Breeder by William Todd Rose

First Incision Man stood in the shadows, as always, with only a vague silhouette and the gleam of moonlight on scalpel to betray his presence. Virginia knew he was there, however, and pretended to be asleep as she kept watch through the slit of one squinted eye: her nocturnal intruder never shifted positions, never fidgeted or seemed to look anywhere but straight forward. The blade appeared to be held at waist level, as far as she could tell, and was held steady.

She tried to listen, to see if he made any type of sound. But if there was any shuffling or perhaps the rhythmic rise and fall of breathing, it was lost beneath the pounding of her own heartbeat. Surely, he had to hear it? He had to know that a pulse that rapid was not the cadence of someone wrapped snugly in the comfort of dreams . . . .

At the same time, Virginia could feel them in her blood, wriggling and squirming like headless snakes in the July sun. Individually, they were no larger than the finest of hairs and could probably pass undetected in small colonies. However, she was infested with them. Their bodies intertwined and knotted together in writhing clumps; blood was still able to squish around them, but their sheer numbers made her heart work even harder and her hands and feet felt numb from the decreased oxygen.

She knew that if he opened her, the pressure beneath her skin would be relieved and they would spill out of the wound like the blossoming of tiny intestines. Pink. Smooth. Smelling slightly of fruit that had just started to go bad. They would squish out of the slit and slither down her arm or belly, leaving a sticky trail for others to follow. They would writhe across the sheets of her bed and drop almost soundlessly to the floor. They would go out into the world to do his bidding, leaving nightmares, tears, and terror in their wake.

But only once they were fully mature and the incubation complete. Virginia had discovered this the hard way by trying on countless occasions to open herself. She had sliced her arm with a kitchen knife and tried to catch them with a pair of tweezers. The first few times, she had been too slow and they slurped back inside the wound and refused to re-emerge regardless of how tightly she pinched the flesh. Eventually, however, she was able to get a grip on one of them: she pulled until it was stretched thin and seemed about ready to come free, only to have the disgusting little worm slip from the tweezers and snap back like a rubber band. She had tried burning them with cigarettes, but they reacted too quickly to the heat, leaving her with circular blisters over top the cuts which had freed them. So she had no choice but to wait for the gestation to run its course and for First Incision Man to set them free.

She may have dozed off for a moment or perhaps she only blinked, but he was suddenly closer to her, about halfway to the bed now; and yet he was still cloaked in shadow, almost as if the darkness had moved with him. Which really came as no surprise: Virginia had never actually seen his face, no matter how near he came, and some primal instinct deep within her knew it was for the best. This part of her mind recoiled from the thought of laying eyes upon him in the same way a hand is reflexively pulled away from fire. It knew that the details of his form were the key that would unlock the gates of madness and for his cloak of obscurity, at least, she was thankful.

As always, though, his approach coaxed the whispers from the walls. The words seemed to swirl in the air around her, rising and falling in volume, sometimes too soft to be anything more than a murmur, at other times loud enough that they seemed to vibrate in the bones of her skull. Sentences overlapped, bled into one another, as if there were fifty speakers hiding somewhere within the drywall: but no matter how many things were being said, there was always just a single voice hissing them all: her voice.

Dirty little girl . . .

. . . stupid, worthless, ignorant . . .

. . . all your fault, can’t do anything right, can you?

The whispering seemed to excite the worm-like things in her blood. She could feel them twisting beneath her skin, stronger than before, like tribal dancers whipped into a frenzy by the pounding of drums. Pain flared through her flesh and it was all too easy to imagine them getting stronger, swelling in size until they threatened to rip through her muscle and tissue on their own.

. . . fat and ugly, why would anyone love you, you stupid little . . .

Virginia could feel a scream trapped in her throat and wanted nothing more than to cry out like she had when she was little. She wanted her mother to appear in the doorway and sweep away all the bogeymen with the flick of a light switch. She ached to feel her mother’s hands smoothing her hair as she was held tightly and rocked back and forth.

But every muscle in her body felt as if it were locked in place. She could not pull away, could not even so much as turn her head from the shadowy figure who was now nearly halfway to her bed. So her cry for help remained lodged like a half-swallowed chunk of meat in the back of her throat and a single tear slid from the corner of her eye instead.

. . . better off without you . . . .

It wasn’t as if her mother would believe her anyway. She had tried to explain once, had pushed up the sleeves of the sweaters which she now wore year-round, and showed her mother the scars criss-crossing her arms. She had rehearsed this moment in her mind for days before finally mustering up the courage to speak about it and knew exactly what she would say. But when the moment actually came, she found herself blubbering: all of her carefully practiced explanations fragmented into sniffles and barely comprehensible snippets. And the entire time she could picture him lurking somewhere within her brain, slicing her sentences with his scalpel, severing words from meaning, leaving half-formed thoughts dissected and dying with surgical precision.

So First Incision Man had never actually been brought into the conversation. The whispers from the walls morphed into only what was being said and not who, or what, was actually speaking them. All of the details of her nightly torture were blurred into something that only half-resembled the truth.

Shortly after that, she began seeing Dr. Singh. But by then, it was too late. Virginia had given up. If she was not able to describe it to her own mother, how could she ever tell this complete stranger what had really caused the cuts that covered her body? So she would sit in his office for an hour each week, staring at the tips of her sneakers and biting her bottom lip.

. . . useless waste of flesh . . . .

First Incision Man was now leaning over her and Virginia squeezed her eyes shut so tightly that bursts of light seemed to explode like fireworks in the darkness. She could feel the cool edge of the blade against her stomach and shivers crept over her flesh. He always waited, sometimes for minutes on end, sometimes for only a few seconds. During that time, the things in her blood seemed to congregate to wherever he was holding the scalpel. She could feel them knotting up beneath its tip, forming a tight little ball that bulged and twisted with anticipation.

A flash of pain just above her belly button let her know that the act had been done. Almost instantly, she felt as if a built up pressure were spilling out of the slit. It was not just the worms being freed from their fleshy incubator: it almost felt as if they had somehow latched onto all the emotions within her, all the fear and rage and pain, and had pulled it through the slice with them. Instead of whispering, the walls now sighed, all the voices exhaling in unison.

And then, in the space of time it took for her heart to beat once, he was gone and the walls were quiet.

Virginia pulled herself into a tight ball and opened her eyes. Drops of blood were spreading across her nightgown like roses unfurling their petals against a field of snow. There was no trace of the worms: they had already disappeared into the night, eager to do their father’s bidding. Usually, once he was gone, there was no trace left to prove that First Incision Man had ever been in the room. But tonight was different: laying across her bed was his scalpel.

Inside, Virginia felt as if she had been hollowed-out. She could not bring herself to cry. She could not summon any sort of relief that the ordeal was over, at least for another night. Where there had once been a tangle of emotion and feeling, there was now only a vast, silent void as dark and featureless as First Incision Man himself.

She sat up in bed and touched the scalpel as if she thought it might suddenly twist around and lash out at her. The blade was smooth and cool beneath her fingertip, the grip textured just enough to keep it from slipping out of the wielder’s grasp.

She held the blade in front of her eyes and spun it back and forth, watching the way light reflected off the steel. He would be back for it, would he not? Even if it hadn’t been left behind, he would be back. Tomorrow night another brood of worms would have grown to the point of needing release; tomorrow night the walls would again whisper their derision and, when it had all played out, she would again be left with this cavernous vacuum where life and emotion should have reigned.

She was tired. So tired of the game he played with her. So tired of it all . . . .

Without a sound, she turned her left arm so that her wrist was exposed. She contemplated the raised veins and thought about the parasites festering there. And, without further hesitation, she took the scalpel and began to slash.

When he came tomorrow, she would not be there. She will have won.

* * *

Elizabeth stirred from her sleep and wondered what had awoken her. She could hear the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall, very faintly her father snoring from another room. The house was quiet and dark.

She remembered the fragments of a dream: something small and slick wriggling its way into her ear. In fact, the tickling sensation was still there. She sat up, thinking of the cotton swabs in the bathroom and perhaps a drink of water before going back to sleep.

And then she saw him. A man, standing in the shadows of the corner of her room. Not more than a silhouette really, but there was something in his hand. Something that gleamed like polished steel in the moonlight.