Watch It Go
At first it had been a blessing, or, at least, that’s what she’d been told. Everyone was so happy, she couldn’t help but feel happy too. Everyone promised to help when it came, but that’s what people do. You think they mean it at the time because you don’t know any better, but it’s only once you’re alone with the child that you find that they’re nothing but empty promises.
Her anticipation had grown as it had grown inside her. She imagined holding the darling thing in her arms and loving it as it loved her back. The reality had been something different. Nights and days filled with screaming and crying and needing. Of course, it was always wonderfully behaved when anyone else came to visit, so she felt like a madwoman telling them how hellish it really was. So she kept it to herself, buried it deep down inside, and tried to block out the child’s screaming.
People told her it was normal to feel detached at first, that bonding came in time, but time came and went and she felt no closer to it. She didn’t know how to be a mother. What was motherhood to her? Beating, bitching, criticising…that was the example she had to follow. Crippled by the fear of unleashing her emotions upon it, instead she locked them all inside, and remained cold, aloof.
Something had to give eventually and so one day she put the child in her car and told it that they were going on an adventure. They drove all day, and, mercifully, as always, the motion of the car lulled it to sleep. They reached the coast as the sun began to touch the horizon, transforming the sea into a radiant golden carpet. She would have been moved if she’d felt anything at all.
It always liked splashing in water, and so she took it down to the shore and told it that a special treat was waiting for it in the water. She knew the coast dropped off sharply a few meters out here, and so she watched and waited as it waded out into the chilly, spring waters. There wasn’t another person around for miles, while this spot was popular with tourists in the summer; it was too early in the year to attract anyone to the coast at this time of day.
The child was soon out of its depth, and the current pulled it under. She felt a release flood her entire body as it’s head slipped under for the last time. She sat in her car for a good twenty minutes, half expecting it to come running up the beach towards her at any moment. Eventually she picked up her mobile phone and dialled three digits.
“Help me,” she sobbed, “it’s my baby, something terrible has happened…”
Rivka Jacobs
A good short story, Ian, dark and horrific! It’s hard to get inside the head of someone who would kill their own children; you neither sentimentalized the mother, nor condemned her. You make me look at the picture in a whole new way. Sends shivers up my spine. Your technique is fine, as well — how you convey the mother’s disassociation and upcoming breakdown, the feelings she has as the child dies. The dispassionate narrative is what elevates the story, making it all the more disturbing.
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Ock
‘Disturbing’ is definitely the word for this one. Although ‘fantastic’ can also be attached to it.
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