Butter

She walks up the sagging moss-lined steps. Slowly and with care. With fear. Onto a water logged carpet resting up top the porch, soft beneath her cold bare feet. She creeps towards the old oak door. Slowly and with care. With fear.

A gentle knocking disturbs the soft wind’s melody. And she waits. Enveloped by the crisp autumn night, only the stars driving away complete darkness. Behind her, the wind stirs again, drifting back into its song as if uninterrupted. She listens to the leaves get picked up then placed down gently on the ground again.

Until the door opens, helping the stars illuminate the evening. A man’s silhouette lingers before her. He does not open his mouth to speak. Instead, he watches her with unseen eyes. His presence is frightening, powerful. As if he holds a secret so deep within him that even he is not aware.

“I have another,” the lady says, voice hushed so as not to breach the night’s eerie silence. She presses her bundle into his hands.

With not a word but a nod the man turns his back to the dark and slowly closes the door. The lady leaves. Guilt pulling at her gut, disgust reaching into her throat and clawing at her insides. Hard to breathe, hard not to scream. But the silence must remain.

At least until the man begins his work.

He clutches the wad of blankets tightly, swiftly making his way through the halls. Down a narrow corridor, the walls stained with grungy white paint. He reaches down for the key that hangs on a string tied to his neck and waits for the ‘click’. The knob doesn’t rattle, the door doesn’t squeak on its hinges.

Blankets are laid on a table in the middle of the room. He grins at the baby, sound asleep and peaceful as if gliding on the wings of its dreams. But it’s no fun when the baby’s asleep.

The man reaches over to a counter lined with tools and grabs a needle already filled with a clear liquid. Without a care he presses it into the baby’s arm, watching the small shaft puncture skin. The child looks around wildly, curious and frightened, eyes opened wide. It does not cry, though tears well in its large eyes.

Replaced by the needle, scissors are brought to the table. The man slices open a brick of butter, nicking the baby’s palm as he does. He presses the Selenium enriched slab to the baby’s mouth. Jaw clenches, butter swallowed. Effects are quick to arise. Blood seeps from the baby’s pores, covering it in a crimson red blanket.

The baby, fingers bleeding, screams. This is when the pain ricochets through its body. When the silence is broken, a cry shattering the clear glass of quiet. When the last tendril of calm drifts away and soaks in the blood of the baby.

The lady, briskly walking, hears. This is when the guilt tightens around her stomach and twists it inside out. When the disgust presses on her chest and sends her heart beating in her ears. When she drops to her knees and wishes she did not thirst for the pride of her father.

The man, gently laughing, continues. This is when he decides how he wants to finish off. When he reaches around behind him fumbles with a loaded gun. When he lays that down and grabs a knife instead.

This is how the baby ends, not with a bang but with a whimper.

A lifeless body lies in evil hands. Slowly lowered into a wooden box. The words that mark it, ‘Unsalted Butter, Since 1928.’

One last step and the job is done. The man hurries through the corridor and into the night. The man hurries through the fenced off garden and past the marble swan. He hurries. He reaches. He kneels.

He places the box on the water, watching ripples distort the lakes surface, and lets go, nudging it softly away from the shore. The box stays afloat beneath the half-moons light, resting in the hands of its crystal reflection.

Author's Note

During WWII there was a mother’s home where single mothers could go to give birth and have people adopt their babies. The owners would get the mothers to work around the house to pay off the fees. In order to please their costumers – the ones who were adopting – they would split up twins and ‘make’ twins, placing two unrelated babies together and claiming they were.
In the case that they couldn’t get a baby adopted they would tell the mother it had been but slowly starve them to death on a diet of margarine and water. Roughly two weeks later, when the baby had passed away they’d put them in butter boxes and either bury them in the fields close to the home, cast them to the ocean, or burn them in the home’s furnace system.
This is a different take on that story. I had to stay in the count of around 700 hundred words and this is what I’ve created. If there’s anything that you think could be changed to be made better I’d really appreciate it if you’d leave me a review. Thanks so much.
PS. The 'This is how the baby ends, not with a bang but a whimper' is a take on The last line of T.S Eliot's poem The Hollow Men so it's not really my line. Credit for that goes to him. :)

Reviews

[Leslie Philibert]

The background of this is awful, and in writing about this you written a fine piece of investigative journalism. Not only excellent in this sense but really well written, I like the pace, the pargraphing, the clear voice. So you did very well here - great.

[SheActsLikeSummer]

Thanks so much. I'm really glad you enjoyed it. And yes, I agree, it's a terrible story in the sense of what it's really about. Thanks again.