The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!
Blinded by the Light
by Donna J. W. Munro
Laney found herself staring up at the light again. The cold breath of the night tickled her face, though she didn’t feel it. The little fella in her belly stopped kicking and turning in her, generated internal heat that flooded out across her skin. She rubbed her hand across the swelling and kept looking up into the brightness.
“I think I’ll name him Joey. Do you think he’ll look like you or like me?”
She knew he might be millions of miles away, but she felt close to him when she came here.
“I miss you,” she said, pulling her jacket closed over the top of her belly and walking back along the bike path toward home.
###
“Honestly Laney, if you’d just tell us who did this to you, maybe then we could get you some support. Daddy and I can’t afford to take care of your little sister and you and now a baby.” Mama spoke as she stirred the pot on the stove, her back not a real barrier for the edge in her tone. The disappointment in her voice might not be a knife, but it cut just the same.
“Sorry, Mama.”
Not much else she could say.
###
At night, when the house ticked off the heat and aches of its long day and Laney lay in her childhood bed staring up at the crackled paint on her ceiling, she wondered if he’d ever comeback. His touch had been, at first, unwelcome. But the brightness of his eyes, the flow of his skin under her fingers, convinced her. He forgave her lack of experience. Showed her things. To the moon and back, he’d given her his love.
The baby inside moved almost nonstop when she thought of him.
“Little fella, do you think Daddy will come back?” She asked.
The squirming stilled when she talked to him. She wondered if she would survive his birth.
###
At school, the kids avoided her. A pregnant teenager in a catholic schoolgirl uniform didn’t sit well with them. Mama and Daddy had fought to keep her in school, demanded protection for the unborn and for the girl, Laney, who chose life. They’d won and Laney sat, big as a house in the back of the room, ignored by the teacher and her former friends. She’d gotten used to it.
Science class usually bored the heck out of Laney, but when they started a unit on space she soaked up all the knowledge about atmosphere, light speed, planets and meteors.
All she could think was, “He’s out there, somewhere.”
###
On the way home, she walked along the bike path where she’d met him. The hard light of mid-afternoon promised that he’d not be there, but she couldn’t resist passing the spot he’d lifted her from. The little fella inside always stilled when she looked up, but here he radiated with the heat his little body communicated to her with. He warmed her gently as she looked up. A comfort, really. She patted her belly and thought about living without him.
###
“Laney, have you thought about the papers we went over,” Daddy asked over steaming plates of meatloaf and potatoes.
She shoved the food around with her fork, making it look like she ate. She didn’t eat anymore.
“Yes, Daddy.”
“We need to decide so the baby gets a good home. You want that, don’t you?”
Little fella pressed sideways, tasting her distress. Warmth flooded out of him, burning her uncomfortably. Her worry always frightened him. She cradled her belly in her hands and waited for Daddy to stop asking her questions.
###
Later, she walked to the bike path and stared up at the sky, wishing that the light would blind her again. Wishing that he’d come and take her away.
Little fella stretched up, warmth rippling through her as he reached.
If only he’d come back for them.
###
That night, Laney dreamed with little fella about his future here. How he’d seed the planet with new DNA. How he’d pave the way more encounters.
The mother of the future, little fella called her. Mother of the new world.
She wished she could sleep all the time.
###
“Get up, Laney!” Jessy said, barging into her room. Since Laney started to show, Jessy’s favor with Mama and Daddy grew by the day. She ran the house and seemed to love lording it over Laney, every chance she got. “You look like a cow. Big and fat. Bet you’ll never have a boyfriend now. Mama says you’re ruined.”
She didn’t feel ruined. She struggled out of bed and pushed Jessy out of her room, locking the door behind her. Little fella hadn’t moved or reacted to Jessy’s taunt, something that usually set him to flaming her skin with the heat of his anger.
She sat on the bed, belly pressed up under her breasts and tapped the high rounded top.
“Are you okay, little fella?”
He didn’t respond.
###
Three days passed and Laney didn’t feel little fella move anymore. She couldn’t go to school or pretend to care about the food her mama kept putting on her desk, then taking away when she ignored it. She lay on her side, cradling her belly and flooding her pillow with quiet tears.
What if he died and was rotting inside?
She got dressed and walked away from the house, night enfolding her in cottony silence. She felt she needed to go back to the beginning where she met her love. Little fella always reacted when she stood at the spot he’d been made. Her bare feet padded through the crunchy grass, hard with frost. The cold hurt. She missed the heat little fella gave her.
The bike track. The beginning.
Silence pressed in around her. No bugs chittering, no wind moaning. As silent as that first night.
Laney looked up where he’d first come to her, hoping that little fella might look with her. Nothing. No warmth, no stretch.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said to the light, not bright enough to be him. Just the regular streetlamp’s yellow glow. “I think little fella’s dead.”
Nothing. No light, no lift. Still alone.
Water gushed down her leg and Laney screamed.
Laney felt her body ripple around the ball of baby inside her. Ripping pain brought her to her knees there under the washed glow. She laid down under the lamp, clutching her hands to her pulsating belly.
The light she’d wished for blinded her.
She reached a hand toward it.
###
Laney stumbled home, little fella gone, her lover gone, and her memory gone.
Mama and Daddy looked her over, questioned her unmercifully, but she didn’t have answers. Eventually, they stopped asking. They sent her to a new school, told her sister to stop bringing it up, and let it fade into their background––a shadow no one noticed.
###
Laney finds herself on the bike path, standing under a streetlamp staring up at the stars almost every day. She wishes she knew why that place made her feel happy more than any other in the world. She wishes she was warm.
.
Fiction © Copyright Donna J. W. Munro
Image Copyright Rie Sheridan Rose
More from author Donna J. W. Munro:
Revelation: Poppet Cycle Book One
In a dark future, people with money live in doomed cities and use the recently deceased as
repurposed servants and workers called poppets. Ellie DesLoge is the teen heiress of the
company that makes and distributes poppets–your basic reprogrammed flesh robot complete
with training chips and kill switches. If Ellie does everything her Aunt Cordelia says, she’ll have a
life of wealth and power. If she chooses to be what is planned for her, life will be perfect.
Everything she ever dreamed. But something about her sweet poppet Thom goes against what
Aunt Cordelia and tradition have taught her. Will she choose to believe what everyone knows is
true or will she follow what her heart tells her about Thom? Her choice will change the world.
Available on Amazon!
Skin Deep
Spreading the Writer's Word 