Peek-a-boo, Mama

 

A Short Story

By

Curt Collier

 

“It’s my body, so it’s my choice. End of discussion,” Gigi said knowing full well that the discussion - the argument - was far from over.

“So you just woke up one morning and found out you were pregnant?” Ben asked sarcastically - his preferred method of communication. “Spontaneous Human Reproduction? Is that it?” He pulled his cell phone from his shirt pocket and mimed pushing the buttons, “I’d better call The National Enquirer!”

“God I hate you! You and your superiority complex,” Gigi said, her hands clenched into fists, arms straight down at her sides. “Why did I ever think I could have a life with such a son of a bitch?”

“I was just thinking the same thing,” Ben said as he replaced the phone in his pocket, “Minus the ‘son of a’ part, of course.”

“A joke. Everything’s a joke to you, isn’t it? I should never have told you I was pregnant. I should have just taken care of it by myself and never told you anything about it!”

“Yeah, maybe you should have. That’s your special mutant power, isn’t it? Keeping secrets? You sure as hell kept me a secret - kept us a secret - from your family and friends these last months,” Ben started before Gigi interrupted, turning her back on him and waving her arms.

“There it is again! We talked about this when we first got involved, Ben,” she said, “How we’d wait to see how things went before telling my parents about us…”

“No, we didn’t talk about anything. You told me how it was going to be. How you were going to wait a while before introducing your boyfriend - your black boyfriend - your black boyfriend from a Pentecostal family - to your white, upper-middle class, too-liberal-to-believe-in-God-Rotary-Club-President-corporate-lawyer dad and software-engineer-volunteering-at-the-Museum-of-Natural-History-as-a-docent mom. Just like you’re telling me now how things are going to be,” Ben said, taking his turn at interrupting. He leaned forward slightly, rubbing his hands together in front of his stomach as if he were turning a hat between them. “Yess’um, ma’am, you’s gotsta tell ol’ Benny heah ‘zackly how things gotsta be, ‘coz po’ ol’ Benny he caint be a-thankin’ fo’ hisself, nosiree. Ol’ Benny heah knows his role in life, yessum he sho’ duz.”

“That’s right, Ben, play the abused and downtrodden black card. Isn’t that what your people always do when you can’t think of anything else to blame your problems on? Huh? God forbid you ever man up and take responsibility for your actions…”

“My actions? Jesus, Gigi, make up your mind! Am I part of this or not? Did I contribute or didn’t I?”

“God, Ben, I hate you. I really, really hate you!” She said as she collapsed down onto the couch, pulling her legs up to her chest and hugging them.

“Does this mean the argument’s almost over?” Ben asked. “You’re repeating yourself, so we must be nearly through, right?”

Gigi unfolded herself like she had been launched from a cannon, jumping off the couch and storming to the front door. She opened it and yelled, “Get out! Get out! GET OUT!”

When Ben did not move obediently toward the door she continued, “You’re damn right we’re done, Ben! I want you out of my house and out of my life. Right now!”

Ben moved slowly to the door and, without completely stopping, jerked his overcoat from the nearby coat tree, throwing it over his arm.

“Yeah, I suppose we’re done,” he said as he walked across her threshold, “Whatever I’m leaving behind, you can just toss it, Gigi. That’s what you wanted to hear from me all along, right? Well, you have my permission to throw away anything you don’t want.”

As she slammed the door in his face she heard him yell through the door, “And that includes the baby!”

 

* * *

 

The rhythm of the taxi rolling along the old brick side street was lulling her to sleep, that and the twenty milligrams of Valium the nurse had given her two days ago and instructed her to take two hours before her appointment. Just as she was slipping into a mid-morning nap in the back seat, the taxi slowed and stopped at the curb.

“’At’ll be six-fifty, ma’am,” the cabbie said through the plexiglas shield dividing the front seat from the back. She slid a creased ten-dollar bill through the slot and reminded the driver to be back in two hours to pick her up. “You betcha, ma’am. Right here in two hours. You want I should come inside and let you know when I’m here?”

 “Yes, please, that would be nice,” Gigi said as she closed the door and stepped up onto the sidewalk. The taxi pulled away and she turned toward the nondescript white-brick building whose only identification was the small wooden plaque beside the front door with the bronze Roman letters spelling “Magna Mater Women’s Clinic.”

She had taken no more than half a dozen steps down the sidewalk when she heard several people screaming and approaching her from behind. Startled, she looked behind her and saw three women and a morbidly obese man holding homemade placards running toward her - the women were running, the man was waddling with authority.

“Murderer! Baby Killer!” the first woman yelled as she stopped at the curb, careful not to step onto the sidewalk where she could be arrested and cited for obstructing access to a healthcare provider. The woman had her dishwater blonde hair pulled back into a severe bun at the crown of her head. She wore a plaid dress and white low-heeled shoes that would have looked out of place on anyone other than Alice the Goon - and this woman, of course. She held a white sign that was well worn from being waved back and forth in the humid Southern air but was nonetheless legible. Jagged red letters spelled, “Abortion is murder! Burn in Hell!”

Next to her was an older woman who might have been the first woman’s older sister or mother. The facial resemblance, as well as the similarity of wardrobe choice, was striking but not surprising; many of these backwoods families had way too few forks in their family trees. The older woman’s face was flushed with excitement - and hate - as she yelled at the top of her lungs, “God hates baby-killers! God hates you! God hates you! And so do I!”

The third woman - a plump grandmotherly woman who looked more like she should have been in the kitchen baking cookies with her grandchildren - which is probably exactly where she would be that evening, unfortunately - said nothing, rather letting her sign - “Life is precious. Execute Abortionists!” - do the talking for her. She did, however, hark loudly and spit several globs of creamy mucous in Gigi’s direction, coming close enough with the last one to make Gigi jump backwards to avoid it.

The fat man caught up to his co-conspirators and began to wave a well-worn leather Bible in the air as he prayed loudly, “Oh, Gawd, have muhsee on th’ po’ chile that’s ‘bout t’ be muhduhed in that den of iniquity! Stretch fo’th yo’ han’ Lawd an’ strike these muhduhrin’ heathen down! Kill ‘em all dead, Hevenlee Fahtha, an’ let the wuhld know thatcha hol’ all life preshus in yo’ eyes!”

Gigi felt someone touch her shoulder and she jumped.

“Come on, Miss Greene,” a nurse from the clinic - her name badge said Sharon - put her arm around Gigi’s shoulders and gently ushered into the clinic. “You just ignore them, y’hear? It’s our turn this week. Last week the same bunch was picketing the courthouse downtown because that Jeffries boy - y’know, the one who killed those two people at the Church’s Chicken restaurant a couple of years ago - got a life sentence rather than the death penalty. Pro-Life this week. Pro-Death last week. Hypocrites every week.”

They had reached the little sign-in station and the nurse let go of Gigi and walked around to the other side of the desk and sat down. She pointed to clipboard and a pen, “If you’ll just sign in right there, Nurse Brenda will be right out to take you to the treatment room for your EVA. You have made arrangements for someone to drive you home, yes?”

“Yes, ma’am. The taxi driver who brought me will return in a couple of hours to pick me up. I asked him to come inside to let you know he was here,” Gigi said as she picked up the pen and scratched out an illegible signature; between the Valium and the unpleasantness outside her hands were shaking too badly to write well. As if the completion of the signature released her from a magic lamp, Nurse Brenda whirled into the waiting room from a side door and promptly took ownership of Gigi. Nurse Brenda was a large woman and, other than her ample posterior, there was little fat on her frame. She was the image of a Norwegian immigrant dairy farmer’s wife Gigi had once met while in Wisconsin. There was even a tiny lilt of the singsong diction that had made the Swedish Chef Muppet so popular. Her large, pale arm had replaced the first nurse’s across Gigi’s shoulder as she firmly led Gigi from the waiting room down a short hall that was all aluminum, clear plastic and glass. 

“Now you just relax, Miss Greene…”

“Gigi. My friends call me Gigi. Georgia Greene. My initials, y’know,” Gigi said.

Nurse Brenda giggled like a teenage girl being let in on the secrets of her best friend’s love life, “Oh, that’s just precious! Gigi. Well, Gigi, just relax and let the Valiums - you did take them, right?” Gigi nodded and Nurse Brenda continued, “You let the Valiums do their job. I’m going to be with you through the entire procedure, okay? Has the doctor explained the procedure to you?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Gigi said.

“Well, just to make sure there’s no surprises, let me refresh your memory, okay?”

Gigi nodded.

 “Once we’ve got you settled in on the table, I’ll put an oxygen mask on your mouth and nose that will give you a nice dose of nitrous oxide. You’ll feel very relaxed and, hopefully, you’ll fall asleep and sleep through the rest of the procedure. While you’re out, the doctor will use a small vacuum device to perform an electric vacuum aspiration…”

“An EVA, yes I remember that,” Gigi said.

“That’s right,” Nurse Brenda continued, “and once that’s over, we’ll clean you up real nice and send you home with a bottle of antibiotics - make sure you take them all, now Gigi - and some pain pills if you think you’ll need them. Some girls do and some don’t, but it’s better to have them and not need them, than to need them and not have them, right?” Nurse Brenda did not wait for Gigi to agree before continuing, “You can expect a little bit of a blood flow tonight, some spotting for the next couple of days and by the end of the week, you should be right as rain.”

While she had been talking, Nurse Brenda had ushered Gigi through an open door into what Gigi took to be the treatment room. There was a small waist-high stainless steel sink next to a paper towel dispenser. The main feature of the room was an ox-blood red leather examination table with the top half tilted upward slightly and the lower half dominated by insectile steel stirrups. On the leather table was a white-with-pink-polka-dots hospital gown, neatly folded. Nurse Brenda quietly closed the treatment room and continued her stream of conversation uninterrupted.

“Here, let me help you get undressed,” Nurse Brenda said as she unbuttoned Gigi’s blouse and removed it. The Valiums were really kicking in and Gigi found herself lying back on the table, the cold red leather sticking to her bare back, and she had no recollection of finishing undressing, putting on the gown or stepping up onto the stool beside the table.

“That’s a good girl, Gigi,” Nurse Brenda said as she straightened Gigi’s gown and gently placed her hand under Gigi’s naked thigh, lifting it. “Just relax. Lay back and spread your legs…”

Gigi giggled, That’s what got me into this mess in the first place!

“…And put your feet into the stirrups. Now just relax and if you feel like closing your eyes and taking a nap, go ahead, it’s perfectly fine.” Gigi could hear Nurse Brenda moving about the treatment room and the pitter-patter of metal and glass things bumping into each other.

“Now you’ll feel a little prick…”

Wow, talk about a theme!

“… but don’t worry. I’m just putting in an IV tube so we can give you some fluid if we need to; nothing to worry about.”

Gigi felt the needle stick and Nurse Brenda taped the plastic tube to her forearm. Gigi closed her eyes as Nurse Brenda fit the plastic oxygen mask over her mouth and pinched the little metal strip to snuggly fit the bridge of her nose.

“Now I’m going to turn on the nitrous oxide - just like we talked about, Gigi, remember? - and while it works I want you to count backward from one hundred, okay?”

“Uh, huh,” Gigi said. She could feel the warmth flowing into her nose and across her chest. From there it was only a few seconds until her whole body was practically glowing.

“One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety nine…”

And she slipped into sleep.

 

* * *

 

The first thing Gigi heard when she was jerked from sleep was the whining of an electric motor. Overwhelming that was a man cursing and a woman - Nurse Brenda? - babbling “Yes, doctor” over and over.

And then the pain hit.

And then the only sound Gigi heard was her own screaming.

She felt like a pair of socks that were being turned inside out together to be stowed in a dresser drawer, except her vulva was the mouth of the uppermost sock and her insides were being pulled out through it. She could feel the doctor maneuvering the vacuum hose inside her and could feel each chunk of the inside of her uterus as it broke free and went into the mouth of the hose. Some parts hung on tenaciously and refused to yield to the force of nature; nature may abhor a vacuum, but whatever was inside her uterus abhorred defeat even more.

“Aiiieeee! God, oh, God! Stop it!” Gigi yelled as Nurse Brenda - still babbling, only now her platitudes were directed to Gigi - tried to calm her down. Her farmer’s wife arms pressed down on Gigi’s chest, pinning her to the examination table.

“Calm down, dear. Calm, down, everything’s going to be fine,” she was saying, but the look of horror on her face named the lie for what it was.

“Dammit, hold the woman still!” the doctor yelled. “What the hell is inside her? I’ve never seen anything…”

Another wave of pain obliterated the doctor’s voice.

“… crank up the nitrous, Brenda! Knock her ass out before she ruptures something and bleeds out…”

“Yes, doctor,” Nurse Brenda said and laid her ample upper body across Gigi while her free hand found the handle on the top of the nitrous tank and opened it all the way.

“Holy Moses and Mohammad! What is…” the doctor gasped.

“Oh, my God!” Nurse Brenda yelled.

The tidal wave of fresh agony washed over Gigi and she faded into the welcoming arms of the anesthetic.

 

* * *

 

“Gigi, dear? Are you awake?” Nurse Brenda asked in a gentle, but firm, voice as she rubbed her knuckles across the top of Gigi’s breastbone. “That’s a good girl,” she said as Gigi’s eyes fluttered open.

Gigi took a great breath and sat up. She looked around the room - a doctor’s office, not the treatment room where she had fallen asleep - on the verge of panic. Something was wrong - something was supposed to be wrong, her mind was telling her. She had faint images of the treatment room, incredible pain, yelling, something fighting to remain inside her…

“There, there. Relax. Everything’s over and you’re just fine,” Nurse Brenda said. She had a cold, damp cloth and was pressing it first against Gigi’s forehead, then one cheek, then the other: a pattern she repeated over and over. “You had a couple of little complications during the procedure, Gigi, and the doctor had make an adjustment. Rather than a standard EVA, he decided that you needed a D & C - that’s a dilation and curettage, dear - to make sure all the foreign material was out of your system. It took a little longer than normal but everything’s fine now.”

During the entire monologue, Nurse Brenda had not met Gigi’s eyes once. They flew around the room, looking at everything except Gigi’s face.

“Over? I’m all done?” Gigi asked, confused. She saw that she was now dressed in the clothes she had worn to the clinic earlier in the day. Her abdomen felt strangely flat and numb and she could feel an extra-large pad resting between her legs. “I’m dressed?”

“Yes, dear, we got you all dressed and ready to go. You probably don’t remember it - nitrous oxide can sometime leave you with a little retrograde amnesia - but you got dressed a little while ago - with my help, of course - and we let you lay down in here until your ride home arrived. He’s just arrived so you’re all ready,” Nurse Brenda said as she helped Gigi to her feet. Nurse Brenda pressed Gigi’s handbag into her left hand and took her by the right hand to steady her as she stood.

“I’ve put your antibiotics and your pain medicine in your purse. Be sure to check your pad as soon as you get home and change it if necessary. If not, be sure to put a fresh pad on before you go to bed for the night, whether this one is soiled or not, alright? And take your medicine either with a snack or a glass of milk - I don’t imagine you’ll be hungry for a full meal just yet, the nitrous suppresses the appetite for a few hours - but don’t take it on an empty stomach.”

While she had been instructing Gigi on what to do, she had been steering her out of the office, down the hall and into the waiting room. A middle-aged man who smelled of tobacco - both smoked and chawed - stood just inside the door, like he was afraid to venture too far into the feminine domain. Nurse Brenda helped Gigi out the door, down the sidewalk - it was already twilight, Gigi noticed with alarm - and into the back seat of the taxi. The driver got into his seat and just before Nurse Brenda closed the door she said to him, “Now you remember, you’ve already been paid for this fare and you’re supposed to help this girl out of the car and into her front door. And don’t you dawdle around hoping for a tip, either, mind you. You’ve been paid enough.”

With a final pat on the back of Gigi’s hand, Nurse Brenda closed the door and was gone. Gigi could just see her hurrying up the sidewalk in the fading light, dry-washing her hands as if they had been contaminated with something unclean and contagious.

 

* * *

 

As she had on the ride to the clinic that morning - Was it really just this morning? She asked herself - she fell into a light sleep as the rhythm of the taxi’s tires on the brick streets sang her a lullaby. Before she knew it, the ride was over and the foul-smelling little man had ushered her to her front door and waited while she unlocked the door and went in. The stranger had not said a word to her or anyone else the entire time she had been in his presence and she wondered if he could speak at all.

Not at all like Nurse Brenda, Gigi thought. I think I like the old man better. His silence feels more sincere than her incessant chatter. I wonder what she’s trying to hide behind that wall of words she surrounds herself with? What questions does she avoid by not giving anyone the opportunity to ask them?

Gigi hung her sweater on the coat tree by the door and walked across floor of her living room in the dark. She laid her handbag on the bar and flipped on the kitchen light. She jumped and let out a brief squeak. For just a split second she thought she had seen someone standing in the middle of the kitchen - a child? - but when the light came on the kitchen was empty.

She giggled nervously and muttered, “That’s some good shit, Garth. Now when do we eat?”

The mention of food sent her stomach into free fall and she knew then and there that regardless of Nurse Brenda’s instructions, she was not eating anything substantial anytime soon. She rummaged through the pantry and came out with some Town House crackers and a can of aerosol cheese left over from a New Year’s party she had hosted several months earlier. The expiration date on the cheese was still a good two-and-a-half years off, although the crackers were getting a little closer to the garbage bin. In the refrigerator she found an unopened quart of milk and poured herself a short glass. A few hors d'oeuvres later and she had reached the limit of what she could eat.

“I guess that falls somewhere between a snack and a meal,” she said. From her handbag she retrieved two bottles of medicine and read the labels. The antibiotics were straightforward: Take two tablets twice a day with food or milk. Cool, I’ve got food and milk covered, she thought and downed two of the pills. The pain pills were a little more subjective: Take one pill as needed for pain, not to exceed six pills in any 24-hour period. At the moment she was not hurting - that eerie numbness within her still reigned supreme - but a harsh memory of unbearable pain goaded her into taking one of the pain pills, too.

After a quick clean up of her little snack time, she meandered toward the bedroom. It was full dark now, but she navigated her little home with confidence, even without a light. She sat on the edge of her bed and suddenly became aware of the pad she was wearing. Sighing, she stood up and slipped out of the flats she was wearing, kicking them across the floor in the general direction of her closet. The pants and shirt she laid at the foot of her bed. Once in the bathroom she lowered her panties and saw that, while not a lot of blood was there, there was more than enough blood present to justify a new pad. Before she did that, however, she shed her bra and bent over turning the shower on. While the water heated up, the pad was disposed of in the silver waste canister and the bra and panties were dropped in the hamper.

Steam was filling the bathroom when she stepped over the bathtub rim and into the tub itself, under the luxuriant hot water. It washed over her body and down into the tub, the heat turning her skin pink. After she had enjoyed the sensation for a few moments, she reached up to the little tray hanging below the shower nozzle for the bottle of liquid soap and the round, fluffy loofah.

A tinkling of laughter startled her. She jumped, and might have slid down in the tub had she not grabbed the shower rod that was firmly set into the wall at each end.

She heard the laughter again and knew it was from very close by: a child’s laughter - a girl child, by the sound of it.

“Ha ha! Mama’s nakey!”

She threw back the shower curtain and peered into the steam.

“Who’s there? Is someone there?” She asked.

A lightning bolt of pain seared through her abdomen and down toward her groin, so sharp and hard that she doubled over.

“It’s me, Mama,” the little voice said. “Mama got a tummy ache?”

The pain subsided enough for Gigi to turn off the water and stand back up. The steam was clearing and she could see that she was alone in the bathroom.

“OK, Garth, forget what I said about this being some good shit. I think we got some muy malo weed,” Gigi said.

She quickly toweled off from her aborted shower and decided that a proper shower could wait until morning. After affixing a new pad to her fresh panties, she slipped them on and pulled a baggy and well-worn University of Texas Longhorns t-shirt over her head. She had never been to UT, did not know anyone who had, but it was on clearance at Wal-mart a few years ago and quickly became her favorite sleep shirt.

She opened the bathroom door and the chill from the less humid bedroom gave her goosebumps - at least that what she told herself when she felt the little hairs on her arm stand up. She reached over to turn the bathroom light off, had a second thought and left it on, pulling the door closed to just a crack.

Jesus, Georgia! Get hold of yourself. You haven’t needed a night light since grade school.

However, the self-chastisement did not shame her to the point of turning the light off.

Unsure exactly how long she might need to be off work, she had made arrangements for her shift to be covered the next morning; therefore, she had no need to set her alarm before she crawled into bed. The thought of sleeping in an extra day was relaxing as she nestled herself under the covers and turned over onto her side facing the wall - her favored position in which to begin the night - and settled in for some sleep.

“Nite nite, Mama,” the girl’s voice said from the dark and Gigi jumped upright in the bed, looking around.

“Who the hell said that?” Gigi yelled. “Who’s doing this to me?”

The light from the cracked bathroom door yielded no secrets in the darkened room. She was alone.

She forced herself to lie back down, this time with her back to the wall and facing the empty room. For a long time - at least in her mind it was a long time - she watched the room, her eyes searching out every darkened corner and shadowed nook for signs of movement. After a while she must have allowed herself to fall asleep because she awoke with a start. She was lying on her back and the covers were pressed tightly over her face and she was having difficulty breathing.

“Tuck Mama in,” the little voice said. “Tuck her in good an’ tight.”

Gigi fought against the sheet and comforter pressing against her face and robbing her of breath. She could feel a weight pressing and, rather than darkness, she was seeing stars as her brain was deprived of precious oxygen. She pushed and kicked, panicking, trying to yell but needing air to make a sound: her throat did not accommodate simultaneous two-way traffic.

Suddenly the pressure was gone and Gigi threw the cover off her face, exposing herself to the sweet, cool air and taking long, deep breaths. She looked around and saw no one.

That was not a nightmare! Someone was trying to smother me! Her reptile brain said inside her head.

Well, where are they now? The rational brain countered. No one would have had time to run away without me seeing them.

Unable to just lie back down after the… Well, what was it, Georgia? An episode? An assault? An attempted murder? A nightmare?

She got out of bed and turned the bedroom light on. The light was sufficient to light her way to the kitchen, so she padded down the hall to get a drink. Still shaking from the encounter, she opened the cabinet and brought down another short glass, this time filling it half full with Absolut 100 she kept in the freezer. The thick, cold alcohol burned her throat pleasantly; not at all like the burning she experienced gasping for air.

After another half-glass, she replaced the vodka bottle in the freezer, put the glass in the sink and went back down the hall to the bedroom. She closed the bedroom door and pressed against the door with her palm to make sure the door was secure. Not needing to visit the bathroom - and be forced to humiliate herself further by once again choosing to leave the light on - she crawled back into bed.

The vodka had warmed her stomach and she was floating in that happy place betwixt and between waking and sleep when her almost-closed eyes saw movement across the room. The figure she had first glimpsed in the darkened kitchen when she returned home was now in her bedroom. It was a tiny little girl, barely old enough to be walking alone with confidence. The scant light did not illuminate the face, but Gigi could see the little girl was wearing a frilly red dress, white knee-high socks and little red patent leather shoes. Her hair was dark and very curly, clinging closely to her head - Just like Ben’s hair. Not really an afro; more like a tight naturally curly crown of dark ringlets.

“Mama not sleepy?” The little girl said, stopping just short of where more details would be revealed to Gigi. “Le’s p’ay a game, Mama.”

Fear froze Gigi in the bed. Her hands were clinching the sheet in her fists and her legs were shaking, but she could not seem to move. The warmth in her stomach from the vodka was now a burning fire spreading out from her abdomen into her limbs. She could not move her arms or legs and could not make herself speak. The little girl took another step toward the bed and Gigi could make out her eyes and some facial features. The little girl had her hands behind her back, obviously trying to hide something in the way children often seek to fool their mothers.

“P’ay game, Mama?” she asked again.

Another step closer and Gigi could see the little girl’s face clearly. Gigi’s eyes opened wide in fear and shock and the barest croak escaped her throat in place of the scream that she intended.

The little girl’s skin was scaly like a lizard or snake; tiny pink scales spread across her nose and cheeks. Her eyes were golden and green and glowed with an inner light. When she opened her mouth to speak again, Gigi saw two rows of needle-sharp teeth with the top canines extended further than the other teeth like a snake’s fangs. A dark red pencil-think forked tongue danced behind blood-red lips.

“Le’s p’ay doctor, Mama,” she said. “Like we p’ayed a’fore, okay?”

She was right next to the bed now and from behind her back she now revealed what she had been hiding: a short, wicked little knife with a hooked blade no thicker than the child’s index finger. Moving too quickly for Gigi to follow precisely, the little girl swiped the blade at Gigi’s chest, slicing the sheet and Longhorn t-shirt. Gigi’s right breast poked out of the slit and the little girl eyed it hungrily. The hand that did not hold the knife cupped Gigi’s exposed breast and Gigi watched in horror as the thumbnail and index fingernail began to grow into two sharp talons. The little girl flicked her hand and the two claws sunk deeply into the breast.

Gigi was able to scream now and she screamed for all she was worth.

“Tickle Mama?” the little girl asked and twisted her hand, widening the already bleeding holes and tearing the tender flesh. “Laugh, Mama. Tickle, tickle.”

Gigi screamed again as the knife blade sliced again exposing her other breast and slicing a scarlet ribbon across her chest. Giggling, the little monster ripped with talons that now tipped each finger of her hands, ripping and pulling at Gigi’s increasingly bloody body.

“P’ay doctor wi’ me, Mama! P’ay doctor! See what doctor did to baby? Doctor pull baby apart piece by piece. Doctor not nice to baby. Why Mama take baby to doctor? Why, Mama?”

Screaming and twisting in the blood-soaked bed, writhing in the covers…

And then Gigi woke up.

She was covered in a cold sweat, the bed as wet as if she had peed in her sleep. She pulled the covers back - they were no longer slashed, but as whole as ever - and she checked her body for injuries and found none. She collapsed backwards into the bed, her head hitting the pillow in relief and she giggled nervously, “What a dream? What a frickin’ nightmare! No more pills and booze in the same night for you, Georgia!”

She felt a sticky wetness between her legs and when she checked, she found the pad had absorbed its limit and begun leaking. The struggling must have incited the bleeding. When she had washed the blood from her thighs and replaced the soiled pad and panties, she felt a pang of hunger. She looked at the clock across the room: one fifteen in the morning. She turned off the bathroom light with a sigh.

Fat lot of good you did me earlier. Might as well save the money and sleep in the dark, huh?

Another trip down the hall and into the kitchen ended with another round of stale crackers and canned cheese, topped off by a full glass of milk.

Maybe the milk’ll counteract that frickin’ medicine.

Once again cleaning up after herself and making a mental note to unload the dishwasher first thing in the morning so she could load up the increasing inventory of dirty dishes in the sink, she went back to bed.

Tossing back and forth for a few minutes, not quite comfortable with re-entering the land of dreams so soon after the two nightmares, Gigi finally found a sweet spot and drifted off.

Almost immediately she was once again jarred from sleep by the little demon child.

“I’m co’d, Mama,” the child said, and Gigi realized this time the monster was in bed with her, pressing her scaly - and quite chilly - little body against Gigi. “Is it ‘u’posed t’ be col’, Mama? I don’ like it. Doctor took me outta th’ warm spot, Mama. Took baby out in pieces. Now baby’s col’.”

Gigi could feel the claw-tipped fingers rubbing her stomach, and the vile little face pressing against her now bare breasts, the snaky tongue darting out to lick Gigi’s nipples as if the demon wanted to suckle. She was unable to move, but at least she could speak.

“What are you?” she screamed. “Why are you tormenting me? For God’s sake someone wake me UP!”

Gigi tried to write free of the probing hands and tongue to no avail.

“Col’ Mama. Baby col’. Let me back in, Mama,” the child said and thrust its claws into Gigi’s belly ripping it open and forcing itself into the gash, wiggling itself into her.

“Better, Mama. Not so col’ now,” it said just before Gigi lurched upright in the bed and was awake.

“Shit! Shit! Shit! What the HELL is going on with my mind?” Gigi yelled as she jumped out of bed and flipped on the bedroom light, once again checking her body and finding herself whole.

The alarm clock said it was half-past four and Gigi decided this night was over.

“I ain’t going back to sleep until all this shit is out of my system and my mind is back to normal,” she mumbled to herself as she stripped off the soaking wet t-short and panties and turned the shower on. This time she left the bathroom door open as she quickly washed the night sweats off herself and then toweled off. A loose pair of jogging shorts - Gigi had never jogged a day in her life, but the shorts made her legs and ass look good, she thought - and a tank top covered fresh panties and a sports bra. She brushed her hair, working out the tangles she had acquired during her imaginary ordeal and went into the living room.

It was too early for anything worthwhile to be on television, so she decided to make herself a proper meal while she thought about how to spend the morning. A veggie omelet, some sourdough toast and a few cups of fresh coffee and she would be back to her old self and ready to face the day.

She opened the refrigerator to get the butter and eggs. Sitting on the shelf was the demon child, swinging its legs back and forth. In its clawed hands it held one of Gigi’s large butcher knives. Before Gigi could respond it hurled itself off the shelf, out of the refrigerator and begun to plunge the knife into Gigi’s chest over and over.

The last thing Gigi heard was the little creature’s wail, “Peek-a-boo, Mama!”

 

* * *

 

Ben Kelly closed the door to his apartment, locked the doorknob and flipped the deadbolt. He went to the bar that separated his little living room from his even littler kitchen and poured himself a glass of bourbon. He emptied the drink in two gulps and poured himself another. This one he sipped as he collapsed on the couch.

“Hell of a day. One hell of a day,” he sighed.

He sat the drink on the coffee table, stripped off the black suit jacket and black silk tie, unbuttoning the first two buttons of his dress shirt. He hated funerals, and no one would have missed him if he had just blown it off; but that was not Ben. He and Gigi had been a couple for most of a year, and even though things had ended badly, he still felt obliged to pay his last respects.

Ben was still troubled by Gigi’s death. The coroner had ruled it an accidental overdose of pain pills and alcohol. Gigi had come home from the abortionist - Excuse the hell outta me, Ben thought, ‘the women’s clinic’ - taken some pain meds and had few drinks. She had then went to bed and never woke up. Her boss had finally alerted the police when Gigi had missed work for several days and they had found her in the bed, several days dead. The undertaker had been unable to make the corpse presentable, but it had mattered little because Gigi’s ‘progressive thinking’ parents had opted to have her cremated. The ceremony had been a simple service by the lake, a non-traditional minister muttering ecumenical universal platitudes who then returned Gigi’s ashes ‘to the earth mother.’

Ben finished off the second bourbon, sighed and stood up. He was too tired to fix himself supper, so he went to the bathroom to take a shower. Just before he reached the bedroom door, as he was reaching for the light switch he heard a little girl’s voice from the darkness say, “Peek-a-boo, Daddy.”

---

Peek-A-Boo, Mama was originally published in

 

Bloodlines

 

           Copyright © April 2011 by Curtis Leon Collier

 

 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system without the express written permission of the copyright holder except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

           

 Certain characters in this work are historical figures, and certain events portrayed did take place. However, this is a work of fiction. All of the other characters, names and events as well as all places, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

           

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          ISBN: 978-0-9826669-20 (Kindle/Mobi)

 

          ISBN: 978-1-257-74668-2 (E-Pub)

 

          ISBN: 978-0-9826669-13 (Print/PDF)

 

           

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