13|thirteen

0|zero

It would be his third time.

It would be his third child.

It would be the third time he was to stand outside their room as his wife went into labour—the doors barred and the windows locked from him. It was a cold and despondent night, a full and heavy moon hung in the sky and a still and silent wind lay suspended in the rooms. All the curtains were drawn against the windows and thick incense rolled like Death’s grip along the tall and twisted hallways, creeping, searching… taking. There were no stars, suffocated and snuffed out, and there was no compassion or kindness.

There were only the choking expectations and selfish wants.

It was not romantic—there was no room for romances in this hedonistic, cursed and truly horrific gothic structure. There was nothing here save for walls and locked doors, no air or water. It was a piece of flat and unforgiving architecture given existence merely to denote his position and lineage.

His lineage—how he both detested and craved his lineage. How he brought both the scythe and the basket to his lineage. His bloodline was like weeds, thousands of seeds (of bastard sons) and spores (of abandoned daughters) spoiling the land and ruining the earth. Heads could be cut, pulled, strangled, but the root was too buried deep, too self-servingly strong and too greedily gluttonous to be rid of so easily, so completely.

And now the root had their cruel and loathing tendrils around his wife, and that he could not abide by. He could tolerate many things. They could take his allegiance. They could take his fortune. They could take his son and daughter and the progeny yet to come—but they would not take his wife. He would not consent to it.

 He could hear them now, their spies, so odious and offensive, skittering down the halls and pressing their ears against the walls, waiting for the child. They, like him, waited for the cry—the cry that would be an end knell, an end to the illness and suffering of his wife as it took another piece of her to the nursery. It would be locked away like the others, as was his wont, but not never to be seen again, as was his wife’s wont.

He had wanted to stop; she had not. He had done his duty by procuring an heir for them, then a daughter for his wife, but his wife had persisted on a third. His wife had wanted to do her duty by them, by giving them a male spare. A daughter would never be good enough, obstructed by her sex to be truly capable. But he knew the third would never be good enough either: it was to be a girl as well.

They would have more spawns; they would take more portions of her; they would throttle her with their thorns as she increased with each passing month. Husband and wife were to have children; babes were to feed from their mothers; the elders were to be obeyed.

He never had cause to denounce his bloodline’s wickedness, never had due cause until that bloodline infected, dirtied and diseased his wife, growing from within her and ripping through her tissue and muscles. He could never be agreeable with her countenance after each ordeal, pale, weak, and so desperately hoping to please them—him.

His wife did not know that she already pleased him, or he would not have offered for her—would not have stayed after their first night. Her only want was her fancifulness.

The door opened and a grotesque and misshapen servant limped onto the balcony. She hobbled a bow and he slid past her, her whispering wheeze of congrats ignored. He slipped through the curtains and into the bedroom, halting at the foot of the bed as the servants, nurses and doctors carried away the bloodied bed sheets and polluted water basins. He paid them no heed, watching his pale, weak and desperate-to-please wife meet his eyes with a brittle and hopeful smile. The lights had been replaced by dim candles, and all was bleak and dark.