Cameron Pierce - Abortion Arcade

After a while, he closes the book and turns off the lamp. He curls around Celia’s sleeping form, wondering if fetuses get lonely, or if loneliness only comes on after the body grows larger than a crumb.

Simon dreams that he and Celia are stapling bacon to the card board walls of a cathedral without doors or windows.

They have coated the entire exterior of the cathedral in bacon when a yellow crow falls of out the sky and begs them, as its dying wish, to go inside the cathedral and sit very quietly. “But how can we go inside if there are no windows or doors?” Celia asks the yellow crow, who weeps profusely for it has been shot through the heart.

“Ask forgiveness,” the crow says, then Simon wakes up. It is an unsettling dream, not the least because he and Celia do not eat bacon, nor any other meat.

She has turned away from him in her sleep. They each take up one side of the bed, leaving the middle cold.

They used to joke that they became one person as they slept. They used to sleep closer together. Now they sleep far apart, while tiny elephants cuddle on the floor around their bed.

He slides across the void of bed to spoon her. She stirs a little, pushing into him, murmuring, “Good morning.”

“Did you have good dreams?”

“A sad one. We were in a funeral home, trying to swallow green pills because we had died and one of us was being forced to go away. The green pills were supposed to make us inseparable, but the pills were as large as ostrich eggs. We couldn’t choke them down. It made me sad. Did you have a good dream?”

“We were outside a cathedral, doing something with bacon. I forget what.”

He never remembers his dreams for long.

He moves his left hand over her hip, up the side of her body, across her chest, and down her belly.

Her belly, where the baby is.

“What the fuck,” he says. “The blanket is squeezing my hand.”

He throws the blankets off. Three powder blue strings protrude from Celia’s bellybutton. They are as thin and transparent as fishing line.

The strings go taut.

He waves his hands back and forth. His hand passes through the strings without getting tangled or affecting them in any way, as if they possess no physical substance, like holograms. But when he makes to grab them, closing his hand into a fist, the strings feel solid in his grip. They feel cold and rubbery, like mozzarella cheese.

“What’s wrong?” Celia says.

He looks at her face. The strings jutting from her belly are not the only strings.

Strings come out of her hands, shoulders, feet, face.

“What’s happened to you?” he says.

“Nothing,” she says, wearing a panicked facial expression. “What’s wrong with you?”

As she speaks, her strings move in sync with her words and gestures. Celia and the strings act in such accordance that Simon cannot tell whether she is controlling them or they are controlling her.

“There are strings coming out of you,” he says. “Strings in your hands, feet, face… even strings coming from your belly. You must see them.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? Is this a joke?”

Simon puts his hands on her shoulders and looks her straight in the eye so she knows he is serious. He speaks in a level voice. “This is not a joke. There are strings coming out of you. I don’t know why you can’t see them, but they’re there.”

She shakes her head and laughs. “I always knew you were a little crazy, but strings? Really, Simon?”

As she speaks, her body shifts like a marionette controlled by a trembling puppeteer. He imagines the strings weaving through her guts and muscles. He cannot touch her after thinking this. The strings repulse him. It is as if she is infected with a dangerous parasite. Despite his revulsion, he feels compelled to save her from these strings that are invisible to her.

“Let me cut your strings,” he says, averting his eyes.

“I’m going back to bed.” Celia turns her back to him and lays down. She pulls the blankets over her head. Her blue strings cut right through the blanket.

Simon tries to stay calm. He doesn’t want to freak out.

He feels irritated with Celia. He knows that it’s irrational and that he had better stop before things escalate into a fight, but he cannot help thinking that it is her fault for not seeing the strings.

“Hold me,” she says, in a half-asleep stupor.

Simon gets under the covers, but he cannot touch her.“Let me cut your strings,” he says.

“Go for it,” she says.

“Do you want me to cut them with scissors, or just use my hands?”

“I don’t care. Do what you feel like.”

“Which do you prefer?”

“Dammit, Simon.”

“Well which?”

“Hands. I don’t know.”

“OK, let me know if it hurts.”

He reaches for the belly strings first because they are the smallest, but Celia is lying at an angle where Simon cannot reach them.

“Can you move?” he says.

She rolls over, grumbling about what an asshole he is.

Simon grabs the three belly strings in his hand and jerks on all three at once. They go slack and slide out of her belly, unbloodied, damaging her in no discernible way.

“Did you pull out my strings?” Celia says.

“Be quiet. I’m waiting to see what happens.”

Nothing happens for another minute, then the strings blacken and wither. They slip out of his hand and retract into the ceiling like vines.

“Do you feel any different?” he says.

“I feel exactly the same, which is annoyed and tired.”

“Sorry. I’ll be done soon.”

“Can’t you be done now?”

“Celia, there are strings coming out of your body. I don’t give a fuck if you can’t see them. I want them gone.

Maybe they’re a new breed of insect, or probes.”

Simon collects all of Celia’s remaining strings in one fist, thinking again of cheese. He will pull them out all at once.

“I’m going to pull all of your strings on three, OK?”

He knows telling her this will annoy her, but since it is her body they are dealing with, he thinks he should at least keep her in formed. “One… two… three.”

He pulls the strings.

He slides a hand under the covers as the strings go slack and dark. He strokes her lower back. “All done,” he says. “Thank you for being patient with me.”

Celia offers no response. Simon feels sick. “Celia? I’m sorry. Please say something,” he says.

Her deteriorating strings leave a sulfuric odor in the air. She must be really pissed to ignore him like this. He knows it is better to leave her alone. After sleeping for a few more hours she will not be mad, but Simon cannot stand letting bad feelings simmer between them, even though Celia says bad feelings are sometimes necessary.

He tries tickling her. She remains still. “Celia.” Frustrated by her unresponsiveness, but also growing concerned, Simon shakes her shoulder. “Celia.” She does not move. “Celia!”

There is no question now. Celia is not breathing.

Pulling out her strings has rendered her unconscious.

And the baby, the baby. What about the baby?

Not knowing CPR, Simon leaps out of bed. He slips in elephant shit twice, banging his knees and elbows, before he reaches the phone on the wall.

Simon and Celia thought it would be charming to have an old-fashioned telephone. Now, as Simon struggles to pick up a dial tone on the antiquated machine, the receiver feels like a stone wheel in his hands.

Finally, the dial tone buzzes through and he punches in the emergency number. He wonders what he will say.

That he has killed his wife and unborn child by ripping out the strings that tethered them to life?