14. BIRTH AND REBIRTH

A very strange night indeed

Ivan Bramble was at the end of his tether, lying there on the doorstep with his eyes fast shut and damp pyjamas.

It had been a horrible night, not because of anything his conscious mind was aware of but because of quite a lot of things that it wasn’t.

He was back with the bullies in the womb. That was where he’d been in the long-ago of his life, and the two sharing the space with him had been the only friends he’d had.

And the only enemies.

The fluid all around them cushioned the blows they aimed at him, quite deliberately, he was sure. And it also dulled the raucous sounds that sometimes found their way from a world somewhere outside the womb into what should have been a quiet and watery paradise in which he could discover little things about himself. Like how he didn’t like loud noises, especially the shouting noises that ended with tearful jerks and woeful sobs. Like how he didn’t like to be kicked. And particularly how he didn’t like the shouty creature in whose body the troublesome womb was installed.

She was bad.

He instinctively knew it was a she even though he had no knowledge whatsoever of gender beyond the fact that it was a she that corralled him inside a watery pen with two monsters that seemed to be like him, but weren’t.

Because he was him and they were other beings created out of toxins and poisons in order to torment him. Sometimes a face would drift past him, and in the smudgy dimness of his home he could just about make out its shape. And other times arms would reach out through the gloom and stroke him as the waters of the womb moved them sort of rendomly, and he would pull back inside himself, hating the contact, hating everything about it, wanting, before he was born, to die.

Yes, that was it. Wanting to die.

And there’s nothing more frustrating than continued life to a soul that wants to die even before it is born.

He knew he was waiting for birth. Somehow the notion had touched his brain with at least that smidgen of knowledge. He was going to be born. Him and the monsters sharing the womb with him. And then he’d be free of them and, even more particularly, free of the nicotine and alcohol of the creature in whose flesh that womb was situated.

Then in the sudden here and now he was aware of it starting. And, shock horror, he knew exactly what it was because he’d done it before fifty years earlier. He was being born. Being squeezed painfully down a passage way from the waters he loved into the air that he knew nothing about. And the woman was screaming.

He could hear her. And he knew what she was screaming when fifty years ago the howls and demented shrieks had been just sound, devoid of meaning even though they had been filled with emotion.

“Argh!” she howled in the darkness of a night in which he should have slept. “Get the b******s out of me! For Christ’s sake, tear the b******s from me and shove them in the bin! Bleed them! For Christ’s sake kill them...”

“….Kill them...”

The two words echoed inside his head with their meaning intact whereas half a century earlier they’d been, mercifully, devoid of meaning.

The woman in whose womb he’d been formed and from whose body he’d been born wanted nothing more than his death!

Another person, midwife or nurse, how had he known who she was? Anyway, she took hold of him and wrapped him in something warm and murmured angelic words at him.

Yes, angelic words.

And he was breathing. His lungs met air for the very first time, and he cried at the agony of it as the wonderful fluids of life drained away to be replaced by the harshness of the air. And when he cried he made sure it was loud enough to obliterate the crying of the other two who had shared the womb with him.

The three of them lay together in a cot.

With fifty years’ of life-experience behind him he knew it must be a hospital cot. He knew where he was.

And slowly the three of them stopped their crying and then, in a moment trapped forever in his mind, he caught the tiniest glimpse of one of them as one eye flickered briefly open and detected light for the very first time.

It had a head and that head incorporated a nose and eyes and a mouth, and its eyes, like his, flickered briefly open, and they both cried again.

It was too much being one of two.

Then he moved his head. Yes, for the very first time he moved his own head, and although he couldn’t move it far he managed to detect, again through eyes flickering open, the presence of a third round head.

He was one of three! And if it had seemed to be too much being one of two it was a nightmare being one of three!

He needed to sort it out in his mind, but he had very little to go on. The womb, he realised, had been a very poor preparation for life in this air with warm fluffy material drying skin that had always been wet. But it had taught him one thing: he really ought to be on his own.

The other two bodies were in the way. They’d have to go, one day, they’d really have to go.

And the dream scattered reality in that suddenly he was on his own.

“We’ll call him Ivan,” cooed a voice. Father’s.

“You can look after him!” growled a second voice. Mother’s.

“You’ll get over it: just get some rest...” That was the first voice.

“I hate the little b*****d...” Mother. Mother. Mother…

“You’ll get used to it now that the other two have new homes with adoptive parents who love them,” placated Father.

“No I damned well won’t!” Language, Mother, language...

And then he woke up.

His whole body ached like it had never ached before. Unless it had, of course, fifty years ago.

His bed was damp. Not wet, just damp, where he’d been born from one world into another. Amniotic fluid? Was it amniotic fluid? At his age? Or had he merely had a nightmare that had pushed perspiration through his pores until his sheets were damp with the stuff?

And why was he crying?

Was it because mummy hated him? She always had, he knew that, but then she’d hated just about everything in her life. She’d even hated her death. And if there was a Heaven and a Hell, whichever she found herself in, she’d hate it. That was the sort of woman she was. Hating everything, but mostly hating him.

There was a sudden unexpected sound and he almost leapt out of bed. The doorbell! It was ringing!

He rushed to open it, clad only in pyjamas that clung to him because even they were damp.

He pulled his pyjamas tightly to him and stared at the two officers standing there because they were staring at him.

“I’ve got my balls back,” he spluttered, filling the void of silence with his most immediate thought, “I’ve got ‘em back, both of ‘em...”

And the enormity of everything hit him, and he fell, slowly, like a scarecrow that had run out of straw, to the ground, closed his eyes and let the world sort itself out while he retired into himself.

He really needed to think.

© Peter Rogerson 29.12.18