This World Belongs to Us: An Anthology of Horror Stories about Bugs by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: From Beyond Press
Published: 2023-05-23T05:00:00+00:00

IMAGO

OCTAVIA CADE

I fell pregnant three months after my sixteenth birthday. The fifth girl in my class, because with the coal running out and mines running down the town’s gone along with it, and there’s not much else to do round here but fuck, so we do. The results speak for themselves.

No one shows any disappointment. It’s not like I was going to college or anything. I guess this is just about what’s expected. It still doesn’t stop the comments, and they don’t mean anything to me because I’ve made most of them myself, to other girls, and they’re lukewarm supportive. But when I hear, from someone not even bothering to stay out of earshot, that they hope it doesn’t end the same way as with my mother, well.

I’m nothing like her. I tell them so in terms of fuck-off, but the answer I get back isn’t one I ever suspected.

“You weren’t her first kid, is all I meant.”

If there were another, I think I’d know.

“The first one died,” says Gran. “In this family, the first one always dies. I’m telling you this so you don’t get attached.” Her hands are in my hair, smoothing it down, the long strokes of brush trying for sympathy when they can’t do much more than keep the snarls away for a little. “There’ll be other babies,” she says.

I don’t want another baby. I don’t even want this one. But babies are what girls do and I did what got it so here we are. And really, what else is there to do with life? I’d have one sooner or later, there’s no reason to wait another year.

“This one won’t die,” I tell her. “It’s growing strong and safe and I’m going to keep it that way. It’s what a good mother does.”

Good mothers are a sore spot. Mine ran off years back. Said she couldn’t stand it anymore, living here in the country quiet with the trees all black and green around her. Said they loomed too much and ran off to the city where other things loomed bigger, wanting excitement and finding only street corners, Gran said. “We all do that too,” she says now, reminding. “She’ll come home eventually, when she’s had enough, to be a help with your second.

“That’s the one that’ll live,” she says. “That’s the one you’ll care about.” She leans close, the stink of her breath a warning of rot too expensive to fix. “None of us cared about the first. You’re not the only one.”

“I care,” I tell her, stiffening, and she guffaws behind me.

“No you don’t.”

“If I didn’t care I’d get rid of it,” I say, smart-mouthed, and get the back of the hairbrush for my trouble.

“There’ll be none of that kind of talk in this house,” she says. “You’ll do your time like the rest of us.”

I’d asked to go on the pill. She’d said no, I didn’t need it, even though she’d been catching me with boys since I was fourteen. “Nothing you need to worry about yet,” she’d said.

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