MicroHorror

I was once with a magic woman. I don’t mean magic in some metaphorical sense either. She showed me things I’d never seen before. She was gone the next morning.

I was left longing, but somehow certain I would never see her again. Then, one day, I was traveling on business and on a layover at Hatfield in Atlanta. I was walking through the concourse when I felt something incredible. The best way I can describe it is a pleasant coolness in my stomach, like some kind of drug, but purer somehow. I turned to see a pregnant woman sitting alone in a terminal station.

It didn’t look like her at all. The woman I had been with was blond and busty. This woman had dark hair, and was petite, aside from her distended stomach. Still, I knew from the feeling that it was her.

She looked up at me as I approached. There was no denying the recognition in her brown eyes, the eyes I’d once seen as blue. I sat next to her.

“How are you?” I said, wanting to skip the small talk, but not willing to be so bold.

“It’s yours,” she said, rubbing her hands over her stomach. “But he also belongs to many other men, which means he belongs to no man.”

Had she not shown me the things she had shown me before, I would have thought her mad. But instead, I was all the more amazed. “Why do you look so different?”

She smiled. “I assume whatever form is needed and never show my true form.”

Something about that gave me chills. Maybe it was a subconscious understanding. I didn’t dwell on it, though. There were other things to dwell on.

“I didn’t want you to leave.”

She gently nodded. “No man ever does, but I had to go. The child inside me has many fathers, each very different from the father before, but it has only one mother. Thus, I must keep my path ever changing.”

I didn’t say anything to that, but she must have read my need for elaboration. “People create paths for their children by the paths they take in their own lives. The child is not forced to follow those paths, but is instinctively drawn to them.”

She made circles with a finger, moving from left to right, so that each circle was identical to the one before it, but further down the line. “That is the path of most. The scenery changes, but the persons remains within the same tight circle, always the same person, but in a different place. The child in me is to be greater than any man or woman before it, and for that to be true I must not have a repetitive path.” She moved a finger erratically, but generally from left to right.

I looked deep into her eyes. There seemed to be many things moving in them, and I knew she was just reminding me of what she could do.

“Will I see you again?”

She shook her head. “I leave this world when the child comes.”

I felt as if my heart dropped.

“Go now,” she said. “Or you’ll miss your flight.”

Flames grew in her eyes, and I knew I had to go. I got up and left. As I walked away, I felt her presence, the feeling, taken from me. In my mind, I heard the echo of her words.

“I assume whatever form is needed and never show my true form.”

“People create paths for their children by the paths they take in their own lives.”

I turned back, but she was gone.

That was about a year ago. I have some inkling of what was in her, and I’m horrified. Now I wait, wondering what my child will do, and wondering if I’ll recognize it.