creepypasta origins

A bad case of the baby blues

WARNINGS: None

He was perfect. Ten tiny fingers, ten tiny toes. Everyone said he looked just like me. We brought him home from the hospital to his freshly painted nursery and spent the next few weeks in a blur of feedings and diapers and sleep deprivation. We were exhausted but happy.

He was about a month old when she came into the kitchen while I was making breakfast. She had an odd look on her face, one I'd never seen before. I asked her if she was all right.

"There's something wrong with the baby," she said.

I dropped the pan of eggs and ran down the hall to the nursery. He was on his back in the crib, kicking his chubby legs and looking up at the mobile above him. When he saw me, his mouth opened in a wide happy baby grin. I lifted him from the crib and turned around. She was standing in the doorway.

"He seems fine to me. What's wrong with him?"

"He..." She struggled for words. "He... said something. He spoke."

I looked down at the baby snuggled on my chest, an infant who could barely hold his own head up.

"He must have made some sound that you mistook for words." She didn't respond. "What did you think he said?"

She hesitated. "He told me to eat shit," she said finally.

I couldn't help it. I laughed. Her odd expression changed to anger.

"I mean, come on. He says a dozen things a day that sound like 'eat shit'." She left the doorway, her face stony. I followed her down the hall. "Why are you so upset about this?"

She spun to face me. "Because he -" she jabbed a finger at the baby on my chest - "looked me dead in the eye, and very clearly said, 'Eat shit'. With enunciated t's and everything." And she slammed the bedroom door in my face.

Things got worse after that. She heard the baby say many terrible things, none of which ever happened in front of anyone but her. She gradually stopped caring for him, refusing to feed him or hold him or even be near him. I became his sole provider. Eventually she broke down. It was inevitable. She'd stopped eating, stopped sleeping. I found her one morning in the bathroom, her stiffening body lying in a tub full of water and blood.

After all the official people left, taking with them my dead wife, I went into the nursery to lay my son in his crib. I unsnapped his onesie and removed the tiny speaker. I looked up at the mobile, with its camera hidden inside the zebra. It was so easy to synch real words to his senseless babble. I decided to leave the camera, it was a good baby monitor. I kissed his forehead and turned off the light, closing the door halfway. I could hear his gurgles and coos as I walked down the hall to call my girlfriend and tell her it was done.

A/N... what?