There was a wife who wanted to be a mother. She had a husband who did not want to be a father.
As much as the wife begged, she couldn’t change his heart. “I’ll never have a child,” he said. Crying did nothing. Yelling was pointless.
The wife turned to treachery...and something darker.
She stole from her husband. First, she stole his seed. Then seven strands of hair. A piece of clothing. A notebook of his thoughts. Finally, as he lay in a drunken stupor, she took a cleaver and hacked off the thumb from his right hand.
He struck her. Kicked her. But it didn’t matter, because one month later the wife was late and she howled with joy.
“A mother!” she said, hugging her own stomach. “Finally, a mother.”
The husband’s face was drawn and gray. Sweat gathered in the nest of his eyebrows. “It must not be mine,” he said. “It simply can’t be…”
“But it is,” said the wife, licking her lips. “Every bit of it. Every bit of you.”
Time went by and the wife grew, worshipful of every pound. Her husband, nervous and jittery now, seemed to shrink. He lost his appetite. A dim film covered his eyes.
“You’ll be a father soon,” said the wife, coldly. “Straighten up. Show your pride.”
But the husband did not. And as the months passed, he became more wraith-like, skeletal and silent. He lay in bed at night, not sleeping, but rubbing the crusted stump of his missing thumb. It seemed he might turn to dust at any moment.
The wife didn’t care. She would be a mother soon. That was all that mattered.
And yet nine months turned to ten, and still she grew. At eleven months she started to fret, her stomach engorged beyond what she imagined possible. The skin stretched and strained. She thought she saw things in the taut skin - the outline of an enormous hand, the impression of a ghoulish face.
After a year, she could hardly stand. Nor could the husband, who lay on the floor, propped against the wall, a corpse with eyes that moved and a dry tongue that lolled over the rim of his withered lips.
“It’s coming,” said the wife. “Help me, it’s coming!”
But the husband couldn’t have helped, not even if he’d wanted to.
The wife writhed and screamed. She called for help, but no one came.
Black bile dripped to the floor at the wife’s feet. Her stomach pulsed and stretched. She shrieked, eyes wide with terror and pain.
On the floor, the husband laughed, choking on the last of his saliva before falling silent forever.
Bones cracked, flesh split. From the space between the wife’s legs, an arm gouged itself free. Not a child’s arm. A man’s arm. Full grown.
The wife saw the fingers flex. The thumb was missing.
“I’m a mother,” she gasped as slowly she was torn in two.
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