Maternal Instinct

"Push! Push!"

She pushed and pushed, and felt her abdomen tense itself to the new contractions. She felt him within herself, and noticed how her body squeezed desperately to get him out.

A scream escaped her lips, and she was told to breathe by one of the doctors by her side. As she tried, she found it impossible. Her lungs were demanding air, and she felt the cold airflow fill them, before releasing it all to shriek once more.

"I can see the head," she heard one of the doctors exclaim, and she felt her body push even harder, almost on instinct, to get him out and finish the ordeal.

She barely registered someone taking her hand, and she turned and looked into his eyes. They were excited with anticipation, which gave her new strength. Her lungs took a deep breath as she contracted again and kept the pressure on.

They had awaited this day for so long, and finally, it was here. The strain on her abdomen made her feel like she was internally combusted, and she increased the pressure to get it over with.

Still, they were worried. The ultrasounds had shown early that something had been wrong with their child, yet they had been unable to determine what it was, and the doctors didn't think of it as serious anyway. Not that she cared. She wanted no surgery within her uterus unless crucial for her child's life.

She glanced up over her stomach that gradually shrinked as the pressure on her abdomen lessened, and she felt that he was nearly out. She took a deep breath, felt the crunch of bone as her teeth were grinding agianst each other, and pushed as hard as she could.

She felt him leave her. He was out.

Awaiting the scream of her firstborn, she lay there, anticipating, and...

SIlence.

Her head glanced sideways. He had risen from his chair and stepped over to the doctors who were holding their baby. Over her stomach all she saw was them looking at the baby, all with the exact same expression on their faces.

Dread.

They were all standing completely still, like statues.

Despite newly giving birth, she sat up, felt a pain in her back and gazed upon her son for the first time.

He lay there, unmoving. Did not even twitch, just laid limp in the arms of the doctor that had pulled him out. His skin was ash gray, and the lips blue as the ocean at night.

The body hold by the doctors was completely devoid of life. One of the arms were dangling, only moved by the father desperately searching for pulse.

The baby was stillborn.

No... it could not be... Not after all they had been through... They had prepared his room, bought him some toys furniture; everything. And it had all been for nothing. She took a while actually realising the reality of her baby which had been dead long before the birth had begun. She realised she would never hear his gurgling laughter, stay valiantly at his side at his first day of school, never would she advice him nor guide him through his teenage years, and never ever could she weep tears of joy as he stood proud by the altar.

All of it and more was rushing through her head, and she collapsed. Just has her first wail came past her lips, she believed she saw something in the corner of her eye.

"What was that?"

She threw herself around so abruptly she felt an immense pain in her back, but it disappeared from her mind once she gazed upon the sight that faced her.

Her child was moving.

Just as gray, just as dead, just as silent, but moving with the clumsiness and twitching movements of a newborn babe.

"Give it to me," she said, and when no one responded, she yelled.

"Give it to me!"

"I'm not too sure that's a good idea," the doctor holding it said. "There has never before been..."

"I don't care, give me my baby!"

Despite it's hideousness, she had never laid eyes on something as beautiful. As it opened it's eyes, it just confirmed how disgusting it truly was. They were milky white, but she did not care the slightest. It was her baby, and never should anyone take it away from her.

She pulled out one of her breasts to feed it, and greedily it grabbed hold of her nipple, put it in it's mouth and began sucking.

Immediately she noticed the baby getting a slightly healthier glow of something slightly resembling colour in it's cheecks, and she felt exhausted. Probably the adrenaline wearing off.

As the baby sucked greedily, she saw as the glow became more noteable and way healthier, red roses in it's cheecks, nor did the hand not feel cold at her breast as she became increasingly exhausted.

She stared affectionately at the beast she had concieved, feeding from her breast. All she did was sitting, calm, as the child kept feasting.

While it sucked, it looked up at its mother, its eyes having become a shade of black blacker than anything she had ever seen. It was all she managed to focus on as she smiled, one last time, before she succumbed to the exhaustion, closed her eyes and let the black consume everything she had ever known about.

Everyone else in the room stared, terrified, at the child that had been declared dead. Yet here it was, mere minutes after it's still birth and breastfeeding, looking as healthy as any normal child did.

Pure terror was the only expression on everyone's faces as the baby crawled into the shriveled armpit of it's mother's corpse, which had died with her last smile still on her lips. The once so beautiful face was now drier and more wrinkled than an old plum, and she now looked like nothing more than a skeleton with skin tightly strethced over the bones. None of this seemed to face the baby as it made itself comfortable, gurgling happily all the while.

Her breasts, however, were the only things on her body not dried, because the baby had never consumed a single drop of mother's milk.