HCE received a lot of high-quality submissions for The Green Issue – sadly, too many to fit inside the magazine! So we offered some writers and artists who’d sent in work the chance to be published here on the website. Keep an eye on our social media for more great work like this, now that The Green Issue print magazine has been released! (For more information or to purchase your copy, visit our shop.)
Lou Siday
Alien Baby
It has been three weeks and my belly has swollen almost double in size. Sometimes in the dark I can see it glowing. I will try to sleep but sleep never comes, and if it does, it doesn’t stay for long. I pull the covers back and stare at my naked stomach. A dim green light is coming from just below my belly button. Perhaps I am hallucinating it, perhaps it is afterimage from the green lights I saw just before I was taken.
This swelling cannot be a hallucination though, it is definitely there. I can’t fit into jeans anymore. I have to wear my nightdress all day and all night. It is off-white and stained, dried blood around the bottom half. But nobody sees me now so it doesn’t matter. I don’t even open my curtains. Since I was taken my life has been an endless night, an endless night with no sleep, no matter how hard I try.
I don’t dare touch my stomach. It is foreign, my body does not belong to me anymore. Sometimes I will float a trembling hand above the swelling, but I feel the energy pushing me away. So instead I just lie there, staring at the green glow under my pale skin. And I try to think of what to do next. The day I noticed the growth, it was like a death sentence. I have often wondered how that would feel – standing in the courtroom as a conscious being and a thud of a gavel later knowing it would be no more. You would be no more. Well that day I saw the growth I heard that gavel. I heard the jury whisper and I felt the judge’s gaze.
And there my life was split in two. My time before the event, my time after. Reminiscing on the before I feel a sense of embarrassment, a shame tied to my innocence. I did not know of a world outside what I perceived. I worked, I drank, and I was content. My mind was occasionally drawn to the skies, a fleeting moment of curiosity when I saw the stars on clear nights. But the stars and their inhabitants were in the sky, and I had my feet firmly on the earth. That’s what I had believed.
The first week I tried to figure out what I had done to deserve this. My whimsical attempts at some earthly philosophy made me assume that for every bad thing there was a reason. Bad energy breeds bad energy. I was being punished for the hedonism that the western world supplies me and that I so greedily lap up. I filled my life with electronic waves and screens. For me, being taken was revenge. I was looking away from the bigger picture, I was avoiding reality. I thought that’s why they took me.
But, realistically I was just the wrong girl in the wrong place. Does this make it easier or harder? Perhaps if there was some moral reason for my suffering I could rationalise it in my mind and reconcile myself with the facts. By the second week, I was deep into despair. It could have been anyone. Why was it me? It is not fair that it was me. This was when I stopped washing. I was getting bigger and couldn’t wear most of my clothes. So I began to wallow, lying in the dark in my nightdress, stinking of sweat and salt. I was too big to leave the house as I was afraid of bumping into someone I knew. The event so visible to everyone that would see me, my glowing stomach marked me as taken. As taken, as harmed, as dumped back in a drugged stupor, second guessing my memories and feeling removed from my own body as something else was implanted and growing.
What was I supposed to do? There were no warnings about this growing up – no advice leaflets handed out at school. You heard about it occasionally. A small, badly written article on some questionable news website. Of course, like everybody else, when I read these articles I laughed. There was no answer, though, in these news articles. In the first week I had spent most of the day researching on the internet, going through forum backlogs and news websites. I found some people that claimed they went through what was happening to me. They didn’t say what happened after. I gave up on looking for answers. My only option was to sit and wait.
It has been three weeks and it hurts to stand. I am running low on the cans of beans and spaghetti hoops I had stored in the back of my kitchen cupboard. I realise that I do not know how long this is going to last for; how long I will be trapped here for. I order a takeaway. As I walk to the door to get it, sweat runs down my back and drips onto the carpet, leaving stains. The delivery boy did not look me in the eye. He is the first human I have seen for three weeks. I want to invite him in. I want to tell him that there is something wrong with me, that I am scared and need help. I want to ask him if he knows what is happening to me. I don’t do any of these things, and as he leaves I start to cry.
After I eat my food I get back into bed. When I am lying on my back, the pain isn’t as bad. I spend most of the days lying here, watching the ceiling. It is pale yellow. I notice a cobweb in the corner, and a spider, wringing its hands.
As the evening draws in, a thudding sound starts coming from my stomach. I put two fingertips on my wrist, to check it against my own beat. It is not. There are two heartbeats coming from my body, one from my own heart, one from another. This foreign thudding vibrates my whole body. The waves travel down my veins, pulsating under my skin. Whatever is growing inside of me is now dissatisfied with being restricted to my stomach. It wants my entire body. It is after my entire life. I take off my nightdress and lie in the dark. The glow is still there, and perhaps now bigger, with green sparks dancing under my skin to every thud. They race down my arms and legs then disappear, like a flashing neon light at a dance club. I do not know what this means. My stomach is hurting.
My body keeps me awake – I cannot block out the heart in my stomach releasing thumps at the gap of my own loud heartbeat. Instead I attempt to picture a future, a future where my body is once again my own. But what if it doesn’t leave? How will I go on? I cannot go on at all like this, there must be an end.
I open my eyes and sit up. My eyes are now blurry, from tears or pain I do not know. Perhaps both. The aches in my body are becoming more and more frightening. They are vibrating my bones, my whole body is moving without my consent. I cry out as the green lights under my skin start flashing more rapidly.
I am lying on a cold steel table. I am not in my flat anymore. The room is filled with a terrible white light, dark shapes moving over me. Everything is a blur, I cannot make out if these shapes are people or objects. Or something worse. I try to say something but I can’t hear myself; my ears are filled with white noise and beeping. I try to speak, louder and louder. My legs are yanked apart, taped to metal poles. I cannot move. I black out.
I awake in my own bed. It takes me a few seconds to realise that I am back. I try to remember what just occurred. I wasn’t in my flat, I had been taken again. Instinctively, I reach my hand to my stomach. Where a being should be, there isn’t. I gaze down, my heart (and only mine) thudding. My belly has shrunk. I am lying naked and completely alone. There is a lump in my throat and suddenly I start crying. Tears run down my cheeks, landing on my empty body, my empty bones. I trace my fingers along my skin, feeling the bumps and the creases. My bumps; my creases. As I run my hands over my breasts and my stomach, I feel nothing but myself, except… I stop when I get to my inner thigh. I feel something there I have never felt there before. Something left on me. Something that still is not mine. I peer down at myself and see a bump. I press down on it and it moves – jumping an inch across my thigh. I press again and it does the same. Frustrated, I pull my hand back. I walk to my bathroom and look in the mirror. My body appears the same as it did before I was taken. I place my hand firmly on my stomach. I try to make out the small bump on my thigh, gazing at myself in the reflection. I turn on the shower. I haven’t showered for so long. It feels like years.
After washing, I dress in clean clothes. I leave my hair wet and my face clear and put my shoes on, stepping outside into the street. I feel watched, anxious of others. Yet nobody looks in my direction. People rush by, chatting under the morning sunshine. Nobody can see my small bump. Nobody can see my recent history, my branding and my crime. I start walking, feeling so light on my feet.
I walk to the coffee shop where my friend works. She hugs and asks me why I haven’t been answering any messages. I make some excuse and we go for lunch. She tells me what I have missed; how someone has started dating someone new, how someone else has lost their job. We say our goodbyes, she heads back to work. I wander around all afternoon, my freedom outshining the sun.
That night I am back in my flat. I shut my eyes, expecting sleep. Then I hear a beeping. I rise from my bed, scouring the flat for the noise. I look for an alarm, or a watch. However, the beeping sound does not get louder or quieter as I walk around; there is no way that I can follow the sound. It seems to be… following me. Then I realise. It is me. I double up, trying to get my head near my thigh. I listen as the beeping is coming from inside me. The small bump I am left with. A reminder of what happened, of what I am not allowed to forget. My questions are still not answered, the scars are still here.
And every night, when I try to sleep, I hear the beeping. I know I am being tracked, I know that’s what it is. And I know that they are probably going to come back. I will wait. In fear and in expectancy. Half of me wants them to return. For the foreignness of the growth, when it left I felt for a while as if something was missing. That it was a part of me. Or, rather, I feel that I am a part of it, whatever ‘it’ is. For this creature to take up home in my own body, I have somewhat helped in its creation and its existence. So now, I attempt to get on with my life. No different than before, except I am waiting. I will always be waiting.
“I have completed an MA in Creative Writing at Newcastle University, my dissertation piece being memoir writing mixed with magical realism. I was awarded a distinction for my MA. During my time I worked on an array of projects, such as short stories and screenplays. I am involved with the Bridges Magazine and one of my short stories, ’The Dancer’, and a flash fiction piece, ‘Butterflies’ were included in the anthology. I have performed these pieces at event such as the Bridges book launch and the MA Degree show. Furthermore, I regularly perform poetry and flash fiction at open mic nights around Newcastle.”