Eye of the Coven: Season 1

Season 1, Episode 5: What Haunted Her Before

BANDIT

Bandit opens her eyes in the crib that her tiny body is lying in. A mobile of baby doll heads spin around and around above her, their eyes blinking over and over. She wiggles her tiny legs, a muffled argument taking place in the linoleum tiled hallway. Bandit sits up, a net of wrinkles forming from where her back was for who knows how long. She peeks over at the sleeping babies on either side of her, the entire nursery an ocean of small, sleeping children. Bandit notices two doctors strolling down the hallway, their conversation muffled by the window.

"Food." Bandit chirps innocently, her voice too weak to cut through the glass. "Hungry." She says, waving her short arm in the air to gain any sort of attention but she fails with only three swipes. "I'm hungry." She says again but the only thing that responds is her growling stomach.

Bandit's crib is so close to the Asian baby next to her, sleeping soundlessly. With a few big bites, Bandit finishes the baby off. It didn't even make a noise. She climbs over to where the baby once sat, gaining access to a baby with a full head of black hair. She eats this one just as fast as she did the one before it. But it's not enough, her stomach growls again, a whirring of noise where the limbs of two babies are being digested. The baby in the crib at the foot of this one looks chubbier, has more meat on him or her than the one tucked in a pink blanket to the left. Bandit climbs to the next crib, digging her pointy teeth into the baby until there's nothing left. They're silent during their demise, almost like they're on Bandit's side.

The climb into each bassinet seems like it gets smaller and smaller each time she shimmies to the next bed. She's bloated, her once-tiny tummy now larger and elongated, like she's gaining the lives of children to make herself grow. It's working. Bandit chomps down more and more on the children in her path, one of them giggling as Bandit bites off their feet. It makes her happy, seeing all of them happy. Her stomach's happiness is beyond. It demands for more until Bandit is chewing on skin and swallowing ears and nibbling at their little fingers.

Bandit is almost five foot now when she reaches the green door with a square shaped window near the top. She's tall enough for an escape, to reach the doorknob. Bandit shoves her way into the hall, where the two arguing men have disappeared. The hallway is darker now, like six out of the seven tiled lights burnt out on cue. Bandit makes her way past the window of the nursery, a label in bold letters catching her eye, right across the bottom: Sick and Diseased Infants. Please Don't Touch the Glass.

Bandit's stomach kicks and gurgles, the digesting babies floating around in their new home. She puts a hand on her stomach, taking a step back from her reflection in the glass. Sick and diseased? Her throat is cotton dry, so dry she can't even swallow her own saliva. She coughs, trying to put some sort of movement in her throat but it doesn't work. It does the opposite. It's dryer than before now, her stomach a twisted knot of sickness, her eyes drying out just as much as her throat.

Bandit stumbles down the hallway, her hand sliding along the whitewashed walls. She croaks out a plea for help but she isn't sure if it's real or if she imagined it. Coughing up what feels like an entire body, a baby hand flops out onto the floor, covered in blood. A leg is coughed up next, the foot following after, the toes tangled in a chewed up mess. She feels her insides being nibbled at, like tiny teeth digging into her organs and her heart, like the babies she just swallowed are using her ribs as a ladder, gnawing at the bones like they're puppies. Bandit tries coughing something else up but blood mixed with saliva slips out of her mouth, dangling from her bottom lip.

"Help!" Bandit finally manages to scream, the yelp echoing off the walls and around the corner, where laughter grows louder and louder. She tries running faster but her balance is so unsteady that she just crashes into the wall over and over again. The babies inside of her chew and chew, feasting on what her stomach is storing.