Mercy Shown

I have been here for two days. My eyes are sinking into my skull and my skin is greasy and gray. The swell of my belly has deflated; my womb has gone cold and my baby, still within me, has begun to quietly descend to the base of my back as my mushy organs part for her weight. My lungs have calmed their efforts to maintain the flow of life, resigning me to my peaceful sleep. 

I’m as dead as the home in which I lay, still and heavy like my body now. The dead walk outside, disturbing the gravel and occasionally becoming curious enough to approach the porch of the house and rattle our door. Like fools, my husband and I believed we could outrun them, that if we could just stay alive we would be saved by some hero or by God. I was first to understand that we would not be rescued from this terror–this dreadful storm was the work of God, not made to be weathered by humans. What god would order the dead to rise from their graves and walk the earth without the destruction of the human race in mind? It is His will that we must die. Had I come to this epiphany before I realized I was pregnant, I would have killed myself. However, God made me weak. I could not bring myself to drag a blade across my wrists while I shared my body with another soul.

I hadn’t meant to become pregnant. I’d be no better than the monsters outside if I attempted willfully to bring a child into this rotten world. It’s this world that my husband and I longed to escape from when we found safety in the embrace of each other. It felt beautiful at the time, doing our duty to nature like the animals God intended us to be. 

Just a day before my death I felt a sharp pain in my belly. My eyes widened, believing it was a contraction. Then a vain thought flashed in my mind: perhaps my child will be the one to beat God, perhaps she might brave this divine punishment and become the Noah of her time. I prepared the bed in the home with towels and bowls of water and plenty of opiates looted from a pharmacy. When my husband arrived home from scavenging, his face lit up with joy and he rushed to help me get comfortable. He was eager to bring his baby girl into the world, and I wished so powerfully that I could share in his joy. 

He was first to notice the blood upon my thighs. Then it began to spill as if I had been struck by a bullet; the mattress quickly soaked up the gore and became heavy with it. My husband began to panic, sopping it up with his sleeve and pressing the bedsheets over the puddle when that didn’t work. Thick and black like mucus, it came with strings and morsels of flesh, gushing out from within me. I knew at once that I was the only soul left in my body. I heaved the most honest sob of my life, clawing at the lifeblood of my only child smeared across my belly. The corpse of my sweet girl lay inside my wrathful womb still; and somehow through my tears, her ghost offered me relief. 

Then something rolled in my belly. My skin stretched and bulged like something was pushing up on it from within. I stared, eyes already raw with tears, and waited without moving at all. So too did my husband, before his eyes flicked to mine with what seemed like hope. I knew my daughter was dead, I knew there was no other life in me now. I met his eyes with a haunting look, knowing God was about to punish me for escaping his flood of death. My skin bulged again and I felt a sharp pain like a burn inside of me, or the rip of a serrated knife carving through meat. 

I lay here now days after, upon the very same mattress made into mush by my blood. Over me my husband sobs, clutching my oily skin and my deflated belly. Meanwhile my belly still churns under the skin, made thinner and thinner as the parasite inside eats her way out. Upon the nightstand lay the dowel which he had pushed into my skull to save me from a crueler fate, brave enough to save me from the greater evil of becoming one of the creatures that roam outside. 

Suddenly, like an oozing pocket bursting, something breaks through the skin of my stomach and a tiny gray hand emerges from my insides much like the dead who clawed their way out of their graves. My husband recoils, his jaw tight and his eyes wide as he struggles to understand the scene. The small, undead arm of our once-daughter bursts out, wriggling and squirming to free herself of my corpse. The trembling hands of my husband hesitate before they reach inside of me and pull her from the womb that once loved her. He looks upon the creature she is now, her tiny body wiggling in his hands, her toothless gums gnashing and somehow holding onto chunks of flesh she has torn out from inside of me. She’s no longer human, nor even animal, for she scratches at her father’s arms like every other one of the parasites we had fought so hard to shield her from.

He coughs out an inarticulate cry, reaching toward the dowel he had saved me with. He presses the thin metal to the base of her neck and waits. He waits like I did when I tried to cut my wrists and save this little girl from a world that would not receive her with love. He sighs a heavy breath and lets his stinging eyes flutter shut, then shows her the mercy and love he had shown me.