Saturday Storytime: ILU-486

I know nothing about Amanda Ching. It doesn’t matter. This story does what science fiction is supposed to do.

The instructions said to wait. Don’t pack a bag. Don’t tell anyone. Don’t plan for childcare. Nothing bad will happen. Just wait. Pretend nothing is amiss. We come to you.

There was more, of course. She understood that she had taken mifepristone, and that if she hadn’t yet miscarried, then she’d need the second drug. More importantly, she needed to get rid of the evidence. Terminating a fetus in any way was a crime, even if it was an accident. According to the cop she saw last time, there were no accidents, only what he called “accidents”, with finger quotes.

Rachel hadn’t been sure what he had meant by that. What she did know was that she had three kids, a bad job, and an ex-boyfriend who’d thought condoms were the devil. He’d said that once, that condoms were the devil, and when she had laughed at him, he’d smacked her one across the face. She might have been happy, or at least okay with marrying him for the added income until that had happened. Then three days later, the bruise still fresh on her face, she’d taken the test, seen the pink lines, and thanked god she hadn’t used the local clinic for the free pregnancy test. Sure it was free, but the moment it was positive, you were entered in the free natal care monitoring system.

She’d done what she’d heard whispered about at work in the diner, put a red kerchief on her window sill and closed the sash, just letting it hang there, and after about three days she’d noticed it was gone. In its place was a little flowerpot with a little violet sitting precariously on the ledge. She’d found the packet with the pills and the paper inside the dirt, under the roots, and almost wept with relief.

Now, she waited for something to happen. Maybe the cops would come. Maybe it was all a set-up. Her kids slept on. She could hear her upstairs neighbor kick on his video game machine and load some game with a lot of machine guns.

There was a knock at her door, and Rachel felt her heart almost stutter. She plodded to the door. Maybe she could just ignore it and it would all go away. She was in the process of reaching for the doorknob when she was seized with a cramp and she had to freeze, suck in a breath. No, there was no going back, not since she’d swallowed a few pills the day before.

She swung the door open and was grabbed by the arms before she could even say anything.

“This won’t take long,” someone hissed in her ear. “We love you. Every part of you belongs to you.”

Rachel felt her feet being fitted into her clogs, her coat being thrown about her shoulders. Upstairs the machine guns rattled on. Her kids slept through anything. She went a little limp, trudged between the two people wearing masks, leading her down the hallway and out the front doors of the apartment complex, towards a running van.

One of the masked people poked her in the ribs. “Just struggle a little. Make it look real.”

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Saturday Storytime: ILU-486
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5 thoughts on “Saturday Storytime: ILU-486

  1. 5

    Elements of this story remind me of a subplot in a Dick Francis novel, in which the pilots of an air transport service collect birth control pills from their girlfriends and sisters and smuggle them into Italy. One of the characters asks if they sell them to the woman who receives them. The pilot “was quite shocked…’Of course not. She doesn’t sell them, either. They are a gift, a service if you like, from the women of one country to the women of another….They don’t see why any woman in the world should have to risk having a child if she doesn’t want one.'” From “Flying Finish”, written 45 years ago. Why do we still have to have this conversation?

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