Vultures by Chuck Wendig

Author:Chuck Wendig [Wendig, Chuck]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Supernatural, Thriller
ISBN: 9781481448789
Google: gWB9DwAAQBAJ
Amazon: B075RRTYQX
Goodreads: 23492846
Publisher: Saga Press
Published: 2019-01-22T00:00:00+00:00

FORTY-SIX

SEX PARTY

“You’re having a little girl,” Dr. Shahini says. The obstetrician blinks. Her dark, fringed eyelashes are so big, so ostentatious, it looks as if they’re coyly waving at Miriam. Hello, hello. In contrast, Dr. Shahini’s voice is mostly steely and flat, like she’s reading numbers off a spreadsheet, except that she always injects a lift when she says the last word, as she does here with “Congratulations.”

Miriam can’t tell if it’s sarcasm or delight. Or, somehow, both.

On the screen of the ultrasound, the baby curls in on itself—herself. Little hands search strange fluid. A bundle of umbilicus strays from the child, wandering off into the dark of Miriam’s body, like a tether, keeping it bound—but also keeping it safe. But now Miriam wonders: will that cord one day work its way around the child’s neck? Will it cut off her baby’s airway? Is that why it’s born only to die? Can she stop that? How? Saving a life means ending one, and whose can end to preserve the baby’s? Her own? Maybe. But would that even be possible now that she seems unable to suffer much harm for long? Harriet, when shot in the head, still began her crass reconstruction, emerging once more from the intimacy of near-death.

And now Miriam thinks, The baby looks like a ghost. A pale specter, diaphanous like a bedsheet held up against a moonlit window. The ultrasound paints it in the strangled blue-corpse color.

Miriam shudders.

Gabby gives her hand a little squeeze. It helps.

“A girl,” Gabby says. Her voice is hopeful and light. Maybe this really is something for her.

“I don’t want a girl,” Miriam says, suddenly.

Eyes turn to her.

Even the baby’s eyes seem to flick toward the screen, as if it—she—knows. I’m watching you, Mama.

“I don’t want a daughter. I’d rather have a son.”

“I apologize,” Shahini says, the eerie flatness of her voice casting her sincerity in deep question. “But in this, you do not get to choose.”

“I was told gender is a spectrum.”

“Gender, yes. Gender is largely a social construct. Sex is not.”

“But some people choose if they’re boys or girls, and—”

“And your child can one day make that choice for herself. That is not your choice to make, and today is not that day. Today, I am telling you that you are having a daughter. What you do with that information is up to you.”

The baby on the screen floats in the void. When it—oops, she—turns, Miriam can feel that movement inside her.

It’s disconcerting, and she says so.

“You will grow comfortable with it,” the doctor says. “The brain releases chemicals that help you respond pleasantly to the sensation.”

A parasite has hijacked my body and has tricked it into liking it.

To her credit, Miriam does not say this out loud.

Though she still thinks this, and she reminds herself right now that it’s probably high time to stop thinking of the baby as a parasite. It’s just too weird. A tinier human has taken up residence inside her, the larger human. And it (she!)

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.