Hysterical Pregnancy

Hi everyone!

I promised that there would be some more creative writing to come and here it is, yay!

No, it’s not A Fantasy Story. I still fully intend to write more of that but I haven’t been inspired and so I’m just experimenting with short pieces at the moment.

I don’t really have any background information to offer on this one; I pretty much just sat down to write and this was what came out.

I hope you enjoy it and, as always, I appreciate any comments you’d like to provide. I’ll only get better if I get some constructive criticism!

♥Nancy♬

She sits in a deep, velvet arm chair with her hands resting gently on her swollen belly. There is a tiny fire struggling to maintain vigour in the grate but she does not take any actions to help it survive. There’s not much left in the room. The floor is wooden but the thick layer of dust makes it difficult to tell. There is a coffee table with a now-cold mug of green tea leaving a wet ring on the glass surface. There is a photograph of a married couple on the mantlepiece; they look happy together. She pointedly avoids eye contact with the man and woman in the photograph. She caresses her distended abdomen. Empty. That’s what the doctor told her. He told her that her belly was empty and barren. He called her hysterical. A hysterical pregnancy. She didn’t believe it was kosher to call a pregnant woman hysterical; surely it was just the hormones making her a little crazy? She’d tried to explain that to Dan, but he’d believed the doctor and screamed at her for making her empty belly out to be full of growing life. Which it is, there is no doubt in her mind. She feels a flicker of movement.

 “Don’t kick,” she scolds, gently, affectionately, to the baby that she knows is wriggling in her womb.

She supposes it was wrong to blame Dan for walking out. They’d tried so long and so hard to have a baby. They’d both wanted the baby. At first, anyway.

 “Okay,” Dan had said, “we’ll go to a specialist.”

He had been so good to her, way back at that point. It seems so far away now. They had gone to the specialist. She remembers back to poking and prodding, appointments and injections, and test after test after test coming back... negative. She tries to forget.

And instead she remembers Dan saying, “we need to stop trying. It’s not going to happen.”

She’d gotten so mad and they’d fought. She regrets it now and wishes for Dan to come home to her. She glances up at her dusty wedding photo. For a split second she misses that woman, the one laughing and smiling with Dan on their wedding day. But she wasn’t pregnant. She stops missing that barren bitch and caresses her stomach again.

Dan will come home, she is sure of it. Once he realises that she’s actually pregnant this time, that’s when he’ll turn right around and come home. How could he not? They have always dreamed of raising a child together. Dan might have said otherwise during their fight on the night he left, but she was sure that he didn’t mean it. He can’t mean it now, anyway, she thinks. Not now that he’s had time to calm down; he has definitely realised that she’s truly pregnant this time.

A doubt niggles in the depths of her mind.

 “I don’t care anymore, I don’t want a baby!” Dan had yelled, on the night before he’d left.

 “Yes you do, you do,” she had yelled back, “we’ve always dreamed of raising a child together!”

 “That was your dream! And it’s not going to happen.”

 “It’ll just take a little longer.”

 “I don’t want to try anymore. I can’t live like this. I’m leaving tonight.”

 “You can’t leave! It’s dark and it’s raining. It won’t be safe on the roads.”

She had turned to logic in her time of need. A pregnant pause had followed. There was a kind of poetic irony to that.

 “Fine,” Dan had said. “I’m sleeping in the guest room. I’ll leave in the morning.”

She shakes her head gently to break herself out of the painful memory. Thoughts are whizzing around in her mind and she can’t do anything to stop them. Dan will come back. They will have this baby together. She’s not hysterical, she’s just hormonal. And her belly isn’t empty, it is full of growing life. It can’t be empty, not after what she did...

She remembers:

It was dark and lightning struck outside the window, lighting up the living room with its wooden floors, polished mantelpiece and deep, velvet armchair. This was a night where the weather was cutting the world off from heaven. How convenient. She lit a candle. She’d wanted a black one but they only had plain white candles at home. Did people really stock black candles in their homes? What would you ever need one for? Well... this. She sat on the floor in front of the coffee table with its glass top and watched as the candle began to drip-drip-drip its wax. She began to speak.

 “Isis, Astarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Kali, Innana.”

She’d read the names on the internet. They were names of goddesses, of female gods that, let’s face it, no one really worshipped. But it was nice to think that on this dark night of rain and storms and husbands leaving there was someone listening, even if it wasn’t God. And this was a woman’s problem.

She read the names again, “Isis, Astarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Kali, Innana.”

She spoke faster the second time, liking the sound of them, the rhythm and the unfamiliar sounds as they fell off her tongue. She said them again. She said them again. She was chanting.

She is not the chanting sort. And now, as she breaks out of that memory and back to reality for just a brief second, she feels bad for turning her face away from God. She turns to him now and makes a different wish, a wish for her husband to come home. It doesn’t feel as powerful as the wish she made on that dark and stormy night. She falls back into the memory.

 “Isis, Astarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Kali, Innana, Isis, Astarte...” she had fallen into a rhythm, a proper chant. But she could feel something building too. It wasn’t God, he didn’t seem to be watching. But it was a familiar force, something that could have been from her own religion and not from one of the crazy religions where the names she was chanting actually meant anything.

Again, she chanted, “Hecate, Demeter,” and she felt that same feeling that something was building, like a wave or bread rising, or an orgasm. “Kali, Innana...”

A pause. And then: “Lilith,” she hissed, and felt the presence of something very powerful all around her. Lightning cracked again. She had chanted women’s names but the last name, that was not a made-up goddess from a pretender’s religion. Lilith may have been demonic but at least she was Judeo-Christian and that had to count for something. And really, she was only turning aside from God, not away to Satan, just... aside. To a female power who could help with a female problem.

Thunder clapped and she made her wish in front of the dripping candle and in the presence of that female power.

 “Give me a baby.”

She snaps out of her reverie and feels sweat running down her brow even though it is a cold day. Her actions had worked. The night had been dark and God had not been watching, but she knows now that he must have heard her plea and understood what she had done in desperation. She smiles and caresses her beautiful, pregnant belly. Empty? Pah! She knows her body better than any doctor. She isn’t hysterical. This is not a hysterical pregnancy. She spoke directly to God and now she is pregnant.

Dan will be home any day now.

She begins to laugh. She is alone in a cold and empty house. Alone, with her cold and empty belly. Her soul feels cold, too.

She laughs. And laughs. And laughs, until the fire goes out.