Litter Box

There was this woman whose mind was brimming with beautiful thoughts: visions of harmony and balance, celestial arpeggios and colors that could break a man's heart. She hungered to let them out, and here it was that she became with child. When she delivered the creature, her offspring was a cherub of porcerlain, round features and fair hair. But the child was stiff as marble and just as cold, an ersatz expression of unorganic want. Stillborn, it was put in a box and down into a hole six feet under blackmost soil. The woman was heartbroken.

And her rage so grew and fevered her brow with boiling hurt that she became pregnant with child again. This mass growing inside her stirred and stirred, a fermenting sore of frustration. It outlasted the time for it to come out, and kept stirring, blackening the skin of the woman who bore it. It was finally born in a shower of black bile, mucus and blood: A deformed thing of fangs and claws, lashing at the air in ignorant frenzy; a thing of hurt and hurting. The woman, exhausted and heaving, pushed the thing away. It fell out a window and smashed on the ground below, releasing a foul odor as it burst.

But after the woman had done away with that thing, her brow cleared and she was relieved. So her mind weaved together the threads of need and frustration and desire, and spun together a new... thing for her to bear. When it was born it was more than animal but less than man, weak on matchstick legs and pink, raw skin. But the woman also saw possibility in it: a bone structure that would carry pounds of flesh, large eyes to see what laid ahead and sharp teeth on a strong jaw to defend itself. She was satisfied.

But as she introduced her child to her relatives and acquaintances, the creature saw the horror and disgust on the faces of those who saw it; and this creature, this pride and joy of its mother, realized what she hadn't seen: what it was born for.

The next moment she turned her back to it, it bit her in the ass.