Not My Baby Anymore

Dark turn of events between a married couple and their baby son. Prompt used for this story: Jenny made the announcement that her baby was an alien.

Jenny was a young adult at the height of her time. She had married the love of her life, Roman, two years back, and had recently given birth to what was the most perfect baby boy to both their eyes.

They were both the happiest they could be. The baby was excellently well-behaved, allowing them both to sleep through the night uninterrupted only after a few months from his birth. He cried and fussed only when he was hungry or needed a diaper change, but he was otherwise a calm little baby who was happy just existing and observing without fussing.

Roman had a great management job that allowed Jenny to stay home and tend to the baby and household needs. This was an excellent arrangement as Jenny liked doing housework and being close to the baby most of the day.

When roman arrived home in the evenings, he would help Jenny with the house and the baby, so she could have a break too.

They both felt the luckiest of people for having found each other and being in the perfect situation that they were in; that is, until things started suddenly changing. In the span of a few weeks, Jenny had a complete personality change. Roman started coming home to a messy house and an unclean fussy baby. He had to do the things that Jenny was typically happy to do while he worked.

Inevitably, this started arguments and fights between them. Roman could not understand what came over Jenny, and unbeknownst to him, neither did Jenny.

A part of her knew that she had the most perfect life she could have ever ask for, but she could simply not muster the energy to be a housewife or even a mother to her perfect little angel.

Perfect… no, that wasn’t right to her anymore. With every cry, with every noise, with every sudden movement, Jenny was convinced that the baby would climb out of his crib or wherever he was, and he’d hurt her, or more specifically torture her. When she saw him, all she saw was a predator waiting to hunt her down.

There was no logic and she had no words to express this to Roman, who she also feared for. The baby - not a baby anymore in Jenny’s eyes, but rather a monster - was going to hurt both her and Roman, it was only a matter of time, she thought.

One time, Roman was playing with his son and Jenny watched from a safe distance. She saw the monster bite Roman’s finger and she saw as he laughed it off, but in her eyes it was the start of the monster’s hunt. She couldn’t bear to watch anymore and locked herself in the bathroom, silently crying to herself. She knew what she had to do. She would not allow anything to happen to the love of her life, and her son was not her baby anymore.

Once she heard Roman step away, though he stayed near within range of view, Jenny got out of the bathroom and ran to the monster to take care of it.

One snap of a neck later, Roman’s screams could be heard in the entire neighborhood. He held his lifeless son, a river streaming down his eyes, his throat not able to keep up with the ceaseless screams. He kept asking why, what have you done!?

In response, Jenny just smiled and told him that everything was okay now, that they were finally safe.

Forcing himself to snap out of it, Roman went to get his phone, still carrying the corpse of his child tightly against his chest, and called the police. As he did this, he kept yelling off the top of his lungs for Jenny not to come near him.

As it dawned on Jenny that the monster still looked like a baby and that the police would come, she headed for the door and ran. She ran as fast as her feet could carry her, without a sense of direction or surroundings. As they lived near a busy highway, it did not take longer for her to reach it, and as she was not aware of her surroundings, she stepped in the middle of the highway when a truck was driving at high speed, crushing her on its path.

Roman did not only have a child to mourn, but also his wife. He was broken. He could not accept that his lovely wife would ever do something like this; he was almost convinced that he would wake up soon and everything would go back to the way things were a few weeks back.

As he did not wake up from what he continued thinking was a dream, he ordered an autopsy on his wife to examine her brain, and it was determined that, effectively, she had a brain tumor that was affecting her view of reality.

If he was broken before, his sense of self was completely gone at that point. He had no more tears left in him, no more emotion, no more mourning, he could not muster living after knowing he could have prevented this if only he had realized his wife was ill.

As much as his family, and in-laws, tried to help, he was too broken to continue, thus hanging himself to be back with his family on the other side.