The Voiceless Abortion

I’m carsick again. Lovely. Stopped on the side of the freeway to puke on the shoulder. So that’s what scrambled eggs and hydrochloric acid looks like.

When I’m finished feeding asphalt, I lean against the driver’s side of my car, just next to the open door. One arm is gently cradling my rolling, heaving stomach as if to calm it. The cold metal presses into my back, soothing me a little. A cold wind cuts too far through my thin, worn jeans and threadbare shirt for my liking, so it’s back into the car with me.

I manage to make it home and to the bathroom just in time for a Sunday Service at Our Lady of Piss and Shit. I collapse against the cool wall behind me when I’m done feeding the toilet. The house is quiet; maybe she’s out shopping or something. With a groan, I drag my unwilling body to my feet, then to my bedroom. My clothes, dirty and clean, are strewn all over the floor. She always insists that the floor isn’t a hamper, closet, or dresser drawer. I always respond by telling her that the floor is just one big shelf in my eyes.

My clothes, soaked in drying sweat, join their friends on the floor. I stand in the middle of the room, nude. She likes that. In the morning, she’ll just lay there and watch me while I dress, absentmindedly scratching my ribs or my leg. It used to freak me out, no matter how often she told me “you’re beautiful.”

Damn. Can’t find my pajamas. I could just sleep naked… No, I’m tired of her nagging me about that. Maybe they’re in the closet. I pull the door open to reveal… empty hangers. Oh. That’s why the house is so quiet.

I lay back on the bed, still nude. My hair is a knotted mess spilling over my shoulders, so I tug at it. My fingers get caught; treble hooks in a fish’s lip. The sheets are suddenly scratchy and too warm against my skin. The room gets smaller and dark, and before I know it my eyes squeeze shut. Acidic tears fall from my eyes, burning a path down the side of my face to soak into my hair, suddenly benign. My stomach starts to rebel again, so I turn over and retch bile and stomach acid onto the floor. Acid spills from my mouth and eyes until I have nothing more to give and I’m dry heaving and sobbing so much that my ribcage may implode.

Finally it’s over, and I’m left gasping hard for breath. The sound of air rushing through an empty shell, dipping and ripping through the cracks, makes my ears hurt. My lungs ache and my throat burns. My stomach starts to boil again, but this time nothing comes up. There is simply nothing left. I crumble on the bed, an aching and almost gutted pile of skin, bone, and hair. The gutting is not yet over.

I need to get this thing out of me. I run my hand over my swollen abdomen, feeling it kick and tear at my insides. I cannot believe that I can feel it from the outside. Suddenly, she is beside me, stroking my hair.

“You came back,” I croak, my voice weakened from all the acid.

“I never left you. How could I leave you like this?” she replies, though her lips never move. Her eyes search mine, a look of pity ghosting over her face before firmly settling over her pretty features.

“But… your clothes…”

“How can I leave if I was never here to begin with?” she smiles a little, grim but still bathing me in pity.

“What’s happening to me?”

“You have to get it out. It’s chewing and gnawing at your insides,” she whispers, and then she is gone. A vise locks in place around my heart and my vision blurs and wavers. I may very well be going blind.

Her words rush to the forefront of my mind, a shrieking banshee. It leaves my mind and attacks my ears, a nearly deafening cacophony and I just want it to stop. I just want it to stop.

Mindlessly, I grab for the knife that I know I left on the bedside table, apples or something. I need to get it out; I can feel it chewing and gnawing at my insides. It’s gutting me, making me regurgitate my insides, taking everything away from me.

I sink the blade into my flesh, just above the pubic hair. It hurts, but it’s nothing compared to the ache in my lungs. Blood bubbles up from my broken flesh, staining my skin. I’m sure I’ve never looked more beautiful. I pull the knife up, up, up until my breastbone stops the blade’s ascent. The tear in my skin widens and more blood falls down my sides in sanguine streaks. It crawled out from the tear, drenched in acid and blood, all gnashing teeth with no eyes. It screams once, pathetically, before steel finds flesh and silences it.

The police found her a week later. She hadn’t been to work. Bacteria and maggots had claimed her flesh long before she was found, and they dined like kings upon her flesh and that of the dead fetus in her torn womb. They ate around the steel embedded in the fetus’ barely formed body.

The grotesque scene didn’t stay in the public eye for very long. She was buried without grief: without a mother, without a father, and without the woman who never existed.