Though my vision was blurred and my senses barely functional, I knew one thing for certain: this place was wrong.
Suddenly, a pair of trembling hands lifted me into the arms of a woman whose face was etched with exhaustion. She cradled me gently, pressing me to her chest. Then, she began to nurse me.
And in that moment... I understood.
I had been inside this woman. She was my mother.
So that explained the blackouts—my body simply couldn't bear the weight of consciousness. A grown mind trapped in the fragile shell of a newborn.
Perhaps this is why infants are born without awareness. A mercy.
My vision was cloudy, my hearing muffled, even my sense of smell was dulled. Had it been otherwise, I might've detected the stench of blood that surely lingered in this room.
I nursed in silence... and sleep took me.
When I awoke, I felt myself being lifted again. My eyes opened to a world of shadows and vague shapes, as though I floated inside a dim, flickering lantern. It was her again—my mother—washing me, wiping filth from my skin.
Apparently, I had soiled myself.
Once clean, she wrapped me in cloth and laid me down. I fell back into unconsciousness.
Time passed. Or maybe it didn't. I woke to pure darkness. No light, no sound, no warmth.
Fear slithered in quietly—cold and silent.
Had it all been a dream? A hallucination? Was I mad?
I tried to scream. Or maybe I did. But a hand clamped over my mouth, silencing me.
Beside me, someone was breathing—ragged, panicked gasps. Then it came: a monstrous roar, deep and unnatural, so loud it pierced even my dulled hearing.
It wasn't human. Not even close.
It sounded like a dying lion fused with the moan of a giant whale. My body stiffened with terror, and the person beside me began to tremble violently.
Movement outside—slow, searching, massive. The creature was hunting.
Then it was gone.
The breathing beside me steadied, just for a moment. And then—boom.
The house shook beneath the force of an impact, as if a tsunami had slammed into its walls.
The creature had returned.
I was frozen, numb with fear. What sort of hell had I been born into?
Why was something like this allowed to exist?
The hand over my mouth tightened. Another crash. The walls groaned but held. At last, silence returned... tentative, uncertain.
Time passed. Dawn arrived slowly, dragging with it the gray light of a reluctant morning.
My sight had improved. I saw her—my mother—sitting across from me, staring intently.
Then... she moved toward me.
She reached out—and began to strangle me.
At first, I was too stunned to react. Then instinct kicked in. I squirmed, kicked, but her grip only tightened. My neck burned. My bones strained.
This was it.
After all that... after the womb, the hunger, the darkness, the beast outside...
I was going to die here. At the hands of the very woman who brought me into this world.
What a cursed world.
I looked into her eyes... and I laughed.
Yes—laughed.
Because I'd had enough. This world—whatever it was—had decided to torment me from the start. Even when I'd accepted death inside the womb, it dangled hope before me. When I craved life, it stopped everything cold.
It was playing with me.
So I laughed. I laughed in the face of death. In the face of the one who wanted to end me. If this was how I would die, then I would die smiling.
And then... her hands stopped.
Slowly, they pulled away.