Here is Part 1 of Cravings, a pregnancy horror story considering darker cravings and changes in contrast to the glow that comes with the all-too-often toxic-positivity focus of carrying a child.

“Honey, I’m home,” Jayden’s voice echoed through the house like a bad 50s sitcom rerun for all that he didn’t watch those kinds of shows.  The callout seemed equally rehearsed and hopeful but harbored a hint of fear in the way his voice cracked that didn’t bespeak Mayberry or the like.  He waited for his wife Claire to greet him at the door.  The house was still and cold with all of the heavy drapes drawn and no lights on anywhere.  He glanced towards the dark bedroom where she must be napping, like the day before and the day before that, for weeks and months on end now.

Honestly, Claire hadn’t been the same since she’d finally conceived, following that witch doctor Miracle Madame Maresh Meliasma’s advice after years and years of trying to get pregnant.  Now Claire was lethargic and succumbed to migraines, nightmares & morning sickness that kept her bedridden much of the time, screaming bloody murder because of her headaches if anyone so much as flicked on the lights.  And she had barely even gotten into the second trimester.  Jayden had read that it was supposed to get better but there didn’t seem to be any improvement; if anything she seemed to be getting worse.  He tried to get her to see her doctor about it but she snubbed the idea.  “After everything they put us through, all those years of fertility treatments, the invasive procedures, the bills…  No way.  To Hell with modern medicine,” Claire had retorted.

So now here they were, readying themselves for their first child.  Maresh had foreseen that Claire would birth a healthy baby boy, and with all of the card readings, spiritual advice and herbal concoctions, Claire had fallen right in line, hanging onto the witch doctor’s every word.  Jayden was still frustrated she wouldn’t consult with her normal doctor, but she instead visited with Maresh every day through Instachat online for about an hour and even invited the creepy old woman into their home once a week on Thursday mornings to supply fresh herbs, massage her aching joints and swelling tummy, and call forth healing realigning energies with elaborate candlelit rituals.  Claire could focus on only one thing: anticipating the pending home birth and natural delivery of their firstborn child, still several months away.

Jayden wished his wife had never set foot in that weird alternative new age spiritual center, something about it had just seemed off.  It wasn’t the crystals or candles or psychic energy books that seemed to line every surface; he wasn’t into any of that mysticism crap but it seemed pretty innocuous.  He recalled small figures made of sticks, straw and mud, and giant Mason jars boasting exotic herbal remedies, and the lingering scent of something sickly sweet decaying, all of which was genuinely unsettling, but it wasn’t really that either.  There was something decidedly sinister about the place that he couldn’t quite put his finger on, more caught up in the air surrounding and within the space itself.  It settled into his gut like that feeling you get when you know you’re being watched by some unseen far away presence or when you meet someone you know deep down has ill intentions.  And Maresh herself was just as disturbing; she only ever addressed Claire and had not uttered a single word to Jayden in the entire time.  In fact, she acted as if she looked right through him without even seeing him.

As days turned into weeks into months, Claire became more withdrawn and more obsessed about the baby.  She never left the house, locking herself away in the gloomy stagnant nest and occupying herself with the remedies, rites and rituals that Maresh suggested.  Oh, and knitting.  Jayden hadn’t realized that Claire knitted since he had never seen her do so before, but her hands were a frenzy of motion, whipping silver needles back and forth and pulling soft white yarn between them like a growing umbilical cord tethering her to the circumstance at hand like some sort of strange pregnancy lifeline.  The so-called blanket she was producing grew larger and larger every day.

Jayden snapped out of his reverie to see his wife eyeing him from the hallway.  She studied him up and down slowly, staring longingly at his body.  She inadvertently bit her lower lip in anticipation, teeth striking flesh to cut forth a small droplet of blood.  Her tongue eagerly danced across her pursed mouth and lapped it up before withdrawing again. 

“Aw, what’d you bring me this time, Sweetcheeks?”  Claire smirked; eyes alight with flame like a cat readying to pounce

She had been ravenous throughout the pregnancy so far, and her cravings kept getting stranger and more bizarre as time passed.  The other day, Jayden had fetched boiled shrimp, and she had devoured over 2 pounds of the mud-bugs in less than an hour’s time, shell, tail and all, their little legs matted together like thick wet whiskers.  Today she had requested pickled eggs, the kind that they import from Europe or Dutch-country Pennsylvania in those big almost gallon-sized jars, stained pink with beet juice vinegar.  Jayden procured the giant jar of eggs from the paper bag in his arms.  Claire lunged at him and grabbed up the prize, prying the lid off in one fell swoop.  She reached in, pulled out a pink rubber-looking egg still dripping with brine, and shoved it in her mouth whole.  She hadn’t even bothered to chew it before she grabbed another to meet the same fate.  And another.

I hope you have enjoyed the first part of this story. Part 2 will air next time here on Haunted MTL. In the meantime, feel free to follow your cravings and order up some midnight munchies, or listen to this lullabye.

Feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL. Or on her writing, fine art, and conceptual projects websites.