What They Were Scared Of

I’ve been residing in my village for longer than I can remember. But the villagers don’t take too kindly to me, I think they’re afraid of me, especially expecting mothers. I can hear their voices in hushed whispers whenever I traverse through the village, they say I’m a monster. They say I feed on the blood of unborn children and their mothers and they know it’s true since they haven’t seen my beloved in moons. It was simply coincidental that she was expecting our first born. No one would look me in the eye, some even quickly evaded the surrounding area if they spotted me. The baker refused to let me in his shop as his daughter was pregnant, but he would never turn hungry souls away so he’d reluctantly hand me small loaves of crusty bread a few feet away from his shop all the while having a disgusted sneer plastered on his withered face. The women whether they were pregnant, already had children, or had neither were particularly fearful of my presence; if they were lucky their husbands held them closely when I walked by and glared at me with such pure hatred in their eyes and if they weren’t such as those without the protection of a husband nor father, they’d cower in terror and not take their eyes off me. 

Maybe I was hopeful at a certain point that this silly rumor would be suppressed soon enough, but it had been many moons and not one person would even dare look my way. Even the children have started calling me by cruel names while running and screaming from me, only attracting the unwanted attention of the locals who thought I was up to something malicious. They would hiss and shriek at me to stay away from their children even when their kin thought it’d be funny to antagonize me any way they could. I mostly kept my distance from my village, unless absolutely necessary. I was never welcomed as warmly after my beloved stopped coming to the village with me. If one of the villagers was unusually gallant, they’d come up to me and demand to know where my beloved was. I responded the same way I typically did: She was ill and needed to stay home. The simple answer always worked or maybe they got too uneasy to be around me and wouldn’t want to ask any more questions. My quiet routine worked for a while and keeping my head down usually kept me out of trouble. I’d buy any goods I needed for the week and go straight home without speaking to a single soul. It worked so well I thought people would forget about me and my beloved. That was until pregnant villagers started going missing. 

All fingers immediately pointed to me and the villagers were quick to accuse me of this wrongdoing. When I entered the village for my routine excursion, they seemed to be waiting for me, angry and desperate to bring justice to whoever was taking the women. I was quick to oppose any and all accusations toward my character, stating that they weren’t looking at all the possible outcomes that may be the reason these women were going missing. Maybe they went too far from the village and got lost in the woodlands, worst case scenario was that they were devoured by mountain lions as they tend to hunt during nightfall. The villagers looked at one another, they knew that I had a point, mountain lions normally wandered closer to the village at night and some expecting villagers couldn’t rest at night so they sometimes did roam outside their homes. However, I could see in their eyes that they believed I was responsible somehow. I was the only one in the village whose home was a bit more sequestered within the foliage surrounding the village, I was reclusive in both location and personality even before this whole debacle, and my beloved was more than eager to get to know these villagers than I was. To them, I was a stranger and an individual they couldn’t get a handle on. They tried to come up with their own reasoning as to why mine didn’t make sense (to them at least) like how the women of the village knew to never explore the woods at night or to not leave without taking someone else with them. I thought that maybe something else lured them out there, but I didn’t tell them that since it would make me sound more guilty. The villagers may have wanted to untether their fury upon me, but they realized they had little to no evidence proving that I was behind this. It didn’t stop them from acting hostile whenever I decided to show my face in that village. 

More expecting villagers were disappearing and the air became more tense as the days went by. Another week went by when they finally found one of the pregnant women, but not in a state they hoped to find her in. She was close to the village, but not close enough to save herself. Her body appeared mangled, there was a huge hole in her stomach, and her skin was gray and wrinkly. She looked like she had been deflated and all that was left was an empty husk for the birds to slowly pick at. This caused the bubble of tension at the village to finally pop when the bleak reality started to set in. Many were terrified and begged the others to pack whatever they could and hope they find another village to reside in. Others argued they should find what creature was out there and hunt it down. But things were at a standstill, half of the villagers didn’t want to leave the village they grew up in and didn’t want to risk getting lost while the creature was still on the prowl. The other half were too horrified to hunt down whatever was out there and they certainly didn’t want to leave their wives and children alone in case it got one of them. What was worse for them was pondering who the creature would go after all the pregnant mothers were gone. Pregnant women weren’t allowed outside after the sun went down, villagers with children slept in the same room, and unattended women with no husbands or male relatives stayed with their neighbors at night. Even with these ordinances, the villagers were still afraid and felt they still weren’t safe. It was bad enough that even when I arrived at the village, the air did not shift like it always did and I could sense they were too busy growing eyes in the back of their heads to notice me. I could still discern their contempt for me, though, and noticed their frustration that they couldn’t end my life right then and there to end this nightmare. And they certainly weren’t secretive about it either, the baker wished he didn’t have to give me bread anymore so I’d starve, some women said they prayed for my demise each night, and the husbands of the missing would curse my name when I passed by. The ambience was desolate, but my existence wasn’t helping in the slightest. 

It was when another mangled body appeared on the path towards my home that the villagers decided to take action against me. This was the irrefutable corroboration they needed to establish my guilt. When I arrived at the village one final time, they demanded I tell them where the missing villagers went. I vehemently told them that I was not responsible for these disappearances and pleaded with them that I would never come back to the village if they let me go. My own fear seemed to verify their trepidation and rumors about me, that I was a monster who was attempting to flee to escape punishment. I told them that my beloved needed me home which sparked another interrogation on the whereabouts of my beloved. I repeated the same answer I always gave, but they refused to believe me and implied that I had something to do with her sudden vanishing from the public eye. Some villagers said they’d search my home for my beloved and the other women while others decided to imprison me in one of the vacant homes. And when they find those women, they said, they’ll hang me by the neck until every gasp of air escapes my limp body. I begged, cried, and exclaimed they were making a huge mistake, but they wouldn’t listen and a handful of villagers began their journey to my isolated home to find something they never should have. 

Now I’m sitting in an empty house, the lack of furniture and warmth reminds me of my own home in a strange way. I’m praying for the villagers that willingly volunteered to go to my home, but I already know they’re grim fates are sealed. All I can do is pray for now that their pain will end quickly, but knowing them, they’ll try to run or possibly bargain for mercy. I can’t stop crying, even though I’m not responsible for their deaths, I was and still am complicit in the carnage. I was always alone, so when I finally met my beloved I was willing to do anything to keep her happy. I didn’t truly know who she was, but when she gets pregnant, she becomes something much more petrifying. She has been pregnant more times than I can count, but each time brings about another stage in my lifetime where I must help her feed. Her body survives on blood, at first the blood of animals, but that wasn’t enough and then it was whatever human she can get her hands on. Her anger and obsession to feed the abomination growing inside her left me in a state of constant fear. Her body became distorted over time, no longer appearing as the woman I fell for, but a parasite that has infested my home. Her slimy and elongated body now takes up the whole bedroom where she feeds and nourishes the swollen egg sack in her stomach. I’m no longer her beloved, but a servant whose only tasks are to impregnate and provide the food she needs. I’ve been lucky enough in the past as her babies would habitually die within the early months of pregnancy, but she found a way to sustain this pregnancy. And that was feeding on the blood of fetuses and their mothers. I have never seen my beloved this grotesque, I can barely stand to be in that house, but staying is the only way of preventing me from being her next meal. She demands I go and find her what she needs and unfortunately I have. When I do get her a terrified pregnant mother, I would throw her into our bedroom, barricade our bedroom door, and leave the house. Whatever she does when she feeds I never want to hear nor see. I’ve thought about escaping constantly or even admitting what I’ve done to the villagers and begging for their help. But I know she’d find me and I definitely know that even the village couldn’t stop her rampage if we did try to stop her.

I loved her, but she’s not who I thought she was. She’s something not of this existence, even now I hesitate calling her a human being. I’m curled up into a ball as moonlight spills from the cracks of this pitch black house, I know those villagers won’t be coming back and my beloved must’ve realized by now that I’m not coming home. This will anger her and she will come for me and anyone who stands in her way. Soon, she’ll make her way to the village and every man, woman, and child won’t be spared. She will be angry. She will be hungry. The villagers are afraid of me, they think I’m a monster. I know it isn’t true, I just wish I told them. Now they’re going to die and it’s all my fault. Please God, someone help me.