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ProcreationOur "Love Bites" Contest Winner
by H.T. Marie
Prana was born to be a mother.
Other girls bantered back and forth about the woman’s role in modern society. Prana knew hers, had always known. She didn’t have time or patience for the trivial goings-on of the world. Procreation was her destiny.
Once she was of age, she wasted no time finding a mate and taking his seed within her to ripen. She was proper about it, of course. She learned the best ways to paint her face and preen to make herself desirable; went through the rituals of courtship and marriage, but only because it meant she’d never have to do it again. If she could have, she’d have laid herself open on the pool table down at Piss Willy’s and let them all take a turn, but babies were expensive, and she wanted lots.
The fortunate thing for Prana was that she always became pregnant when her husband covered her. That something as hard and blunt as a man’s cock was required to create a soft and innocent child seemed wrong by nature. Her husband was a nameless, faceless fountain of seed, like the unknown donor of pollen spread by a bee. The only pleasure she got from him at all was the ecstasy of his child suckling at her breast.
For Prana, there was no sensation that compared to a soft, toothless mouth pulling at her swollen nipple. The first gentle suction that led to gradually more vigorous feeding brought the life up in her like no man could. She imagined she could actually feel that life flowing from herself into the hungry infant. Releasing that energy left her shuddering in exhausted bliss. She was sure that all of life revolved around that perfect exchange from mother to child.
If there was a circle of life, Prana thought herself the equator.
The pale beauty tiptoed toward the cradle, scarcely stirring a mote of dust as she moved closer to the slumbering infant. Her black hair, like the sheer curtains, floated into the room on a midnight breeze, reflecting the light of the full moon like a protective halo over the bassinet. She stretched her long, bony fingers toward the tiny child. How precious. The little girl, surrounded in lace and plushy pink pajamas, was only a few days old.
It was an odd feeling for Prana, hovering above such a little one without the common experience of the birth moment between them. The suckling would be bliss.
Prana reached into the cradle and lifted the little girl slowly from her gurgling slumber, cursing her bony, cushionless arms. Damn the disease and its devastation! Damn the man who’d brought it home! Damn her barren, empty womb!
XXXX
The bastard. Most men would have been content to have such a fertile, doting wife and mother to keep his house and raise his children, spread his spawn across the earth like dandelion fluff. Not her husband. For him, it seemed, mating had been more than just a ritual of conception. He’d seemed to crave the act, even moreso right before she’d finally slain his worthless carcass.
Prana shuddered. What was there to enjoy in the sweating, the pumping, the thrusting build up to gruesome facial contortions and heavy snoring? Disgusting. Men were disgusting, her husband a pig. As long as her belly had been full of his seed, she hadn’t really cared where else he’d sown it. She could never have known he’d find himself a dark mistress to taint him.
She hadn’t even noticed he was different until she’d taken him inside her, the hunger of her empty belly nagging and painful. Colder, harder, he’d torn her with his violent, desperate thrusting, rutted into her, more agitated as he’d pumped away. Nearly thirty minutes of fruitless banging, and then he’d rolled off without spilling his seed.
Desperate for her baby, she’d impaled herself on him until blood flowed down his shaft and stained the crisp, white linens beneath his hairy ass. She’d cried into her pillow as he took her from behind and caressed her neck with his tongue, realizing too late that he’d not wanted to kiss her there…
XXXXPrana held the newborn close to her heart as it began to stir out of sleep. She smelled so good, so new, her tiny peach-fuzz covered head like rose petals as Prana drank in the perfume of new life. It’d been so long since she’d held one this small. Decades. The last of her own children had been dead at least ten years now, and she’d been barren forty before that.
After all that time, she was a mother again. It didn’t matter to her that the child she now coddled already had a mother. That mother could have another child. This one was hers, or at least she would be, very soon.
Prana stole out of the nursery, baby in her arms, and could not help but dream about the life that awaited her. She wondered why she hadn’t thought of it before. How many days had she lain awake and lamented bitterly her exile from the loop of creation, when all the while, her prayers had been answered? The disease was not a curse but blessing. She was not barren, only unable to produce or accept seed. Now she was like the blessed virgin, could give life without the undesirable male element, an immaculate procreator.
She looked down into the tiny girl’s round, trusting face and rejoiced. After tonight, she would never be without the company of that precious little one. This baby was never going to step away from her, or look for love elsewhere. This daughter would never grow up to desire the touch of a man. Prana’s touch was all she’d ever need, and hers for Prana would suffice. The two were a match made, not in Heaven, perhaps far beneath it, but Heaven was where you made it, as far as she was concerned. Hers was here in her arms.
The baby started to cry as they arrived home. Prana didn’t attempt to soothe her. Unless the child was desperately hungry, she would never accept the sacrament of the sagging, empty breast. She cradled her baby in her arms and sank into the rocking chair to wait.
The chair squeaked loudly now. Prana let the gentle creaking lull her into an almost hypnotic state, the baby’s cry a lullaby to the mother. She had never been so at peace. The anticipation of their impending enjoinment would have had her heart racing if her heart were still capable of such. Perhaps the absence of the comforting thud of a heartbeat in that cold chest gave the baby more reason to cry. Prana let her cry.
The daughter’s wails grew piercing with each shaking breath as the tiny hands and feet kicked angrily against Prana’s hollow breastbone. It was time. Couldn’t have the neighbors talking about strange goings-on in the night.
She unbuttoned her top slowly, relishing the familiarity of the ritual, and exposed her cold, withered breast. “There, there, darling,” Prana cooed, “just a minute more. Let me take off your beautiful pajamas first. We wouldn’t want them to be stained.”
Finally, she lifted the child and pressed the nipple to her wet lips. The baby took it immediately, sucking feverishly at the drooping udder to no avail. Prana let her head fall back in ecstasy as she felt the ancient flow of life rise up in her once again. The child pulled harder in desperation, and it drove Prana nearly through the roof, so deprived was she of the sensation. There was no milk to be had, and there never would be. That was okay. There would soon be no need for milk, only hunger for that which Prana alone could provide.
With one long, blackened fingernail, Prana sliced at her breast, directly above the grey teat at which her baby nursed. As she’d hoped, the newborn drank thirstily of the black blood that spilled into her mouth, too hungry to care that it wasn’t warm, wasn’t milk. Clutching the daughter tightly, the mother arched back, forcing the breast deeply into the hungry mouth.
When she straightened up at last, Prana’s face had changed. There was a flash of moonlight on long, canine teeth and a deep, unholy growl from somewhere beneath her bosom. With a piercing kiss, the two were joined for eternity.
Prana loved babies. She was born to be a mother.
© H.T. Marie, 2007
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H.T. Marie grew up in rural Wisconsin. She studied Animal Science at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, and briefly worked toward a Master’s at Texas A&M University before settling into a less academic lifestyle. She still lives in College Station, Texas with her husband, three dogs, and three horses, and spends her free energy reading and writing. She has published a fair amount of fanfiction in the Supernatural fandom, and co-wrote one Virtual Season of that show before going back to writing original stories. She has several novel projects in the works and is writing shorter fiction to gain an audience. No genre is off-limits, though she hopes to write primarily literary fiction in the future.