Prologue

 

The birth of a baby is meant to be a joyous occasion surrounded with smiles and tears of happiness, but that was not so for my birth. When I came into this world, I was surrounded by strangers who immediately recoiled at my presence. A woman with makeup dripping down her face and blonde hair plastered to her head was screaming. Her only friend; a short woman with dark hair tied into a knot, was cowering behind the woman. The pair of chicken sheers she gripped were shaking as she inched towards me.

The short woman hacked through my umbilical cord frantically, while I cried out for the protection of my mother, who was panicking and trying to drag herself away from me on the musty couch we were on. Once I was free, my mother kicked out at me, pushing me across to the edge of the couch.

I could hear her hysterical sobbing and moaning echoing through my ears as a heavy hand gripped my arm and dragged my naked body around to face both women once more.

“What is it?” the short woman whispered, poking a nail into my soft stomach. She placed the bloody sheers down at my face then snatched me up, ignoring my desperate cries for warmth and safety, which immediately choked in my throat when I saw a creature crying back at me from the sheers.

Staring back at me was a baby with short black and brown fur all over its small, bloody body. Its brilliant blue eyes surveyed me closely, while a pair of tiny, pointed ears on top of its head flipped forward in curiosity. A long, slender tail hung lifelessly from it; only twitching to life when mine did.

The creature looked up at my mother with confusion, but she refused to look at it. Its body hung limply from the hands of the woman who was inspecting its feet. I could feel everything happening to it. That was me. I was the creature; a monster.

“We need to get rid of it” my mother choked when she stared at me through the sheers “that is not my baby.”

The woman holding me agreed, before placing me on the couch so she could scamper away.

When she returned, she held a tattered old towel in her hands that she threw over the top of me.

“It doesn’t deserve to be here” my mother’s shaking breath cracked, before her heavy hands began to squeeze around my ribs “It needs to die.”