Dating : The Sunlit Impediments

TW: Gore

The woman’s story began when she asked to see the baby she had just given birth to, images of tears streaming down her face while holding her baby close swimming in her head. She thought of how she’ll weep from the unhindered joy of seeing for the first time little fingers wrapped around her’s, or a little face smiling at her, “No, she won’t be smiling,” her thoughts interrupted, “she’ll be crying at birth, and she’ll be hungry,” at this, hot beginnings of tears flooded her eyes, she wanted nothing more than to hold her baby.

Still, she found how she was reacting ridiculous and thought it’s best to laugh the tears away, which only managed to make her cry even harder. Rivers of tears now flowed on her cheeks, her nose stuffed and a spot right beside her heart was hurting, still she thought, “I can’t be ugly crying right now, I’ve never done that in front of him and not even giving birth will change that.”

The woman’s husband however, was moved to get up from his bedside arm chair and attempt to console her. He knelt on the floor next to her and caressed her head, savouring long minutes of a tender kiss on her temple that worked wonders in abating her sobs, “I want to see her,” she repeated when he finally pulled away, stopping with his face still intimately close to her’s.

“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that just yet, it’s for the best that no one sees her,” he whispered with care.

The woman’s face contorted in confusion, “What do you mean? Why am I not allowed to see her?”

“Trust me, it’s for your own good,” he curtly answered and met her eyes without any sign of menace. He was as calm as he could be but it didn’t seem like he was there altogether. The expressions he wore were like the cold ones that professionals had on when executing a routine task.

The woman held onto his eye contact sharply, standing her ground when he stood up. For a few seconds, they stared at each other in a standstill before the woman decided to laboriously manage all her post-partum pains and bring herself to sit on the edge of the bed to confront him.

“My own good? Daniel…I….I…”, she stuttered, “I blacked out, and woke up without her in my belly. You’ve told me that you had to take her out, but in case you haven’t noticed, that means I gave birth, Daniel, and I want to see the baby I gave birth to, I want to see our baby.” She was insistent now, the fact that she had to repeat her own basic-fundamental right three times now went over her head.

Yet, her protests were only met with a calm and stoic tone from him, “I can’t let you do that, not yet.” This time around, his body language began to betray him, he chewed on the insides of his left cheek and crossed his arms defensively.

“Okay can you at least tell me why? Is she sick? Should we be taking her to the hospital?”

By the end of her question, Daniel looked down at his shoes with an annoyed sigh, there was nothing more he wanted but for the conversation to be over, “No, no, nothing of the sorts to be worried about. It’s just best for you to not immediately see her,” he answered, finally meeting her eyes again “I better go now,” he said dismissively, it seemed like there were far better things for him to attend to than his hysterical wife asking for their newborn.

“And when exactly can I see her?” The woman hounded him, nowhere near pleased at how she was losing her end of the bargain, “How is seeing my own newborn daughter something to be discussed Daniel?”

“I’ll go check on her now, okay,” he replied sharply and nodded in fake submission, signalling that the conversation was really over this time, “You should rest, and here, take the painkillers, they should help with the pain.” He handed her a plastic medicine container from the bedside table and walked out briskly, careful to close the bedroom door only halfway through, to keep a watchful eye over her.

Now the woman was left alone fuming with rage, in any other circumstances she would have immediately chased after him, but great waves of pain kept her chained to the bed. She had no choice but to do as he said and take the painkillers. Lying on her back, she closed her eyes and took frantic shallow breaths, her head began to spin. Pounding aches grew from a spot on the back of her head that she instinctively reached out to and recognised a throbbing lump had formed there.

To top it all off, stinging pain from her lower abdomen demanded attention, an intense version of the piercing pain you’ll feel when you pull back a piece of your cuticle, the irritating type that dragged itself down the sides of your finger instead of stopping right next to your nail beds. For a while, the unbearable sensations were enough to make her forget about her baby and Daniel, but when she traced careful strokes over her lower abdomen and found neat rows of stitches, her mind flitted right back to them, “This is where he cut her out,” she reasoned with herself out loud before the painkillers took full effect, dragging her down to a well of deep-dreamless sleep.

The bedroom door stood ajar in front of her, outside is an empty house where no sound, other than leaves rustling against window panes were heard. The wide windows inside the bedroom though, brought in only the comfortable evening sun, where specks of dust danced lazily under its warmth, oblivious of the woman on the bed and all her sunlit impediments.

Earlier today in this very room, gentle rays of morning sunlight swayed through parted curtains and landed softly next to the bed. This small patch of sunshine’s routine is to change places with the glow of a wooden night light perched on the stand. More than that, it brought with its warmth all that the day had to offer for the inhabitants of the house. The woman was sleeping soundly on her bed, her pupils darting occasionally under her eyelids, giving away how she was savouring the last minutes of a tranquil dream.

With every easy rhythm of her breath billowing on honey strands of hair, she was oblivious of the human shaped absence beside her. Her husband, Daniel, who occupies this space, had left before the first traces of dawn were to be seen in the horizon. He goes on daily walks to the tree lined hills behind their house, to be deterred only by the worst of rains or snows, and almost always alone. He’s never gone for long though, and has developed a knack for being back just in time for a hearty breakfast with his wife.

Now that the ornate black hands of the bedroom clock showed that it’s 06.11 am, a rush of adrenaline jolted the woman awake, revealing dark brown irises with bottomless depths. She proceeded to prop herself up — one elbow at a time — and took her phone from the nightstand. “It’s March 15th,” she read out and smiled, placing her right hand over her swollen belly, “Two more days, and we’ll be through with this leg of the journey, eh?” She asked the baby in her belly.

The final days of her pregnancy have been difficult, with acts as simple as getting seated being an arduous affair. With her right hand protectively over her belly, she used her other arm and both of her legs to push against the bed and get seated. Having managed this, she sank into the cushioned headboard and let out a deep sigh, realising that her trip down to the kitchen will be more sets of elaborately choreographed movements. But this thought was easily overcome with the anxiety from missing out on her sacred morning rituals: getting to run the kettle, fry the eggs, and prepare the toast were now her few sources of joy in life.

Carefully she brought one leg down from the bed and then the other to stand up and make her way down to the kitchen, her right hand still cautiously positioned over her belly. When she was halfway down the flight of stairs, sharp stinging pain began to grow on her left wrists and upper arms, soon her knees followed in on the complaints. These were the products of her simple morning accomplishment of getting out of bed. She cursed at them and tightened her grip on the handrails, persevering her way down, and counting every step of the way as she’s had for the past few months.

At the bottom stairs, she noticed the sound of keys unlocking the front door, and turned her head just in time to see the door swing open and bring in a tsunami of the day’s luminescence, obstructed solely by Daniel’s slender — tall figure. A smile of relief formed on the woman’s face as he walked towards her. He took her swiftly in his arms and planted a playful kiss on her forehead.

“You took unusually long just to get down the stairs today,” he chafed while acting like he was checking his wristwatch.

“Well I’m two days away from our due date and I believe that allows me some slack mister,” she responded with a friendly slap to his arm.

Daniel made grand gestures towards the kitchen to match her enthusiasm, “Why don’t you take a seat then madame? Let me handle everything this morning.”

Their kitchen was a minimalistic spacious one with black granite tabletops and a gas stove on the furthest right of the space. Next to it were glass sliding doors that flooded the room with natural light that opened up to an unkempt garden, a project Daniel says he’s putting off for brighter days. It was an eyesore that they spent an awful lot of time looking at. You would have a direct view of the garden from the front door and from the bottom of the stairs, and how it led out to a clearing that met the beginning of the tree lined hills back there. Rows and rows of dense foliage that keep rolling further, as far as you can see.

A high kitchen table with white barstools separated the kitchen from a dining room made of more open space. In the middle is a large oddly shaped wooden table that still smelled like wood varnish to this day. There was no need for a table that size, guests have been scarce with them residing far out in the country.

The woman sat on one of the barstools at the kitchen table and couldn’t help but frown at every move Daniel was making in front of her. “He’s not using the right measuring spoon,” she thought while he filled the moka pot with coffee, “Pregnancy hormones must be affecting my mood,” she convinced herself, “which measuring spoon you use doesn’t really matter, I should really just stop with this over thinking.”

And so she decided that it would be best to talk to him instead of letting her thoughts run wild while she waited, “You know, I’m really glad you’re here for this. I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t around. With your job in the hospital, it’ll be hard to jump back in after six months. Quite frankly I can’t wait for the time that the two-,” she paused and smiled at her nonchalant mistake, “No, three of us will spend together doing nothing.” She finished with her chin playfully resting on her hands.

Leaning on the kitchen counter, Daniel turned around to face her and grinned widely at the comment, “It’s the least I could do for you, I’m not the one who’s been carrying her around for the last nine months,” he pointed at her belly with a spatula in his hand, “And speaking of doing nothing, maybe we could finally get to that pain of a garden while we’re at it,” he exclaimed while turning around swiftly on his heels, pointing the spatula at the garden now, conducting an invisible orchestra for an audience of one.

The woman laughed joyously at his antics, “Look at you finally thinking-,” cut short by a sudden jab at her lower rib, she paled and Instinctively held her belly with both hands. A cacophony of lumps emerged on one side of her belly before disappearing all together.

“What’s wrong?” Daniel asked, moving closer towards her.

“It must have been her kicking, but I could have sworn she kicked me right at the ribs,” the woman replied in disbelief.

“She can do that?” He paused and stared at her belly in fascination.

“I’m not sure, she’s never kicked that high or that hard before,” the woman chuckled, “It seems like things are getting more and more uncertain with her and on top of that there’s still so much that I don’t know.” The woman stopped for a minute and thought about the weight of what she had just said, but then reached out for Daniel’s right hand and placed it purposefully on her belly.

He smiled at this gesture, this way he could feel that the baby, his baby, was alive and well inside her. He gave her belly a kiss, hoping it will help soothe the woman, before walking back to the stove, “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here, miss overthink! Focus on the things we do know. She’s probably just as hungry as I am.” He expressed while cracking two eggs onto a pan.

But Daniel was already one too many seconds late at expressing this, the woman was already lost in the jungle of her own thoughts, “We don’t really know for certain that she’s hungry, do we? Don’t you ever find it harrowing just how much we don’t know about her? Like you said, you’re not the one who’s been carrying her around for the past nine months, so I don’t think you understand just how scary it is to not know so much about something that has been growing, eating, sleeping, and living inside of you for that long. I lose my head thinking about whether or not she has anything resembling the thoughts that you and I share. I don’t know if she kicks because she’s hungry, or if she’s protesting at how cramped my womb is. I don’t know if she’ll be happy with us calling her she, or if she’ll even like having me as her mother!” The woman lamented in a daze, she was far too entangled in the veins of her thoughts that all Daniel saw was her looking straight at nowhere in particular in front of her.

The room seemed to have been sucked out of air, Daniel’s initial excitement was replaced by a heavy silence. Walking away from the stove and the bubbling eggs, he opened the top drawer to his left and picked up a serrated bread knife. He turned around to face the woman now, and took purposeful steps towards her with the knife gripped in hand, before picking up a loaf of bread placed conveniently on a rattan basket on the table in front of her.

He was exasperated now, just two days before his expectations of so much joy these thoughts finally broke through an unspoken dam. He began to slice the bread on the table right in front of her, letting her sit with the weight of her thoughts and emotions so that he would have her full attention when he broke his silence “I hear you, and I must admit that I’m scared too. But who isn’t when they’re about to become a parent for the first time? Have we not done our best to prepare? We’ve waited a whole year. I’m sure we’re ready. These thoughts are just unnecessary roadblocks, “ he tried to explain clearly.

To Daniel’s disappointment, the woman was still caught in her daydream. His anger bubbled to the surface, and he stopped slicing the bread for a few seconds, only to then tighten his grip on the knife. With a long deep breath, he raised his voice at her, “There’s NO backing out when you’re two days away you hear me! We’ve always wanted kids, we’ve tried for so long, and we’re having one together now.” At this tone, the woman finally raised her head to look at him.

Daniel was too shocked at his own rage that he dropped the knife on the table. He closed his eyes and clenched his fist on the table’s edge, trying his best to calm himself down with deep breaths, while the woman stared at him in equal disbelief. He felt better after a minute had passed, and finally gathered the courage to meet her gaze, “Look, I’m sorry,” he stopped, and reached out to run his fingers through her hair, “Why don’t you start telling me all the things you do know so far about the baby while I go and set the table? We should start using that mammoth of a log before it rots,” he said with a guilty smile on his face before walking off to the table behind her with his shoulders slumped.

“Sure,” the woman replied, finding it within her to blink away the sudden escalation. She sat with her hands folded in front of her and tried her best to collect her thoughts. A patch of sunlight had landed on top of her hands and caught her attention while she talked to Daniel, “I know for certain that she has her own weight pressed against mine,” she paused, smiling down at her belly before continuing, “I know she has a form that mimics mine and yours and most of us when we were in the womb. I’ve seen that with my own eyes in the numerous sonograms.”

That was when she noticed that the patch of light on hand was beginning to expand rapidly until it engulfed her arms and body entirely in it. Sitting under the sunlight, a sharp wave of pain hit her on the back of her head and she fell forward. Unconscious with her head lying on the kitchen table, a steady stream of blood oozed from a wound on the back of her head and pooled on the shimmering black surface of the table like a halo. The woman stopped feeling her limbs and abruptly closed her eyes, bathed in light while being swallowed by an overwhelming darkness.

Later that day, the woman woke up without her baby, she was exhausted through and through when she recalled how Daniel had stormed off when she asked to see her baby. She was lying on her bed encased in darkness, the sun’s rays had been replaced by the cold glow of street lights and no one had turned on her bedside night light. When the woman rolled over to do just that, she saw that the slithering black hands of the clock showed that it’s 9.16 pm.

Slowly she began to get up, wincing still at the pain on her lower abdomen. The air in the house felt eerily still when she walked barefoot out the bedroom. She peered over the staircase ledge and saw no sign of Daniel anywhere, going down the stairs, the floor below seemed just as quiet.

Even before reaching the kitchen, she could see that the backdoor was open, “Is he out for a walk at this hour?” she wondered as she stepped further, footsteps hovering soundlessly on the marble floor. The stillness of the house carried itself out into the night, the air outside felt stifling although you could make out traces of a breeze on the trees lining the hill. She walked out to the unkempt garden and looked around, “where could he have gone at this hour?” She thought.

When lightning strikes, you’ll see a flash pierce the sky before you hear thunder rumbling, that’s what it was like for her out there when she finally saw Daniel. Back turned to her, at 9 pm at night, it appeared as though he finally got around to doing some of that gardening he had always talked about and was digging a hole at the edge of their garden with nothing but one of his bare hands, while holding something with his other. “Daniel!” the woman called out, he showed no sign of hearing her though and kept on digging.

“Daniel?” She called out again when she was a few feet away from him, “Yes?” he turned around and dropped what he’s holding by accident. It was a small rounded thing that tumbled forward a few times, almost like a bigger tennis ball that was dropped nonchalantly. Out of instinct the woman stepped forward towards her husband and whatever strange task he was carrying tonight. She was about to pick up what he dropped when the moon light shined perfectly on top of it allowing her to take in full view of how it was a head, a severed baby’s head.

“Daniel!” the woman shrieked in pure terror, but he only stood motionless and perplexed, tilting his head to the side the way an innocent puppy would when it doesn’t understand a command, “What’s wrong?” he asked.

“What’s wrong? Is that what I think it is? Or is this some cruel out of season Halloween prank?”

“The baby’s head? Honey I had to do it, it was the most logical thing to do,” he replied, looking pleased at himself, “They told me to raise her, and that she’ll be great help for you and me, and for all of us, but I found out what they were really going to do, so I stopped them on the very first day.”

“You’re not making much sense there Daniel.” She said, “He’s finally lost it, the stress of having his own child and living in this seclusion has finally taken its toll on him,” she thought while slowly stepping backwards.

“No, I know what it looks, like it’s nuts, but trust me, I did it for everyone’s best.”

“But why Daniel?” she fell to her knees and pleaded, Daniel standing just steps away from her, their severed baby’s head in between.

“I don’t understand this,” she cried out, “why? Daniel!” she screamed at the night. The pain was unbearable, it wasn’t just physical pain anymore, she felt as though she had hiked to the top of the hills and dropped down from there onto jagged rocks below. As if her ribs had cracked open and someone had hammered her skull in. Breathing became a difficult task, and Daniel rushed to hold her, “I know it’s confusing but I did it for our own good, she wasn’t our child to begin with, you’ve said so yourself, how you didn’t know if she had thoughts like you and I, how you weren’t sure if she would like you as her mother, I found out the answers, she won’t, she’s not our child, she’s not even human! I had to do for you and me,” he explained in distress.

“You’re not making any sense, Daniel! Those were thoughts! Anxieties, senseless worries, why did you go and act them out?” She croaked in between sobs.

“Come with me to the hills to meet them, okay? It’s where I go every morning, I go to see them, I thought they were good, but no, not after what they did to you today.”

Turns out Daniel was livid after all, he had the sense to take the car up to the narrow unpaved roads to the top of the hills, while the woman sat looking out the window in a daze. She wasn’t sure if this was real anymore or a twisted nightmare she hadn’t woken up from.

At a sandy clearing on the top of the hills, Daniel parked his car, and motioned outside, “There they are, come take a look at who’s behind all this,” the woman stepped out of the car and saw that outside the clearing revealed a clear view of the slopes below, including a direct view of their house. She could see the lights are off where her bedroom is, and watch as someone turned the lights on, someone with honey coloured hair that looked like every sign of life had been sucked out of her, and outside in the garden she could make out shadows of a figure digging with their bare hands.

It’s an all too familiar scene that was playing out in front of her, like watching someone press rewind on a DVD of her life, “you see now? I can’t explain it myself, but it’s something about where our house stands, and how sunlight hits it so that in its absence we’ll be able to see past time. I come up here every day to see how the day would play out, and yesterday I saw them both lying dead on the dinner table, the baby was going to take all our lives.”