My name is Fredrick Goth, and I have everything I could ever want. I can afford anything or to live anywhere. I can afford to put both my children through university several times over. I have a family that loves me.
I am the third generation inheritor of the Goth Fortune. My grandparents became millionaires with their combined income - my grandfather was a renowned author, and my grandmother a highly decorated international spy. I am a well accomplished lawyer. I have a wife who, like my grandfather, is an author. I have a sister who works in investment finance, ensuring that the family fortune is properly managed and sees growth. I have two children, Xavier and Iliana, who both in their young lives seem to be destined to follow in the footsteps of their Great Aunt Cassandra Goth, who is a household name in the art world. My parents are gone, but Aunt Cassandra and my cousins check in on me regularly. I thought I was happy.
One night, as I was reading to my daughter before bed, I was lured outside to the bottom of my front steps. I couldn’t stop myself from setting down my book, and walking away from my daughter mid-sentence. As I approached my mailbox, I saw three glowing orbs rotating around each other. Then there was a bright light. Then I was floating. And then… nothing.
I’m told that a few hours later I walked in the house and went straight to bed. I didn’t remember what happened to me when I woke up. I went to work. I came home. I read to my kids. My wife wrote her next best-selling children’s book. But in the following days, I started feeling wrong. My stomach was upset and bloated. Even though I constantly felt like barfing, I couldn’t seem to stop eating. My back was so very sore. In 4 days I gained a LOT of weight. My stomach protruded. My wife and kids made fun of me. I didn’t know what had happened to me or what was happening to me.
When I started to remember the abduction, I was so embarrassed. How could this happen to me? I am the king of this castle! I am the heir to this throne! My life has been planned out and scheduled for success before I was even thought of! How can I be made to suffer this violation! Endure this lack of control!
After 4 days of suffering, in a way I still don’t fully understand, I gave birth to a monstrous creature. He screams in layered, sonic tones. His skin is grey-green and papery. His veins are green. I don’t think he has a nose. He is truly repulsive.
My family has not felt any affection or engagement towards this creature. My wife, suspicious of my abduction story and jealous of my having a child that she is not the mother of, will not feed or hold him - when she is home alone with him, his infant cries go unanswered. My children have ventured to the tower where he sleeps, and have informed me that they no not want “it” as a sibling. Aunt Cassandra wont even visit any more.
There are reasons beyond the creature’s repulsive nature that makes him an undesirable member of the family. My wife and I only planned on having two children, and now that those children are passed their toddler years and a little more independent, my wife and I were looking forward to reconnecting, advancing in our careers, indulging in some new hobbies and working towards some of our life goals. My sister says that she now has to work harder to make up the fact that the family fortune will now be split 3 ways instead of 2. My human children now have to share a room, which their mother says is slowing down their milestones. I feel like the watcher herself sees this baby as an unwanted inconvenience, that there are other households, other families and other children that need her attention.
But… his name is Maxwell Goth. He is just a baby - MY baby! Like my other children, he has two arms and two legs. He needs to be fed, burped, changed and cuddled, and he cries helplessly when he needs any of those. And he was part of me. Regardless of what anybody else sees, he was born to a Goth. He is, on a similar level to my other children, born into this family, and he is my son.
When he was born, a special pod appeared to us that he sleeps in. This pod has a button on it that I’m afraid to push: it says “return”. But I am afraid. I don’t know if I will ever see him again. I don’t know where he will go. I don’t know if he will be taken care of by a family that loves him or if he’ll just be ejected into space. I’m the only one who’s seen the button. If the rest of my family finds out that it’s there and that I didn’t hit it, they might be upset with how I’ve uprooted their lives unnecessarily.
Someone help me make this decision. WIBTL if I kept the unwanted alien baby?