A Rewrite of Ray Bradbury's "The Small Assassin"
The baby was born fat and red, and his mother was afraid. Most mothers experience some fear for their infants. Will she be able to care for the child? Will the child survive? Those fears are normal, but this mother felt something different.
She wasn't afraid for the child; she was afraid of the child.
She sensed it before he was even born: this baby was aware. He had the thought process of an adult and the body of a newborn. From his bassinet, his milky eyes focused on her with an eerie accuracy, and she knew that he hated her.
"What's wrong?" the doctor asked.
"What's wrong?" her husband asked.
She tried to explain what she knew, what she felt, but the men did not believe her. They had not carried that claustrophobic fetus. They had not shared blood with it. They had not fed it with their own bodies. But Mother knew.
The men whispered behind her back. It was normal for mothers to experience changes after the baby was born, they said. Some medicine would do her good, they said.
But no medicine could protect her from her baby, who was already rising into a sitting position before the blood of his birth had even dried. She cried out, but by the time the men returned to the room, the baby had lain back down. He flashed her a vicious grin, which the doctor dismissed as a reaction to a bellyache.
"You should feed the infant," the doctor said.
She would not. She refused.
"Then get some rest," he said.
And the men left the room again, no doubt to discuss how to fix her. Once more, the child sat up, but he did not stop there. He climbed to his feet and launched himself onto her bed, saliva dripping from the fangs in his newborn gums.
There was only one way to solve this problem, the mother thought.
Lots of babies don't live past their first day.
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