Oh, The Horror!

      Who can deny the sweet infectious gales of giggles that come from the bedroom of twelve-year-old girls as they jump on the beds, fighting with pillows, feathers flying? Christine smiled, recalling that not so long ago, her baby was just that, but now Tabitha's body was changing...the most amazing thing to Chris was that regadless of any change, and all the perverts in the world, Tabitha was yet still full of that innocence she'd had just a year or so ago. In her child's mind, she was the same, despite her mosquito-bite bumps on her chest (of which she was quite proud), her slim new curves just beginning to show, and of course hair growth (another proud moment that had lasted all of about five seconds before being deemed annoying). In the main, though, it was forgotten--all that went with it still yet to be discovered. Moreover, it had meant so little to Tabby, why should something so personal mean anything to anyone else? Why indeed? What a good point, Christine thought: "From the mouths of babes".

Indeed... 

     Still, even though she'd been somwhat aware at some point, like all kids, it had been easily forgotten... And so Tab was totally oblivious as she and her best friend, Maddie, walked about it skimpy tank tops and underwear, utterly innocent of anything remotely obscene. Now, this posed a bit of a dilemma, for a mother must wonder what she could say or do to maintain that beautiful bliss of innocent ignorance while at the same time ensuring protection---you hear so much these days. And her father, well, as a man, he could only imagine the vulgar thoughts of other men, and boys.

 

     A pain deep inside hit her then, and a clammy sweat broke on her face as the sudden squirming in her belly felt so much like her baby had once, back when they were that miraculous 2-in-1 creature known as pregnant woman...except for the ominous feeling that this writhing, moving, swelling thing was demonic, not beautiful or blessed. She wondered why she would suddenly feel this way--it certainly was no mere stomach ache, for with the roiling in her guts came a terrible foreboding. Deep and penetrating, it was a warning, she knew it without knowing how, exactly, she only knew it in that same way in which she knew she was herself, or that currently standing in the kitchen, her hand hovering at the fridge for water while she cradled her solar plexus with her other arm. It was just fact: indisputable, inexplicable, and inexorable. As her central air came on, she felt her skin pimple with chills, felt the drying sweat cold and wet on her face like a dead fish; speaking of dead fish, she looked like one, with sudden matching luggage dark and bruised under her eyes, her skin gone a sickly pale grey. 

 

As the winged harbinger of that black-pit portent from her gut spread its shadowy wings inside her mind to take flight, she doubled over, her bottle of water crashing and rolling across the floor; her ears went numb. It was utterly surreal: in the bedroom the girls laughed and played, in the living room the television blazed sports or some shit, and yet she felt not as if she would die, but rather like she already had, and that now, passing into the underworld, into the Afterlife, she would have all the universe's secrets revealed to her...but she didn't want them. She did not want that knowledge, Goddammit! She knew that fucking black bird was taking flight and her dread tripled, making her heart pump and adrenaline flood her veins; the vast pitch spread behind her eyes and the glaring thoughts that rushed in were worse than looking straight into an eclipse and burning out her retinas...

Suddenly, there was no kitchen, no family noise in the background, just a blinding idea, a supernova inception blazing before her. She saw with a clarity the likes of which no mortal humans ever get to experience, it was irrational, illogical, and fucking crazy, but it was inescapable.

 

The scene bloomed like some kind of rotten rose, the color, surely of death like black and brown and maroon had found a way to breed together in a cocktail of some nasty, toxic-blood looking kind of hue; it saturated everything like reading between the lines with the color of repulsion and her stomach writhed and rumbled. In front of her, memories that she would question: Tab trying to get her father's attention and him with obligatory snippets of "shame on you" when she did something wrong; he didn't seem to even want to look at her anymore unless he was rejecting her in this insidious way and Chris saw the tears in Tabby's eyes as she had tried to sit on his lap--when had that been? Right before her 12th birthday, Chris thought--and he says "No, no, you're getting way too big for this. You're getting too old for this kind of behavior." As if it was completely right that it should be so awkward between a father and the daughter he once adored; as if she were the strange creature instead of an adulating, spoiling father suddenly turning to stone.

 

The thing slithers in her belly as the vision lets her go, leaving her depleted. She cannot name the something inside, and it was something she wanted to leave nameless, for surely she could not know, from that flash of agonizing memory, from the demonic slug inside, what she knew with such utter clarity in the vision. She could not be thinking the dark thoughts swirling in that toxic blood color in her head; surely, he could not possibly be thinking what she knew he was thinking! NO! No.

 

Stop. Put it out of your head. It's the news, it's the fucking horror in the world, it's poor little Alyce down the street, whose mother just got the nerve to throw out the bastard after he'd messed with Alyce for God knew how long... It was not in Chris' house; not within her reality, right?  It could not be, no, no, NO! Never, never, NEVER...

 

Just then, like clockwork, Tabby and Maddie bounced in, full of cheer and red faced and Chris noted, for the first time their little outfits at home, all tank tops and little "boy" shorts, gangly arms and lanky legs made her think of baby monkeys and frogs but in their shining, innocent-cherub faces, they were just extraordinarily beautiful, sprinkles of freckles, leftover sun stain in their cheeks, hair completely unkempt and everywhere, literally feathered with goose downy from their play. She could not see past that, just cute slim little girls that stirred a nostalgia in the child within herself, knowing that they were about to embark on an epic hormonal adventure that no one could really explain and through no explanation could be justified, and there was the sadness in a deep well inside that knew her baby would not be the same soon, that she'd be lucky to get hugs and occasional conversation, she would cease being needed and especially wanted...that she would not be cool, she would be the antithesis of anything cool or awesome in her little girl's life and that sadness felt like it could be bottomless, so she did not dwell on the inevitablity of Tab's growth, rather, the adrenaline and her dark visitor swirling, writhing, and swelling in her oven, in her womb, her place of life. The pain and disgusting squishy grind of the invader made her both protective and angry...and rather dangerous.

 

She hugged them both to her and would be damned if she told them to put on more clothes, as though they should be ashamed or feel guilty in some way for the position they were in, but she looked at him, oh yes, she kept her eye on her husband, the father of this wondrous little lanky- and still-skinned-knee gorgeous girl before her and she felt like a lion, toward Maddie, too, her "adoptive daughter by default of the BFF code". 

 

"Mom! Dad! Guess what?" Tabby said, her grin set like a Cheshire cat, feather stuck right next to her face in her wild mane of hair.

"What's that, baby?" Christine asked, noting that while he could see from the living room, he was not as interested as he used to be, he was no longer the attentive, adoring father, some asshole had taken her husband's place, or at least, that's what it seemed, unless this was a front, an act, a veil, and she had to ask herself why...What would cause such a man, a proud father and husband to either shut off or to at least pretend to shut off? And now that had it, she could not get past this revelation that only now she was seeing thanks to her parasitic passenger, as it roiled and rumbled through her midsection, she could not let go, it simply would not have let her if she wanted. The nagging worm inside the toxic decayed bloody vision with which she now had seen these seemingly small acts of inconsistency had peeled out her corneas to have an almost bird's level and all around look and now there were too many large, problematic ramifications. She saw him feign his interest, but she was looking at the interest below the obliged act, she was watching and God damn it if she saw what she didn't want, a fucking glint here and there, some piqued attention beneath his careless facade as he looked at them in the kitchen, and her teeth ground together.

 

"Maddie and me, we did make the team! Isn't that awesome?"

"That is fantastic, my baby! Oh, good for you, Mads!" Chris squeezed them and got grunts and some eyerolling, but they hugged back, their frail little frames another reminder that regardless of this first big change they were approaching in life, they were still very much her babies and as such, she had to protect them.

"I am so proud of you!" She beams at her daughter grinning her snaggle teeth back, retainer line completing the awkward phase she had just been through and all she can think of is the tiny, helpless Tabby that had come from her, (almost killing her in the process)... That bloody little ball of life that had been her tenant.Chris' memories continued flashing in that decay-colored-place behind her eyes; she recalled her first fears of motherhood, like she would break the squirmy, funny, beautiful and horrifying creature then so dependent on her, how Tabby had then become the baby and later, toddler, who responded and learned so fast it had blown her away. The memories slammed into her chest while the slug slithered and squirmed within the darkness now swirling in her soul. She remembered her precious little girl, at one time so afraid of her first day of school, and later, all the fears overcome, the scrapes, the cuts, and the falls that had made Chris' heart shove its way into her throat to choke her, all the late nights and kissed boo-boos of childhood, the funny questions, the game of why, mom had all made way to this amazing little lady, just on the brink of the next big fat horrible growth-spurt that would span years and change her in all sorts of ways, this girl who had more friends that Chris could ever have dreamt of at her age--or any age, really, in Chris' case. She felt misty, all that nostalgia and reverie at once so sweet, sad, and profound; she was warmed by that engulfing fuzzy feeling that recollection sometimes gives like a beam of light in her darkness. Then just as they faded, as if to remind her of her duties, it oozed through her, reminding her of its presence; and with that, the vortex of dread telling her yet again that something just was not right, and that she must find the problem in order to make a solution...and as she saw Will's eyes glance over, something festered inside her chest, now, when she looked at the man she once loved so much she had married him...

Giggling, eating apples, apparently Chris had not heard what Tabby was saying but she tuned in now, her hopefulness an invitation to spoil her reckless, something that Chris had fought against all Tab's life, especially as she was an only child and Chris could not and would not have more. 

"So, can me and Maddie go, pleeeease, mom? Pleeeease?" Tab then looked at Mad and they began talking about the boy band for whom they were crazy fanatic. She put it together, saving her from having to ask Tab to repeat herself and possibly a little drama about not listening to Tab. She wanted to listen as long as she could for she knew the years of rebellious secrecy were just a block away and they could be just social, somewhat average, or they could become fatal to this little being for whom she loved more than there were adequate words. 
Tabby selling her idea, said, "It'd be like, you know our reward for doing so well in school, Ma, and you know we won't be alone... Come on, would ya think about it, please?"

Good one, Tab, go ahead and put mom on the spot; she was great at that.