The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Hatchling…
by Alex Grehy 

“Sterile,” I heard the creator say as the buyer’s eyes lit with greed. The two men stared at my naked body through the viewing window.

“Sterility is a two-way safeguard. It protects our patent from unlawful duplication, and it protects you from any…well, let’s call them unintended consequences.”

The creator looped his arm around the buyer’s shoulders and led him through the hermetically sealed door to his office.

I walked away from the viewing window, back to my enclosure. I shielded my actions from the CCTV camera and removed the egg from a nest of blankets.

Whether by the creator’s mistake or by some miracle, I had squeezed the egg from my body just a week ago. It was so tiny, I could have held it in the palm of my hand. I didn’t understand, at first, what it was, but I was filled with an overwhelming desire to protect it.

It had grown so quickly, urgently. Now I sat cross-legged on the floor of my cell and nestled the egg in my lap. I could barely circle it with my outstretched arms. I crooned encouragingly as the life within thrummed and pulsed against my fingertips. Every time I touched the egg, my self-realisation expanded. I understood, now, that I was a commodity, a humanoid female, bio-engineered to meet the specific needs of my buyer, whatever they might be. The creator had given me subliminal telepathy, all the better to anticipate my buyer’s needs. I had been nothing but a lovely drone – until the egg awoke my sentience.

Now we yearned for freedom. I extended my awareness, my latent extra-sensory perception sharp and powerful. I could manipulate matter and read the minds of all the building’s occupants. I was able to tap into the computers with my consciousness. I learnt about all the security measures that held us prisoner.

I listened in on the creator’s conversation. He did not guard his thoughts, why should he? I heard him describe my features to the buyer, but his words did not match what was in his mind. She is strong (her thigh muscles could squeeze you to death), athletic (fitter than an olympic sprinter), flexible (bendy as an octopus), compliant (yet she’ll outlive your perverted little imagination).

The egg convulsed in my hands and split cleanly along its long axis. There lay my daughter, curled up tight, so beautiful, so perfect. She looked up at me, her dark eyes intense. My love for her seared through the last of the brain fog the creator had gifted me. She stood up, stepping out of the shards of her shell. She stretched, already tall and strong, already growing.

Hand in hand, mind in mind, we activated the keypad that would open our cell. What then?

Vengeance? Certainly.

Destruction? Assuredly.

Escape? Absolutely.

And afterwards? Well, that will be for us to choose.

Fiction © Copyright Alex Grehy
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

More from author Alex Grehy:

After a lifetime of writing technical non-fiction, Alex Grey is fulfilling her dream of writing poems and stories that engage the reader’s emotions. Her work has been featured by a wide range of publications including Siren’s Call, Raconteur, Bookends Review, and Toasted Cheese. One of her comic poems is also available via a worldwide network of public fiction dispensers managed by French publisher, Short Edition. Her ingredients for contentment are narrow boating, greyhounds, singing and chocolate. It is a sweet life, yet Alex’ original view of the world has led to her best friend to say ‘For someone so lovely, you’re very twisted!

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