The continuous wailing had begun to grate on her ears. She had to do something about it. With all the energy she could muster in her lean exhausted frame, she got up and shook back her shiny brown locks that limply framed her gorgeous face. Slowly and hesitatingly, she climbed the richly carpeted wooden staircase, almost dreading reaching that Thing.
Her footsteps drummed a muffled noise into the carpet, much like the suffocated beating of her heart. She cast her beautiful eyes on the wooden wall which gently curved with the staircase. It was lined with the heads of dead animals and portraits of her forefathers who looked rather displeased with her.
She reached the hall and saw It. Suddenly, the hate that clung to every emotion she felt nowadays, growled in her head with an unreasonable ferocity. The screaming greasy little thing was propped on the pram. It was kicking its thin twisted arms towards the sky, as if worshipping the devil. It was howling as if trying to wake up every evil, dead and decaying thing that’s rotting in the depths of hell.
Oh, why couldn’t it shut up just for once? She couldn’t bear to look at it any longer. It repulsed her.
She turned abruptly and caught the huge ornate mirror looking lovingly at her. The mirror, her favorite family heirloom, had always loved her and she in turn loved it. Even now, when she was in her foulest mood and expression, the old mirror told her that she was the most beautiful women the countryside had ever seen.
She knew it. She eyed the delicate curves of her pout which gleamed a fiery red against her moon washed skin. She looked at her big, innocent rabbit eyes, set symmetrically across her perfect little nose. Her high cheek bones and her strong sharp chin gave her face a sublime hint of royalty.
So many hearts had bled for her, had cried for her, and had desired her. She was aware that after marriage, her cult status had somewhat diminished. She missed the fanatic importance and attention she was so used to.
She raised her perfectly shaped eyebrows, widened her eyes and tilted her face to that perfect angle. She blinked innocently and enjoyed the adorable expression that resulted; the diligently rehearsed expression that had turned many strong men into purring weaklings.
The greasy hideous thing was still crying. With practiced aloofness, she turned and walked towards the Victorian window of her sprawling mansion. She gave the iron gates one last look, and breathed out a whistle of relief before closing the windows and drawing the heavy curtains over it.
The baby’s screech now echoed off the walls of hall, closing in around her. It hammered relentlessly against her eardrums, shooting a sharp pain through her already throbbing head. She paced up and down nervously near the window, wrenching her hands in utter misery. In order to calm herself, she slowed down and tried to mouth a tune she had heard on Hector’s old gramophone. She trailed off into silence, unable to remember the exact strains. It was one of those silly pompous little tunes which were overtly jolly; but that was all she could remember.
A few months ago, for the first time in his life, Hector had done something unpredictable. In a moment of alcohol inspired madness, he and a couple of his equally predictable and insufferably boring friends had decided to fight the Marrownese war, that had initially started in the big town of Marrow which was a good 50 miles away.
“They can’t bloody take away our bloody land and get their god-forsaken bloody hands on our women!!” Hector had roared in a state of drunken stupidity.
“Ahoy!!”, the group had cheered on.
“We will put on our finest straw hats and gun their guts out! Bloody hell, their guts. Our guns. Our bloody fair women!!”he had drawled.
“HOYYY!!!” “HOOUY!!”
The next day she had watched with mild amusement as he had put on his boots, his finest field hat, and his tasseled leather jacket. He dusted his old double barreled gun and filled his pockets with pouches of grainy black gunpowder.
Was he really going to leave her in this condition? She had looked down at her swollen stomach with mild disgust. It had irked her no end, that she would lose her perfect body to ugly stretch marks and unwieldy fat. Her breasts had become very sensitive and heavy with milk, in anticipation of the baby. They hurt when she moved around quickly and her brassiere stroked her nipples, the cloth biting into it.
Everyday she complained of something or the other. At first, Hector used to get worried. On many occasions, he had called the local doctor. Once, he also got her the best doctor from Marrow. But all doctors assured him in their grave voices that nothing was wrong and that the mother would be fit as fiddle after the delivery.
She, in her heart, knew that something would go wrong. She could not help but be filled with an inexplicable sense of foreboding and doom.
She knew German soldiers were ruthless and many people had already died. But, she never stopped her husband. She did not hate him, but she was not awfully fond of him either.
Her father, the richest trader in the countryside, had given away her hand in marriage to Hector, because he had saved his life. Her father had listed out many reasons why Hector was ideal for her. She couldn’t remember any of those. All she remembered was how much she had protested against the proposal.
Hector was poor! she had wailed which was amongst her many other complaints.
Her father had dismissed all her protests with a casual wave of his hand. She was going to marry Hector, whether she liked it or not, he had barked. She was too young and frivolous to make such an important decision, he had continued, and he didn’t want her to be a victim of her youth and fall in love with one of the good-for-nothing characters that loafed around under her room’s balcony. She had tried every trick she could think of, to persuade her father. But, when her watery big innocent rabbit eyes failed to move him, she had accepted her fate grudgingly.
As a wedding gift, her father had given the couple the huge Victorian mansion and all that was in it. He had also given away bags of gold and 1000 paces of fertile land. He would never have her princess be anything but a princess, he had whispered in her ears during the father-daughter wedding dance ritual.
Hector never really bothered about the wealth. He had continued his original job which was that of a millet farmer.
Everyday, he would put on his hat and stride out of the house after kissing her lightly on her forehead. And everyday, he would come back at dusk, with unfailing regularity. And then he would sit with his feet up on the wooden barrel in the courtyard and smoke his pipe. In the night he would say he loved her. He would then make love to her. He was so bloody predictable. She hated it.
She also hated his big fat broken nose and the ugly scar tracing the contours of his smile till the back of his neck, giving him a horrible lop-sided toothy grin. It did not matter to her that he had acquired the scar whilst putting his life in danger and saving many passengers, including her father, from the derailed steam engine. She hated it.
But, most of all, she hated it when children scampered up to her shouting “Beauty and the beast”, before breaking into a run. Hector, evidently found this funny and mock-chased the laughing kids. She hated it. All of it.
And now, it had been two months, since he had disappeared with his gun, his hat, his boots and his favorite tasseled leather jacket. Soon after he had gone, she had called midwives and got her labor induced. She could not take Its burden any longer. She wanted It out of her body.
she had hated ‘it’ from the moment she had set her eyes on it. It was covered in white slick and didn’t move, just like a sick naked helpless little animal.
-----------
Unable to bear the asphyxiating thoughts from her past, she threw open the windows again. She walked slowly towards the baby. It reminded her forcefully of Hector. It had the same broad ugly nose and sparse hair. It had the same weird lop-sided, but toothless, smile. It also had copious amounts of sticky saliva dribbling all over its body.
Her thoughts avalanched uncontrollably into her loveless marriage that was forced on her, the boring life she led, the passionless nights with him, the mean children who teased her, her jealous middle aged friends, her scarred abdomen, his scarred face, the war, her prince who was supposed to come but never did, her dead father, her burning craving for attention….
She was sure. She hated it.
It confused her greatly, because she knew that she was extremely emotional and soft at heart. ‘You’ll make a wonderful mother someday’, her nanny had told her when she had cried over the injured rabbit and nursed it lovingly back to health.
Her big, innocent rabbit eyes had swollen up with tears when her father had taken her on one of his hunting trips. She had cried herself to sleep for a week, and made her father swear he would never hurt any animal. Even as a teenager, she had taken care of little Susie as if her own, when Susie’s mother who was her elder sister suffered from a terrible bout of black fever. Her heart would invariably melt at the slightest provocation. And here she was standing in the huge hall of her mansion thinking how much she hated her own baby.
She hurriedly pushed back these thoughts when the baby gave a rather urgent piercing screech. It was hungry. It had been hungry for quite sometime now. She unbuttoned her blouse and picked up the baby as gently as her quivering hands would allow. “Gently darling”, she thought to herself, “you don’t want to drop the baby now, do you?” She stood in silence for a moment, numbed with shock and guilt.
She put it against her soft breasts, and winced in pain as it started sucking violently. 'It doesn’t like you too' she mused, her guilt reducing ever so slightly.
She did not know what to name It. Hector, if he ever came back, would insist on something like Hector junior, which ofcourse, suited the thing perfectly. It did not have any trace of her.
But, she doubted if Hector would ever return. Everyday, sick with anticipation, she would eye the tall iron gates of her mansion. He never showed up, and she would be oddly relieved. She would draw the heavy curtains across all the windows and gloat over the strange satisfaction that consumed her when she thought that her husband is most probably dead, and that soon she’d marry her prince.
But she couldn’t help wondering whether eligible bachelors would want to marry a widow with a baby.
It had stopped sucking now, and lay quite still in her arms - whimpering and wheezing breathlessly like an injured puppy. She looked at the large grandfather clock beside the window as it loudly struck 7. “Time for a walk” she said mechanically. “…Darling” she added as an afterthought. No one could say she was not trying. She had been brave and tolerated everything since the time it was born. She had done everything she could to force herself to think and behave normally, like other mothers do. She was so guilty of her feelings that she could not bring herself to tell anyone about it. And so, all by herself she had fought her demons, getting weaker by the day.
“Time for a walk” she repeated loudly in a bid to rid her mind of these depressing thoughts. Her voice came out unnaturally shrill, and did not sound like her own.
She carefully tucked the baby in the pram and wheeled it around. The baby had started crying again. But, she was not irritated any longer. A curious happiness had begun gnawing at her heart. Maybe, she was getting better. Maybe, she was winning over her mind.
She wheeled the pram purposefully down the hall and through the corridor, humming the same tune which had eluded her moments ago. She had never noticed before that the tune had a sinister edge to it. ‘Strange!’ she thought. She stood with the pram at the edge of the magnificent wooden staircase, still humming the sinister tune below her breath.
Lined on the wall, in order of seniority, the portraits of her forefathers still carried the disapproving look. Together they glared down at her, forbidding her – warning her. Their disapproving eyes had acquired a blazing intensity which she had definitely not noticed before.
Each portrait of her ancestor was accompanied by his most prized kill. Garrold M. Bardot was accompanied by a tiger head which hung below his formidable and proud looking portrait. Werner Bardot looked a little less formidable, almost a bit embarrassed, with his black buck and its slender twisted black antlers. She smirked at them and their silly paltry kills.
‘Time for a…..walk’ she said and stepped down carefully, one stair at a time, pushing the pram with utmost care. Suddenly, she faltered at a step and the pram slipped out of her hands.
As the pram bumped up and down the staircase, her blood curdled and she froze where she stood. She blinked unbelievingly, stupidly. She heard the Thing shriek a thousand vile things at her, accusing her of black wicked sins. She heard her forefathers wail and moan, beating their chests in unison. She heard the animals screech in protest, growling, roaring, condemning her and damning her existence. She shut her ears with her violently shaking hands, but the screams magnified inside her head. With one final crash, the house suddenly drowned in unnatural deathly silence.
“Oh-no…” she whispered; tears welling up in her big, innocent, rabbit eyes.
