CW: arachnophobia, pregnancy and childbirth/tokophobia, miscarriages/abortion/sterilization, graphic gynecological exam, body hatred, self-harm and suicide, brief mention of child sexual assault and pregnancy, death, blood/bodily fluids, bodily harm, mental illness, sexism and misogyny, medical gaslighting.
Pregnancy is an infestation. A hidden invasion.
An invisible operative sneaks inside you, planting a package of foreign genetic material and forcing you to replicate it trillions of times. Soon, your hostage cell floats down your fallopian tube to the womb to feed on the blood-bed of your uterine lining like a vicious little tick. If it plants itself in the tube, the cell will kill you as surely as it killed my mother.
Like my mother, if I get pregnant, I might be among the 23.8 people in 100,000 who die. If I were Black, my risk would be twice that; if I were over forty, almost eight. There is an 85% chance my vagina will split; a 6% chance I’ll suffer a fourth-degree perineal tear. That’s when your vadge rips open to your asshole.
The more you know.
You could be invaded right now. You can’t see it.
Trust me. I’ve tried.
I never wanted to be pregnant. Now I can’t escape it, not even in my dreams. Especially there.
You see, the things are inside me.
• • • •
Ever since my divorce, I’ve worked for WriteStuff, a content creation company. I pick an article topic, examine the SEO-friendly terms the client wants, and string them together in a blog post that sounds as if an actual person wrote it. If you’ve ever Googled ball pythons, gearshift knobs, or ten reasons you should worry about mesothelioma, you might’ve read my work.
The pay’s not bad. In an average day, I can typically crank out between $15-30 an hour because I type fast, but still, it’s not a king’s ransom, and as with all gig work, it’s not predictable. Mostly, my bills get paid from renting out the property my father left, a grudging reminder of his credo that a woman’s place was in the kitchen.
No, the real money is in direct orders, when a client asks specifically for my services, which is how I became a ghostwriter for Bitty Bugs—ironically enough, a mommy blog. My only request was to write only child-rearing articles like “Diapers: Cloth or Disposable?”
But pregnancy topics? Hard fucking no.
• • • •
You may wonder if the divorce was Alan’s fault, but it wasn’t. Alan was decent and thoughtful, a bouncy, Labradorish person, not a guy who thought foreplay was grabbing you on the ass and saying, “Hey, we have twenty minutes.” (For the record, that was my boyfriend before Alan.)
The issue was that Alan wanted children.
We met in college when Alan hired me to write his Humanities 250B paper. From there, we struck up a friendship, a relationship, and finally a Vegas wedding with a tacos-and-beer reception and his sister Livvie as maid of honor. I love Livvie. To be honest, she’s why I stayed with Alan as long as I did.
Anyway, you’d think these low-key nuptials would’ve assured Alan’s parents I wasn’t a gold-digger, but no. Whenever Alan’s mother visited, I imagined an infinite loop from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes started up in her head. I think it’s the scene where Lorelei meets her wealthy fiancé’s uptight father. The dad confronts her with, “Do you expect me to believe you don’t want to marry my son for his money?” and Lorelei responds, “Of course not! I want to marry him for your money.” After we divorced, Alan’s mother probably bit her nails for the next nine months, certain I’d turn up pregnant.
Trust me, she had nothing to worry about.
Before getting married, Alan and I had discussed kids, but I’d told him, “Probably not.” Then seeing his face fall, I added, “Let’s maybe see in five years.” He took this as a yes.
Spoiler: It wasn’t.
Even before the marriage, I’d been nervous about pregnancy. About the whole concept. It grosses me out, to be honest, especially the swelling. Toward the end, every pregnant woman looks like she’s carrying a bomb filled with baby. I’m not sure when that anxiety started.
Scratch that. I remember exactly when.
On a fourth-grade field trip, I sat next to the other unpopular girl, Leah W., and at some point, she handed me a stolen library book called Five Hundred Fucked-Up Facts. Passing it around had been Leah’s big strategy to move up the popularity scale, and I’ll have to give it to her: it was kind of working. When I took it, the book fell open to “Fucked-Up Fact #42: The Youngest Person to Give Birth.”
The girl was five. There was a picture.
Then Leah explained how it must’ve happened.
Before then, I’d thought I had only two lower holes: my butthole and the tiny one for pee. No, said Leah. There was a middle hole. Then she explained what went in there. And what came out. That this could be done to any girl.
To me.
Spoiler alert: I became paranoid about pregnancy. I learned the hard way that I couldn’t take the Pill, so I was adamant that all my male partners wore condoms I provided. Only during my period did I feel safe, and not always then. What if it wasn’t a period, but implantation bleeding? Honestly, it was maddening not being able to look inside and see.
I’d test myself again and again, standing in the morning sunlight with my latest pee stick, trying to spot a line. Until I heard you could get cheap tests at the dollar store, I was spending over fifty bucks a month for the early response kind that can detect as little as 6.5 mIU/mL of hCG.
You know. Just in case.
Still, the instant my period dried up, the nightmares began again. I’d jerk awake, sweat streaming down my back, and grab my tits, my pelvis, my abdomen, certain I felt movement. Something in me. Something not me.
Ultimately, I had to admit I hated things inside me. I detest needles, swabs, dildoes, butt plugs, thermometers, fingers, my own toothbrush. I wanted nothing in there. Nothingnothingnoth—
Sorry. Give me a second.
In any case, Alan really tried. Before the divorce, he suggested a visit to a therapist, a professional who could provide nonjudgmental feedback about . . . things.
“Such as?” I demanded.
“The nightmares.” Alan waited a moment. “I can’t sleep in the same room anymore, Anna. When you wake up all panicked . . . it scares me. You scare me.”
“I scare you?”
Alan held up his hands. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just that . . . you might need treatment. A few tests?”
As you can imagine, the rest of the conversation with Alan did not go well.
• • • •
From: Client 8354932874
To: Team Member 2039478
Re: Blog
Hey. Let me know if you’re interested in a 10,000-word article on pregnancy issues. We realize it’s a rush, but we’re offering a substantial perk for early completion. Please respond by pressing “Accept” or “Decline” below.
Thanks,
Client 8354932874
• • • •
I pressed “Accept.” What can I say? I needed the money.
In the divorce, I’d been adamant: No alimony. Even so, Alan sent me a birthday card that year. Tucked inside was a generous personal check with a note. “Buy yourself a nice present, Anna. Best wishes, Alan.” Still, no money lasts forever. If I accepted the article, I’d get a payout and bonus—and future orders. That meant steady income, the gig job equivalent of finding a magic unicorn that crapped pure perfume rainbows. I thought, Okayokay, how bad could it be?
It was ten thousand words on contraception.
Sweet.
The funny thing was, I could almost write the whole article without doing extra research. It wasn’t until I’d gotten near the end of the SEO list that I saw a method I’d never heard of.
Twenty minutes after hitting “Submit,” I was booking a consult with the first available OB-GYN on my plan.
• • • •
“So,” he said, sliding his fingers into me. “What brings you here today?”
Gritting my teeth, I focused on the clinic ceiling. The light in the room was dingy, the examination bed paper already wrinkled. “I thought we could discuss birth control,” I answered.
In response, he pressed my cervix harder. Near jars of cotton balls and swabs, the assistant stood looking clearly bored. The doctor shot her a look. “Shanelle, when was her last pap?” he asked, listening as she dutifully read it off the chart. “So, two years ago?” When he turned back, his expression was disapproving.
“Yes. We can certainly go over birth control,” he said, taking his fingers away. “Are you sexually active?” When I shook my head, he looked skeptical. “Hmm. Well generally, condoms work best for a girl your age.”
“Excuse me,” I said. “The thing is, I already know the method I want.”
Above the rim of his glasses, his silvery eyebrows rose. “Oh, please,” he replied, waving a hand. “Do tell.”
I cleared my throat. “I want a bilateral salpingectomy.”
At this he seemed surprised. The procedure isn’t as widely known as it should be, so if you’ve never heard of it, here’s a free PSA. In a bilateral salpingectomy, your tubes aren’t just cut, they’re completely removed. You’ve stuck that uterus on a desert island, and with both tubes gone, the chances you’ll die from an ectopic pregnancy drop to nearly zero. No little mom-bombs for you.
Hearing this, the doctor scribbled some notes on my chart. It was impossible to see them, so I lifted my head, but immediately I wished I hadn’t: above the small steel sink I spotted movement from some long-legged thing that crept across the ceiling.
“So. Someone’s been on Google, haven’t they?” When I didn’t answer, he gave a tight smile. “Yes. Well. I’m going to book you an appointment with a consultant.”
“A consultant? I mean—I thought this was the consultation.” I gestured to my half-open paper gown.
He patted my knee, frowning when I moved it. “Yes,” he said. “I think several appointments would be best.”
I envisioned endless hours on hold. Multiple copays. Uber bills. Client articles composed on my phone in the waiting room. “I mean, is that necessary—”
Over his head, something insectoid shimmied inside the fluorescent light. One thin brown leg eased from a hole, gently fingered the ceiling tile, then retreated.
“You’re quite young for that procedure,” the doctor remarked. “You need to consider a nonpermanent method. Even a tubal with clips would be better.”
“But I don’t want—”
“Well, we can’t always have what we want,” he said. “Please lie down. Shanelle, will you prep the tray?” For a moment, I met his assistant’s eyes, but below her mask, her expression was unreadable.
“But tubals are—I mean, they’re not the current standard for elective steriliz—”
Now it was his turn. “Excuse me . . .” He looked at the chart for my name. “. . . Anna. Anna, which of us has a degree in medicine?”
I caught Shanelle’s glance again. She ducked her head, staring at the instrument tray before scooping out a gelatinous blob from a small vial.
“I don’t want children.” I shifted awkwardly. “Or to worry about getting pregnant. Ever.”
The doctor noted this. “But you realize, Anna, that we shouldn’t make emotional decisions.”
“Emotional?”
“Let me assure you that your fear is natural, Anna, but so is giving birth. You’ll see.” Quietly, Shanelle wheeled the tray to the bedside. “I noticed in the intake paperwork that you are divorced?” he asked.
For a moment, I thought he might insist Alan sign off on this. “Yes, the divorce went through a while ago,” I said, trying to sound firm. “It’s finalized.”
He nodded. “See, right there’s what I’m talking about. Your divorce. It suggests—hmm. Some personal difficulty making a lifelong commitment, let’s say.”
I stared at him. Even in my thoughts, I was tongue-tied.
“Let me put it this way. Next week, you might meet a wonderful man. Right? After that operation, you can’t say, ‘Oopsie, I want a do-over.’”
“But . . . isn’t that really my concern?”
Deftly, he pulled on fresh gloves. “Not really. It isn’t just your concern. Feet in the stirrups, please. Good girl. Now. Are you sensitive to cervical pain?”
“Yes, but what is this—”
He nodded to Shanelle. “Sorry,” Shanelle murmured, then slipped the needle into my vein. I hadn’t seen that coming.
“No examination would be complete without the pappy, hmm?” He picked up an instrument. “You’ll feel the speculum. Then a slight pinch.”
When he slid it in me, the instrument was metal-cold. Reaching for a swab, he dabbed it in that mystery blob. Despite the injection, I sensed the tip poking at the dimpled center of my cervix. God, it felt like being rasped out with a mascara wand. The sound from the overhead lights grew from a mild buzz to a horrid insectile clittering.
With a satisfied nod, the doctor peered up, framed by my thighs. “So. That’s done. Remember, Anna. Pregnancy isn’t all about you. It’s about two other people besides you. At most, you’re only one-third of the equation. Don’t you realize that?”
I found I could not really reply.
• • • •
No clue how I got home. On my phone the next day, I saw I’d scheduled a follow-up and gotten an Uber.
I hope I tipped?
• • • •
My phone buzzed “Hey, girl,” the text read. It was Livvie.
Of all Alan’s family members, I liked Livvie best. She could pick up a conversation from weeks ago, like pressing “play” on a moment she’d paused, and low-key flirted with everyone—men, women, random pets, various trees.
Perhaps it’s actual flirtation; I’ve always been shitty at figuring that out. Once, when we were quarantine-watching a movie over Zoom, I joked I should’ve married her instead of Alan, and from my screen, Livvie gave me this exaggerated up-and-down ogle and said, “Oh, yeah. Might be kinky, but who gives a shit?” Then she reached for her microwave popcorn, and we settled down to watch Legally Blonde.
Rolling over in bed, I tried to focus. “heeey,” I typed back. Fuck capitals.
Three dots appeared, tapping like impatient fingers. “I’m abt 15 min away. I wanted to give you time to pick up yr undies.”
I sat up. The room spun, and my gut turned a slow roll. “15 min fm wht?”
“from yr house.”
“I thought you were coming Tuesday”
“it IS Tuesday.”
• • • •
“Oh, my God.” Livvie’s face fell. “Are you okay?”
I realized I should have called it off. In fifteen minutes, I’d done what I could. Picked up my undies. Puked reheated coffee. Washed the hair I’d puked on.
“Not Covid, I swear. Just food poisoning.” I waved her in. “Whatever you do, don’t eat that bagged salad.”
“Well, for God’s sake.” Livvie embraced me. “Go sit down. I gotcha.” Tucking her dark hair into a bun, she ventured to the kitchen, and while I eased back onto the couch, Livvie made a cup of ginger tea and threw away the salad.
“So,” she said. “I’m guessing lunch is off.”
“Ugh. Just the word lunch sounds nauseating.”
Livvie put a teacup in my hands, and I took a careful sip. “Okay,” she said. “When did you start feeling sick?”
I counted back. “Maybe Monday?”
She frowned. “Kinda long for food poisoning. Tell me all about it.”
I did. For the past few days, I hadn’t been able to string together thoughts. And there had been nightmares. I could feel their sticky mental residue, vague memories of tangled hairs and a dull metallic clanking.
“Nightmares, huh? I remember Alan mentioning those.” Livvie chuckled. “Don’t worry. He didn’t tell me super-private stuff, like how you banged and all. I just remembered the nightmare thing.”
“Well, they’ve gotten worse since—”
“Since what?”
I told her. The condescending doctor. His refusal to do the operation. The spiders. The shot. The painful pap. “Hell,” I finally concluded. “I seriously wonder whether I’m having a psychological reaction or whatever.”
“Pussy traumatic stress disorder?”
“Basically.”
Livvie frowned. “Could you get a second opinion from a non-asshole?”
“I’m still working that out.” I sighed. “I have a follow-up in a week, so maybe I can talk him into an IUD. Unfortunately, that gyno is the only provider in town accepting new patients.”
“Fuck this town.” Livvie snorted. “Hell, fuck this state. Tell you what, Anna. Let me make some calls.”
She was so good at this. Advocacy. Networking. For almost a decade, she’d been a support counselor at a rape crisis center, the kind of counselor who meets you in the ER and stays with you the whole time. Ever since the laws had changed, she’d rarely had an evening off.
“Sure.” I sank back into the couch. “Might as well, right?”
“Hell, yeah. Besides, I’ll be glad to drive. Merely text me time and place, and I am there, baby. BAM. Faster than a fucking Uber.”
That reminded me. “By the way, I don’t even remember getting home, you know? I got an Uber notification, but the whole trip’s a big blank.”
“Damn.” Livvie snorted. “Sounds like my college freshman year. All sorts of moments I can’t recall.” Again, she fell silent. “Yeah. Too many nights pieced together from fragments. You know?”
Yeah. I did know. I thought many women did.
“I don’t like that,” Livvie said at last. “No. I don’t like that at all.”
• • • •
Livvie stayed two days until I’d recovered. While she ducked out to feed her cats, I managed to catch up on writing client orders. Diaper Dilemmas. Me Time for Mommies.
Still, I felt so drained, I didn’t really leave the couch except to pee. I’d wake up headachy and nauseated, fit only for watching Netflix between bouts of stirring, haunted sleep.
“Goddamnit,” I told Livvie when she came back. “It has to be the fucking virus.” I’d retrieved an N-95 from my jacket and put it on. From my hall closet, Livvie dug out my stash of Covid tests, but they came back negative. Plus, I had no fever, no cough, and to judge by my stanky armpits, there was nothing wrong with my nose. Just exhaustion. Nausea.
And no period.
• • • •
The old dream came again the night she left. It’s not a dream, exactly. More like a vivid memory playing at three a.m. in terrible detail. The textures. The tastes. The smells.
The legs.
I’m back in fourth grade, lying in my Walmart sleeping bag in the bunk I shared with Leah. As befitted her rising status at sleepaway camp, she’d claimed the top. For hours I writhed around in the dark, painfully aware that I needed to pee, and digging into myself with the heel of my hand wasn’t helping. Bottom line, I had to visit the privy.
On the camp tour, the counselors had shown us the bunks, dining hall, fire pit, and last, the privies. At the predictable choruses of “ewwww” and “gross” from the campers, they rolled their eyes, knowing that however pretty or privileged these girls were, they’d eventually be sitting and shitting into that same foul hole. And in fact, only admitting I was minutes from pissing my bunk got me moving. If that happened, I’d basically have to light myself on fire to eradicate the shame, and even then, I would forever be The Girl That Pissed Her Bunk and Lit Herself on Fire.
Fumbling with the flashlight, I tiptoed downhill. Our first job as campers had been to whitewash the stones along this path, and now I understood the wisdom. In my beam, they practically glowed.
The stench hit me immediately. Sour and rank, it was a tangy stink that stayed in your hair, and inside, someone had already fouled the toilet ring with explosive poop. Sighing, I put the light down and braced my calves against the bench seat I couldn’t bring myself to put my butt on. Dangling my ass over the hole, I prayed I was leaning back enough not to piss into the underwear I’d lowered past my knees. The undies were brand-new, covered with tiny blue flowers and a matching bow in the front, and I didn’t want to mess them up.
The relief was exquisite.
From a wooden peg on the wall hung a limp roll of toilet paper. Reaching for it, I kicked the light over and watched the beam swing wildly. Just then, I heard the spotty sounds of raindrops on the corrugated roof, a kind of thrumming, and when I found the flashlight, I shone it at the ceiling overhead. The sound was coming from there.
At first, I didn’t understand. Above me hung an enormous bundle of hair, thick, dark, and filamentous, a wiry brown tangle like the overgrown thatch I’d seen between the thighs of a woman undressing in the YMCA locker room last summer. The patch on the ceiling was shot through with round shapes, I saw, like droplets of cream on a beard. Little tiny dots.
And then the dots began to move. To tap. To bounce. To crawl. To jitterjitterjitter in a moving carpet across the walls and down toward me. A thrumming filled the privy as the clump of dots and hair shivered and quivered as I realized no no that’s not hair not hair they are
they are tapping their bodies on the ceiling that’s the sound
it’s not rain
and that is not hair
no no
they are
they are
they are spiders.
Screaming, I clawed between my legs, frantic to yank up my underwear. I lost my balance and thrashed against the walls, the flashlight still lighting that horrible brown undulation. I could not find the door. My hands flailed wildly, hitting anything in the
hair hair thatch of women’s hair
pubes
spiders
and beating at the privy walls in a desperate animal attempt to flee the writhing, drumming swarm of spiders by my head.
And then the spidercloud fell on me.
After that, I don’t remember much.
I suppose they called my mother. I could not stop screaming even after the camp director threw ice water in my face. Mom drove up a twisting mountain road at two in the morning to get me and drove us back in pinch-lipped silence as I sobbed.
Everyone assumed I’d been hysterical because the spiders had gotten into my hair. This was partly true. When that massive, tangled cloud had fallen, the spiders had scampered through my scalp, in my ears, between my lips. I’d bitten down on a mouth of them that tasted of rancid cornflakes. No matter how hard I scrubbed my tongue, the flavor lingered on. All through that eternal car ride home, I sat in the back, my mother furious at wasting summer camp money on me.
And though neither of us knew it, she would be dead in four days from the thing growing inside her.
But that was not the reason.
No. I’d been screaming because when the spiders fell on me, my pants had been stuck around my knees.
They’d fallen in my underwear.
I had felt them. Down there. And now, I understood something horrible.
They could crawl right up inside that center hole.
• • • •
By the time the police siren chirped, Livvie and I had been on the road for hours. “Shit,” she groaned, staring into the rearview mirror.
Last night, I’d broken down and told her about the symptoms. The morning nausea. The breast pain. The headaches. My swollen belly. “It’s okay. It’s okay,” she said when I started crying. “All right. You haven’t gone to that doctor again, have you?”
I shook my head. “God, no. I have a follow-up in a week, and if he thinks I’m . . . well, he’d have to report it.”
“Yep. And no clinics? No women’s centers or whatever?”
“Only you.”
“Okay. You took some tests? Where’d you get them?”
I thought a second. “The dollar store.”
“You paid cash?” Livvie’s pen scratched.
“Hell, yeah.” We all knew the drill. Don’t buy pee sticks with a card. Don’t buy more than two. Wear a mask and a plain-ass hoodie. Park on another street. No purse. And always pay cash.
“Good.” She nodded. “Give me a couple hours.”
As it turned out, Livvie didn’t take me to a doctor. Heading into a dark clinic parking lot far past closing time, I saw a woman framed in a doorway, a solid figure in medical scrubs patterned with pink and purple cats.
Livvie turned to me. “Sorry, Anna. I realize this isn’t what you expected, but—well, it’s the best I can do. At least you’ll be able to see for yourself what’s going on.”
In the examination room, I sat on a table smelling of anxious dog, and as she and Livvie made quiet conversation, the vet squirted lube onto my abdomen. Around her neck, she wore a portable ultrasound, and as I lay still, she moved the wand back and forth, looking sharply at the monitor.
“What?” I said. “What is it?”
The vet held up a hand. “Sorry. It looked like something for a minute. But no.”
Craning my neck, I tried to see the screen, the unknown barren moonscape that was me, but really . . . I shouldn’t have. In the middle of what looked like a grainy gray fan, I imagined I saw a gathering of dots. Cream-colored dots in a thatch of thick brown hair.
I swallowed. “This machine—it works on humans?”
“Yep. Only difference is the setting. Best that works for humans is ovine.” She flicked off the machine. “Well, that’s it.” she said. “No detectable evidence. No sac, no rings, no double blebs. You’re good.”
So that was that.
During the drive home, Livvie stayed silent. It had all been for nothing. Nothing lived in my inner emptiness but (dots dots dots dots) space. Turning my face aside, I pulled the hood down so she wouldn’t notice me crying.
The siren behind us chirped again.
“Fuck my whole life,” muttered Livvie, and flipped on the turn signal.
When the cop came to her window, we kept silent. Did we know why we had been pulled over? Where were we coming from? Livvie kept staring straight ahead, her hands on the wheel at ten and two. “Sorry,” she kept repeating. “We will not be discussing our business.”
The cop swept the interior with his flashlight on high, and I winced. “Hey,” he grinned. “You seem nervous.” Then he peppered us with questions. Had we undergone any medical procedure? Were we concealing medication? Levonorgestrel? Mifepristone? Misoprostol? How about if he brought some dogs? “Sorry,” Livvie said. “We do not consent to a vehicular search.”
Eventually, the cop gave up. “Fuck it,” he said, and told us to get the hell out. We definitely did.
She dropped me a quarter-mile from home, knowing it was too risky to drop me any closer. Awkwardly, I tried to thank her. “Don’t sweat it,” she said, her large eyes glazed and exhausted. “You’re probably late just from stress. I’m glad you got the ultrasound, Anna. I hope it gives you some peace. Get some sleep, okay?”
But I remembered that dark space inside me. That moment the vet seemed puzzled by the image on the screen. Possibly because the things in me were very, very small. Too small to see.
Even a whole nest of them.
• • • •
From: Client 8354932874
To: Team Member 2039478
Re: Blog Assignment
Hey. We were looking for a quick 5,000-word article on issues in pregnancy to include the following topics:
- Plan C: When Plan B Fails
- Joan Crawford Was Right: No Wire Hangers!
- Five Unexpected Uses for Knitting Needles
We realize it’s a bit of a rush, but we’re offering a substantial perk for early completion. Please let me know by pressing “Accept” or “Decline” below.
Thanks,
Client 8354932874
• • • •
For the next week, I stayed home and dedicated my days to shotgunning WriteStuff orders, typing until the tendons in my wrists swelled. Indoor Trampoline Parks. Car Accident Liability. Best Torque Wrenches of 2025. Anything was better than thinking about Livvie, the cop, the stack of pee tests stinking up my bathroom wastebasket, my nausea. My swelling.
Five Best Restroom Deodorizers. Seven Telltale Depression Indicators.
Livvie had probably gotten on some police shit list, I thought. I doubted she’d want to roll the dice on driving me anywhere again. And where would she take me? A different clinic? Perhaps the pound? Could I get spayed?
I let out a choking sound that might have been a laugh but wasn’t. Jesus, what options were left? Do the surgery on myself with a kitchen knife?
In the end, that’s what made me keep the follow-up with Dr. Asshole: maybe I could convince him to give me a tubal with clips, at least. An IUD. Or, as the meme says, why not both?
I’m sure you’ll be shocked at what happened.
• • • •
“Now,” he said. “Do you have any specific concerns about your health today?”
I carefully curated the information, listing very general symptoms. Fatigue. Breast tenderness. A little bloating. This was a grand understatement. I could only wear sweats when the waistband rode on my pubic bone like 90s jeans.
“Hmm,” he said. “Let’s peek, shall we? Shanelle, bring me the gloves, please.” Obediently, she held the box, and as she did, our eyes met, and I caught something there I couldn’t explain.
Hissing as he dug his fingers into me, I gripped the bed. “It’s okay,” said Shanelle quietly, and held my hand.
The doctor pressed down, one hand on my abdomen, the other inside, like he was trying to make his fingers meet in the middle. “Cervix feels normal on palpation,” he muttered. “Ovaries palpable, no sign of vulvar pathology . . . Shanelle, are you getting this?”
Reluctantly she let go and took up the clipboard, but before she did, she looked at me again.
“Yes. Well. I think we’ll stay where we are with the birth control for now, Anna,” the doctor said, peeling off his gloves.
“But . . . I mean, it’s not a ‘we’ issue. I’m not comfortable with using only condoms, especially—”
He clicked his pen and made a note on his chart, not really listening. “Yes?” he said absently.
“Especially if I’m—” I paused. “Assaulted. Raped. What do you want me to do? Whip out a Trojan and ask nicely?”
The doctor fetched a long sigh. “Let’s avoid being dramatic. I understand you’re concerned, so my best advice is to avoid those situations and you’ll be fine.” Making another note, he said, “We’re done here for now. Please see the receptionist before you leave.” Then he patted me on the knee again. As he left, the door hissed on its hydraulic hinge, and all I could do was stare at the tile and try not to cry.
“He wouldn’t give me one either.”
In the corner, Shanelle was sweeping the countertop clean of used gloves and lube, and when it came, her voice was so quiet it seemed part of my own thoughts. “Damn near begged him for a hysterectomy after my son,” she said. “Thought I’d have some leverage because I work here, and he still said no. Since then, I guess I’ve heard his little speech a hundred times. The truth is that I have two kids. I didn’t want that second one. The guy who raped me didn’t give a shit.”
I pushed myself up, my ass hanging from my loose gown. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “You know I am.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I do. That’s why I’m even talking to you.”
“But why—”
“You don’t get it?” Shanelle raised a perfect eyebrow. “Easy. Cutting your tubes is a one-and-done. Delivering your babies? That’s a growth industry. Literally.” She walked to the door, opening it to the crowded hallway. “Thanks so much,” she said clearly, her tone bright and professional and false. “Please stop by the receptionist on your way out.”
• • • •
Sometime around ugly o’clock in the morning, I shut my laptop. Stumbling into the bathroom, I turned off the lights so I wouldn’t have to look at myself.
Despite what you may think, I’m not delusional. I understood what all the evidence suggested—the pee tests, the spotting, the doctor’s prodding. Even the official ultrasound, if you count being wanded in a vet office with the machine on “ovine” as official. Most people would have accepted they weren’t pregnant and moved on.
But I knew. I sensed it in my gut. Something inside there had changed, whether it was visible or not. And that’s what seemed so supremely unfair. A cosmic joke. I’d always been so careful. Despite all that, here I was. Invaded. Occupied. In the end, I just wanted this body to be mine. Was that asking so much?
So. The signs all pointed to no. But still. Clenching that rubbery skin around my stomach, I wished for the thousandth time that I could pull my flesh apart and scrabble through my uterus like a messy purse. You know. To look for myself.
You see, I could feel it move.
As I sat on the toilet, the skin of my abdomen undulated and roiled, the flesh over my navel first taut, then sprawling and flaccid. From deep in my pelvis came a tickling. A crawling sensation.
And there was one more thing. The tests had all said no, true. But they were screening for a key chemical produced by placenta. HCG.
Human chorionic gonadotropin.
But what if the things inside me simply weren’t human?
• • • •
When Livvie first came to take care of me, I lied to her by saying I had nightmares. In fact, I’d been having only one.
The dream starts with a tickle, a lazy little brush on my thigh. I try to scratch, but my hands are bound to the bed with my fourth-grade underwear, the pair with the blue-green flowers and the tiny satin bow.
Moving my legs, I hear a cold metallic clank. A speculum, naturally, its steel beak poked into my vagina like an inquisitive duck. The blades of the speculum slowly expand, cold metal cranking me wider, my defenseless cervix open to the air.
Why, anything could crawl up there. Anything.
The tickling intensifies. On my knee, I sense a tiny tap. A light inquisitive pressure moving one touch at a time, a thin-fingered pianist easing notes into existence. My overgrown pubic hairs twitch with movement. Something skitters by my clitoris. On the bed, I thrash and buck, mad to scratch, to jerk my frenzied fingers toward my crotch to rake that tickling away even if it brought on blood.
And I am so open there.
In tiny motions, it tiptoes over the speculum. And then at last I begin to scream because it’s crept inside me, in me, making its inexorable way up and up, crawling and creeping as I scream.
And then
then
It falls on me. A massive brown cloud coming on me in a clittering mass, a flush of things through my hair, between my thighs, all cream-colored dots and tangled limbs, jittering and jumping and skittering in a massive carpet made from thin intertwining legs that
god they were crawling over each other
crawling crawling in a mad frantic panic to get inside me
and then o god
They were filling me they were
crawling
inside me inside me into my
cunt
swelling me making me huge so huge
and now my abdomen bubbles and ripples and crawls
and now
o
o god I can feel them in my womb
So many spiders
So many spiders
So many spiders.
• • • •
From: Client 8354932874
To: Team Member 2039478
Re: Blog Assignment
Hey. Please let me know if you could write a quick listicle-type post on pregnancy issues. Topics should include the following:
- Mommy Mad Money: Selling Fetal Stem Cells Online
- Keto-Friendly Placenta Recipes
- So, Your Uterus Flopped Out!
- Massive Rectovaginal Tearing: Can You Ever Sit on a Barstool Again?
- Take Your Baby’s Teeth Before They Can Take Yours
We realize it’s a bit of a rush, but we’re offering a substantial perk for early completion. Please let me know by pressing “Accept” or “Decline” below.
Thanks,
Client 8354932874
• • • •
Took another test. Stared at the pee stick for the results to show up. One pink line if you’re normal. Two pink lines if you’re fucked.
The test showed asterisks. They look like tiny spiders.
• • • •
I got a text from Livvie today. She wanted to know how I am. Staring at my phone, I started to cry because the thing I wanted most was to hang out and watch some Hallmark Channel rom-com. I’m glad she texted. I’m glad she felt safe.
I couldn’t have her over, though. The place is a mess. And there are . . . things.
For one, getting out of bed requires careful planning. I can almost manage to make it to the bathroom. Most of the time.
I couldn’t let her see me.
This was my worst nightmare.
“Stop it,” I said to the empty room. “Just fucking look.” Viciously, I shoved my shirt open and forced my eyes to see what I’d become.
Over the last weeks, my body had altered radically. The nausea had been cataclysmic, tapering off only if I didn’t eat, so . . . I didn’t eat. Didn’t matter. Everything in the middle kept growing growing growing anyway. I think it’s cannibalized the calcium in my bones. That’s what they do, right? Gain a child and lose a tooth, the saying goes.
The bones in my face have become sharp and predatory, and the skin above my elbow hugs the humerus. I can circle my bicep with my fingers. Below, my knees stand out like two bulbous leg knots.
But oh. The rest. In my life, I’d seen many pregnant women. Many pregnant bellies. This was nothing like them.
A week ago, I’d taped a sheet of cardboard to the bathroom mirror to hide my lower half. Till you got past my armpits, everything looked normal, but after that, my body . . . exploded. My breasts had blown up to pendulous plods dangling in the exhausted cups of my sports bra. They ached miserably.
And below . . .
Oh, dear God, below.
My belly was a heavy, throbbing mass that stretched down past my pubis and thighs, a great yellow-white expanse of pulsing segments each with its own brown line. Through it all ran a red vein like a garden hose.
Did I say I wanted to peek inside myself? Well, I could now. My skin was thin as a blister.
You didn’t need an ultrasound to watch my babies grow.
As I lay there, two segments rippled and bulged as something shoved hard against my skin from inside, and I groaned, spitting long strings of yellow bile into my pillow because there was nowhere else. The bed was foul beyond words. If I wanted to go to the bathroom, I had to tie a bedsheet around my stomach for stability.
I’m terrified I’ll trip. If I do, my abdomen will explode.
And I don’t know what might come out of it.
In other news, my breasts have started leaking. What trickles out is thick and yellow-green, like antifreeze, and when it dries, it leaves corrosive burn marks on the sheets. I’m afraid to touch it.
I’m afraid of what can drink it.
In the end, I texted Livvie and told her I was great. I confessed I was a little tired. My screen flickered briefly with the three gray dots, but then the phone rang.
“Hey,” she said. “My thumbs got tired. How’ve you been?”
I’ve turned into a giant, bloated maggot, I thought. “I’m good,” I croaked. “How about you?”
“You don’t sound good,” said Livvie. “In fact, you sound like shit. Listen, I need to come over anyway. I still have your key.”
I frowned. “My key?” Then it hit me. “Right. From when I was sick.”
“Seriously, I’m going to be around, so . . .”
More tears slipped down to stain the already-stained pillow. I scrubbed at my running nose with my sheet. “Don’t worry. Just . . . hold onto the key for awhile,” I said.
“Okay, babe. Love you. Hey, I can swing by on the weekend if you’re up to it.”
The weekend. That would be fine. Things would be resolved by then. One way or another. “Just keep the keys,” I told her, knowing this might be the last time we ever spoke. “I trust you.” I did. And I loved her. And whatever had infiltrated me, infected me, I wanted Livvie to be miles away from it. From them.
You see, I think they’re ready to be born. Within me all the time now, I sense tiny pinprick bites. They have filled me with toxin. Sometimes, I sense a needle-like poking at the mouth of my cervix, something determined and investigatory. Probing. It is like a little pap smear from the inside.
They are trying to get out.
• • • •
I stayed on hold an hour until the clinic receptionist picked up. Was Shanelle there? I would like to speak to her, please.
When Shanelle came on, I begged for a morning appointment. The soonest available. First of the day.
When she asked me in that polite public voice what the purpose of my visit was, I explained I had—well, something to discuss with the doctor. It would be best, I said, if there weren’t people around when that happened.
Shanelle was silent a long moment. Then she said she had no problem with that.
Next morning, I called for a ride to the clinic. I would need extra space, I said. And no, I wouldn’t need a ride back.
I’ve chosen a long, loose dress, one that can conceal more than just the horrifying metastasis of my abdomen. My breasts leak thick greenish fluid almost constantly, and I’ve had to stuff my sports bra with sanitary napkins. That’s bad, but there are . . . other things.
Apart from my belly, I’ve gotten quite shockingly thin. My arms have grown stalky and longer, like my legs.
All six of them.
The newest ones just sprouted days ago. Thin and reedy, they wrap around my belly at the widest point as if to protect the things in there, to nurture ten thousand squirming, venomous little beings on the verge of emergence. To cuddle them.
It’s sweet.
When I get to the clinic, I will beg Shanelle to duck out for a cup of coffee. Drive to that bakery with the good donuts. Take a long break.
To save herself.
I don’t have much time. I know that. For days, I’ve sensed a growing imminence, like when the land around you falls silent before the clouds let go with rain. I’ve kept very still, hoping not to trigger anything by moving.
It is like carrying an abdomen of sweaty dynamite.
The segments ripple, but they seem as if they are husbanding strength, resting before the final push. And when that push comes, it will come quickly.
When the doctor walks into the examination room, I will be ready. I only need to do a little cutting. A little slicing. My father was right after all: a woman’s place is in the kitchen.
That’s where the knives are.
But the knife is not for him.
It’s for me.
When the doctor is standing before me, I will make one quick slice across my straining skin. I imagine a pop as I explode in a cloudspray of bright blood, blowing out my uterus and most of the lower half of my body like a blossoming red orchid. My intestines will puddle at my feet. At his feet. He will be covered in me, the blood and chunks of my flesh, my womb, and when it is done, my skin will hang in flaps like a flaccid flesh balloon. And I’ll be dead.
But not my children. My ten thousand crawling children.
And I think they’ll be hungry.
