www.morpheustales.com Baby Boom By Alan Spencer Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick. The ticks sounded like a gas oven clicking on before the flame whooshed up from the burners. The first time they happened, it was for only ten seconds, so short-lived Darlene Thompson didn’t think anything of the odd noises. Her husband, Doug, dismissed it as strange, yes, but nothing more than a trick on their ears. It could’ve been their neighbors, who have been known to argue and have sex at add hours of the night. No matter what angle of the argument they played, the noises couldn’t be happening in the apartment. But the following night, the ticks re-occurred. This time they were louder and extended in duration. Twenty seconds. Thirty seconds. Then a full minute straight. The truth was unavoidable: it wasn’t the neighbors making the sound; it was Darlene’s body. Darlene, being in her third trimester of pregnancy, couldn’t sleep thinking this, so Doug drove her to the hospital. By the time they arrived, she knew the exact source of the ticks. Her belly. ### The doctors’ uniforms looked like spacesuits, except they were made from a dark green canvas material and included rectangular plastic faceplates. They were what the military wore when diffusing car bombs, she realized. As she lay in the hospital bed, one of the doctor’s thick gloved hands roamed over her belly. His fingers poked around her torso and pelvis, pushing in deep. She swore he gasped sharply each time he checked the child. Startled, maybe, or outright nervous and suffering from hellish jitters. Was he really scared just touching her? After studying her torso, the doctor drew blood from her left arm with a syringe large enough it could’ve extracted a sample from a bull. She could see the fluid channel out of the IV tubing and into a clear bag. Her eyes doubled as did her breath once she saw her blood glowing vibrant neon red in the room’s darkness. Her shock didn’t last very long. She was dazed from the constant flow of narcotics they kept administering. They were meant to keep her calm and non-resistant. The less she moved, the doctors told her, the safer everyone would be. “Why is my blood glowing?” she asked in a hazy voice. The doctor told her to rest. He’d be back later. And don’t move.
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