[RAW Edit] Ethan, Drabble

Title: Ethan
Drabble

by, Black-Haired Girl


“She had always wanted a baby.

I never much understood it but I suppose it comes with being a woman. There must be something down to the DNA that makes a woman bonkers for babies and my wife had this fever threefold. Ever since we had first started dating she had always lamented of a future with children. Her eldest sister had four natural births. Her brother had sired a fleet of little nobles. Now it was her turn to help me carry on my family name.

We tried. We tried for years. Sex became nothing but a chore. We charted ovulation. Every day was another check of her basal temperature. Every morning came another cocktail of fertility drugs and herbal remedies. Every attempt was precise, well calculated, but it wasn’t enough. No matter how hard we tried conception was unachievable.

I suppose it was natural for her to blame herself. I am told most women do. She cried every night and apologized to me frequently for her inability to be, as she would say, “a suitable woman”.

Her self-deprecation bothered me. I tried to get her to speak to the family physician about how she felt but she was too private for such exchanges. It began to eat away at her. I suppose I was in denial of it at first. I tended to overlook how odd it was that she spent so much time in the empty nursery on the third floor. I didn’t seem to notice how quiet and aloof she had become until it was too late.

Seven years into our attempt to have a child she began to shut down. It happened right after the outbreak. She stopped talking entirely. Four months had passed and she hadn’t uttered a peep to anyone- family or servants alike. She had grown pale and thin. Her once full, pink face had grown sallow and gaunt. She rarely changed her clothes. It had been weeks since she had brushed her hair. Whenever someone would suggest that she should take a bath or try to spruce up she would burst into tears and bury her face in her hands. I had called a therapist to consult her. He had diagnosed her with an inexplicable semi-catatonic condition and had little advice for us.
The only thing he suggested was to turn off the TV. I attempted this only once. The news was on. It was always on. She had been sitting on a couch staring unblinkingly at yet another extended program about the destruction beyond the compound when I snagged the remote and turned off the TV.

She screamed.

It was the most unearthly sound I had ever heard. Her face contorted into a horrifying expression I cannot begin to describe and her shrill voice tore through my ears and sent a stab of pain into my heart. I quickly turned it on. She turned to look up at me with bloodshot eyes. She was gone. Gone from me, gone from the family, gone from the world.

It had all been too much for her. The outbreak, having no children, being confined to the compound and shut away from the horrors of the world. I suppose watching the rest of the world lose their children was the only thing that made her happy.
If she couldn’t have them then they couldn’t either.”

Ethan stared down at his father’s neat and angular handwriting. His face felt hot. He quickly closed the leather bound journal and pushed it back into the top drawer of the desk. Footsteps began to crescendo from the end of the hallway. Anxiously he slammed the drawer shut and jumped to his feet just as the dark oak door to the study began to open.

“Ethan?”

“Good morning, mother.”