10
10
I t's almost midnight, and small grains of sand scratch Flora's eyes beneath her lids. She is atop her pumping perch, the only light in the room emanating from the timer on the sucking machine. Her head snaps back when she almost nods off, but then
what's that noise
Adrenaline pops her eyes open and sharpens her senses. She hears the soft pitter-patter of a whisper. Like someone speaking just under his breath so that Flora can make out the percussive consonants and nothing else.
Maybe it's something in the pump. As much as she is using the machine, she expects it to have some technical glitches. She will call the support line tomorrow and see if they can help her troubleshoot over the phone.
Her pulse is just starting to slow when the noise is back—the puh of explosive p 's and the tah of syncopated t 's—like a fly buzzing beside her ear.
Flora leans back slightly to get the momentum needed to hunch forward and switch off the pump. But leaning back allows streaks of milk to escape her flanges, down the sides of her torso. "Shit!" she cries out, lurching herself forward quickly to avoid any more spillage. She then carefully unscrews the right bottle from the connector and places it on the coffee table. As she reaches for the lid, her forearm grazes the bottle and sends it crashing to the floor.
All she can see is the huge puddle of milk on the hardwood below, the slightly translucent white fanning out quickly against the dark boards. She wants to scream. And so she does. She grabs the nearest pillow and screams into it—really fucking screams—as loudly as she can.
There's no other way to put it: this is so unfair. It's unfair that nursing was hell and that her husband works across the world and that she's all alone in this and that she has naturally higher sleep needs than the average person and that she smells like dog shit all the time. Her milk on the floor is the highest form of cruelty the world can deal right now, since the
there it is again the whispering
The pump is off. So it must be a voice she's hearing. She throws on a loose sweater that, given the scratching against her throat, is on backward. But that doesn't matter right now. Because right now she hears a man's voice speaking softly and slowly and there's not a man in this house; there shouldn't be a man in this house.
She holds herself as still as she possibly can, but it's useless, because she can't hear anything through the deafening hum in her ears. Is that the blood rushing in her veins? She shakes her head to stop it, but that doesn't help.
Flora's mind is on hyperdrive. Someone is in her home. She is paralyzed with indecision and fear. What should she do first? Retrieve Iris? Call the police? Search downstairs? Flora closes her eyes tightly as a reset. And when she does, she feels a familiar hand slip into her own. Just like it did all those years ago whenever the loneliness was all-consuming. Whenever the world roared.
Zephie.
Her imaginary friend has returned to her.
Flora gives Zephie's hand a squeeze of thanks as she looks at her. The girl is half Flora's height, with eyes trained on the living room and her hair pulled back tight in a French braid.
A newfound confidence lifts Flora's foot for one step and then another, back toward the mysterious male voice. She assesses the darkness, Zephie with her inch by inch. Her eyes rove over the low coffee table with pump parts scattered across its surface, the fat beige couch sinking in the corner where she always sits, the matching lamps she found at a discount store.
She feels a deep squeeze of her hand just as her eyes land on the baby monitor, perched atop the end table she pulled from the garage for her pump gear. Zephie is telling her something. That squeeze says more than any words can.
That squeeze says: the voice is coming from the baby monitor.
someone is in Iris's room
She flies up the stairs faster than she even would have guessed possible. Her feet barely touch the ground. Until, that is, her left toes get caught on a leg of her mother's curio cabinet in the hallway and send her entire body careening forward.
Flora lands hard on her hands, her wrists taking the brunt of the impact. A sharp jolt travels from the center of her right palm to her elbow. She instinctively cradles it with her left hand and crawls on her knees the last few steps to her daughter's room.
The door is slightly ajar, just as she left it. At least, how she thinks she left it. When she pushes it with her left hand, it creaks and opens to reveal a bright room. For a moment, she thinks the lights are on, that the intruder has had the audacity to flick the switch. But no, that's just the moonlight coming through Iris's windows, painting the crib and rocking chair in a sinister hue.
Her eyes furiously scan the room for a human figure, but they find no one. As she stares, her wrist throbs with a steady pulse of pain.
A flicker of movement from the window catches her eye, but she can't make sense of it. She pushes herself to standing, which takes more effort than it should. Her body is stiff and tight and aching.
As she puts weight on her feet and straightens her legs, the world goes black momentarily. She should eat. Or drink.
Slow, deliberate steps bring her to the window, where her eyes adjust and send a delayed message to her brain about what she sees there.
Bugs. Lots and lots of bugs.
A line of beetles marches up the outside wall of the house and into Iris's window.
who opened this window
The beetles move in a single-file line across the windowsill, down the eggshell wall, over the beveled hump of the baseboard, across the wood floor, over the folds of a forgotten pair of dirty pajamas, up the sturdy leg of the crib, over the rounded front edge of the
it was me I opened the window because Iris's diaper pail had stunk up the place
The beetles' legs—so many legs—move in tandem. This must be what she was hearing. Her body is frozen, her feet hardened in cement. Flora's eyes follow the line of beetles where it leads to the crib.
Zephie stiffens beside her. "Where are they going?" the girl asks.
And even as she is asking, they both know the answer. They both know and neither wants to see, neither wants to confirm. Regardless, Flora propels herself forward, a motherly instinct that cannot be stopped, and places both hands on the edge of the crib. She looks over the side and sees Iris's mouth wide open, her wails snuffed out by the endless line of insects crawling into her mouth, down her throat, through her small esophagus into her intestines, where Flora is certain they will gnaw at her baby from the inside.
Flora reaches desperately for her daughter, the jarring motion tweaking her sore back, and uses her fingers to stretch open Iris's mouth. She feels around inside for the beetles, scooping them out with fervor, throwing them in all directions. As they land on the surrounding surface of the mattress, they struggle to flip off their backs, then return quickly toward the baby, drawn like magnets. But Flora manages to finally wipe Iris's mouth clean, allowing her unmuffled voice to scream with a pulsing wail that only a newborn can emit. Still, Flora knows there must be more bugs in there. Deep in there. She again thrusts her fingers into her daughter's tiny mouth, and this time they reemerge covered in white spit-up.
That's when Flora feels Zephie's arms around her waist, guiding her to pick up the baby, to press her to her chest, to sway her back and forth in a comforting motion. The three of them stand together, rocking in tandem, until Iris eventually calms, her desperate cries downgrading to pathetic sniffles.
When things are finally quiet, Zephie says, "I think maybe we were wrong."
For a moment, Flora doesn't understand. But then she looks back at the window and sees—there are no beetles. The crib is empty, the mattress clean, save for the wet spot of Iris's puke.
There were never any bugs, only Flora's sleep-deprived mind manipulating her.
She holds Iris tightly. As she does, Flora stares at her own fingers, messy with spit-up and vomit, evidence of the violation. She thinks about how these tainted hands have only one job—to protect Iris from the world.