A Caricature Of Unbothered Peace

By Markus Ang (Maokus), art by Waveblank

I would know the cry of my child if he wailed from across mountains and seas. And I know now the cry coming from the bassinet beside my bed is not his. I do not remember the day it began, nor the number of nights I have lain sleepless and alone as the incessant screaming carves footholds for itself in the brittle matter of my mind.

The sound has a fluttering, phlegmy quality of vocal cords far larger than the tiny throat they inhabit. I hear the creaking it makes as it raises itself on eight thin fleshy limbs, feel the shifting of the bed as its hulking form gingerly crawls around my body. It has been venturing closer these days, as if slowly building up the courage to take what it came here in the first place to receive.

My trembling muscles shift the air bubbles formed between my back and the sweat-soaked mattress as I force myself into stillness. Tiny hooks at the tips of its feet brush up the skin of my cheek and through the blackened valleys under my eyes. It seems it has decided the time for waiting has elapsed.

I burst forth from the sticky sheets and grab at the air. In the darkness I am almost certain I feel my fingers graze its damp synthetic skin as it recoils, skittering back across the room. The momentum from the missed blow sends me reeling off the bed and into a heap on the untiled concrete floor.

My hands leave slick trails in the layers of accumulated dirt as I scramble frantically away from the recovering beast. A weapon. I need a weapon. I grip the kitchen counter to haul myself to my feet, and find in my hand a butter knife still oily from a makeshift dinner moments or possibly days ago.

I whip around, knife in hand, just in time to make out through the shifting dark a shadow rushing back into the bassinet. The crying now is louder. More urgent. Now even from the kitchen I can make out every vibration in its throat, the sickening sound of layers of flesh slapping against flesh. My palms against my ears do nothing to dampen the rattling of my brain within my skull.

The serrated edge of the butter knife draws blood as I force it deeper, deeper still into my ear canal. I feel its blunt point push gently against my tympanic membrane, then a great pressure as I push in. My eardrum strains like an overstretched rubber band, its structure failing as the tension builds towards a muted pop.

The unsteady hum of the faltering air conditioning unit falls into silence, but the crying does not. I know I am screaming by the pain in my throat. The cry will not stop. It has never stopped. Since the beginning of time and till its inevitable end — as long as this creature and I exist in this world — I know I will continue to hear it.

I rip the knife from my ruined ear, sending a spray of crimson dots flying across the floor. Now is the time. It cannot see me from inside the cage in which it cowers. I stagger forwards, guided by the faint moonlight streaming through the window.

The trinkets hanging from the toy arch spin with the grace of orbiting planets in the silver light, a caricature of unbothered peace. The pounding in my head grows painfully as my vision curls around the rim of that cursed bassinet, inch by inch revealing its contents. The volume of the scream in my ears crescendos in concert with the building pressure in my head. At first I see a hand, then the tip of an ear, then its glassy black eyes and grinning mouth all at once.

With a cry it thrusts out its hand to strike me, but I am quicker. The blunt knife connects with a splash, puncturing a hole in its supple throat, just between its trachea and accursed vocal cords. Its pathetic form squirms around the point where the butter knife pins it to its pillow. Blood gurgles as air fights to leave its rapidly filling windpipe, dulling the remaining dredges of that eldritch scream as it flickers out.

I watch with two hands gripping the hilt of the knife, in case it somehow musters the strength to pull it out and make another attempt at my life. The first thing to cease is its legs, then the spasming muscles in its neck, then its cry that mercifully, beautifully, finally fades from my ears. I know in that moment that the beast is gone, but somehow I cannot summon a feeling of victory. Somewhere deep within me, I know I have lost something, but in that moment I cannot quite place what.

Exhausted, I slump over the corpse of my vanquished enemy. It is still warm, and I feel a strange comfort in cradling its tiny form. An instinct deeper than death compels me to hold it close as I slip deeper into my first blissful rest in months.

Somewhere above, a soul pierces through the sheltering sky and joins the cruel heavens.