Special Delivery

Flash-fiction - by C. K. Butcher

Ella screamed and pushed. She wasn’t sure she could take much more. 

Robin, her midwife, drew her eyebrows together. “Just a couple more pushes, love. That’s all it should take,” she said. 

Ella licked her lips, tasting the salt of her sweat. Her dark hair stuck to her face, and exhaustion wracked her body. Drawing herself up, she took a deep breath and pushed again. Another scream ripped from her throat, but she was rewarded with a feeling of release, and a piercing cry rang through the room. 

“It’s a boy,” Robin said.  

Ella fell back on the bed, a grin plastered across her pale face despite her fatigue. Victor moved to Robin’s side, his tall frame towering above her, and stared down at his son. 

Silence. 

“Is something wrong?” Ella asked, taking in the troubled looks on their faces.

“Of course not,” Robin said. “Everything’s fine. Sometimes babies look a little off after a long labor–and you’ve been pushing for hours. Things will straighten out soon enough, I’m sure.”

Ella’s heart lurched, and she reached for the baby. Robin cleaned the baby with the strips of wet cloth she had previously prepared and swaddled him. She handed him to Victor, who brought him to Ella. 

Peering down at his face, she noted his features were a bit peculiar, though it was hard to tell in the dim candlelight. She stroked her finger across his soft head, covered with peach fuzz hair, and then froze. 

“What’s wrong with his ears?” she asked. Robin shuffled her feet and smoothed her apron, avoiding eye contact.

Ella stared more closely and noticed the odd angle of the eyes. The nose that was a bit too rounded. The mouth with its full lips. She fought against the lump lodged in her throat. He was beautiful. Still, her heart sank a little as she studied his features. 

“Is he alright?” Ella asked.

“Well, he does seem a little… unusual. But it’s likely just a temporary abnormality,” Robin said. “I suspect in a couple of weeks he’ll look much… better.” 

Ella nodded, swallowing hard, while Victor rubbed her back. She couldn’t quite read Victor’s expression. His jaw was set, and his muscles were taut. She breathed in and slowly exhaled. 

“Don’t worry, darling, everything will be fine,” Victor said, wrapping his arm around her and smiling down at them. Ella smiled back and leaned into Victor’s embrace, knowing they could handle anything together.

Ella stared at the sleeping child, wrapped in a fuzzy blanket in the wicker bassinet. The flickering candlelight cast odd shadows around the room, causing her to shiver. She had tried. She really had. But every time she put the baby to her breast, she cringed. She couldn’t even look at him while he suckled. A normally tender moment between mother and child was instead a grueling act, made worse by the fact that the baby had been slow to gain weight and often threw up his milk. 

She’d hoped his features would shift, would change, but they’d only become more foreign. Once unswaddled, the baby’s arms and legs were noticeably too short, mere nubs of what she’d expected. His high-pitched cry pierced through to her bones.

And his smell. She sometimes had to hold her nose when she was near him. Ella didn’t think she had really noticed the scent of a baby before. But their baby smelled… odd. Off. Like he didn’t belong, reeking of otherness.

Victor seemed less bothered by these anomalies, which made her feel even worse. She was a terrible mother! How could she have these feelings for her own child? She should love him no matter what. And she did, or at least tried to. 

They hadn’t given him a name yet. They couldn’t think of anything fitting. Nothing seemed quite right. They had wanted a baby so badly, and it had taken years for her to finally get pregnant. It seemed like the universe was playing some cruel trick on them. 

“Is he mine?” Victor once asked her, the accusation punching her in the gut. “I’ve heard stories of affairs between one of us and… one of them. You can tell me. I will love him no matter what.” She had slapped him. Her pain and grief were too much at that moment. Of course, he was Victor’s. This was the baby they made. Somehow. 

Robin was overwrought. She’d continued to visit and check on Ella and the baby to make sure everything was going well. It wasn’t. She’d thought things would have sorted out by now, but the truth was becoming harder to deny.

“He isn’t gaining weight properly. He’s not as healthy as he should be,” Robin said after checking Ella and the baby.

Robin suggested they visit a doctor, but Ella and Victor were too terrified of what the doctor might say and of the looks he would give their child. Ella also worried about how he might look at her. Maybe the same way Victor sometimes did. Besides, the closest doctor was a couple of villages away, a few hours by horse. 

So, they kept to themselves, hoping each day that the baby would begin to change. It would be more like they expected. Would begin to thrive.

Ella sighed. She’d been pondering for days, weeks. The knot in her stomach had grown until it seemed to consume her entire being. Though the thought made her sick, there seemed to be only one solution. Robin had suggested it. She’d been asking around throughout neighboring villages and heard of one similar case in another village a few years back. The rumors suggested that the grandmother of one of the parents had had an unseemly affair. The genetic proof only coming out a couple of generations later. The neighbors had nearly burned the house down, trying to rid the town of the aberration. Robin told them of the parents’ decision. The act that had saved their child’s life.  

“We have to do it,” Ella said, her voice low and filled with sorrow. 

“Why?” Victor challenged, rubbing his hands over his face. “We can keep him inside. No one will see him. See how different he is.” 

Tears streamed down Ella’s cheeks. “You can’t keep a child locked up inside. What kind of life is that?” she said. “Besides, you know everyone will know. They’ll figure it out. They’ll know he isn’t one of us. They’ll kill him!” 

Victor’s eyes filled with unshed tears as he stared at the baby and nodded. He picked him up and took him to the old wooden rocking chair—one last lullaby. He stroked the baby’s soft hair and skin, trying his best not to stare at his ears, the awkward limbs, the odd quirk of his mouth.

Ella placed the basket on the porch and then knocked on the door. She fled down the steps and across the road to the dark shelter of the trees. Victor embraced her, tears streaking down his cheeks as he held her. 

The door opened, and an old man in a priest’s habit stepped out and looked around. The warm glow of the porch light created a halo around his head—like a Guardian Angel. He started when he noticed the basket. Bending down, he moved the blanket aside to see the mewling baby. He looked around again, searching, but Ella and Victor were well hidden. The priest picked up the basket and went inside. 

Victor stroked Ella’s hair, pushing a long strand behind her pointed ear. A shape they had longed to see on their son but which never formed. It was clear their son, somehow, was human. And now he would be able to live among his own kind. Could flourish.

He took Ella’s hand, and they moved into the forest, back toward their own world.