KICK IN THE PANTS WRITING CONTEST STORY YES I KNOW I LOST
Title: A Family Affair
Author: omiscully
Word count: 5534
Warnings: Creepy, dystopian weird shit with sex and that sort of thing everywhere. Hopefully a lack of anvils. Woman stuff.
Author's note: So I came up with the idea for this when I was a wee little middle school radical. Hopefully this version is more of a story and less of a horribly anvil-ridden over-the-top crazy thing. No disrespect to my radical self. I love her very much still. So, yeah. This is just a story.
Karen was sitting by the pool. It was a good day to bring the children to swim. It was hot, but there were enough clouds in the sky that there would probably be no sunburns to deal with. She had been up the night before with poor Cody, whose stomach had kept him awake until three or four. Splashing in the shallows with a couple of others, he seemed to have recovered well; better than Karen, at any rate. The heat added to the heaviness of her limbs. They seemed somewhat disconnected from the rest of her body. It was partly the heat and partly her tiredness, but being this pregnant always made the outer parts of her body seem strangely other. The focus of her brain, her arms, the arch of her back, was her swollen belly.
She glanced around. The pool was fenced in to separate it from the surrounding buildings, which were businesses and Family facilities, jumbled and crowded in next to the narrow road leading to the water. Along the fence, a narrow line of grass grew, poking bravely up through the concrete.
The pool was filled with children. The boys and the flat, thin girls did tricks off of the diving board into the deep end. The very young children and the pregnant girls stayed in the shallows. She looked back to the stairs that led into the shallow end. At seven, Cody was too scared to venture into the deep end with the other boys. He seemed to prefer the company of girls anyway; he had no boy friends of his age. Karen worried about him. Soon, the girls he spent his time with would be moving on. A few of the girls at his age were already lounging at the pool's edge, dangling their feet into the water idly and draping their arms over their basketball stomachs. Karen didn't remember her first pregnancy very well. She had blurry memories of excitement and fear and the bodies of other girls around her, lifting their shirts to reveal their new big stomachs and breasts, livid with stretch marks.
Karen looked back to the other end. There was Laurie. She was swimming across the pool, zig-zagging from one side of the deep end to the other. She was a short girl, with thin arms and a thick belly, but the water and the length of her stroke made her look long-bodied and strong. At eleven, she was old to still be swimming in the deep end. When she thought about Laurie getting older, Karen got an ache in the bottom of her chest.
She'd had one girl grow up before. Madeline was now seventeen. At five, she had taken crayons and drawn herself with four babies crawling around her and a heavy belly. She too had been old for her first baby-- twelve. Envy had consumed her as she watched her friends' bellies grow at eleven, ten, eight.
She was ecstatic when she stained the back of her daisy-printed dress with blood. Her reaction was unusual for such an orthodox girl, but Karen understood; she had wanted it so very badly. In the bloody dress that had to be buried was her long overdue advancement into the world she had ached to be a part of. Karen's husband, John, had scolded Madeline when she could not summon up tears for the funeral.
"Maddy, you lost an egg. Do you know what that means?"
He was wearing a black suit. He was a very handsome man. Karen admired his long limbs and big hands that held Madeline's face. Karen was wearing her usual funeral dress. It was simple and comfortable, as advertised at Mourning in Comfort.
"Yes. I killed a person." Her face was solemn, but Karen could see that Madeline was not upset. She understood the gravity of what had happened what she had done, but she was entranced and glowing with her own advancing adulthood.
"Not just a person, even. You killed the one who would have been your child." John was a good person, Karen thought. Karen herself could not summon up the passion for this event that John could. Tears were glistening in his eyes. Karen was just tired. She looked at the marker on the ground. It was a plain white stone, the latest in a line of five that took up their patch of land. If there were any more deaths they would have to get a plot away from the house, in the communal burial ground. Under the new mound of dirt was a blood-soaked rag. Madeline had not bled very much, which Karen was thankful for. Her own first murder was shockingly gory. They couldn't have the funeral for two weeks.
Madeline was shame-faced now. She had always been a good, obedient girl, but also always a little too passionate. She lacked the capacity for conflicting emotions, which was why Karen was unsurprised at her unorthodox (even deviant) happiness. The girl looked at the ground. Tears were flowing freely from John's face, and his arms were trembling with anger and frustration. Karen realized she hadn't been paying attention to what he was saying to Madeline. "Do you understand?" John asked, his hands gripping Madeline's shoulders. Madeline sniffed and nodded, shaking a little.
"That's enough, John." Karen put her hand on his shoulder. "She's young. She won't understand completely until she is older. Then she'll mourn more than you or I." She'd been told the same words many times. She wondered if anyone actually believed them.
Slowly, John let Madeline go. He stood up and wiped his face on his sleeve. Karen rubbed his back. "It's alright, dear," she said. "Go inside now." He nodded and walked away, murmuring again and again new life is beautiful.
Madeline was still sniffing at the ground. "It's my fault," she mumbled. Madeline always was like this; she got caught up in one emotion before another found her again. If she hadn't wanted this so badly she wouldn't have forgotten her grief.
Karen kneeled. She knew what she was going to say, but she didn't know if it was true. "It's alright, dear. We can't control everything our bodies do."
Madeline look up, shocked. "Yes, we can. I should have felt it happening and told you so I could make a baby instead of killing it. But I'm bad. I didn't care about my baby." Karen had fuzzy memories of school at Madeline's ago. She remembered the warm classroom filled with girls and their lanky new limbs stretched awkwardly out. She remembered her teacher, a little. She remembered her saying that a mother bled, it was because she wanted her baby to die.
"It's not that easy. Don't worry about it. It's not your fault." She hugged Madeline, who wiped her nose on her sleeve. Karen wasn't sure if she said the right thing. Madeline was just confused now. Maybe when she grew up, she would hate her mother for what she said.
And she did, in fact, grow up to hate Karen, though Karen would never know if it was because she thought her mother was an unrepentant murderer. She was away at Mother House now. Karen's home wasn't the sort of environment Madeline wanted for her children.
"Mom!" Karen started and looked up. She realized she had been looking at her stomach. Her eyes always seemed to settle there naturally. She looked around and saw Laurie standing in front of her in her pink one-piece. She seemed to have tanned already this summer. Her skin had that soft sheen that pool water gives. Water dripped from her tangled ponytail. "Is there anything to eat?"
"Yes, Laurie. In the cooler." Laurie turned and walked in her stalking stride to the cooler and took out a sandwich. She sat next to her mother, cross-legged, and ate, slowly and deliberately. Karen put her hand on the girl's head. The hair felt rough with chlorine.
"You're pulling it," Laurie complained. Karen smiled and took away her hand.
"Are you having fun?"
"Yes. I like swimming."
"Have you made any friends?"
"Everyone wants to splash instead of swim."
Karen nodded. It was what usually happened. She didn't worry about Laurie not having friends. Laurie had always been more into doing things than being with people. If she was honest, Karen had a perverse sort of pride in Laurie that she didn't let people hold her back. Laurie was better than the other children. The only thing that worried her about Laurie was that she soon would be grown up.
Laurie was not like Madeline. She was reserved. She did what she was told, but showed no interest in anything other than herself. She was quite well-qualified to be a mother-- more than most first time mothers, as she was older than average and so had had more schooling. She had always been interested in doing well in school, so she did well. But it was the achievement that she liked, not the knowledge itself. It was a point of pride for Laurie to prove she was good at what she was supposed to be doing, but Karen could see so clearly her absolute ambivalence towards becoming a mother herself. Laurie was consumed by her own brain. She was full of a child's pride. That sort of disposition was not a good one for motherhood.
The worries grew confused in Karen's mind as she watched Laurie lick salt off of her fingertips. It was her real responsibility, as a woman, as a human, to make sure Laurie carried her pregnancies to term and bring new human life into the world because it was the most good thing a person could ever do and new life was beautiful, after all. She should tell the Family, or at least John, about her concerns about Laurie's character-- that she did not think Laurie was ready, did not think Laurie understood that having a baby was different than reading about it, that when Laurie did her duty to the state and humanity and kept seven of her children they would be as satellites to the sun that was Laurie.
But she would never tell the Family, or John. It was Laurie she was actually worried about, not her future children, which were a shadow of festering guilt. Karen didn't like to think about it, but she had admitted to herself long ago that she felt the unnatural urge to see Laurie grow up with no children of her own at all.
She had never told anyone. Not only did she not enjoy dwelling on the feeling, she was afraid of thinking it too loud. It said something horrible about her own character that she did not wish to contemplate. How could she wish for fewer humans, when new life was beautiful?
Karen watched Laurie stand and walk back to the pool. She passed the older mothers on their chairs, the young mothers standing or sitting on the cement in groups, the young children splashing in the shallows, the pubescent girls cradling their swollen bellies at the pool's edge, the teenage boys running to do flips off of the diving board, and slid into the water head first without a splash.
Karen looked away. Cody was giggling with his friends. She ran over her other children in her head, as she did every day, every hour. Max, Jude, and Adam were at school. She would have to pick them up in two hours. Madeline was away, of course, with the Mothers. John Jr. had even longer ago left with a family of his own. Her other children were with the Family. They were mostly nameless; after the first five she had lost the enthusiasm for naming. She had not picked a name for the one inside her now. She must raise it, of course, to meet the quota of seven children in her household while she was fertile. Once she was too old, she had two options: adopt from the Family and raise the children alone, since John would be obliged to leave her for a woman who could still bear children, or work for the Family directly.
She hadn't kept a baby in a long time. Each time she remembered she was keeping this one, and the one that would come after it, she was dully surprised.
And there was Laurie in the deep end, striking out with her skinny arms again and again.
After she'd bathed Cody and picked up Max and Jude and Adam from school and made dinner, John came home and they all sat to eat. The table was in the kitchen. They were lucky in their fairly large apartment-- there was a whole two feet of space between the counter (which had the stove, sink, and fridge, as well as another couple of feet of empty space) and the table, leaving a convenient place to walk. Cody, Adam, and Jude shared one room, with Max and John Jr. in another. Laurie had her own room, because she was willing to take a room of a fraction of the size so she could be alone. There was enough room for a bunk bed with a desk under it, and a drawer for clothes under that. Karen and John's room was larger, to accommodate their bed. They all shared a bathroom. John had been very pleased that they had found such a great place; their even had a plot of grass outside, a perfect place for gravestones.
The boys talked about school when John prompted them. They had school six days a week. One day a week was all Family Ethics classes, which as a general rule was easier than the regular academics day. Laurie and other girls her age had mandatory school four days a week and an optional fifth day, which was an academic day. The mandatory days were Family Ethics.
"You're getting older, Max. You should start thinking about marriage." John had been an overachiever as a boy. He had married Karen when he was fourteen. He was passionate about the World Family in a way Karen had never been. She still wondered why he had chosen her to marry. They got along, and she certainly liked him very much, but she was not on his level.
Max nodded eagerly in response to his father. He worshipped John. He was the oldest since John Jr. left home, and now glowed with authority. "I met a girl this week. It seems like we might be compatible. She wants to keep her next baby."
John grinned broadly. Karen nodded and smiled. This was big news. Max was a little young, but John would never hear that, so she stayed quiet. This girl sounded virtuous. Karen would miss Max, but she had watched Madeline and Junior leave and had managed. In any case, they would all be soon replaced. It was the right thing for humanity.
"New life is beautiful," said Karen, almost without realizing, and as she said it she found the same words were leaving Max's mouth. John put his hand on her shoulder and smiled proudly at Max. Cody played with Adam's broccoli. Jude gazed at Max with envy. Karen's eyes rested on Laurie, whose head was buried in a book. Her fork missed her mouth twice. Karen couldn't help smiling.
"Laurie, don't you have anything to say to your brother?" John didn't like it when Laurie read at the table. Laurie looked up. She was aware of what was happening, though clearly she had been engrossed in her book.
"Congratulations, Max," she said, and returned to reading.
"I'm worried about Laurie."
They were in bed. Karen usually preferred to sleep on her stomach, but at this point in her pregnancy that was always very uncomfortable. She was on her back, restlessly moving her hands between resting on her stomach and resting on the bed.
"Why?" she asked, trying to ignore how her heart rate picked up.
John shifted. "I think she may be a deviant."
The word jolted her. John didn't say these things lightly. She didn't let him see how shaken she was, and closed her eyes. "She's just reserved. Don't say such things."
"I didn't raise her to be reserved. She's cheeky. She doesn't take her place in the world seriously."
You didn't raise her at all, Karen thought, and was immediately shocked that she thought it. John was the reason any of the children were any good. Karen knew she was herself a...deviant. She barely let herself think the word. What if John read it in her face, in the shift of her hands, in her thoughts themselves?
She kept her eyes closed. She could not look him in the face and lie. "She's just different from you, John. She's not growing up as fast. Give her a little time."
"I don't want her to kill her first." His voice grew distant, and she knew it was because the idea of Laurie bleeding upset him.
"She's like you in that she's an overachiever. She will do her best to keep her first alive." It was a joke, really, to talk about the first one being born alive. John was hopelessly ignorant of this, or at least behaved so, like all men did. Karen found it almost infuriating how he talked like the first menstruation was the child's fault. His idealism and orthodoxy were what made him a good man, of course. Good men didn't understand that predicting your blood was not the same as refraining from touching yourself.
"I'm worried that..." John stopped. He sighed, and remained silent. Karen wondered what he thought was so terrible about Laurie that he could not bring himself to say it. Finally, he started again. "Will you talk to her? She doesn't talk to me."
She doesn't talk to anyone. "Yes, John. Don't worry about it." She put her hand on his and squeezed. He smiled at her, then closed his eyes. She could tell he wanted to have sex with her, but as she was pregnant, it would be a waste-- a death. He didn't approve of touching himself-- or, as it was called, making donations. He said there were already too many men interested in that, and not enough woman to accommodate the supply in the sperm banks. It was more virtuous to hold out until she could conceive again.
She turned on her side, away from him. She knew she wouldn't sleep for a long time. She did not want to talk to Laurie. She did not want to tell Laurie to be like Madeline. She could not face it. But I will, she thought.
The thing inside her kicked. She realized it would be ready to to leave in a month or so. Then she would have a new baby. She would be keeping it.
The idea felt good; better than she remembered. It was so nice when they were babies. They were accomplishments. There was no need to worry just then about the next baby, or the baby's babies. It was just a baby. Her own.
She didn't let herself think about Laurie anymore. When the baby got tired of kicking, she slept.
She and Laurie were home alone. Cody was away at a friend's house. The boys were at school. John was working. It was another hot day. The air was still and heavy. There was a cricket in the house somewhere. Every so often, it cheeped. Laurie had looked around for it earlier, but it always went silent when steps approached. The house was probably more hospitable for it than the outside, anyway.
Karen was reading the newspaper. DEVIANTS MURDER MILLIONS, the front page screamed. The Humans, a terrorist group, had burned down a sperm bank in California. This sort of slaughter was rarely successful; sperm banks were heavily guarded. Karen stared at the photo of a woman crying in front of the rubble. Her face was a tortured mask.
She looked away. Cody's friend's mother had been quite subdued when Karen dropped Cody off, and when the children went off to play she began crying. Karen had held her as she sobbed over the deaths. Why don't I feel anything. Why don't I feel anything. Why don't I feel anything.
Laurie was reading a book. She was curled up on the chair before the table, not conscious of how her skirt was bunching and leaving most of her thigh uncovered. She still acted like such a child-- nothing like Madeline at her age. Madeline had demanded a bra in fourth grade, had spent hours in front of the mirror, had invited her friends over for sleep overs where Karen overheard whispered conversations about legs and boys and sex, sex, sex, and who had done it and who hadn't. Girls that age were encouraged to get artificially inseminated rather than have intercourse (as sex led to bonds children didn't usually break as well as adults could), but that was more for appearance's sake than anything. It was only slightly unusual for a girl to get pregnant through intercourse after her first bleeding.
Karen set down the newspaper. "Laurie, don't you think it's time we get you a bra?" She hated the words.
Laurie slowly tore her eyes away from her book. Karen saw some flash of an expression, but it was unreadable. "Okay," she said. So different from Madeline, from Karen's own sisters, from Karen herself, even. Karen's mother had been the one to suggest they go, but Karen remembered her excitement.
"Should we go now?"
Laurie glanced back at her book before returning her gaze to her mother. "Yeah, okay." She stood up and stretched, arching her arms high above her head.
"Change and then we'll go," Karen said, also rising. The heat and the weight of her stomach made moving unpleasant. Laurie nodded and walked down the short hall to her room. Karen followed her, turning one door later in the bathroom.
She stood in front of the mirror and realized she didn't remember why she came to the bathroom. They didn't have a full-length mirror; the one over the sink was just big enough to reflect back her angular face and wide shoulders. She thought she was pretty, these days, even though she usually looked a little tired. When she was younger she hadn't thought she was nice to look at at all, but now she seemed alright enough. Her nose was a little wide, her eyes a little narrow, her hair a little gray, her mouth a little thin, but they combined to make a face that was interesting, if nothing else. She could see Laurie in the shape of her eyes, but she could tell her daughter would grow up to be much more beautiful. Her hair was dark and thick, not the thin dishwater blonde stuff Karen had, and her face generally was less severe than Karen's. It was just as unreadable, though.
The baby suddenly moved, starting Karen out of her thoughts. She still couldn't remember what she had gone to the bathroom for, so she just used the toilet and called it good.
She was shaking the water off of her hands as she walked into the narrow hall. She wasn't sure what possessed her to not knock before entering Laurie's room; she always knocked, on every door. She just did it. "Laurie, are you ready?" she called as she turned the doorknob. The door swung open and there was Laurie with her skirt on the floor and some sort of cloth or paper or something that was covered with the shocking red of blood.
Karen thought Laurie must be talking, but she couldn't hear anything. Her concentration was consumed by the scene in front of her. Laurie was covering herself with the hand not holding the bloody thing. Her skirt and underwear were on the floor, and she was stepping out of their tangle towards Karen. She was speaking, and Karen realized that she should probably be paying attention.
"Please, mom, please, please don't tell don't tell--" Karen had rarely seen Laurie lose composure. Even as a little girl she had been quiet and unreadable. Now she was shaking. Her eyes were wide. She was walking towards Karen but remembered she was holding the bloody thing, so she pulled her arm away, behind her back. "Please, nobody can know, don't tell dad--"
"What is that?" Karen gestured towards the thing in Laurie's hand. Laurie looked wide-eyed down at it.
"It's--it's a...a girl at school had them," she whispered. She held it up shakily.
"Oh." Karen remembered suddenly she had learned about pads in history class. It was a mass-produced absorbent product for menstruation when women and girls used to let their unborn children die every month. They had been removed from stores when Karen's mother was in her teens or so. Their presence encouraged menstruation. "You got this at school?"
Laurie was staring at the floor. She was still shaking. "A girl sells them," she whispered. Karen has been completely oblivious to the presence of a black market in her own school. She suddenly wondered what it would have been like if she had known.
"Where have you been putting them? When they're full?"
"I burn them in the disposal."
Karen was silent. She was waiting for her own reaction, but it didn't seem to be coming. It seemed as if she was becoming colder and colder. She looked at the pad. "Looks like you need another one." Laurie looked up quickly. Her face seemed like someone else's. Karen couldn't remember the last time she saw her cry. She wasn't crying now, not really, but her jaw was clenched and her shoulders were shaking. If Karen had ever considered something like this happening, she may have guessed that Laurie would run. In reality, she looked too afraid to run; defeated in a way Karen hadn't seen before. "Where do you keep them?"
Laurie turned and walked shakily over to her desk. As always, she was obedient; but it was a different quality of obedience. Any of her usual confidence and subtly defiance was gone. She kneeled and opened her drawer. Her shaky hands pawed through the clothes. From the bottom, she produced a plastic bag. It was clear, and Karen could see it was full of square packages.
"How do you put it on?"
"It's, um..." Laurie opened the bag and took out a square package. She opened it and produced another pad, this one clean and white. She didn't look at her mother as she peeled a section from the back, picked up her underwear and stuck the pad to it. She put it on, with her skirt.
Karen didn't know what else to say. She thought it might be within her power to chastise Laurie, but John would be calling the Family. John-- he would be unable to handle such a betrayal. He didn't think real people, people outside of The Humans, people who weren't on a TV screen, were capable of this act. His own daughter! Participating in the worst kind of crime. It wasn't just murder; it was deviant murder.
Yet Karen was so tired. The bloody thing on the ground summoned up no emotions in her but vague curiosity and disgust. She herself had menstruated five times in her life. The bloody rags were buried with Madeline's first. It was a normal amount of accidents. John hurt each time, but he had forgiven her; they had tried their best, and it was nothing but a tragedy. He blamed her, perhaps, but that was to be expected. If it was anyone's fault, it was hers.
She had felt guilt crawling up her throat each time. Now, she saw her daughter's bloody murder and felt nothing.
"Let's burn this," she said, gesturing at the pad. Laurie again looking quickly up at her. She said nothing. She picked it up and stood on front of her mother. Karen turned and led her out of the room. They walked down the empty hall, which wasn't quite wide enough for the two of them. The cricket chirped and fell silent as they advanced. It was a tired, heavy, hot day. The baby kicked.
They put it in the disposal. There was a dull whirring roar when she closed it. She let go, and Laurie stepped in front of her and opened it again. There was nothing left but ash. Apparently satisfied, she closed it.
Again, they stood in silence. Laurie may have been the murderer, but they were both now complicit in a secret so large it was barely manageable.
"You can't do this forever." Karen wished she didn't have to say the words. "Do you have a plan?"
And finally Laurie cried-- huge, childish sobs, and Karen wrapped her arms around her, trying to suppress the emotion that was finally, finally thickening her throat, her huge belly between them.
Karen had kept many secrets. Her life was much more inside her head than outside. She had lived with her parents until she was 18, which they hadn't been happy with. Her mother was dead; she had died giving birth at 52, an end she would have wanted. She was a very good woman. Though she had been young at the time, she was part of the Living Movement, who had stopped the slaughter of innocents. She had again and again told the story of rebelling her mother against her murderous parents and marrying at 14. Karen had been something of a disappointment to her parents; she'd never shown quite the initiative of a true child of the Living Movement, though she was certainly adequate. Her father was still alive now, married again to a woman around Madeline's age. He was a very good man.
So Karen remembered talking about the Movement, the Family, the World Family, marriage, children, and murder. There wasn't much else to say. Her head spun with thoughts, but she didn't like to consider what that said about her.
It had never made sense to her that John had chosen her, but she knew he didn't know her. She always wondered why her mediocrity had not steered him to another girl, but perhaps she was better at keeping a secret than she thought.
She did not know John very well. They had spoken a few times before he told her he wanted to marry her. It was late; they had for some reason been going to the same place when it had started raining. "Your children will be very beautiful and smart. I can help with that." John did not usually compliment anyone, let alone himself, so she remembered hiding a smile. The memory was always a surprise; she couldn't see herself laughing at John today, and couldn't remember when she stopped finding that sort of thing worth laughing over. "I heard you are going to keep your next child." She had just had her fifth, and was not yet pregnant again. "It can be ours."
She had never said she wanted to keep her next child. Her mother spread rumors about her. She was ashamed of her daughter, and tried desperately to save their family's reputation. But John was handsome, and he was nice. Karen didn't want to tell him he was mistaken. He was younger, but he easily looked as old as Karen. Her mother would be ecstatic; what a boy, she would say! Such ambition and initiative. It was still raining. They were underneath a tree. There buildings around them were dark. It somehow was the most lonely spot she had ever been in. Karen had never slept with a boy. They kissed. She was cold, but it felt hot. She wanted him and he wanted her, so they fucked in the dark under the tree and it was painful and warm and like nothing Karen had ever felt. They were married soon after, and she was pregnant.
It was not like her other pregnancies. She knew she would be keeping this baby; her growing stomach seemed more part of her than it ever had. But her mind was on John. His every movement raised reactions in her she had never felt to this intensity; but they could not have each other. She was already pregnant. He did not like donating. She had never ached so badly. She realized that before she had had only the slightest inkling of wanting. Her brain was consumed. Sleeping in the same bed as him was torturous.
Once, in the shower, her hands accidently trailed over her body in a way that made her gasp. She didn't know what would happen if she continued. Her stomach was huge. Men made life when they were touched, but it died if it wasn't dealt with properly. Would her baby suddenly stop kicking? Would she go into labor three days later and birth a dead thing? Her skin crawled. She would be a murderer again; she had only killed one so far, in her first blood, and she couldn't couldn't couldn't do it again, not after the fire and the tears. John would break.
She found out eventually that John would not break, and that he had enough life in him to ache and grieve four deaths and be cold to her, the murderer, getting her pregnant again with a disinterest that made her skin crawl and her limbs freeze and made her wonder what it was about the rain and the dark under the tree that she had ached for so much.
But their family was how it should be. Their children were very beautiful and smart.
Author: omiscully
Word count: 5534
Warnings: Creepy, dystopian weird shit with sex and that sort of thing everywhere. Hopefully a lack of anvils. Woman stuff.
Author's note: So I came up with the idea for this when I was a wee little middle school radical. Hopefully this version is more of a story and less of a horribly anvil-ridden over-the-top crazy thing. No disrespect to my radical self. I love her very much still. So, yeah. This is just a story.
Karen was sitting by the pool. It was a good day to bring the children to swim. It was hot, but there were enough clouds in the sky that there would probably be no sunburns to deal with. She had been up the night before with poor Cody, whose stomach had kept him awake until three or four. Splashing in the shallows with a couple of others, he seemed to have recovered well; better than Karen, at any rate. The heat added to the heaviness of her limbs. They seemed somewhat disconnected from the rest of her body. It was partly the heat and partly her tiredness, but being this pregnant always made the outer parts of her body seem strangely other. The focus of her brain, her arms, the arch of her back, was her swollen belly.
She glanced around. The pool was fenced in to separate it from the surrounding buildings, which were businesses and Family facilities, jumbled and crowded in next to the narrow road leading to the water. Along the fence, a narrow line of grass grew, poking bravely up through the concrete.
The pool was filled with children. The boys and the flat, thin girls did tricks off of the diving board into the deep end. The very young children and the pregnant girls stayed in the shallows. She looked back to the stairs that led into the shallow end. At seven, Cody was too scared to venture into the deep end with the other boys. He seemed to prefer the company of girls anyway; he had no boy friends of his age. Karen worried about him. Soon, the girls he spent his time with would be moving on. A few of the girls at his age were already lounging at the pool's edge, dangling their feet into the water idly and draping their arms over their basketball stomachs. Karen didn't remember her first pregnancy very well. She had blurry memories of excitement and fear and the bodies of other girls around her, lifting their shirts to reveal their new big stomachs and breasts, livid with stretch marks.
Karen looked back to the other end. There was Laurie. She was swimming across the pool, zig-zagging from one side of the deep end to the other. She was a short girl, with thin arms and a thick belly, but the water and the length of her stroke made her look long-bodied and strong. At eleven, she was old to still be swimming in the deep end. When she thought about Laurie getting older, Karen got an ache in the bottom of her chest.
She'd had one girl grow up before. Madeline was now seventeen. At five, she had taken crayons and drawn herself with four babies crawling around her and a heavy belly. She too had been old for her first baby-- twelve. Envy had consumed her as she watched her friends' bellies grow at eleven, ten, eight.
She was ecstatic when she stained the back of her daisy-printed dress with blood. Her reaction was unusual for such an orthodox girl, but Karen understood; she had wanted it so very badly. In the bloody dress that had to be buried was her long overdue advancement into the world she had ached to be a part of. Karen's husband, John, had scolded Madeline when she could not summon up tears for the funeral.
"Maddy, you lost an egg. Do you know what that means?"
He was wearing a black suit. He was a very handsome man. Karen admired his long limbs and big hands that held Madeline's face. Karen was wearing her usual funeral dress. It was simple and comfortable, as advertised at Mourning in Comfort.
"Yes. I killed a person." Her face was solemn, but Karen could see that Madeline was not upset. She understood the gravity of what had happened what she had done, but she was entranced and glowing with her own advancing adulthood.
"Not just a person, even. You killed the one who would have been your child." John was a good person, Karen thought. Karen herself could not summon up the passion for this event that John could. Tears were glistening in his eyes. Karen was just tired. She looked at the marker on the ground. It was a plain white stone, the latest in a line of five that took up their patch of land. If there were any more deaths they would have to get a plot away from the house, in the communal burial ground. Under the new mound of dirt was a blood-soaked rag. Madeline had not bled very much, which Karen was thankful for. Her own first murder was shockingly gory. They couldn't have the funeral for two weeks.
Madeline was shame-faced now. She had always been a good, obedient girl, but also always a little too passionate. She lacked the capacity for conflicting emotions, which was why Karen was unsurprised at her unorthodox (even deviant) happiness. The girl looked at the ground. Tears were flowing freely from John's face, and his arms were trembling with anger and frustration. Karen realized she hadn't been paying attention to what he was saying to Madeline. "Do you understand?" John asked, his hands gripping Madeline's shoulders. Madeline sniffed and nodded, shaking a little.
"That's enough, John." Karen put her hand on his shoulder. "She's young. She won't understand completely until she is older. Then she'll mourn more than you or I." She'd been told the same words many times. She wondered if anyone actually believed them.
Slowly, John let Madeline go. He stood up and wiped his face on his sleeve. Karen rubbed his back. "It's alright, dear," she said. "Go inside now." He nodded and walked away, murmuring again and again new life is beautiful.
Madeline was still sniffing at the ground. "It's my fault," she mumbled. Madeline always was like this; she got caught up in one emotion before another found her again. If she hadn't wanted this so badly she wouldn't have forgotten her grief.
Karen kneeled. She knew what she was going to say, but she didn't know if it was true. "It's alright, dear. We can't control everything our bodies do."
Madeline look up, shocked. "Yes, we can. I should have felt it happening and told you so I could make a baby instead of killing it. But I'm bad. I didn't care about my baby." Karen had fuzzy memories of school at Madeline's ago. She remembered the warm classroom filled with girls and their lanky new limbs stretched awkwardly out. She remembered her teacher, a little. She remembered her saying that a mother bled, it was because she wanted her baby to die.
"It's not that easy. Don't worry about it. It's not your fault." She hugged Madeline, who wiped her nose on her sleeve. Karen wasn't sure if she said the right thing. Madeline was just confused now. Maybe when she grew up, she would hate her mother for what she said.
And she did, in fact, grow up to hate Karen, though Karen would never know if it was because she thought her mother was an unrepentant murderer. She was away at Mother House now. Karen's home wasn't the sort of environment Madeline wanted for her children.
"Mom!" Karen started and looked up. She realized she had been looking at her stomach. Her eyes always seemed to settle there naturally. She looked around and saw Laurie standing in front of her in her pink one-piece. She seemed to have tanned already this summer. Her skin had that soft sheen that pool water gives. Water dripped from her tangled ponytail. "Is there anything to eat?"
"Yes, Laurie. In the cooler." Laurie turned and walked in her stalking stride to the cooler and took out a sandwich. She sat next to her mother, cross-legged, and ate, slowly and deliberately. Karen put her hand on the girl's head. The hair felt rough with chlorine.
"You're pulling it," Laurie complained. Karen smiled and took away her hand.
"Are you having fun?"
"Yes. I like swimming."
"Have you made any friends?"
"Everyone wants to splash instead of swim."
Karen nodded. It was what usually happened. She didn't worry about Laurie not having friends. Laurie had always been more into doing things than being with people. If she was honest, Karen had a perverse sort of pride in Laurie that she didn't let people hold her back. Laurie was better than the other children. The only thing that worried her about Laurie was that she soon would be grown up.
Laurie was not like Madeline. She was reserved. She did what she was told, but showed no interest in anything other than herself. She was quite well-qualified to be a mother-- more than most first time mothers, as she was older than average and so had had more schooling. She had always been interested in doing well in school, so she did well. But it was the achievement that she liked, not the knowledge itself. It was a point of pride for Laurie to prove she was good at what she was supposed to be doing, but Karen could see so clearly her absolute ambivalence towards becoming a mother herself. Laurie was consumed by her own brain. She was full of a child's pride. That sort of disposition was not a good one for motherhood.
The worries grew confused in Karen's mind as she watched Laurie lick salt off of her fingertips. It was her real responsibility, as a woman, as a human, to make sure Laurie carried her pregnancies to term and bring new human life into the world because it was the most good thing a person could ever do and new life was beautiful, after all. She should tell the Family, or at least John, about her concerns about Laurie's character-- that she did not think Laurie was ready, did not think Laurie understood that having a baby was different than reading about it, that when Laurie did her duty to the state and humanity and kept seven of her children they would be as satellites to the sun that was Laurie.
But she would never tell the Family, or John. It was Laurie she was actually worried about, not her future children, which were a shadow of festering guilt. Karen didn't like to think about it, but she had admitted to herself long ago that she felt the unnatural urge to see Laurie grow up with no children of her own at all.
She had never told anyone. Not only did she not enjoy dwelling on the feeling, she was afraid of thinking it too loud. It said something horrible about her own character that she did not wish to contemplate. How could she wish for fewer humans, when new life was beautiful?
Karen watched Laurie stand and walk back to the pool. She passed the older mothers on their chairs, the young mothers standing or sitting on the cement in groups, the young children splashing in the shallows, the pubescent girls cradling their swollen bellies at the pool's edge, the teenage boys running to do flips off of the diving board, and slid into the water head first without a splash.
Karen looked away. Cody was giggling with his friends. She ran over her other children in her head, as she did every day, every hour. Max, Jude, and Adam were at school. She would have to pick them up in two hours. Madeline was away, of course, with the Mothers. John Jr. had even longer ago left with a family of his own. Her other children were with the Family. They were mostly nameless; after the first five she had lost the enthusiasm for naming. She had not picked a name for the one inside her now. She must raise it, of course, to meet the quota of seven children in her household while she was fertile. Once she was too old, she had two options: adopt from the Family and raise the children alone, since John would be obliged to leave her for a woman who could still bear children, or work for the Family directly.
She hadn't kept a baby in a long time. Each time she remembered she was keeping this one, and the one that would come after it, she was dully surprised.
And there was Laurie in the deep end, striking out with her skinny arms again and again.
After she'd bathed Cody and picked up Max and Jude and Adam from school and made dinner, John came home and they all sat to eat. The table was in the kitchen. They were lucky in their fairly large apartment-- there was a whole two feet of space between the counter (which had the stove, sink, and fridge, as well as another couple of feet of empty space) and the table, leaving a convenient place to walk. Cody, Adam, and Jude shared one room, with Max and John Jr. in another. Laurie had her own room, because she was willing to take a room of a fraction of the size so she could be alone. There was enough room for a bunk bed with a desk under it, and a drawer for clothes under that. Karen and John's room was larger, to accommodate their bed. They all shared a bathroom. John had been very pleased that they had found such a great place; their even had a plot of grass outside, a perfect place for gravestones.
The boys talked about school when John prompted them. They had school six days a week. One day a week was all Family Ethics classes, which as a general rule was easier than the regular academics day. Laurie and other girls her age had mandatory school four days a week and an optional fifth day, which was an academic day. The mandatory days were Family Ethics.
"You're getting older, Max. You should start thinking about marriage." John had been an overachiever as a boy. He had married Karen when he was fourteen. He was passionate about the World Family in a way Karen had never been. She still wondered why he had chosen her to marry. They got along, and she certainly liked him very much, but she was not on his level.
Max nodded eagerly in response to his father. He worshipped John. He was the oldest since John Jr. left home, and now glowed with authority. "I met a girl this week. It seems like we might be compatible. She wants to keep her next baby."
John grinned broadly. Karen nodded and smiled. This was big news. Max was a little young, but John would never hear that, so she stayed quiet. This girl sounded virtuous. Karen would miss Max, but she had watched Madeline and Junior leave and had managed. In any case, they would all be soon replaced. It was the right thing for humanity.
"New life is beautiful," said Karen, almost without realizing, and as she said it she found the same words were leaving Max's mouth. John put his hand on her shoulder and smiled proudly at Max. Cody played with Adam's broccoli. Jude gazed at Max with envy. Karen's eyes rested on Laurie, whose head was buried in a book. Her fork missed her mouth twice. Karen couldn't help smiling.
"Laurie, don't you have anything to say to your brother?" John didn't like it when Laurie read at the table. Laurie looked up. She was aware of what was happening, though clearly she had been engrossed in her book.
"Congratulations, Max," she said, and returned to reading.
"I'm worried about Laurie."
They were in bed. Karen usually preferred to sleep on her stomach, but at this point in her pregnancy that was always very uncomfortable. She was on her back, restlessly moving her hands between resting on her stomach and resting on the bed.
"Why?" she asked, trying to ignore how her heart rate picked up.
John shifted. "I think she may be a deviant."
The word jolted her. John didn't say these things lightly. She didn't let him see how shaken she was, and closed her eyes. "She's just reserved. Don't say such things."
"I didn't raise her to be reserved. She's cheeky. She doesn't take her place in the world seriously."
You didn't raise her at all, Karen thought, and was immediately shocked that she thought it. John was the reason any of the children were any good. Karen knew she was herself a...deviant. She barely let herself think the word. What if John read it in her face, in the shift of her hands, in her thoughts themselves?
She kept her eyes closed. She could not look him in the face and lie. "She's just different from you, John. She's not growing up as fast. Give her a little time."
"I don't want her to kill her first." His voice grew distant, and she knew it was because the idea of Laurie bleeding upset him.
"She's like you in that she's an overachiever. She will do her best to keep her first alive." It was a joke, really, to talk about the first one being born alive. John was hopelessly ignorant of this, or at least behaved so, like all men did. Karen found it almost infuriating how he talked like the first menstruation was the child's fault. His idealism and orthodoxy were what made him a good man, of course. Good men didn't understand that predicting your blood was not the same as refraining from touching yourself.
"I'm worried that..." John stopped. He sighed, and remained silent. Karen wondered what he thought was so terrible about Laurie that he could not bring himself to say it. Finally, he started again. "Will you talk to her? She doesn't talk to me."
She doesn't talk to anyone. "Yes, John. Don't worry about it." She put her hand on his and squeezed. He smiled at her, then closed his eyes. She could tell he wanted to have sex with her, but as she was pregnant, it would be a waste-- a death. He didn't approve of touching himself-- or, as it was called, making donations. He said there were already too many men interested in that, and not enough woman to accommodate the supply in the sperm banks. It was more virtuous to hold out until she could conceive again.
She turned on her side, away from him. She knew she wouldn't sleep for a long time. She did not want to talk to Laurie. She did not want to tell Laurie to be like Madeline. She could not face it. But I will, she thought.
The thing inside her kicked. She realized it would be ready to to leave in a month or so. Then she would have a new baby. She would be keeping it.
The idea felt good; better than she remembered. It was so nice when they were babies. They were accomplishments. There was no need to worry just then about the next baby, or the baby's babies. It was just a baby. Her own.
She didn't let herself think about Laurie anymore. When the baby got tired of kicking, she slept.
She and Laurie were home alone. Cody was away at a friend's house. The boys were at school. John was working. It was another hot day. The air was still and heavy. There was a cricket in the house somewhere. Every so often, it cheeped. Laurie had looked around for it earlier, but it always went silent when steps approached. The house was probably more hospitable for it than the outside, anyway.
Karen was reading the newspaper. DEVIANTS MURDER MILLIONS, the front page screamed. The Humans, a terrorist group, had burned down a sperm bank in California. This sort of slaughter was rarely successful; sperm banks were heavily guarded. Karen stared at the photo of a woman crying in front of the rubble. Her face was a tortured mask.
She looked away. Cody's friend's mother had been quite subdued when Karen dropped Cody off, and when the children went off to play she began crying. Karen had held her as she sobbed over the deaths. Why don't I feel anything. Why don't I feel anything. Why don't I feel anything.
Laurie was reading a book. She was curled up on the chair before the table, not conscious of how her skirt was bunching and leaving most of her thigh uncovered. She still acted like such a child-- nothing like Madeline at her age. Madeline had demanded a bra in fourth grade, had spent hours in front of the mirror, had invited her friends over for sleep overs where Karen overheard whispered conversations about legs and boys and sex, sex, sex, and who had done it and who hadn't. Girls that age were encouraged to get artificially inseminated rather than have intercourse (as sex led to bonds children didn't usually break as well as adults could), but that was more for appearance's sake than anything. It was only slightly unusual for a girl to get pregnant through intercourse after her first bleeding.
Karen set down the newspaper. "Laurie, don't you think it's time we get you a bra?" She hated the words.
Laurie slowly tore her eyes away from her book. Karen saw some flash of an expression, but it was unreadable. "Okay," she said. So different from Madeline, from Karen's own sisters, from Karen herself, even. Karen's mother had been the one to suggest they go, but Karen remembered her excitement.
"Should we go now?"
Laurie glanced back at her book before returning her gaze to her mother. "Yeah, okay." She stood up and stretched, arching her arms high above her head.
"Change and then we'll go," Karen said, also rising. The heat and the weight of her stomach made moving unpleasant. Laurie nodded and walked down the short hall to her room. Karen followed her, turning one door later in the bathroom.
She stood in front of the mirror and realized she didn't remember why she came to the bathroom. They didn't have a full-length mirror; the one over the sink was just big enough to reflect back her angular face and wide shoulders. She thought she was pretty, these days, even though she usually looked a little tired. When she was younger she hadn't thought she was nice to look at at all, but now she seemed alright enough. Her nose was a little wide, her eyes a little narrow, her hair a little gray, her mouth a little thin, but they combined to make a face that was interesting, if nothing else. She could see Laurie in the shape of her eyes, but she could tell her daughter would grow up to be much more beautiful. Her hair was dark and thick, not the thin dishwater blonde stuff Karen had, and her face generally was less severe than Karen's. It was just as unreadable, though.
The baby suddenly moved, starting Karen out of her thoughts. She still couldn't remember what she had gone to the bathroom for, so she just used the toilet and called it good.
She was shaking the water off of her hands as she walked into the narrow hall. She wasn't sure what possessed her to not knock before entering Laurie's room; she always knocked, on every door. She just did it. "Laurie, are you ready?" she called as she turned the doorknob. The door swung open and there was Laurie with her skirt on the floor and some sort of cloth or paper or something that was covered with the shocking red of blood.
Karen thought Laurie must be talking, but she couldn't hear anything. Her concentration was consumed by the scene in front of her. Laurie was covering herself with the hand not holding the bloody thing. Her skirt and underwear were on the floor, and she was stepping out of their tangle towards Karen. She was speaking, and Karen realized that she should probably be paying attention.
"Please, mom, please, please don't tell don't tell--" Karen had rarely seen Laurie lose composure. Even as a little girl she had been quiet and unreadable. Now she was shaking. Her eyes were wide. She was walking towards Karen but remembered she was holding the bloody thing, so she pulled her arm away, behind her back. "Please, nobody can know, don't tell dad--"
"What is that?" Karen gestured towards the thing in Laurie's hand. Laurie looked wide-eyed down at it.
"It's--it's a...a girl at school had them," she whispered. She held it up shakily.
"Oh." Karen remembered suddenly she had learned about pads in history class. It was a mass-produced absorbent product for menstruation when women and girls used to let their unborn children die every month. They had been removed from stores when Karen's mother was in her teens or so. Their presence encouraged menstruation. "You got this at school?"
Laurie was staring at the floor. She was still shaking. "A girl sells them," she whispered. Karen has been completely oblivious to the presence of a black market in her own school. She suddenly wondered what it would have been like if she had known.
"Where have you been putting them? When they're full?"
"I burn them in the disposal."
Karen was silent. She was waiting for her own reaction, but it didn't seem to be coming. It seemed as if she was becoming colder and colder. She looked at the pad. "Looks like you need another one." Laurie looked up quickly. Her face seemed like someone else's. Karen couldn't remember the last time she saw her cry. She wasn't crying now, not really, but her jaw was clenched and her shoulders were shaking. If Karen had ever considered something like this happening, she may have guessed that Laurie would run. In reality, she looked too afraid to run; defeated in a way Karen hadn't seen before. "Where do you keep them?"
Laurie turned and walked shakily over to her desk. As always, she was obedient; but it was a different quality of obedience. Any of her usual confidence and subtly defiance was gone. She kneeled and opened her drawer. Her shaky hands pawed through the clothes. From the bottom, she produced a plastic bag. It was clear, and Karen could see it was full of square packages.
"How do you put it on?"
"It's, um..." Laurie opened the bag and took out a square package. She opened it and produced another pad, this one clean and white. She didn't look at her mother as she peeled a section from the back, picked up her underwear and stuck the pad to it. She put it on, with her skirt.
Karen didn't know what else to say. She thought it might be within her power to chastise Laurie, but John would be calling the Family. John-- he would be unable to handle such a betrayal. He didn't think real people, people outside of The Humans, people who weren't on a TV screen, were capable of this act. His own daughter! Participating in the worst kind of crime. It wasn't just murder; it was deviant murder.
Yet Karen was so tired. The bloody thing on the ground summoned up no emotions in her but vague curiosity and disgust. She herself had menstruated five times in her life. The bloody rags were buried with Madeline's first. It was a normal amount of accidents. John hurt each time, but he had forgiven her; they had tried their best, and it was nothing but a tragedy. He blamed her, perhaps, but that was to be expected. If it was anyone's fault, it was hers.
She had felt guilt crawling up her throat each time. Now, she saw her daughter's bloody murder and felt nothing.
"Let's burn this," she said, gesturing at the pad. Laurie again looking quickly up at her. She said nothing. She picked it up and stood on front of her mother. Karen turned and led her out of the room. They walked down the empty hall, which wasn't quite wide enough for the two of them. The cricket chirped and fell silent as they advanced. It was a tired, heavy, hot day. The baby kicked.
They put it in the disposal. There was a dull whirring roar when she closed it. She let go, and Laurie stepped in front of her and opened it again. There was nothing left but ash. Apparently satisfied, she closed it.
Again, they stood in silence. Laurie may have been the murderer, but they were both now complicit in a secret so large it was barely manageable.
"You can't do this forever." Karen wished she didn't have to say the words. "Do you have a plan?"
And finally Laurie cried-- huge, childish sobs, and Karen wrapped her arms around her, trying to suppress the emotion that was finally, finally thickening her throat, her huge belly between them.
Karen had kept many secrets. Her life was much more inside her head than outside. She had lived with her parents until she was 18, which they hadn't been happy with. Her mother was dead; she had died giving birth at 52, an end she would have wanted. She was a very good woman. Though she had been young at the time, she was part of the Living Movement, who had stopped the slaughter of innocents. She had again and again told the story of rebelling her mother against her murderous parents and marrying at 14. Karen had been something of a disappointment to her parents; she'd never shown quite the initiative of a true child of the Living Movement, though she was certainly adequate. Her father was still alive now, married again to a woman around Madeline's age. He was a very good man.
So Karen remembered talking about the Movement, the Family, the World Family, marriage, children, and murder. There wasn't much else to say. Her head spun with thoughts, but she didn't like to consider what that said about her.
It had never made sense to her that John had chosen her, but she knew he didn't know her. She always wondered why her mediocrity had not steered him to another girl, but perhaps she was better at keeping a secret than she thought.
She did not know John very well. They had spoken a few times before he told her he wanted to marry her. It was late; they had for some reason been going to the same place when it had started raining. "Your children will be very beautiful and smart. I can help with that." John did not usually compliment anyone, let alone himself, so she remembered hiding a smile. The memory was always a surprise; she couldn't see herself laughing at John today, and couldn't remember when she stopped finding that sort of thing worth laughing over. "I heard you are going to keep your next child." She had just had her fifth, and was not yet pregnant again. "It can be ours."
She had never said she wanted to keep her next child. Her mother spread rumors about her. She was ashamed of her daughter, and tried desperately to save their family's reputation. But John was handsome, and he was nice. Karen didn't want to tell him he was mistaken. He was younger, but he easily looked as old as Karen. Her mother would be ecstatic; what a boy, she would say! Such ambition and initiative. It was still raining. They were underneath a tree. There buildings around them were dark. It somehow was the most lonely spot she had ever been in. Karen had never slept with a boy. They kissed. She was cold, but it felt hot. She wanted him and he wanted her, so they fucked in the dark under the tree and it was painful and warm and like nothing Karen had ever felt. They were married soon after, and she was pregnant.
It was not like her other pregnancies. She knew she would be keeping this baby; her growing stomach seemed more part of her than it ever had. But her mind was on John. His every movement raised reactions in her she had never felt to this intensity; but they could not have each other. She was already pregnant. He did not like donating. She had never ached so badly. She realized that before she had had only the slightest inkling of wanting. Her brain was consumed. Sleeping in the same bed as him was torturous.
Once, in the shower, her hands accidently trailed over her body in a way that made her gasp. She didn't know what would happen if she continued. Her stomach was huge. Men made life when they were touched, but it died if it wasn't dealt with properly. Would her baby suddenly stop kicking? Would she go into labor three days later and birth a dead thing? Her skin crawled. She would be a murderer again; she had only killed one so far, in her first blood, and she couldn't couldn't couldn't do it again, not after the fire and the tears. John would break.
She found out eventually that John would not break, and that he had enough life in him to ache and grieve four deaths and be cold to her, the murderer, getting her pregnant again with a disinterest that made her skin crawl and her limbs freeze and made her wonder what it was about the rain and the dark under the tree that she had ached for so much.
But their family was how it should be. Their children were very beautiful and smart.