Mother and child relationships are doomed in my family. We were truly set up for failure.

A lot of people in my family claim that this is due to a curse that was put upon the women in the family ages ago. No one can decide on the reason for the curse, which I guess is not of utmost importance now anyway.

Many women have taken extreme steps to avoid becoming pregnant, and some have even run away from the land, never to be seen again. I once heard a rumor that there is some kind of magical doctors on the outside who can stop them from ever becoming pregnant. But, the chances of escape are slim, and I would not want to risk being caught trying to leave. So, I take my chances.

My own mother hates me. She only talks to me if absolutely necessary, and spends most of her time locked up in the downstairs bedroom. I have no idea what she does in there. My father doesn’t really care either but does the bare minimum in terms of parental duties.

This is the way that most people grow up in the family.

In school, we are taught why most of our moms are the way that they are, although it is not taught in detail. Once we reach a certain age, however, we are able to have a front-row seat to a birth. It is supposed to prepare us for our time, as well as give us sympathy for our mothers.

Shelby’s older sister Gia got to witness a birth two years ago. We tried to get her to tell us what she saw, but every time we asked she got irate and yelled at us to leave her the fuck alone. Shelby told me that Gia stayed in her room for almost an entire week and refused to come out. She said that she could hear Gia crying in the odd hours of the night, sobbing loudly as if she was afraid of something.

This only made us more curious, but we were banned from hanging out at Shelby’s place for months, so we never got the chance to ask Gia to tell us what she saw ever again.

Whatever it is that they witness must be scarring though, as this seems to be the case with most of the other girls in the family. After they witness a birth, they almost become a recluse; they hide away in their rooms for days, refusing to interact with others.

They are also assigned a care nurse, who checks in on them a few times a day. They started doing this when a lot of the girls began to kill themselves after witnessing a birth. They said the casualties after the viewings were too high, and if this kept up, there would soon be no more women left to grow our family.

A year ago, our neighbor’s oldest daughter became pregnant. I remember when the whole neighborhood was talking about the news. I also remember one night, a few months later, when I woke up to hear shouting and yelling.

I had gotten out of bed and walked over to the window so that I could peer out through the broken blinds in my bedroom. I saw the neighbor’s daughter, whose name I later found out was Trinity, crawling towards the street, her swollen pregnant belly hanging below her, almost touching the ground.

I watched as she moved across the floor as if she was injured, while she sobbed and wailed.

Soon after, her father and sisters came out after her, shouting for her to come back. She ignored them and continued to move, attempting to stand up. They got to her first though, and picked her up, dragging her back towards the house.

I kept watching as she stood up and began walking normally, which prompted them to let go of her. As soon as they did, she fell forward, holding her arms behind her, and landed directly on her stomach.

I flinched when I saw her body land on the ground. I swear that I could almost hear the sound of crunching bones and organs when she fell, and a wave of nausea hit me as I watched her lay there on the floor.

Her sisters and father stood there, in shock, until one of them shouted for another to call a doctor.

At the sound of this, Trinity pushed her hands underneath herself to lift up her chest and then proceeded to slam her head down on the ground over and over while her sisters tried to stop her.

I stopped watching after that, and I crawled back into bed. My hands were frigid as I lay there, listening to Trinity’s family outside as they shouted and cried.

I learned that she was dead the following morning. People kept saying she fell and had a freak accident. I, of course, knew the truth, but I told no none.

I sat in the small birthing building on the morning of my 18th birthday and thought about all of this. It was my turn to witness a birth, and I sat in the uncomfortable chairs along with ten other girls.

I was nervous about what I might see, and I found myself repeatedly wiping my sweaty palms on my dress. It felt like we were in there for hours before we saw someone enter.

A pregnant woman came in with chains on her wrists and ankles. We all sat in silence as we listened to the sound of the metal dragging behind her as she calmly walked to the center of the room and stood under the bright lights.

A nurse walked in after her and waved at us.

“Welcome to your first birthing!”

She looked around the room and then motioned towards the pregnant woman as a few more nurses came in and began to lock the chains down to some hooks on the floor.

“This woman here is going through her fifth birthing. She knows what to expect, and has volunteered for this. You might think that she needs help during the process. You might hear her ask for help. I ask that you do not approach her and that you do not get out of your seats. This is for her safety. This is a painful process, and a lot can happen, but I need you all to trust that we know what we are doing and that everything will be fine. Understood?”

We all nodded and a few girls verbally acknowledged their understanding.

“Alright then. You are about to witness the most miraculous part of life.”

Right on cue, the pregnant woman began to growl. It was a low, animalistic sound. A sound that I had never heard another human make before.

We watched as this went on for a few minutes while the nurses circled her, making sure she was okay.

After a while she hunched over, her blonde hair falling over her face as she continued to make sounds.

She began to convulse a bit, her shoulders moving up and down, slowly at first, but then faster and faster.

I started to get nervous, but I couldn’t look away.

All of a sudden, the woman threw her head back and screamed. It was high pitch and shrill, and I felt like it was going to burst my eardrums. I winced as she kept screaming.

Then, her mouth began to expand. It looked like her jaw was unhinged and her mouth hung open abnormally wide as she kept screaming.

A few seconds later, her screams became muffled and she sounded like she was being choked or gagged.

That’s when I saw it.

There was something inside her, and it was clawing its way out.

We watched as something could seen emerging from her throat. It was black and scaley and it reached a hand out and grabbed onto her shoulder as it pushed its way out of her mouth.

Next came the head, which was twisted around at the neck as it pushed out. It straightened back up once it was fully out, and turned to look at us.

It had no face, no features at all, and yet somehow, I could feel it looking at us.

I looked around at the other girls and noticed that most of them had stopped watching.

I couldn’t bring myself to stop looking, so I turned back around to face the woman giving birth.

The thing was almost all the way out of her at that point, and it finally came out with a sickening plop as it fell to the floor.

It stood on its two back legs, using its arms to support itself, kind of like how a gorilla would stand. I watched as the woman let out one more croak before she fell backward onto the floor.

The thing that came out of her stumbled around, leaving a trail of brown goo as it moved. It scanned the crowd as if it was memorizing our faces, and I felt my palms begin to sweat.

After a few minutes, it stood upright and let out the loudest roar that I had ever heard, before it fell to the ground and began violently convulsing.

We watched as it twitched around the floor for a while before it began to spasm even more, jumping a few feet into the air before falling back to the ground.

It did that a few times, and I began to notice it shrinking each time it shot up into the air.

After a while, it wiggled around and the skin changed from black scales to normal human skin. Then, the arms and legs shortened until they were small, and the body and head followed.

Finally, it was done and we stood up to look at it. It was now a regular baby.

A nurse approached it and picked up the baby, wrapping it in a blanket and walking it over to us.

She handed it off to one of the girls, and they began to pass the baby around.

When it was my turn, I took the baby from the girl next to me and stared at it.

It looked up at me with the darkest eyes I had ever seen. The baby’s face was blank, with no emotion. No joy, no tears, nothing.

I stared at it a bit longer, wondering how this came from the creature that we had just seen minutes ago.

While I thought about this, trying to comprehend the horror I had witnessed, I couldn’t help but hear a small voice in my head commenting on how it was the cutest baby I had ever seen.