Role

Chapter 3

Delilah grabbed her backpack and opened it up. There amongst the blankets
she'd tried poorly to pad it with the little fetus' swarmed and writhed. The
smaller ones would simply move their heads up and down. Their eyes were black
orbs that made them look like grey lizards. Without developed didgets, their
hands were just stumps. Others were larger and had fully formed fingers.
Reflexively, they seemed to grasp at their air as they writhed. Mouths
without vocal cords opened and closed in a horrific imitation of life. Their
eyes, misted grey much like Delilah's, would roll around in blind agony
speaking of the torment their souls likely suffered. To anyone this was
obviously a pained, undead existence. To Delilah, they were just babies like
any other. Defenseless and helpless she should have thrown them away long
ago. Yet she loved them with all her heart. They were her family and friends.


Picking up one of the boys, she gently cradled it in her hands and twisted
the umbilical cord around her fingers as she spoke to herself.
'We have to find mummy. She can make daddy stop. And help me look after you.
And give us hugs. Mummy is really magic! She can do anything.'
The fetus in her hands was twisting its head around. Without fully formed
bones, it's large deformed head was threatening to tear it's neck. Delilah
huffed and pulled the fetus upright. She was responsible for them all. To
teach them, to clothe them, to feed them. Every day she pushed scraps into
their mouths in the belief it kept them alive. Her attempts at childcare were
so pathetic and misguided that real children would have joined the dead
within days. Yet to her she was a mother figure in her own right. The Eldest
Sister. Matron to her own little clan of forever-tiny kiddies. She just
missed her mother so much.

In the darkness of the night, on the ground, next to the squirming fetus of
what was to become a boy, Delilah closed her eyes and cried herself to sleep.