Kolka’s

Giuseppe Famiani on Unsplash

The woman peeked through the decaying curtains at the same lifeless grey world. What little sunlight pierced the thick blanket of clouds glinted off flakes of snow in weak piles around the small grid houses, rooms as empty as they were cold. It had been her home for nine months, as far from the Megacity as she could go and still survive.

Those that did survive here had lost everything, been chewed up and spat out to the hundreds of miles of abandoned properties without luxuries like running water or power. Very few lived here by choice, only those desperate to disappear, embracing the lifeless streets empty of enforcement patrols.

Through the curtains, an approaching stranger trudging through the snow pushed her heart into her throat. She only breathed again when she recognised the neighbour wrapped in rags, a large pack over his shoulder. Face covered in soot, the man stopped at the door to meet her eyes through the window. Those eyes understood her plight, had for months, if not explicitly then still enough to leave the cans from his pack on her doorstep and move on without words.

Her belly pushed from the inside and, rubbing the great mound beneath her breasts, softly humming a song unconsciously formed through the months in an instinctual familiarising of her voice, she brought the cans in.

Kolka’s. Mystery meat, the sole nutritional source every citizen enjoyed. Even the wealthier Megacity elite could only buy higher grade Kolka’s; most had to settle for cheaper variants rife with genetic and biological drawbacks. But since the last crops had died in her youth, the alternative was to starve.

The main side effect of cheap Kolka’s was well known, yet, smiling at her enlarged belly, she’d somehow avoided it.

Some unknown freak occurrence within her had allowed a man she’d briefly loved to give her the child now almost fully grown inside her. Everyone had heard the stories, whispers of women still falling pregnant despite the world’s diet rendering most infertile. Many lost their offspring within weeks. Some managed to give birth stillborn. The few children that lived were born deformed and grotesque, abominations quickly taken by the patrols, no place for such monstrosities in civilised society.

But only in the Megacity. Out here, no one would take her child.

When the pain began, twisting inside her worse than anything before, she cried and screamed on the dirty mattress covered with an itchy blanket to catch the mess. Pain overwhelmed any fears of how horrendous her child would be. For hours she focused on suppressing, embracing, pushing, eventually forgetting with the intense effort and determination. No matter how her child appeared, how inhuman it may be, she would provide for it nothing but unconditional love.

Into the night, sweat and blood staining the blanket, a scream, a wailing announcement of presence into the world filled her with relief for her aching, fatigued muscles but anxiety for what she’d find between her legs. Reaching for her baby, she appreciated the strong cries, soaking up the unfamiliar sound to inevitably let a child meet its mother.

There, along with the tiny human in her hands, she wept.

He was human.

No deformation, no mutations. He was her son, the beautiful baby boy she would dedicate herself to making happy and comfortable and showering with love and affection and would protect with her life.

His cries settled as he nestled against her breast beneath the blanket, overwhelmed with emotion herself, even more than when she’d discovered the pregnancy. His song came to her lips, renewed purpose in the soft lullaby no one else in the world would ever hear.

The darkness was near complete when she woke. Perhaps a dream, a small disturbance from her son; whatever preemptively jolted her from exhausted sleep made no difference when they arrived seconds later.

The door exploded from its hinges with a blinding flash. Her son screamed but she stayed silent, clutching him close to her and cowering in the mattress. The dark figures stormed inside, raining down upon her world. Hands gripped her shoulders, threw her like a doll and tore her clothing, pinned her to the ground.

She wouldn’t give them what they wanted. Her delicate strength held him against her as he screamed and she, voice trembling, hummed his song to calm him. She curled into a ball, her son at the centre, while the barrage of hands turned her over and tugged at her arms and boots kicked the air from her lungs.

Against all her will, the deafening gunshot cementing a bullet in the wall briefly stunned her.

They seized her arms open during her lapse in strength, prying them open for her son to drop to the cold floorboards. They held her down as she screamed, the barrels of their guns digging into her face and body. They found him through his screams, picked him up to dangle by the ankles, helpless and terrified. They took him out the door, his wailing fading with distance as she tasted blood in her throat from her violent screaming.

He was gone. The hands finally released her, the guns retracting. Her helpless screaming was all she could muster, nails digging into the floorboards while the boots left with their monstrous hands, as quickly as they’d come and destroyed the only shred of brightness in her life she’d spent nine months creating.

Once they’d all left, one pair of boots returned with a loud thud, dropping something by the open door letting snow drift in. She didn’t hear the words through her scraping, futile screaming, only saw the consolation box of mid-range Kolka’s they’d left for her.

Almas Salakhov on Unsplash