Boy of silence

“It’s not a boy!”

The stale smell of vinegar, isopropanol and blood ‘twixt the cataplexy of angry voices and sinister adulation could force blood out of any rational being’s mouth. Instead, there is chatter like a field of a thousand chicadas calling for predators.

“Why the hell would I lie about something like this?”

“This isn’t the first time you’ve been conniving. You’re the one trying to break our family apart!”

Your family? As far as I’m concerned he’s my husband!”

“It doesn’t matter. You are never to taint our name with a heir!”

Being judged on a pedestal of a single layered mattress, legs agape, lucid from an epidural is truly a position any woman would like to be in. Or would one?

With a semi-violent jerk, a pair of wrinkled and work-torn hands pulled the duvet cocoon, welcoming decibels that’d accompany rattling of teeth from a whole room.

Soon, a deafening silence, drooped smiles like melting arsenic on magma, and a row of lemmings single file out the door into their little grotto.

I have since been the boy of silence.