The Womb
By Julia O'Donnell
Close your eyes. Imagine the air around you is thick and moving. It ripples like water, but is warm and slips around you like blood. There is a faint impression of light, but all around you is darkness. You hear a soft, slow pounding near you. Occasionally, it trembles, and other times it seems to be racing over itself. This is my existence right now. I live within Mother.
She is warm and tender sometimes, that’s why I chose her, but I didn’t expect her to be so scary. Sometimes she completely stops breathing. I feel the walls around me constrict and the air in my cord stops pulsing. I gasp. Gasp. Gasp. For air. And suddenly she breathes again, but everything stays tight. I cannot imagine how she manages to take such a deep breath while everything in her is closed.
The other day after some time of this I heard her screaming. I was surrounded by crackling, deafening sound, so arresting I could hardly breathe again. Her tension suffocated me, pressing on my chest, drowning me with the loss of air in the cord, worse than before.
I heard another voice screaming back. It’s deeper than Mother’s. I think they are fighting about me. I heard something inside Mother say she wishes she were not pregnant, and then I felt everything inside of her grow heavy, and somehow darker than the almost lightless being I felt before.
“I didn’t think it could happen this fast! Do you think I would’ve done it if I knew?”
“We can’t do this!”
They won’t stop shouting. It’s all they do anymore.
I could finally feel her talking to me today. I have been here for weeks, without anything happening in this void. Today she put her hand on me. "Hi, Emma!" She said. "I can't wait to see you!" She left her hand there for such a long time. I wanted her to never let me go. It's dark in here, but at least I can feel her.
I’m so tired. They shout all night every night it seems, and then Mother rests for what feels like an impossibly short amount of time before her entire body twists upward again and remains tense for hours. Her heart is pounding. She crunches me tighter and twists me around. The darkness only consumes more of me as she seems to run from one thing to the next.
Sometimes she talks to me. She calls me by my name. She says, “Hi baby, I love you, I’m so sorry.” She says I’m sorry so many times a day. She tells me how she’s feeling all day. She is so angry and sad all the time. She says she loves me but she is scared she won’t be able to take care of me.
Something happened to me today. There was something at the end of my arm, and I felt it disappear. A few hours later, Mother started asking if I was ok. I think she has prayed a thousand times today that I’m not dead.
Am I dead?
She doesn’t talk to me anymore. What have I done? I’m still here, I think. But something is different.
Mother has still been ignoring me. Tonight she told the other voice that she thinks something is wrong with me. I cried out. I tried to tell her I’m still here, but she doesn’t hear me. Then, something happened; there was some pressure underneath me.
Suddenly, everything in Mother twisted again and she crunched me up in a tighter ball. Everything is shaking. Is this an earthquake? I feel funny.
Something is definitely wrong. Mother was right. I wanted her to be wrong so badly. The walls are closing in on me, and then they suddenly disappear and are so far away I cannot feel them. It hurts.
Mother’s awake. She’s moaning. Oh. It hurts. It’s so tight. I need air. I did not think it could get tighter, but every time it happens...oh, it just gets worse.
The air around me is moving differently. Something is happening.
Mother just whispered to the other voice that something is really wrong.
I do not think Mother slept last night. She and the other voice are fighting again. He said something about losing his job, and she said I might be dying. Am I dying?
Something just changed. She talked to someone. I could not hear the voice, but she is more scared now. I know because I can feel everything tightening even worse.
I’m gasping again. Gasping. I need air.
Suddenly, she is up. I am so grateful for the break. I can breathe when she is running around. It isn’t pleasant by any means, but at least I can breathe.
Do you remember I said there was an impression of light? It’s gone now. It’s this horrifying red that is almost the same as black. Everything is spinning. I am surrounded by something different now.
There was something at the end of my legs. It’s gone now.
She tensed when she saw it.
I can feel her shaking more often now. She almost never stops, though it’s worse sometimes.
Help me. My leg feels weird.
I can’t breathe. The black red thing is coming inside of me, outside of me, all around me. It’s consuming me. Help. I’m. Gone.
