Amongst the pure children of a moral man, only the ninth was born alive. In the dead of the night, it ripped the silence apart with a high-pitched cry, scaring away the ghost that observed from the corner of the room. The shadowy figure was petrified by the mortal’s shriek and jumped out the window to save itself. The doctors and the nurses heard and saw nothing suspicious, their eyes too immoral to see what the pure child saw. They cleaned and checked the child, a small girl with pink flesh, soft bones and a piercing shrill filling her lungs. The doctor approved and left the room while the nurses cleaned up the mess and helped the mother who was drugged out of her mind.
From the window, the ghost was watching. Starving as it was, it waited for a chance. The flesh of humans, let alone children and infants, was a legendary delight among its kind. The mother, sooner or later, would fall asleep, and the child would be lulled by the soothing beep of the machines.
And so they did, and the ghost was delighted. The mother was asleep, muttering words of terror in a slur in a bed with metal bars and a box attached. The prey was there, unprotected, wrapped in white fuzzy clothes; she was almost taunting it to come and rip it apart. Licking its teeth, drooling, and smiling to itself, the ghost slipped through the window and went straight for the kill. It rushed towards the child, who was inside a box of glass.
The ghost tried desperately to open the box, crazed by the starvation. Like a stubborn Christmas gift, the walls of the box stayed intact, protecting the child. It bit through the glass and howled in agony. Milky white blood showered the child. By instinct, the child began shrieking, waking up the father who had dozed off on the chair near the beds. He saw nothing of the ghost - How could he? Only the pure can see the ghosts - but called the sister on watch to see why the child was upset. The sister came and checked the child; everything was normal, the child was dry, the heartbeat was normal and it wasn’t hot or cold. Maybe it was just a nightmare or the first signs of a fussy personality? Everything was so safe and sound.
The ghost was furious, muttering outside and biting the inside of its cheeks. How it angered it when children wouldn’t obey their fate and stay still while it ate their petty flesh. Always the younger the child was, the harder it was to keep it still. Human larvae with ear-raping cries that couldn’t lift their own heads without help but could keep demons at bay with their screams. It made the ghost want to snap his long teeth and return to his old ways of hunting, wandering around woods and feeding off whatever it could catch, but the taste.
The taste of a newborn's flesh was something only the finest of poets could describe, according to the ghost. If it was a flower, it would be a savory pink rose; if it was a sound, it would be Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers. It is and will be the purest, most precious and delicious meal a ghost could ever have from human meat.
It had ravished dozens and dozens of others, from sickly elderly men to newly born children. It had snapped bones like crab legs and slurped the marrow, licked them clean, leaving the guts and the brain for dessert. It had saved the blood of hundreds and the fluids in jars and drank them as its morning tea. It needed to feel the taste again. It was starving and the child was like finely cut oyster meat dangling in front of a chained, starving lion.
The ghost would get what it demanded, even if that meant killing the protectors of its meal.
And, of course, the child would shriek and writhe as loudly and as powerfully as her little lungs could to keep the devil at bay....
After two days the woman and the child took the hospital leave and returned home with the father, all happy and loved, like all families with a newborn should be. Naturally, the ghost was following, running at an unnatural speed.
In a matter of a few hours, the father had set up the crib and everything, while the woman was taking care of the child and just trying to rest; a new mother was always weaker and more fragile than women who never had children. The pair spent the remaining hours of the day cuddling with the child and admiring their new bundle of joy.
The night crept and the child was falling asleep in its mother’s arms. The mother cooed and the father smiled wide, how lucky could they be? But the joy was short-lived. Children that sleep with their parents become fussy and stick with their family. The child must learn from such a darling age that she’d be alone. So the mother picked up the child and walked to her daughter’s room.
Pink wallpaper covered the walls and an even pinker and cheaper carpet covered the floor. The room was simple; the budget was too tight for extras. Inside the crib, a single fluffy white stuffed bear. Now it was bigger than the infant, but later it would be its teddy, its first and softest friend.
The mother placed the child in the crib. She lingered her fingers with the child's fragile body. She smiled sadly, in her mind flashing the horrors and the joys of her pregnancy and birth. How can a simple drop of seed create such a beautifully horrifying thing? Her body almost died and created this. She wasn’t sure if she should cry or laugh. Whatever, the child must sleep.
She kissed her goodnight and switched the light off. Her husband was already asleep, the toll of the day too much on his shoulders.
In the dark of the night, the ghost could finally move freely. The realm of the shadows had expanded and now the ghost walked up and down the house, searching for its meal. When the prey was as easy as this, it liked to play dumb. The hungrier it was, the more it would enjoy. The ghost observed the house while it wandered through the rooms. It just shook its head. It never liked human decoration or architecture, too boring for his taste. Most of the objects were tasteless.
They were placed on the shelves and the walls just to fill the void. The pictures would be eaten by worms. The vases would fall and shatter. The books, with the first hardship, would be burned. The fine china would break and become dull from the use and the porcelain dolls would be left to become a spider’s den.
It was so much more interesting to watch them rise and die and leave everything behind to rot. It was like a theatrical play for one person, an unintentional gift from boring mortals to even more bored immortals. Like dolls made out of porcelain bones and cay skin, the mortals moved up and down the dollhouse’s rooms and levels. They bred, wed, befriended, fought and died, while the ghost and the others of his own enjoyed observing. Of course, they felt nothing about the mortal’s struggles and joys, but it was so enjoyable to look at their misfortunes and passions. They observed them like scientists that observe the lab mice running up and down the mazes and the test tubes.
It made it feel a weird kind of joy and excitement in his howling gut. It reminded it of the older ages when it and its brethren would wander the battlegrounds and the fields, feasting on fresh and rotten corpses. How they would eat the bodies raw, without even removing the armor or the cloth. When the humans waged war against each other, these were the times that the ghosts feasted and had the time of their never-ending life. How he savored these old memories. Some could say he even missed the feeling of unity and absolute happiness. But he stopped reminiscing about the past; the memories wouldn’t feed him tonight, as much as they brought the sweet taste of armor in the wide of his tongue.
The ghost found the children’s room. Oh dear Lord. The ghost smiled so wide and showed off his numerous, needle-like teeth. Let the feast begin…
Swiftly, it danced with the shadows and, like spilled liquid, reached the crib. The child was already deeply asleep; her chest rose and fell rhythmically. Easy prey, the ghost thought as it licked its black lips. Should it eat the babe raw with the clothes and the blankets? Or should it snap her fragile spine and cook it with spices and garnishes? Tough question and even tougher answer for the ghost; the first would satisfy his hunger for a moment while the other would satisfy his taste buds.
The ghost decided on the second option. Gently, it picked up the child and shushed it. The child couldn’t see clearly, she was way too young, but she could feel the change. What was holding it wasn’t human. It had no warmth or love inside it, like an empty void. It made her cringe, how cold the thing that hugged her was. She started to mewl and demanded to be put down; ghost or not, she wanted to leave.
But if the child was one time stubborn, the ghost was one hundred. It clenched its grip and tried to imitate the lulling rhythm of a woman’s heart. It couldn’t fool the child; the child tried to cry and shriek, to inform her parents of the threat, to make them wake and come and save her from death’s grip. With a sigh, the ghost let his ribs open up and hide the child inside. Now it lay inside the ghost’s empty torso while the bones clasped up together again, sealing the child’s fate.
The child wanted to scream so loud, to rip the bones and flesh apart and escape her dark fate.
She dared and ripped her lungs apart with the screams. The ghost felt like its ribcage was being burned from the inside out, like a monster a thousand times stronger and more heartless than it clawing their way out of its insides. It winced and tried to ignore the pain, but it got only worse by breath to breath. The ribs opened up and it tried desperately to get the child to stop. The child was heavy and in its terrible state, it couldn’t lift her to save its life. It fell down and let out a groan of agony. Its ribs opened up instinctively and the child fell to the ground, side by side to it.
The damage was done and the ghost was whimpering while his insides were trying to hold themselves from falling apart. The child stopped crying and stayed silent. She was way, way too young and pure to see a god’s death.
She stared into the ghost’s eyes. A bottomless void met the blue sea. The past met the future.
They stayed like this for an hour or more. The child couldn’t walk to get back in the crib and the ghost was way too hurt to move. During this long battle with not closing their eyes, something clicked hard inside the ghost. It amazed it how stubborn the child was; it scared it. In its long everlasting life, it had never seen such stubbornness from such a small thing. It had seen so many grown-ass men with more medals than teeth that in their final moments turned into mushy pools of self-pity and begging, but not even once such a child. Such ferocity and audacity and will to live were more glorious than all the battle medals and honors. Even the fearless way the child looked at it made it feel a deep, strong respect for the child. Its stomach stopped rambling; such a fearless being wasn’t suited for its dinner.
In the midst of its absolute misery, it shakily stood up and picked up the child. The child was about to cry when she felt the change in the ghost’s aura. It was still cold, but it had something loving, like a cool summer breeze. It held her more gently, mimicking the way a mother would hold their child before it took them away forever.
She stayed still and waited for even the slightest, palest chance the ghost wanted to return to its old ways. But it stayed the same. It even mimicked a hug and tried to bring her closer to its chest. The smell of dust and the texture of perfect bones were engraved into her memory.
Now it placed back into her crib and observed her one last time. Such stubbornness, a stubborn diamond against a sea of begging screams and tears. It promised under its breath it would protect this stubborn child that killed it with all the ways it knew and didn’t know. Without any grace, it fell to the ground and shattered, breaking into dust-sized pieces of bones. What was left of its tainted soul, an unshaped bit of smoke, floated and got absorbed into the teddy bear’s faux fur. It didn’t let itself to be inhaled by the daughter; its tainted past would destroy the child. But inside the bear, it could stay still and strong, guard the child against all the evil of the world. To protect this perfect stubbornness, this ferocity it had seen only among its kin.
But the child would age and die… this thought came to the ghost's mind and made it crazy. After all this, it couldn’t take the child’s life as effortlessly as it once could. It came up with the perfect idea.
The morning came, and the mother went to feed her sleeping child only to find it dead. The big teddy bear had fallen and suffocated the child. Oh blood-red moon, the mother was hysterical. She took the teddy and ripped it to shreds, gathered the remains, and burned them while her husband was crying his heart out.
Credited to Rian Karrasco