Mia 3: Child Cannibalism

Mia’s hair is rolled into a bun at the nape of her neck. Sitting in the driver’s seat, she’s wired stiff, her back rigid and straight as a pole. Her jaw is quivering, and she’s clutching the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles are white. The crescents of her nails bite into her palms.

Mia’s eyes stay fixed to the road, and she blurts out, “I am never going back there again!” Mia’s voice carries in staccato pulses over the Billie Eilish playlist pumping from the car’s stereo.

” ... so you’re a tough guy...”

Lisa lifts her head, glances at Mia and nods sheepishly, sweeps her long blond hair back behind her neck, and then lowers her gaze back to the blue glow of her phone, continues mouthing along with Billie.

Mia’s voice is like a hammer smashing a pane of glass, shattering the friends’ uncomfortable silence. Mia had been giving the cold shoulder to Lisa. She’d been gruff, evasive, quiet as dead air since they’d left, abruptly, following dinner.

Mia wishes to drive 5 hours back to campus, rather than stay the night in the house. She abhors that house more than anything. The house, to her, the gothic creepy thing, is no longer a structure. It is alive. It is a living, cruel reminder, exuding evil.

Leaving the house, she imagined the whole building could grow legs the size of the Eiffel Tower and chase after her as she drove off, like a giant spider or like one of the hideous aliens from War of the Worlds.

She’d been a rational being her whole life. Never did she feel a paranormal presence. Never did she entertain the thought of sinister, “evil spirits.”

But there was ... something ... something menacing in that place. Lisa, as crazy as she seems, perhaps is right. Maybe ghosts are real...

And now Mia wants only to flee. Getting the fuck out of there, it was the only thing she could think of during dinner.

During dinner ... The terror remained. The baby was still there. She could sense it. She knew it was staring at her, through the walls. Or perhaps it was under the floor.

Maybe it could bash open a hole and crash down through the ceiling, land on the table. The living dead infant, the horrific little being rising with its solid red eyes and canine mouth. The toddler growling and pouncing on her, having its vengeance. The phantom, the undead infant morphing into a monster and eating her face like Travis the Chimp...

After all, it was her fault, right? The guilt crept back, fogging over her. It was her doing. Her demon. The baby had been sucked from her stomach. The baby squished, made into red mucus in a tube. The baby pulled from between her legs, as she sniffled and closed her eyes.

She’d felt a part of herself die on that awful table, when her legs were spread, forced apart, in those cold metal stirrups. She’d never forget the antiseptic smell of the room, the mechanical nature of the procedure, and the singing whir of the vacuum hose, that metallic snake, with its icy mouth jabbed inside her, drinking her blood...

The baby sucked from her stomach, red mucus in a tube...

She wondered what happened to it, if they’d flung the fetus into a dumpster, if it was eaten by bugs and rats.

Or worse. The baby, her baby, might have been eaten by a creepy businessman in Asia. She’d read about that somewhere, how there are creepy businessmen in China who eat “fetus soup,” a broth cooked with aborted fetuses. They believe the fetus soup gives them superhuman power...

Whatever happened, whether or not the fetus vacuumed out of her stomach ended up on a plate in China, whether or not that was true, and, please God, she hoped it wasn’t, what she knew for sure was that the energy she’d created was real. It wouldn’t die. It would never die. And she feared it would find her. That it was after her now.

So she’d run. She’d leave that house and never return. She’d pray the spirit stayed there. Maybe she’d find a way to let the spirit rest and find its way to God...