Ad Nauseam

SISTER ALICE’S SUITOR



Plop!

Alice leaned forward on the toilet. A wriggle of white had caught her attention and she looked down at the crotch of her panties pushed to her knees. A plump white worm stuck to the cotton, its eyeless front searching the air for food.

Oh God! Oh my God! It’s a maggot!

Alice dropped to her knees and turned to face the toilet, bile burning her throat as she leaned into the bowl to retch. She sat back and tried to hold it in at the last moment, but vomit splattered over her gown and onto the pristine bathroom floor. Clamping a hand across her mouth, she choked back a sob and fought a fresh wave of nausea, her eyes bulging out of her pale face. Cold sweat ran between her shoulder blades and she began to shake.

I’m dying and I can’t tell anyone!

She closed her eyes and prayed it would all go away. She opened them again, peered into the bowl, and shrank back at the sight. Dozens of maggots floated amongst her partially digested lunch, but they hadn’t come out of her mouth.

A band of pain tightened around her midsection, and she let out an involuntary Oooh! The labor was starting.

Alice crawled haltingly across the tile into her bedroom and pressed her face against the plush carpet as another ferocious contraction hit. She kicked off her nasty panties without a second thought. As the pain eased, she felt a half-hearted kick, causing her inexplicable panic.

She hadn’t wanted this pregnancy, had been so horrified by the circumstances behind the conception that she told no one these last nine months, secretly hoping she would miscarry. She had even tried to abort it herself with herbs and drugs, but to no avail. As the pregnancy progressed, as she grew larger and felt the infant stirring in her womb, Alice felt an attachment forming. She felt a mother’s love stir within her, causing her to abandon her quest to terminate the pregnancy. She feared for the baby now. What if the baby didn’t make it? What if she had damaged it? She knew this child wasn’t natural, but it didn’t matter. She loved it. No matter what it turned out to be, she would care for it and love it as a mother should. No one would take it from her. No one. She would kill for her child, with her bare hands if necessary.

Her baby would survive.

Alice clawed her way up the comforter and onto the bed where she laid back on the pillows and clutched at her swollen abdomen. The pains came quick and hard, and she tried to breathe shallowly through them like she read in the childbirth books, but it was difficult not to pant.

She clumsily peeled off her gown and spread her hands across her distended belly. Mottled, dark patches that had appeared months ago had now spread into a horribly bruised mass of purple and black flesh, tight, shiny, and somehow putrid looking, like the lividity of a week old corpse.

Her contractions became relentless.

Alice’s water broke with an alarming pop and foul smelling amniotic fluid gushed from between her thighs; her white sheets were now the dirty grey of used mop water. In the late afternoon sunlight, she could see the gleam of dark clots of blood and slimy, green mucus pooling on the sheets. She screamed as another cramp struck, leaning her head back and squeezing her eyes shut.

With her eyes closed in the half-trance of childbirth, Alice remembered back to a night nine months ago. As sick as it was, whenever she was overwhelmed she sought comfort in that night.

***

Alice earned the nickname “Sister Alice” decades before in college, being the last virgin in her dorm. Coeds had wagered on when she might give it up, most of them placing their money on never—a bet they would’ve won.

At forty-five, she was the stereotypical, dowdy librarian. Despite her mousy features, she perfected a stern countenance which silenced the rowdiest group of teens with merely a glance. Her work was her life. She returned home every night to a spinster’s cottage located on the edge of town. Small and tidy, she decorated it with doilies on nearly every surface and kept company with six cats. She had no other friends and nothing in the way of a social life. Her only living family was Sheila, a younger sister, happily married with three children and living across the country in New Hampshire.

On the verge of menopause, Alice had long ago given up on having a family of her own, something she had always desperately wanted. She was now content with her solitude and with her simple life. It didn’t even bother her that her romantic life was non-existent. She hadn’t had a real date since college, and even then, the captain of the chess club had quickly broken up with her, accusing her of being frigid and dull. Her lack of prospects was a subject that Sheila never failed to harp about in their bi-monthly phone conversations.

The phone calls were always the same. In the first half hour, Sheila would dominate with tales of her children and their various activities. Alice would struggle to sound interested and amused as Sheila recounted how well the oldest had done at her dance recital and how Junior had once again shoved peas up his nose. Then for about ten minutes Sheila would gush about her husband Frank and whatever wonderful thing he’d done for her lately, while Alice silently endured with gritted teeth. The conversation would then turn to Alice’s activities and Sheila questioning whether or not she had met any interesting men. This always led to at least fifteen minutes of Alice defending herself against her sister’s well-meant prying. Finally, it would end in an uncomfortable silence with terse goodbyes.

It had been a particularly hard day and Alice had so far consumed a half a bottle of red wine after coming home—something she rarely did—when the scheduled phone call came. She continued to drink while Sheila chatted on, and she was quite drunk when the conversation took the inevitable turn towards her own sorry, single existence.

“I just don’t know why you don’t do anything social, Alice. You certainly aren’t going to find Mr. Right sitting behind a desk all day, cataloguing dusty, old books.”

“Maybe there is no Mr. Right for me. Have you ever thought about that?” Alice felt proud that her voice carried only a hint of a slur. “Besides, I’m very busy at the library right now. I wouldn’t even have time to date if I wanted to.”

“But don’t you want to? I mean, I hate the idea of you festering away in that house all by yourself with nothing but those mangy cats for company! You need interaction, human interaction!”

“My cats are not mangy!” Alice snapped. “And has it ever occurred to you that maybe I don’t want a husband and kids? Maybe I don’t like goddamned children?!”

Sheila was silent for a while, and Alice felt instantly sorry as she searched for the right words to apologize when Sheila spoke again in a softer tone.

“I will pray for you, Alice. It’s all I can do. Maybe God can heal your bitter heart by bringing a wonderful man into your life.”

This was the final straw. Having also been deeply religious her entire life, but now drunk and furious at Sheila’s presumptions and meddling, Alice gripped the phone and spoke through tightly clenched teeth, words flowing out of her mouth before she could even consider the lack of wisdom behind them.

“You just go ahead and pray to God. Because I’m not going to. He hasn’t done a damn thing for me in that area. I think I will pray to the devil tonight; maybe he will send me a man.”

Alice hung up the phone without another word, hot tears of shame and regret stinging the backs of her eyes, and finished her bottle of wine in one long pull before stumbling off to bed. As her eyelids closed, the sound of her sister’s voice echoed in her mind. She flinched at the recollection of her own hostile words and pressed her eyelids tightly together to block them out. Soon enough, her persistence and the bottle of wine she’d had helped her off to the Land of Nod where a dream awaited her. A vivid dream. A sexual dream.

***

Alice was in the garden, the warm August mist thick around her body, obscuring her from passersby on the street. She had no memory of getting out of bed to come here, or of removing her gown and sensible panties. But here she stood. Bare to the world.

She ran her hands over her breasts, delighting in the moist feel of condensation on her flesh. Suddenly, she was aroused by the act of being so brazen, so nude in a place where she could be easily discovered. Her palm slid down her slightly doughy belly to tease between her thighs.

The mist parted and a young man stood before her in the haze, his pale, naked body glistening in the glimmer of the moonlight. No more than twenty, he was beautiful.

Alice’s eyes followed the muscled indentation of his hip as it curved deliciously toward his cock, which stood in impressive arousal. Her eyes widened. Despite his fierce erection, his skin lacked the flush of sex. Instead, his flesh was an unhealthy shade of grey, his eyes milky and unblinking marbles, and his throat opened from ear to ear in a grisly and gashed grin. She could see knobby cartilage in the mostly bloodless wound on his neck as her eyes took him in from head to toe.

For all his youthful sexuality, the man before her was obviously dead.

The sight of him should have sent Alice screaming into the night. But she did not fear him. She felt unable to resist placing her palm upon the cold, hard muscles that formed the ridge of his abdomen. It surprised her when he unexpectedly fell over, landing on his back with a meaty thud, his glazed eyes moving slowly up to her.

Stunned by this turn of events, Alice knelt by his side, the warm night air caressing her body as her eyes moved from his, and rested on his erection. A jolt of sexual awareness sizzled between her thighs. She knew she should be horrified by the feeling, disgusted by the corpse that lay before her, but she couldn’t quell her arousal. Years of burying her sexuality beneath the mundane details of life, came crashing down on her, causing a hunger that needed fulfillment, despite the morbid circumstances.

Up this close, she could smell him, a rotten, yet slightly sweet aroma. She still felt an overwhelming need to feel that rigid, young flesh inside her. She had no idea how his penis could be erect with no blood flow, but didn’t care. Instead she marveled at the thick, sturdy veins that ran darkly beneath the bluish skin.

He was dead, but he was here, and he was hers! Leave it to the devil to deliver a dead man to her door. Even in her dream she had vague recollections of issuing that challenge, and she would take what she could get. Finally she could know the carnal bliss of coupling with a man. She could experience all the pleasure that the girls in the dorm had moaned about, taunting her mercilessly.

Alice moved to straddle the boy, her hand caressing the silky, hard skin of his cock. It was cold as she guided it slowly into her own hot flesh; the delicious feeling of stretching to accommodate him caused her to groan aloud with pleasure.

He didn’t move, but remained erect, allowing her to slide and grind against him, building her own pace, her hands clawing at chilly, hard pectoral muscles. She wished he would touch her breasts, but his arms remained stiff at his sides, so she grabbed them herself, fondling and pinching her own nipples with abandon as she felt her orgasm approaching. Alice continued to ride him, rocking hard as her climax crashed over her in exquisite waves that seemed endless. He made an odd garbled sound, like a choked moan, and then his cock moved, spasming inside her as it gushed forth, flooding her insides with cold semen.

***

Alice slept in the morning after the dream until well after ten, the mid-morning light streaming through the blinds, assaulting her eyes. She hadn’t slept this late in years, but it was Sunday, her day off, so it didn’t matter.

Her head hurt from all the wine, but she felt a pleasant throbbing in her groin, and debated on whether to get up at all. Her thighs felt sticky, and she vaguely remembered her erotic dream.

Must’ve been a real doozy.

Throwing back the covers, she felt stunned to realize she was naked, having shed her sleeping garments in the night. Her hand flew up to her mouth and she uttered a horrified shriek when her gaze fell to her thighs. Opaque in places, a thick, black slime coated her skin from crotch to knee.

It smelled like dead fish rotting in the sun.

Alice jumped from her bed and ran to the adjacent bathroom, turning the water as hot as she could handle before scrubbing her body. She continued to wash long after the filth was gone, grunting out harsh sobs and shaking with disgust. Her mind refused to accept that the episode had been anything more than a perverse dream, despite the evidence that swirled down the drain. She got out and threw the soiled washcloths (it had taken three to remove all traces of the foul slime on her thighs) into the trash.

Wearing an old t-shirt and jeans, she had just begun stripping the linen from her bed when there was a knock at her door. She froze, suddenly nervous. No one ever came to her house. She debated ignoring it, her hair was still wet and she hadn’t bothered to put on a bra, so intent was she on cleaning up the bed. The knock came again, more insistent this time, and she went to answer.

A young man in a suit stood on her porch, his badge gleaming in the afternoon sunlight when he held it out for her inspection. He smiled at her, but it didn’t touch his eyes. Alice stared, wondering why a police officer was at her door.

Must be official business.

He cleared his throat and spoke. “I’m sorry to bother you. Miss . . . ”

“Collins. Alice Collins.”

“Ms. Collins. I am Detective Dunlavy and I’m here in response to a call from a pedestrian that saw something in your garden this morning when he was walking his dog.”

The detective had a pleasant manner, but his eyes were sharp, scrutinizing her reaction. She hoped she didn’t appear nervous, and really had no reason to be since she didn’t know what he was talking about. Bits and pieces of her dream started creeping into her head and she felt a little ill.

“So what was in my garden, officer?” She tried to gain confidence by using her no-nonsense librarian voice, but inside trembled with fear. Alice felt detached from the situation, complex emotions warring within her, but surprisingly calm on the outside.

“Not was, Ms. Collins. There is a body in your garden.”

“What? You can’t be serious! How would a body wind up in my garden?” Alice felt as though she might faint.

The dream! Oh the damn dream! What have I done?

She stumbled and the young detective caught her arm, then led her into the living room and sat her on the couch as he disappeared into the kitchen for a glass of water. When he returned, his accusatory look was gone.

He must now believe that I had nothing to do with this. Alice knew she wasn’t out of the woods yet, because there would be an investigation, and she’d naturally be a suspect. The officer stood a few feet away, watching her sip her water.

“I’m sorry to have to tell you this news, ma’am.”

“Was the person murdered?” Alice asked, her eyes wide with wonder, certain that she had somehow wound up on the other side of the looking glass.

“Well that’s the weird thing,” the young officer shifted his feet, obviously uncomfortable. “He was murdered. But we already know who did it. This boy was murdered two days ago by his roommate in a dorm at the college.”

“My Lord!” Alice exclaimed. “I know what you’re talking about! That poor boy whose roommate slit his throat while he was sleeping. I heard about that! Dreadful business. I work at the college in the library; and, well, you know how young people gossip. So how did he end up in my garden?”

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out, Ms. Collins. His body was reported missing from the morgue last night. There were some legal issues with the family and we were holding him for an autopsy, but they didn’t want one performed. Then last night, he just disappears and shows up in your garden this morning.”

“Why my yard?” Alice was genuinely perplexed, though she had a terrible suspicion the cop was way off with his theory. She was starting to believe that something much more sinister had brought the corpse to her property.

“I don’t know for sure. Have you had any problems with a particular student?”

“None that stand out in my mind.”

“How about last night. Did you hear anything unusual?”

“No, I’m sorry. I was asleep.” Her eyes darted to the empty wine bottle and the cop looked as well, a small smile curling his mouth in understanding.

Well, better for him to think I’m a drunk than a necrophiliac, Alice thought.

Detective Dunlavy didn’t miss Alice’s nervous behavior or the signs of alcohol consumption from the night before. There was no surveillance footage from the morgue, though the technicians had yet to find any evidence that the cameras had been tampered with. He had a suspicion that this was some sort of prank played out by college students on the quiet librarian, but he remained alert as he questioned her, looking for indications that she may have been involved somehow. He was certain that the murder was solved, the roommate had confessed to the crime and the evidence didn’t point to any alternative, but he still had to investigate this disturbing twist in the case.

The detective stayed a while longer, interviewing her as to her whereabouts both last evening and the night of the murder, before taking an official statement from Alice. The coroner’s office took care of removing the body. She didn’t go look at it, didn’t want to see it and confirm her terrible suspicions. Detective Dunlavy left with an apology and a promise to be in touch soon. Alice watched him go, then locked the door behind him, her knees trembling so badly she collapsed right there in the foyer and wept.

Detective Dunlavy contacted Alice three more times over the next month, hoping she would remember some scrap of a detail that might help their investigation, but she could offer him nothing. The young man’s family buried him, and life went on. With no plausible leads on the case, it was soon put aside and mostly forgotten. The young man who killed the student had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and institutionalized. Alice didn’t care at all about the case or how the body had come to be in her yard. She knew the terrible truth. She had more important things to worry about.

That month she missed her period.

***

Alice ignored it at first, figured that maybe she was beginning menopause, though she’d been showing none of the usual signs that her menstrual cycle was winding down. This had to be some horrible dream.

Corpses do not walk into your garden with the intent to copulate, and they certainly don’t knock you up in the process!

She considered calling to make an appointment with her doctor the next day, but she didn’t. She was afraid of what they might find, certain that within her remained evidence of her vile indiscretion and they would lock her away forever in some asylum. Once she was forced to divulge the horrendous details behind the conception, the obstetrician’s next call would certainly be to a psychiatrist. She couldn’t go to a doctor, or rather, she knew on some level that she wouldn’t go to the doctor. She prayed the symptoms would go away.

During the earlier part of the pregnancy, Alice had spent a good deal of time researching abortion on the internet, ordering countless herbal medicines that promised to terminate the child “gently and naturally”. None had worked.

Bouts of severe nausea and cramping left her weak for days, but the child still seemed to thrive. It was hopeless. She would have to see this to the end or die trying. Alice wondered what the cops would say if they found her body. Oh, the horror this would create within the community when they discovered whatever monster she gestated in her diseased womb.

***

She spent the next couple months trying to do her job, ignoring the morning sickness and fatigue, pretending she just had the flu. When her swelling abdomen became too much to cover with clothes, Alice took a hiatus from work, claiming mental exhaustion after the stress from the prank in her garden. After decades of working at the same college, she had reached tenure, and with no family and simple tastes, her savings were more than enough to support her. With no friends and her sister so far away, there were no visitors to check on her, which was just how she liked it.

Alone in her house, Alice could no longer pretend she wasn’t pregnant. There had been no test to confirm it, but she had all the usual symptoms. She grew larger every day; and, at around six months along, the thing within her began to squirm, making her want to tear her belly open and rip it out.

There were other symptoms, as well. Patches of dark bruising appeared on her abdomen that spread fast, forming mottled patterns all over her torso, resembling some kind of fungus. Her teeth began rotting nearly overnight, turning dark and mossy before falling out of gums which bled almost daily.

And there was her appetite. Alice knew that expectant mothers often craved strange foods, sometimes even inedible things like soil or egg shells. She was still pretty sure her cravings were over the top. She became sick when eating fruits and vegetables, so she was stuck with dairy, meats, and breads. Then she could only drink milk that had long since curdled. She would wait for the mold to grow on her cheese and bread and relish in its musty green flavor as if it were the sweetest ambrosia.

The worst, though, was the meat. She often left raw steaks and hamburgers on the counter for days, gnawing on them once they changed from a ruby red to a greenish grey. These things should have poisoned her, should have at the very least made her quite ill, but they tasted better to her than a pint of rocky road ice cream.

As terrible as those things were, they were nothing compared to her odor. By the time she reached the seventh month, Alice could no longer go out in public at all. Her horrible pallor and nearly toothless mouth looked bad, but her stink was unbearable. She gave up on trying to find different soaps and deodorants to control it, and douching was useless. No matter what, she always smelled ripe and gamy, like a dead animal. She thought she might be dying. Alice ordered her necessities online, instructing the deliverymen to leave it all on the porch. She wondered if they could smell her through the door.

Perhaps driven away by the smell, even her cats wanted nothing to do with her, half of them having run off and never returned. The remaining three spent most of their time hiding from her, and only ventured out of their hidey-holes to eat. They’d abandon dinner completely and scamper away when she tried to touch them.

***

Alice broke down and made an appointment with an obstetrician. In the waiting room, the other women shied away from her, clearly trying to hide their disgust, but failing miserably. Even the receptionist turned her head away from Alice when they spoke, attempting to escape her pungent body odor.

The doctor flinched when he saw her, and Alice thought she heard him gag during the pelvic examination.

“Alice, at your age and given the lack of prenatal care, I would suggest an ultrasound and genetic testing.” The doctor said.

“I will take the ultrasound for now, but I need to think about further testing.”

Alice’s palms were sweating and her mind raced, wondering what the testing would reveal. She lay back on the table and closed her eyes as the doctor spread a thick jelly on her stomach, pressing a round instrument against her and squinting at the image on the screen of the mobile ultrasound machine. He shook his head and grunted, going over the same spot multiple times. When he had wiped her belly and helped her back into a seated position, he looked at her sadly, obviously unhappy with the news he was about to give her.

“Is it alive?” she asked, her blunt and emotionless manner taking the doctor by surprise.

“There is a heartbeat, but it seems irregular. There were also, some . . . abnormalities . . . structural abnormalities that I’m concerned about. I feel that it would be in your best interest to proceed with genetic testing and amniocentesis at this point.”

Alice was silent for a moment before nodding curtly. “I understand your concerns doctor. You have given me a lot to think about. I will need a day or two to decide what I want to do.”

Leaving the doctor with a promise to call within the next day, Alice drove home and sat on her couch, a carton of spoiled milk on the table before her. She imagined herself undergoing the testing. The long needle puncturing her womb to draw forth a black, viscous fluid. As if it could read her mind, the baby kicked. She rubbed her belly, soothing it unconsciously. The baby responded to her gentle touch, ceasing its restless motion.

Alice felt a pang of unexpected affection for the creature. She didn’t know what it would be, but despite its paternity, it was hers. She began to feel a begrudging respect for the little creature that refused to be destroyed. As her mind started to go, that respect turned into affection.

Fearful of what the tests might show, Alice called the doctor’s office the next day and said she would be seeking treatment from a different obstetrician. It was a lie. She now knew that she would deal with whatever lay ahead, alone. Taken by surprise by the developing love she felt for the baby, she would let no one stop her from seeing this through to the end.

***

Alice threw herself back on the bed, cords of tendons sticking out on her neck while her clawing hands tangled in the bed sheets. Greasy sweat coated her body and bloody milk dribbled from her nipples as she choked back screams, terrified one of the neighbors would hear her and call the cops.

She dug her heals into the mattress. Her legs opened wide, pushing with all she was worth. She was going on pure instinct now, an animal reacting to the pain of birth. The agony was overwhelming and became her whole world as she struggled to expel the infant, fearing she would split right down the middle and bleed to death on her own bed. This excruciatingly long process sapped her strength.

Hearing her own flesh tear, Alice wailed, all thoughts of her neighbors calling the police pushed from her mind under the pressure of the unbearable pain. Unable to restrain herself, she pushed with every ounce of strength left, expelling the creature, the product of her dead lover’s foul seed, onto the sodden, soiled bedding. She let her head fall back against the headboard and wept with relief, not bothering to tend to the newborn until she heard it’s growling cries. She felt the sheets pull as the beast began to make its way toward her, and what must be claws pricked her gory thigh.

She leaned forward to collect her baby, but the gnarled umbilical cord hung, still attached, trailing up to disappear into her ruined vagina. Alice tugged to free it, and a burning pain flared inside her, as the stubborn placenta refused to be dislodged. Unable to get the scissors from the vanity drawer, she instead held the sinewy purple tether up to the thing’s mouth, allowing it to gnaw through the cord with its tiny, sharp teeth. Careful to avoid the biting mouth, she tenderly brushed his cheek, dislodging a maggot that had stuck there from the slime of the birth.

It was a boy.