РОЖДЕНИЕ/BIRTH

BIRTH

I lie there, sprawled open like a carcass on a cutting table. In this sterile hell, where even the air seems tinged with pain, I feel something inside me tearing. The pain whips from within like a bare nerve being tugged with blunt pliers. There are people all around, all in white, like a goddamn masquerade of death. They fidget, touching me with cold hands, but I'm just a piece of meat to be cut and mended. They say something reassuring, but their words are as empty as a dead stare, and I want only one thing: for this to be over.

Each new spasm is a hammer blow to my bones, as if they're about to shatter into splinters. I can feel my body betraying me, tearing apart to spit this thing out into the world. Yes, the thing. That lump of pain and hatred that started gnawing at me from the inside out back when it first started growing. It turns me inside out, every movement is like a knife slowly and methodically slicing me from the inside out.

Blood is flowing, running down my thighs, mixing with sweat and tears. Warm, sticky-it's like it's draining from my very soul, taking the last crumbs of humanity with it. I don't feel human anymore. I'm just a shell, a machine for the production of pain and hate.

And now, it's coming out. It's not a child, it's something alien, hostile. As it leaves my body, I feel an emptiness inside me. But not a normal void, but a black hole that's ready to swallow everything in its path. The nurse holds it up to me, but I don't want to see it. I don't want to see the thing that will remind me of everything I've been through.

She shoves it into my hands and I instinctively grab it, but inside everything screams with disgust. That face is his face. Wrinkled, ugly, but in every curve of it I see the features of the man who did this to me. Just looking at it makes me sick. I feel that scream - a scream from the very depths of my being - tearing outward, but I hold it inside. I won't let them see that I've been broken.

All I feel is hatred. For myself, for him, for this damned creature that now lies in my arms. I want to throw him away, to hurl him away, but I can't. These fucking instincts make me hold him tighter, even though every moment, every move he makes makes makes me cringe.

I'm not a person anymore. I'm just a shell, stripped of anything human. What came out of me ripped out the remnants of my soul with it, leaving only coldness and pain. And that scream stuck in my throat will be with me forever.