Joel Arnold - Fetal Bait Apocalypse - 3 Collections in 1

“What you care about that for?” he asks. “What you care if the baby gets a little taste?” And he smirks, like he’s daring me to say something more. Usually I hold my tongue, and the times I can’t, I turn enough so that the bruises land on my sides and back. But he doesn’t hit as hard when I’m with child. And that’s a good thing.

There are nights he comes to bed after drinking in the barn, drinking that terrible moonshine whiskey Matt Hemple makes, and lays his head on my stomach. He likes to feel the baby kick against the side of his face. I stroke the back of his head. It’s the only time he lets me touch him without hitting back. I almost love him then.

Almost.

And sometimes he comes up with names for the baby. Silly, desperate names, like he’s grasping, trying to get a hold of I don’t know what.

“How do you like Criminy?” he asks.

“What kind of a name is Criminy?”

“It’s a good name.” He stands there a moment, his eyes blank and bloodshot. Then he goes back to the barn. Tends to his tractor or his cows. Like he woke a moment from a dream, and then the dream grabs back hold of him.

Number eleven.

What shall I name him? Or her? With the others, I started out with bible names: Matthew, Luke, Mary, Ezekial. Then I went with Presidents and their wives: George, Ronald, Nancy, Jackie. And the last two, Johnny C. and Reba, I named after my two favorite singers.

I think if this one’s a boy, I’ll name him Jesus. Not Hay-Seuss, like a goddamn Mexican, but Jee-sus. As in the Son of God. As in crucified, died and gone to Heaven.

Sven’ll think I’m blaspheming, but I’ll just tell him to go to hell. And then I’ll ask him, “Don’t you want your son to be named after the Son of God?” He’ll hit me. I’m sure of that. He’ll punch me a good one in the face.

But not in the belly. Never in the belly these last weeks with child. It’s the one power I have over him. The one thing I have that he doesn’t.

He’s got his tractors, his crops, his barn, his booze, his fists, his tough talk.

But I’ve got the womb.

And goddamn, if there’s nothing he wants worse than this child…

This baby in me — I feel it kicking now. Mostly at night when I’m lying in bed and Sven’s snoring next to me. I feel it moving around, like it’s dancing to the beat of my heart.

When I put my hand on my belly, it calms me. Makes me forget for a moment the aches and pains, the bruises and welts. The scars that have been there since our first days of marriage.

“Enjoy yourself in there, Jesus,” I whisper. I feel like it’s going to be another boy this time. Been right with most of them. “Enjoy yourself while you can.”

I turn and look at Sven’s face just above the covers. Sometimes when he’s asleep like this, or passed out on the living room couch, I think he looks like a little boy, and I feel sorry for him, sorry for the bastard he’s become. And I reach out and run my hand gently over his cheek, feeling the wrinkles and the tough old skin of his, oily and bristled. I feel sorry for him and wonder where the child in him has gone and run off to.

I’m due any day now. My belly’s as big as an apple basket. This is my favorite time. Now. When I know the child inside me is fully formed. A whole little being squirming inside of me. When I look in the mirror past the bruises and the tiredness, I look radiant. I smile, and the smile is genuine. Sven doesn’t dare touch me now. Not these last few days. He stays away mostly, knowing how easily his rage gets the better of him. He only comes around when it’s supper time, sits at the table, eats the food I’ve cooked, and only talks to me after dabbing the grease from the corner of his lips.

“Please,” he says. “Let’s work things out.”

But it’s always too little, too late. He knows it, but the want in him is so great. It sobers him up these few days where at least he has to try.

“Please.”

I sit there. Look at him from across the table. The smile on my face is genuine, and my skin shines with that healthy glow. I don’t say a thing. Soon he pushes away from the table. Walks with his head down out to the barn. He’ll spend these last couple nights sleeping in the hayloft.

It’s the only time I have any power over him. And I know after this one is born, the beatings will come harder than ever. And after a few months he’ll take me again. Night after night. Take me in that angry way of his until I’m pregnant with number twelve.

Now, sweet Jesus, I think tomorrow is your day, the first day you’ll see this big, bright world. I put the pills in your daddy’s moonshine, so he’ll sleep all of tomorrow. Enjoy this last night in my womb. Enjoy the warmth of my blood, the beat of my heart. Because tomorrow you’ll meet your other brothers and sisters, out behind the barn.

I’m resting today. I need a good night’s sleep. It’s tough giving birth by yourself. It’s even tougher digging deep into the earth looking for the bones of your children. Tougher yet to pile the dirt on your newest one as he cries his first cries.

Down there with his brothers and sisters.

It’s the one time of the year I feel any power over Sven, but the glow I feel inside will last another week at least, even after Sven wakes from the drugs, beats me with his leathery old fists and asks me, “Why? Why? Why?”

When the Grim Reaper came for John Pepper, instead of a scythe, she carried a cell phone. It took a moment for John to realize what was happening, but he rose from the ground and saw his earthly body on the kitchen floor. Blood trickled from his nose and his eyes stared lifelessly from their sockets. What happened? He’d been scooping chocolate ice cream, and now…

The scoop laid at his feet, a circle of melted chocolate filling in the crevices between the floorboards. He stared at his body lying there, trying to comprehend what was happening, until movement beneath the Reaper’s cloak distracted him. The black fabric billowed and swayed as if agitated by an invisible wind. The Reaper’s skeletal hand gathered the dark fabric about her throat and clutched it tightly.

How did he know it was female? There were no signs, no telltale features, yet something about the figure made him certain.

Her arm creaked as she extended the cell phone to John. He looked at it as if it might be poisonous.

The Reaper pushed it closer. “Listen,” she said. Her voice was sonorous, like the dying vibrations of a large, thick bell.

John reached for it and froze. It wasn’t a real cell phone. It was a toy. A Barbie phone.

Deirdre’s phone.

He’d rather it was something poisonous, something sharp and deadly. Not something this painful. Why this? Why Deirdre’s phone?

“Listen,” the Reaper insisted.

Deirdre was only four when a car driven by a drunken teenager ran her down. It happened two years ago, but John still could not sleep at night until his quota of tears had found their way to his pillow.

He placed the phone to his ear.

Again, the Reaper gathered her cloak about her. The fabric bulged, rippled, as if something moved beneath it.

“Daddy?” Deirdre’s voice was muffled. It sounded far away.

John’s jaw trembled. Words caught in his throat like chunks of wet coal.

“Daddy?” There was desperation in her voice. A glimmer of hope, perhaps?

John whispered, “I miss you, honey. I’ve missed you so much.”

“Can you play with me?”

John looked up, trying to read the expression on the face of the cloaked figure, but there was only the dull talcum of skull deep in the shadow of her hood. “Is this real?” he asked, watching her closely.