Haunted MTL Original – Coffin Birth – David Simmons
“Coffin Birth” by David Simmons
When another person is going on about something you find disagreeable and you wish to make them stop talking, the best strategy to employ is to let them know that they have a little something on their face.
“You got a little something…,” you say. “On your face. Right there,” and you’re pointing to your own chin, right below your bottom lip. Cringing, half-smile, eyes squint condescendingly. This is when they stop talking.
“Oh…” and they’re speaking and making excuses but their sputtering isn’t actual words and they’re dabbing their chin with their napkin in the same spot that you pointed to on your own chin.
“Ah, no, yeah, it’s still there,” and now you’re pointing to a different spot, lower, smiling sympathetically.
“Did I get it?” is what they ask you, anxious, desperately blotting their face.
“Ah, nevermind,” you tell them, your hand waving them off. “Don’t worry about it.”
“No seriously, did I get it?”
“Hey, forget about it,” you reply, refusing to speak about it any further.
They sit across the table from you now, frantically dabbing and blotting at their face. They have completely forgotten what it is they were pontificating about and furthermore, now, they cannot remember why they felt so adamantly about whatever it was.
* * *
Gar is going on and on about something he has recently started referring to as Taco Tuesday. Gar is always going on and on about something.
“The premise is simple. I transfer the mydriatic from the original bottle into this one.”
He is pointing to a vial of eye drops, the label on the front peeled off.
“Atropine,” Gar declares, tapping the vial. “The doctors used to keep Atropine in the office which is way more potent than Tropicamide. A bottle of Atropine will close your throat all the way up. Tropicamide; it’ll do it but it’ll take a lot more.”
He plucks the vial of eye drops between his index finger and thumb and frantically begins to tap it against the gnarled and scratched wood of the tabletop.
“Atropine…” he goes on, “dysphoria, tremors, psychomotor agitation, tachycardia, convulsions…”
Gar is listing off the symptoms of mydriatic eye drop poisoning on his left hand, starting with his thumb, then index, then middle and so on until he has made it all the way to the little finger of his right hand and then he stops and says, “did I say dysphoria yet?”
The Honeywell wireless door chime produces the sound of a digital device attempting to recreate the sound of a natural doorbell and a young woman in yoga pants walks into the restaurant. Gar looks away for a moment, his eyes following the woman as she makes her way to the counter.
The woman says to the man at the counter, I ordered online? and she says it like it’s a question in that distinct way that only privileged caucasian women from places with shiny, new gentrification-names like NoMa and SoHo speak. She scrolls through her phone, finds what she is looking for, shows the man at the counter the image on the screen. The man looks over his shoulder and yells fifty-six, picking up! He looks at the woman, smiles, tells her just a moment.
“Look,” Gar says, eyeing the counter. “Watch him say it, he always says it.”
The man at the counter puts utensils and napkins in the plastic carryout bag, hands it to the woman, still smiling. The woman nods at the man, thanks him.
“Our famous pico de gallo is over there on the condiment table,” the man at the counter says, Gar silently mouthing the words of his speech along with him. “Along with flour tortilla chips—made right here in our own kitchen—and salsa; mild, medium or diablo. Please help yourself.”
The woman nods, makes her way to the condiment table. Gar is watching her, focused. He licks his aubergine sausage lips.
“Fine piece of ass like her probably don’t even eat chips and salsa,” says Gar, sneering.
“Alright, that’s enough,” I say to Gar and that’s all I say. Three words. This will probably be all that I say for the remainder of this engagement. This woman is somebody’s daughter. Somebody’s sister. Perhaps somebody’s mother, although judging from her narrow waist this would probably prove unlikely. Fuck! Here I am, focusing on this woman’s hips like a lecher, objectifying this woman, turning her into an object, all because of Gar’s insidiously skewed perception of women, infecting me like some kind of lubricious virus. Everyday I become more like Gar and less like me.
“What’s the big deal?” he says, playing innocent.
Gar winks at me, uses his eyes to draw a line to the condiment table where the woman is shoveling chips into her takeaway bag. She’s using the tiny condiment cups, filling them up with different kinds of salsa, snapping the plastic lids on top. With the salsa all being the same shade and hue, I can’t help but wonder how she is going to tell the difference between mild, medium or diablo. It’s not like she took the time to label the condiment cups or keep them separated in some way.
“Off you go then,” he says and the Honeywell wireless door chime lets us know that the woman has exited the restaurant.
I watch Gar watch the woman walk out the door, out into the parking lot.
“Did you know,” Gar says, mouth full of masticated tortilla chips, “that in 2007, a 23-year-old woman in India, over eight months pregnant, decided to hang herself moments after her contractions started? A living child was spontaneously delivered, bursting forth from the woman’s body, which—I’ll have you know—was still suspended by the neck, dangling from the ceiling.”
Gar makes a fist and holds it a foot or so above his head, arm bent at the elbow; cocks his neck at an angle, grits his teeth together and pulls his fist up like he’s holding a noose.
“The healthy infant was found on the floor, still tethered to the body of the mother by the umbilical cord, crying and messy with afterbirth.”
I think about the woman, wonder if she has a family.
“I’m Desi. Did you know that?” he says, food particles spraying out of his mouth. “You wouldn’t know it by looking at me. Grew up in Mumbai, right next to the Matunga Road railway station. All my life.”
I’ve never been outside of the country, never left the state of Maryland. I don’t think Gar has either. I think about the woman, not the pregnant woman in India who hung herself, although I think about her often as well because Gar tells this story so frequently. I think about the woman who just left the restaurant. I wonder if she prefers mild, medium or diablo.
When Gar plays Taco Tuesday he prefers diablo.
Gar, with his mouth full of food, says, “2005. Hamburg, Germany. A landlord is always having issues with a particular tenant paying her rent on time. After weeks with no communication he decides to let himself into the unit where he finds a tenant, pregnant with her lips blue and brain dead from a heroin overdose. When officials found her in her apartment, she was in an advanced state of decay. That’s technical mumbo jumbo for the broad was full of insects. During the autopsy, the baby’s head and shoulders were found to be outside the woman’s vagina, the other half still stuck up inside her. That’s what they call coffin birth. Have you heard of this phenomenon?”
I wish Gar would stop talking. Sometimes it feels like his voice is coming from the inside and that the sound I hear with my ears is the echo of his actual words. The inside ones.
“The technical term for this extraordinary phenomenon is post-mortem fetal extrusion. Dead bodies create natural gases as they decay. Precious, corpse-stink effluvium. When a pregnant woman dies the gases enclosed in the upper body and pelvic area exert pressure on the uterus. Then pop! The baby pops right out. Like a fucking pimple!”
Gar takes his thumb and presses it into his cheek to create that wet popping sound—simulating what he believes to be the sound of coffin birth—then cracks up laughing. He’s slapping his thighs, eyes wet and black like two oil spills.
The man at the counter working the register looks over at us, startled by Gar’s guttural laughter.
“I’m German. Did you know that? Ich bin Deutscher. Street tough, raised hard in Dresden. Wir sind ja nicht aus Zucker you realize.”
The door chime goes off and another woman walks in, this one with two young children.
“Aw shit,” he says, eyes following the woman as she approaches the counter. “Prime real estate.”
I hate it when Gar turns people into objects. The woman and her children stand at the counter, order their food, fish tacos and lengua, sides of red rice. She orders something else, pollo con chile guajillo in Spanish.
“Did you know, in 2008, the body of a 38-year-old woman was discovered in Panama? Plastic bag over her head, duct taped wrists and ankles, plus they gagged her. Overkill if ya ask me, no pun intended. During the autopsy, they found a fetus in her undergarments, the umbilical cord intact, still attached to the godforsaken placenta.”
The son—about five or six—is older than the daughter who clutches the mother’s legs, peering at us suspiciously, eye-fucking me then eye-fucking Gar, back and forth. Back and forth. Gar waves at the little girl, winks at her with one of his oil spill eyes and she gasps, hiding herself behind her mother’s legs.
Gar says, “Still intact! Would you believe it?” and then “did you know I’m Panamanian? Soy Panameño. All my life. My family is still in San Miguelito. The fucker at the counter working the cash register? El sigue mirando a mi chica. No puedo soportar ese pelao.”
I watch the man at the counter put plasticware and napkins into a plastic bag. He doesn’t seem to be giving the woman an inappropriate amount of eye contact—not overtly so—at least as far as I can tell.
“Watch,” Gar is saying, his ocean-black eyes sparkling with delight. “He’s gonna say it again. Sweet galactic fuck, he’s gonna say it again!”
He’s violently shaking his right leg under the table, the fabric of his pants audibly chafing the side of the booth we are in, barely able to contain himself.
“He’s fucking saying it!”
The man at the counter says: “Our famous pico de gallo is over there on the condiment table. Along with flour tortilla chips—made right here in our own kitchen—and salsa; mild, medium or diablo. Please help yourself.”
Gar is in tears, his face red and swollen as if he has eaten too much salsa. The woman instructs the older child to go to the condiment bar, stock up on as much of the chips and salsa as he desires. Gar wipes the wetness from his cheeks, still smiling in the corners of his eyes. He follows the boy’s movements with his starving wolf gaze. The boy pauses in front of the salsa, contemplating whether he wants mild, medium or diablo.
“You’re a big boy aren’t you?” he says to the child with a conspiratorial wink. “Then get the diablo. You’re not afraid of a little heat now are you?”
The boy does that deer-caught-in-headlightsthing with his lips parted in an O, anime eyes wide with confusion. I watch him watch Gar; see the boy try to make sense of what he’s seeing. Gar is a very large man. Unnaturally so. The way the child wears shock all over his face you can tell he’s been told never to talk to strangers. Especially strangers who look like Gar. Although he is still young and hasn’t seen the world for all of its chaos and unpredictability, some kind of evolutionary fight-or-flight instinct buried deep inside his bladder informs him that this large man sitting in the booth is an imminent threat. Something about this man is making the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Palms clammy, his stomach feels larger than usual and hollow, as if he has too much empty space inside of him. Gar smiles at the boy, sticks his tongue out and crosses his eyes.
“Bryson!” the woman shouts. “Bryson, get back here now. Wait with Mommy.”
The little boy is still frozen in terror; one hand ladling the salsa, the other holding the condiment cup. His tiny hand shakes, spilling tomato mush onto the floor.
Gar leans forward, hisses, “Listen to your mother Bryson.”
Hearing his own name makes the boy come alive. Eyes bright with awareness, he darts over to the woman, joins his younger sister in the safe space behind his mother’s legs.
The woman says, “Do not speak to my child?” and the word child has that familiar insecure question mark at the end of it, turning what should be a demand into a pusillanimous request.
Gar is still smiling with his inkwell eyes. He licks his lips. They look like two fat worms.
“Sir,” says the man at the counter, putting a little bass in his voice, “I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
“Alright, alright,” Gar waves off the man at the counter and doesn’t move.
“Now. I’ll call the police.”
“Will you now?” Gar asks, his deep space eyes never leaving the boy at the mother’s legs. “And what will you tell them? Did I not pay for my meal?”
“Sir please,” the man at the counter says, the last hint of bass leaving his voice with the word please.
“Did I run off on my bill? Does this piece of paper with your company name and address printed across the top not indicate receipt of payment? If my money is good enough here to take, then am I not also good enough to enjoy the use of your dining facilities?”
“Please sir, I don’t want any kind of trouble.”
Gar is waving his receipt in the air and the man at the counter is retreating. I watch as his primitive animal brain does the cost-benefit analysis of what would happen if he engaged Gar in a physical confrontation. I watch him measure the distance between Gar and himself, wondering if he can reach the phone in time to call 911. I watch him as the Cortisol floods his brain, watch the moment of realization when he determines that the cost of approaching the threat is too high and that retreat is his only option for survival.
“But it’s Taco Tuesday!” Gar whines. He pulls in one of those thick purple worms that he calls a lip, juts out the lower worm—presses it out—and I realize that Gar is trying to pout.
“Please just leave.”
We get up from the table together, scoot out of the booth at the same time. I take one last look at the salsa; mild, medium or diablo.
“You’ve got a little something,” Gar says, pointing at the man. “On your face.”
The man at the counter’s hand comes up to touch his face, reflex-quick. He’s wiping and rubbing, trying to find that stray piece of whatever it is.
“No, not there,” Gar says, pointing to his chin. His swollen, purple worm-lips spread out into a grin until all that’s left are teeth.
“There.”
David Simmons lives in Baltimore where he has worked as an optician, electrical estimator and drug trafficker. His writing has been featured in Strange Horizons, Bridge Eight, Snarl, 3 Moon Magazine, Across The Margin and the Washington City Paper.
What if ours weren’t the only reality? What if the past paths converged, if those moments that led to our current circumstances got tangled together with their alternates and we found ourselves caught up in the threads?
Marla returned home after the funeral and wake. She drew the key in the lock and opened the door slowly, the looming dread of coming back to an empty house finally sinking in. Everyone else had gone home with their loved ones. They had all said, “goodbye,” and moved along.
Her daughter Misty and son-in-law Joel had caught a flight to Springfield so he could be at work the next day for the big meeting. Her brother Darcy was on his way back to Montreal. Emmett and Ruth were at home next door, probably washing dishes from the big meal they had helped to provide afterward, seeing as their kitchen light was on. Marla remembered there being food but couldn’t recall what exactly as she hadn’t felt like eating. Sandwiches probably… she’d have to thank them later.
Marla had felt supported up until she turned the key in the lock after the services, but then the realization sank deep in her throat like acid reflux, hanging heavy on her heart – everyone else had other lives to return to except for her. She sighed and stepped through the threshold onto the outdated beige linoleum tile and the braided rag rug that stretched across it. She closed the door behind herself and sighed again. She wiped her shoes reflexively on the mat before just kicking them off to land in a haphazard heap in the entryway.
The still silence of the house enveloped her, its oppressive emptiness palpable – she could feel it on her skin, taste it on her tongue. It was bitter. She sighed and walked purposefully to the living room, the large rust-orange sofa waiting to greet her. She flopped into its empty embrace, dropping her purse at her side as she did so.
A familiar, husky voice greeted her from deeper within the large, empty house. “Where have you been?”
Marla looked up and glanced around. Her husband Frank was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, drying a bowl. Marla gasped, her hand shooting to her mouth. Her clutched appendage took on a life of its own, slowly relinquishing itself of her gaping jaw and extending a first finger to point at the specter.
“Frank?” she spoke hesitantly.
“Yeah,” the man replied, holding the now-dry bowl nestled in the faded blue-and-white-checkered kitchen towel in both hands. “Who else would you expect?”
“But you’re dead,” Marla spat, the words falling limply from her mouth of their own accord.
The 66-year old man looked around confusedly and turned to face Marla, his silver hair sparkling in the light from the kitchen, illuminated from behind like a halo. “What are you talking about? I’m just here washing up after lunch. You were gone so I made myself some soup. Where have you been?”
“No, I just got home from your funeral,” Marla spoke quietly. “You are dead. After the boating accident… You drowned. I went along to the hospital – they pronounced you dead on arrival.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Frank said. “What boating accident?”
“The sailboat… You were going to take me out,” Marla coughed, her brown eyes glossed over with tears.
“We don’t own a sailboat,” Frank said bluntly. “Sure, I’d thought about it – it seems like a cool retirement hobby – but it’s just too expensive. We’ve talked about this, we can’t afford it.”
Marla glanced out the bay window towards the driveway where the small sailboat sat on its trailer, its orange hull reminiscent of the Florida citrus industry, and also of the life jacket Frank should have been wearing when he’d been pulled under. Marla cringed and turned back toward the kitchen. She sighed and spoke again, “But the boat’s out front. The guys at the marina helped to bring it back… after you… drowned.”
Frank had retreated to the kitchen to put away the bowl. Marla followed. She stood in the doorway and studied the man intently. He was unmistakably her husband, there was no denying it even despite her having just witnessed his waxen lifeless body in the coffin at the wake before the burial, though this Frank was a slight bit more overweight than she remembered.
“Well, that’s not possible. Because I’m still here,” Frank grumbled. He turned to face her, his blue eyes edged with worry. “There now, it was probably just a dream. You knew I wanted a boat and your anxiety just formulated the worst-case scenario…”
“See for yourself,” Marla said, her voice lilting with every syllable.
Frank strode into the living room and stared out the bay window. The driveway was vacant save for some bits of Spanish moss strewn over the concrete from the neighboring live oak tree. He turned towards his wife.
“But there’s no boat,” he sighed. “You must have had a bad dream. Did you fall asleep in the car in the garage again?” Concern was written all over his face, deepening every crease and wrinkle. “Is that where you were? The garage?”
Marla glanced again at the boat, plain as day, and turned to face Frank. Her voice grew stubborn. “It’s right here. How can you miss it?” she said, pointing at the orange behemoth.
“Honey, there’s nothing there,” Frank exclaimed, exasperation creeping into his voice.
Marla huffed and strode to the entryway, gathering her shoes from where they waited in their haphazard heap alongside the braided rag run on the worn linoleum floor. She marched out the door as Frank took vigil in its open frame, still staring at her. She stomped out to the boat and slapped her hand on the fiberglass surface with a resounding smack. The boat was warm to the touch, having baked in the Florida sun. She turned back towards the front door.
“See!” she bellowed.
The door stood open, empty. No one was there, watching. Marla sighed again and walked back inside. The vacant house once again enveloped her in its oppressive emptiness. Frank was nowhere to be found.
So I guess it’s goodbye for now. Feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or here on her website.
Today on Nightmarish Nature we’re gonna revisit The Blob and jiggle our way to terror. Why? ‘Cause we’re just jellies – looking at those gelatinous denizens of the deep, as well as some snot-like land-bound monstrosities, and wishing we could ooze on down for some snoozy booze schmoozing action. Or something.
Honestly, I don’t know what exactly it is that jellyfish and slime molds do but whatever it is they do it well, which is why they’re still around despite being among the more ancient organism templates still in common use.
Jellyfish are on the rise.
Yeah, yeah, some species like moon jellies will hang out in huge blooms near the surface feeding, but that’s not what I meant. Jellyfish populations are up. They’re honing in on the open over-fished ocean and making themselves at home. Again.
And, although this makes the sea turtles happy since jellies are a favorite food staple of theirs, not much else is excited about the development. Except for those fish that like to hide out inside of their bells, assuming they don’t accidentally get eaten hanging out in there. But that’s a risk you gotta take when you’re trying to escape predation by surrounding yourself in a bubble of danger that itself wants to eat you. Be eaten or be eaten. Oh, wait…
So what makes jellies so scary?
Jellyfish pack some mighty venom. Despite obvious differences in mobility, they are related to anemones and corals. But not the Man o’ War which looks similar but is actually a community of microorganisms that function together as a whole, not one creature. Not that it matters when you’re on the wrong end of a nematocyst, really. Because regardless what it’s attached to, that stings.
Box jellies are among the most venomous creatures in the world and can move of their own accord rather than just drifting about like many smaller jellyfish do. And even if they aren’t deadly, the venom from many jellyfish species will cause blisters and lesions that can take a long time to heal. So even if they do resemble free-floating plastic grocery bags, you’d do best to steer clear. Because those are some dangerous curves.
But what does this have to do with slime molds?
Absolutely nothing. I honestly don’t know enough about jellyfish or slime molds to devote the whole of a Nightmarish Nature segment to either, so they had to share. Essentially, this bit is what happened when I decided to toast a bagel before coming up with something to write about and spent a tad too much time in contemplation of my breakfast. I guess we’re lucky I didn’t have any cream cheese or clotted cream…
Oh, and also thinking about gelatinous cubes and oozes in the role-playing game sense – because those sort of seem like a weird hybrid between jellies and slime molds, as does The Blob. Any of those amoeba influenced creatures are horrific by their very nature – they don’t even need to be souped up, just ask anyone who’s had dysentery.
And one of the most interesting thing about slime molds is that they can take the shortest path to food even when confronted with very complex barriers. They are maze masterminds and would give the Minotaur more than a run for his money, especially if he had or was food. They have even proven capable of determining the most efficient paths for water lines or railways in metropolitan regions, which is kind of crazy when you really think about it. Check it out in Scientific American here. So, if we assume that this is essentially the model upon which The Blob was built, then it’s kind of a miracle anything got away. And slime molds are coming under closer scrutiny and study as alternative means of creating computer components are being explored.
Jellies are the Wave of the Future.
We are learning that there may be a myriad of uses for jellyfish from foodstuffs to cosmetic products as we rethink how we interact with them. They are even proving useful in cleaning up plastic pollution. I don’t know how I feel about the foodstuff angle for all that they’ve been a part of various recipes for a long time. From what I’ve seen of the jellyfish cookbook recipes, they just don’t look that appealing. But then again I hate boba with a passion, so I’m probably not the best candidate to consider the possibility.
So it seems that jellies are kind of the wave of the future as we find that they can help solve our problems. That’s pretty impressive for some brainless millions of years old critter condiments. Past – present – perpetuity! Who knows what else we’d have found if evolution hadn’t cleaned out the fridge every so often?
Feel free to check out more Nightmarish Nature here.
Continuing our junkyard dawg werewolf story from the previous St. Patrick’s Days… though technically he’s more of a wolfwere but wolfwhatever. Anyway, here are Part 1 from 2022, Part 2 from 2023 and Part 3 from 2024 if you want to catch up.
Yeah I don’t know how you managed to find me after all this time. We haven’t been the easiest to track down, Monty and I, and we like it that way. Though actually, you’ve managed to find me every St. Patrick’s Day since 2022 despite me being someplace else every single time. It’s a little disconcerting, like I’m starting to wonder if I was microchipped way back in the day in 2021 when I was out lollygagging around and blacked out behind that taco hut…
Anyway as I’d mentioned before, that Scratchers was a winner. And I’d already moved in with Monty come last St. Patrick’s Day. Hell, he’d already begun the process of cashing in the Scratchers, and what a process that was. It made my head spin, like too many squirrels chirping at you from three different trees at once. We did get the money eventually though.
Since I saw you last, we were kicked out of Monty’s crap apartment and had gone to live with his parents while we sorted things out. Thank goodness that was short-lived; his mother is a nosy one for sure, and Monty didn’t want to let on he was sitting on a gold mine as he knew they’d want a cut even though they had it made already. She did make a mean brisket though, and it sure beat living with Sal. Just sayin.
Anyway, we finally got a better beater car and headed west. I was livin’ the dream. We were seeing the country, driving out along old Route 66, for the most part. At least until our car broke down just outside of Roswell near the mountains and we decided to just shack it up there. (Boy, Monty sure can pick ‘em. It’s like he has radar for bad cars. Calling them lemons would be generous. At least it’s not high maintenance women who won’t toss you table scraps or let you up on the sofa.)
We found ourselves the perfect little cabin in the woods. And it turns out we were in the heart of Bigfoot Country, depending on who you ask. I wouldn’t know, I’ve never seen one. But it seems that Monty was all into all of those supernatural things: aliens, Bigfoot, even werewolves. And finding out his instincts on me were legit only added fuel to that fire. So now he sees himself as some sort of paranormal investigator.
Whatever. I keep telling him this werewolf gig isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be, and it doesn’t work like in the movies. I wasn’t bitten, and I generally don’t bite unless provoked. He says technically I’m a wolfwere, to which I just reply “Where?” and smile. Whatever. It’s the little things I guess. I just wish everything didn’t come out as a bark most of the time, though Monty’s gotten pretty good at interpreting… As long as he doesn’t get the government involved, and considering his take on the government himself that would seem to be a long stretch. We both prefer the down low.
So here we are, still livin’ the dream. There aren’t all that many rabbits out here but it’s quiet and the locals don’t seem to notice me all that much. And Monty can run around and make like he’s gonna have some kind of sighting of Bigfoot or aliens or the like. As long as the pantry’s stocked it’s no hair off my back. Sure, there are scads of tourists, but they can be fun to mess around with, especially at that time of the month if I happen to catch them out and about.
Speaking of tourists, I even ran into that misspent youth from way back in 2021 at the convenience store; I spotted him at the Quickie Mart along the highway here. I guess he and his girlfriend were apparently on walkabout (or car-about) perhaps making their way to California or something. He even bought me another cookie. Small world. But we all knew that already…
If you enjoyed this werewolf wolfwere wolfwhatever saga, feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or here on her website.
Reece
September 2, 2021 at 5:35 pm
This is dark. I love it.