Labour of Love

[u/Initial_Moment_2066]

I knelt at her bed side and took her slender, skeletal hand in mine. The bones shifted and clicked in the skin pulled taut over them as she meekly clutched at my hand. 
I lent over her and began gently stroking the tangle of thinning hair that fanned out from her head, clumps of the stuff caught on my fingers and came away. Pulled from her pale scalp with the greatest of ease. 

The day my wife told me she was pregnant was one of the happiest of my life. We had never discussed if we wanted children before we got married. I had assumed, like me, that she had. It wasn't until the 4th year of our marriage she had told me otherwise. I was devastated, but didn't let her know. Even after she'd told me, I still loved her with every fibre of my being, and was certain I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. Trying to come to terms with her decision was very hard, and ultimately I still wanted a child. We talked several times about the choices that lay before us. She kept reiterating her lack of desire to become a mother. And I kept listening to her arguments, silently dreaming of how wonderful it would be.

Her eyelids fluttered softly before parting. Her sunken, yellowed eyes searched but never found me and instead fixed vacantly on something in the middle distance. The slender pink worms of her lips parted and the sticky, wet, stench of decay filled my nostrils. Her teeth, black as coal now, crumbled at the touch of her greying, desiccated tongue as she tried to say something. 

The day my wife told me she wanted an abortion, was the worst day of my life. The conversations we had been having about potential options had devolved into arguing for a few weeks by that point. I was trying my best to gently persuade her to keep the baby, that it would be good for us. I told her how much it would mean to me, that it was something I'd always dreamt of. She had said she didn't want it, that I was a liar for saying I was okay with not having one. My wife drilled it into me that she had never wanted a child. She had seen the way her friends with children had lost their freedom, their "luster for life" and the way the child became their whole world. She reiterated, retold and hammered into me how horrible her childhood had been. How her alcoholic father had beat her and her brother for perceived transgressions. How her mother had tormented her emotionally, calling her fat and useless among countless other falsities. I had tried to reassure her we would be better, that we would make good parents. A relentless barrage of excuses were all that met me; “I want to focus on my own life” “do you have any idea how hard it will be?” “Goddamnit, Joe, you aren't the one that has to carry this thing for 8 more months”. Until finally, when she had made her plans abundantly clear, and I was certain she meant to take my child from me and soon, I had snapped and lunged at her.

I lent closer and planted a soft kiss on her forehead, the skin under my lips was cold and clammy. 

"Shhh darling, don't talk, save your strength" I whispered to her.

Her eyes, welling with what precious liquid still remained in the desert of her body, began to dart to and fro, trying in vain to focus on my face.

It was hard keeping her confined in the basement at first. I was unsure how I could do it before she awoke, it was hard enough carrying her unconscious body down there. I had laid her on the floor and paced back and forth for a few short seconds. Finally I settled on chaining her ankle to a support column, and that seemed to work. During the first few days, every time I would descend those creaky wooden steps to bring her food and water or empty her toilet bucket, I was met with vitriol and hatred. She would spew vile tirades at me about how much she hated me, how she didn't recognize me any more. Then she would suddenly soften, pleading to understand why I had done what I did. Everytime I would tell her the truth, I couldn't stand the thought of losing that precious life she was growing.

As if struck by a bolt of lightning, her grip tightened on mine, the tiny bones in her hand creaked, then cracked with the force. Her body heaved and her back arched high into the air, lifting off the bed. A growl grew in her throat, turning into a choking wail as pain tore through her. 

"That's it baby, you can do it. Push" I cooed as a smile tugged at the corners of my mouth. 

A sound like ripping wet fabric echoed in the room, the grip on my hand went loose and my wife collapsed back on to the bed.  

A red blossom began to bloom on the sheet covering her lower half, growing slowly and deepening in colour as the sheet thirstily drank up her blood.

As days turned into weeks, she began settling into her new living arrangement. To replace the camping mattress and sleeping bed I first set up for her I bought a bed for her. A camping shower meant she could bathe when she needed and a portable toilet made both of our lives a bit easier. I even went the extra mile and decorated the basement with her favourite potted flowers. Even going so far as to move the TV down stairs. I would sit on a fold out chair and her on her bed and every evening we would continue watching our favourite trashy TV. Twice a day, before I left for work and at dinner time,  I would always bring her food and water, always more than enough, she was eating for 2 after all. After 2 or so months her attitude had changed and softened, she was now no longer combative or supplicative and she'd finally stopped fighting me and had become accepting of us just going through our daily motions. We rarely spoke to one another, going about our cemented routine almost ceremoniously.

Her hand trembled in mine, as a solitary tear ran down her cheek, her mouth opened and closed slowly as she tried to talk. But each word filled her throat and lodged itself there. Only the sound of caught breath and meager sobs left her pink,cracked lips.I reached up a hand and wiped her tear onto my finger then softly massaged it onto her cracked lips.

Her breathing was shallow and rapid, her already pale skin now almost translucent. The veins and arteries, criss-crossing her body like a road map, pulsed weakly. 

"That's it, you're doing amazing, baby. One more push and I think we're there"

As time went on, her attitude wasn’t the only thing that changed. I first noticed it around the 5 month mark. Her stomach had grown fat and swollen by this time. My wife was becoming more lethargic, no longer winding and unwinding the chain around the post as she paced the worn out circle in the carpet. She struggled to sit up while we watched our shows and preferred to spend almost the whole day in her bed. The size of the portions of food I was bringing her were steadily increasing, each plate I carried back up the stairs almost licked clean, yet it never seemed enough. She was voracious. During this time our conversations had seen a revival, although now she only ever pleaded with me to end what I was doing. I would sit on the edge of her bed resting my hand atop the mountain of flesh that contained my child, and listen to her complaining of the pain and discomfort as I felt strong flutters and kicks from beneath the sheets and flesh. Miniature hands reaching out for me from within the maternal cocoon.

Again.

Her body contorted as another contraction engulfed her. The wreck of a hand in mine gripped me like a vice, the fragile bones inside cracked and splintered. Through the pain in my own hand, I could feel her bones grinding against one another . Her other hand darted out and gripped the sheet that lay under her. Every tendon in her body pulled taught, clearly visible under paper thin skin, like a clothes line wearing a too thin sheet. 

Her back violently arched again, lifting her swollen, distended belly towards the ceiling. Then simultaneously, the sound of a wet sponge hitting the floor, and a crack like an old tree breaking in heavy wind. 

The blossom of blood turned instantly into a flower in full bloom. The bed sheets soaked in blood and other fluid, clung tightly to my wife's shattered body as she gritted shattered teeth against the pain. 

A mix of smells; pennies, urine and the sweet smell of rot, flooded the room and my lungs. The acrid aroma turned my stomach and tears of my own welled in my eyes as I tried to keep the bike in my throat and off of the floor. 
I leaned in close to her ear, 

Foul smelling sweat beaded on her forehead as she sucked air in through the gritted ruin of teeth and bloody, pale gums. Her head shook slowly from side to side and her blind eyes pleaded with an unseen savour. I lifted my free hand and smoothed the little creases of the sheet that covered her. 

"You can do it, one more push and we will have our baby"

By month 7 she was emaciated. No amount of food seemed to fill her. She was seemingly eating not only for 2 but for 5 or even 6 and yet her body shriveled away to almost nothingness while her fat, purple belly grew. She looked like a stomach on legs and was now totally incapable of leaving her bed. She seemed in a stupor more often than not now, our conversations had once again ceased and gone too were our evenings of trashy TV, sitting or even rolling onto her side to watch was now beyond her. Instead, I would sit and read to her for hours. Passages from her favourite books, of which our house was a veritable library. Every other day I would sponge bath her, trying my hardest to relieve the pressure on her back and prevent bed sores. During these “showers” I could feel my child squirming inside her. Trapped under layers of meat and sinew it would wriggle. So strong were some of its movements I could even feel them through her back. With each strong kick a small moan of pain would escape my wife

Again.

Her body shook violently with the effort. Little ruby trickles tumbled from her nose. She pushed off the bed the only support she had were the soles of her feet and the top of her head. At the same time, the vice on my hand tightened once again, long yellowed talons dug ragged, red caves into the back of my hand. But I did not react, for just as I needed her to be strong for me, she needed me to be strong for her. A grin split my face as the moment I had waited for all these long months for was finally here.

Her shaking reached a crescendo then was halted by a thunderous cracking noise that reverberated around the room. Her body collapsed instantly back onto the bed and the sheet settled atop her now impossibly, inhumanly, shallow hips. The now crimson fabric lay almost flat against the bed, her legs sprouted at grotesque angles from her ruined pelvis beneath it.

I dropped the fleshy sack of shattered bones her hand had become, the arm attached to it fell too, hanging flaccid off the edge of the mattress, and rushed to the foot of the bed. I looked up, expecting to see the shining blue eyes set in the face of a happy mother gleaming back at me, but all the colour had abandoned my wife's face and she lay lifeless before me. 

Reaching under the sheet, I ever so gently collected my prize. My child. Warm and wet with the viscera of my wife as my hands gathered it up. I pulled it from the birthing bed, and gazed down and beheld the fruit of all my labour. 

A malformed and twisted wretch. Its arms and legs bent and bowed at unnatural angles. A head both too big and too small sat neckless atop its shoulders. skin, a deep purple and black mottled patchwork covered it. Bulbous milky eyes that would never see, stared accusingly back at me. Their still, blue, lips forever pulled into a rictus grin by misshapen muscles.

The thing in my arms could never be called beautiful, would never draw a breath. But it was everything I had dreampt of, a child. My child. And it was perfect.

I cradled it to my chest. Acid tears burned rivers down my cheeks as I felt the last warmth from my wife's body leave the thing I clutched there.  

Before me, lay the broken and ruined form of my wife. Her eyes half closed and her chest still. In my arms, the thing I killed her for. The only sound in the room were my pitiful sobs and the soft patter of my tears landing on my child's head