Christopher Ransom - The Birthing House

'I want to be with you forever,' she said, whispering to me, watching me as I watched her. 'I want to love you forever. Can I love you forever? Will you promise me there will never be anyone else and that we can have each other and be like this forever?'

'Yes.'

'Do you love me?'

'More than anything. I love you.'

We spoke fast, repeating these declarations until they became vows.

I moved against her and slid into her and up against her and out again, over her triangle and to her navel. I was shaking all over and she cradled my head in the back of her hand, pulling me down, moving her hips up against me. Without guilt or thought I cried out in actual pain and shuddered as the pulses of my ejaculate made us comically wet and still we had not done the 'it' part of it.

'I'm sorry, I'm sorry . . .' I was mortified.

'Shush, no, it's beautiful,' she said, kissing me. 'This is only the beginning.'

I felt her hands reaching for me, or pulling on me to keep me up. This latter, if it was her intention, was not necessary. At seventeen and coming down from one of the most powerful climaxes of my life, I had lost nothing. In a way it was better, for now I could start again and do it for her.

'This is what I want,' she whispered. I waited for an explanation while her hand circled between us, on me and then elsewhere. 'I want you, I want all of you. Inside me. I want you forever. I want to have your baby.' Her eyes glowed as she said it again, making sure I understood the words she had never spoken, not even in jest. 'I want to have your baby.'

I lifted myself off of her so that perhaps twelve inches of space remained between our bodies and I watched as, eyes closed, her breath coming in gulps, she gathered the threads of my semen and applied them to her sex with a repetitive motion that was somehow repulsive and graceful. I did not understand. Just know that, whatever distortions you are tempted to assign my recollection, don't make the mistake of thinking she was putting on a show for my benefit. Though it was the most erotic act I have ever witnessed, it was also without thought, instinctual. Her hands moved as if she were not in control, efficiently cleaning up the mess like the sweep of that woman's hand in the paper towel commercial, only more primal, the way one imagines our ancestors weaving reeds. Each sweep of her palm gathered whatever fluid it could find, and then smoothed it over the cusp of her belly and further, down into the place God intended. She pressed her fingers into herself, rubbing herself until she was bucking against me.

I watched. I kissed her. I watched.

What did I know, at seventeen? She could have been performing some secret act only women learn when they have sought counsel to help them conceive. I certainly did not know that this was an act no woman, including my wife, would ever perform in my presence again. I knew only that this was it, the greatest proof my girl could offer that she loved me, that when she said forever she meant forever. Because, when you think about it, what is more risky to a teenaged girl than getting pregnant? What commitment is more long term than having your child, knowing she will likely be ostracized for it?

On another, more selfish side, my ego soared. What so many women understandably find repulsive - this thick, bleach-smelling substance - Holly was devouring to a place so much more dangerous than her mouth. I watched her hands do their work until her muscles clenched and pulled my seed deeper within her, and I understood the degree to which I had misjudged her love for me, how all-encompassing it had become, and that our future was sealed, that we would forever be us. I understood I would never, ever be alone again in this world.

Whatever you think happiness is, whatever you think it really means to be safe and secure and loved, I can tell you this. It is never more present in us than when we have coveted and loved and risked everything to claim another, and having done so found our equal, having reached the mutual understanding that we want the same thing, and that the thing we want is nothing. Nothing . Not money not fame not cars not houses not artistic greatness not even children, nothing except the person we are mated to, lost and found. This ecstatic mental state so perfectly in tune with our physical design is our home, the only real home we are given a chance to find in this life, the place we are lost, found, safe, forgiven, remade and forged into better men, the home we are forever trying to get back to, the one true birthing house.

When she had become almost frantic and I could bear observing her from a distance no more, I pulled her hands away and pushed myself inside her again, and this time I stayed.

We stayed this way for more than seven hours. I keep telling you it was not about the sex, but now it was the sex and nothing else. I know that I came inside her three more times, and she every time with me, pulling me deeper. The candles burned to their foundations before we drifted off to sleep.

Are you sleeping now? Is my voice soothing, or does it frighten you? If you want me stop, that is okay, too. Not every story needs to be heard to be understood. But I think you have heard this story before, or at the very least have felt it growing between us. That is why I'm telling you now - so that you will know everything about me, so that nothing will grow between us.

When you wake up, in the end, we will be together.

That is all that matters now.

26

It was a beginning, and he was a man who loved beginnings more than middles or endings.

He told himself he was being foolish. He told himself he was being a fucking idiot. He told himself that his wife was smart, beautiful, decent, forgiving, working to preserve their new hope in the ongoing experiment that was their marriage, and most of all that she was pregnant with his child.

Or a child.

But every child needs a home. He'd given Luther a home. Then Alice. It wasn't enough. He needed the other half. Wasn't that what the Bible said? Eve was the rib, and you missed her forever. Except, in this age of MBA wives and husbands who were good at cooking and cleaning and wringing their hands but not even handy enough to change a pipe under the sink, Conrad knew he was the rib. Jo, his host body, was her own strong woman and she was pulling away.

Nadia Grum was here. Half a family, waiting for the right man.

He had admitted that he wanted her. Wanted her, but wanted what of her? Not sex, or not only sex, because he was if anything painfully aware of her condition and the preposterous nature of their situation. Sex was a distant thing if it was there at all. In its place, something unnamable, and more powerful.

Oh yes, he could see how a sane man might decide it was time to seek counsel in the form of one's doctor, one's wife, one's family. But Jo was his only family, and like a man running from the avalanche of emotional debt but not yet bankrupt of pride, he chose to leave Jo out of it. To call his wife and inform her of his experiences, his utter emotional fucked-uppedness, would be an Armageddon, what the marriage shrinks called a relationship-ending event. No, whatever the end turned out to be, he would determine the course on his own. He knew that seeking advice would not change his wishes. Because the real horror is that when you're busy ruining your life, self-awareness doesn't stop you.

Sweating out the beer in their new cotton sheets, thinking of her one story below, he could see all these things, but he was powerless to them. And to one more thing.

The house.

Something had happened here, maybe several somethings involving life and death and the things that slip through the cracks in between. Something had been born here and it lived here still. He did not have all the pieces, but he felt it. He felt the will of the place working on him every time he returned home and it was not going away. It was, in fact, getting stronger. It had broken the mirrors, out of anger. Angry that he was next door with her, or that they hadn't been here, where they were supposed to be, tending to business. He wanted to know it. He wanted to touch the ghost, if that's what it was, maybe even help it. Her. He was terrified, repulsed, and drawn to it as he was drawn to the girl and the destruction she would bring down. And never mind Dr Alexis Hobarth, the animal sage, and his scientific explanations for what was, in effect, a miracle birth. He wasn't religious, but he wanted to be faithful, to find something deserving of faith, even if it cost him his marriage. Maybe this house would offer such an article. And maybe this thing inside him, driving him, was but a quaint strain of madness. And if so, so what? Wasn't love like that? An excuse to go mad, just for a little while? Who didn't wish for that? A padded room to protect you while you flipped out, a chamber where your most vile stench will be expelled and ventilated, a darkened theater to project your dreams on to the willing patrons of your all-too-human freak show.