Through the open window

 Through the open window and the not-quite-closed curtain the light, all silvery reflecting its’ journey here via the moon’s grey reflective surface the light made it’s way into the bedroom of a woman lying asleep in her bed, gently snoring, so gentle in fact that it doesn’t really qualify for the snoring category but is a bit more than heavy breathing. It doesn’t really belong to either category, or perhaps is a member of both. But anyway the silvery moonlight was not aware of this categorising difficulty and wouldn’t have been interested in any case as it lit upon the woman in her bed. Her facial features are pleasant, if a little blank. Blank as if … the woman isn’t real somehow. She looks perfectly real but you just get the sense that she looks “too real”. There’s no personality shaping the features, if you get my drift, which possibly you don’t, and that’s quite all right as — but that’s of no consequence. Her belly beneath the covers is large: either the belly of a fat woman, or one who is pregnant. There’s a soft thud noise, of something small and not very heavy, falling on to the carpet floor. And a scurrying. The bedroom door opens and closes again but nothing appears to have passed through. On the other side of the bed what looks to be some sort of tubing appears from beneath the bed covers and dangles down towards the floor and stops about an average adult’s knee length from it.

    It drips fluid.

Outside the something scurries down the garden path, barely glimpsed in the combination of moonlight and streetlight. A cat is disturbed and screeches loudly in protest. It joins the scurrying only in the opposite direction. We remain with the first and the cat is quickly forgotten. The something looks a little like — and then we see it as it stops beneath a streetlight, looking directly back at us. It’s a baby. No, not a baby. It’s a fetus. But that’s not possible! It seems to sense us (and perhaps only seems) even though we’re not part of this world, simply dropping in for a read or a watch, or perhaps a listen (for I do not know which medium this this is playing out on). It sneers, then turns with surprising alacrity and zings across the road and into a garden opposite.
Another cat loudly complains but there isn’t, this time, the sound of a fast retreat. Only a sudden silence.
Then scurrying again, followed by a pause, followed by the sound of a window rattling; or perhaps a door.  This is repeated two, three, maybe four times more. Then the definite sound of a window sliding open. It stops almost as soon as it starts. The fetus is small after all and requires not much of an opening. An assumption I know! But I’m still reeling from the fact that a fetus is running around outside of its’ mother and scaring cats and killing cats and breaking and entering. What sort of a world have we dropped into here?

                            #

Joe lay in bed stroking … well, stroking it. I think you can imagine what I mean by “stroking it”; his brow was a little moist, his eyes glassy, as nothing was currently utilising them, as all the vision that was presently taking place was happening in the mind’s interior. His ears were also currently functionally useless as none of the messages it was sending to the brain were getting through. Or rather they were but were not being paid any attention to, so all engrossing were the images and sounds that were being brought into being by Joe’s mind, images and sounds taken from reality and giving new meaning and shape in Joe’s mind. Images such as the pregnant woman he had seen earlier that day in the driveway of the house opposite his house. He had seen her once before when she had moved in a few weeks ago. He hadn’t seen a man, a husband or partner, or a wife … she seemed to be living there alone but perhaps he had just been missing the person she was with. Maybe. But right now he preferred to imagine her living alone, for now alone, soon with him. Actually that was kind of a turn off. He liked pregnant women. Loved pregnant women. But he wasn’t sure he fancied the idea of bringing up a child. Or child plural. Then you’re stuck with the cost, both financial and time. For him the perfect woman was perfectly stuck at eight and a half months pregnant. It was as precise as that — no later, no earlier. Eight and a half months pregnant “felt” right. It was all about what felt right, like puzzle pieces coming together.
It was a shame for him that the messages that his ears were sending him were being held in the “To Be Attended To” tray. More than a shame but a tragedy. If his mind had looked at the messages it would have heard the sound of his windows and two doors being rattled, and that last window being opened a crack. He would have heard the quick pitter-patter of tiny feet traversing his living room floor, then scurrying up his stairs, along his short landing, and pausing at his bedroom door. He would have heard his bedroom door opening, and the pitter-patter of the tiny feet again across his bedroom carpet, louder now as they are so much closer. He would have felt the tug on his duvet as something climbed up it. But he knew of none of this. The first he knew, when it was now far too late, was when something monstrous suddenly loomed in front of his face, so monstrous, so startling that his eyes lost their vacant glassy look as they were fully utilised by Joe’s brain for the last time. He screamed. There was pain, sharp pain that sliced cleanly through him.
And then he was dead.