[Guest Writer] Gemini by Brian Rydquist

Editor's Note: This is a content warning for those sensitive to certain topics; self-harm, child loss, graphic descriptions of violence. 

    

    Sylvia bent over the lifeless bodies of the newborn infants she had just spent six hellish hours delivering. Screams of anguish poured from her diaphragm, blood soaked her nightgown from the waist down. Her husband William knelt beside her, stroking her shoulder in a futile attempt at comfort. The midwife, an elderly Inuit woman, knelt on her otherside.

“Please miss,  you must lay down. Your body has suffered incredible stress, the birth was not a good one.”

“My babies, my babies, this can’t be!” Sylvia shrieked, deaf to the woman’s words.

“Shh, shh,” William was muttering as he rubbed her shoulders.

“Maybe it won’t be, I have already sent for the spirit leader of my tribe. He should arrive any moment.”

“Don’t be a fool! How dare you give my wife this false hope! You can clearly see the babies are dead, and besides, no one could survive this blizzard.”

“Maybe.”

    There was a knock at the door. William jumped in surprise, then rose to his feet and went to answer it. It was another Inuit, a man wearing a thick oiled seal skin, his face was wise and weathered. William quickly stood aside, dumbfounded that the man had survived the journey. He had once again underestimated the hardiness of the Inuit; this harsh wilderness was new to him and his wife, but the Inuit embraced it. William fought to muscle the door shut against the howling wind and snow that blew into the house, instantly replacing the warmth.

“We are lucky. Their spirits are still here in this house,” the man said in the slow, measured speech of the Alaskan natives. He went to Sylvia and placed a hand on her shoulder.

“This is our spirit man,” the midwife whispered to her. “He is going to help your babies.”

Sylvia fell away from the bodies of her infant twins. The shaman withdrew a totem from the folds of his seal skin, a shaker which looked similar to a baby rattle. He shook it slowly in circles over their bodies and sung a visceral incantation in his native tongue, that slow moving speech the Inuit had. Sylvia watched intently, captivated by the ritual, sobs still shaking her entire body. William’s eyes were drawn elsewhere, to the shadows which seemed to coalesce and dance around the edges of the room, moving closer and closer towards his stillborn children. Something was wrong. Abject terror filled him. The impossible happened before his very eyes, the babies’ eyes opened and they came to life. Sylvia’s miserable sobs turned to weeping. Her babies were alive.

And then the two newborns looked at the shaman in unison and smiled at him.

William could see from where he stood by the door that they had an unnatural intelligence in their eyes. An intelligence that could not possibly belong to a newborn. The boy met William’s eyes and waved at him, a very human gesture, but not the gesture of an infant. The midwife sucked in a breath and backed away towards the front door, towards the only exit. 

“No, this cannot be. I have been deceived,” the Inuit man said aloud to the room.

“What do you mean deceived?” William demanded, going to him and grabbing him roughly by the shoulder, turning him around to face him.

“I am so sorry. I have made a mistake. So sorry, so sorry,” the man was muttering.

“What do you mean you’ve made a mistake? My children are alive! You have given us a miracle, and you call this a mistake? A deception?” Sylvia spat. She had already crawled, dragged herself over to her children. 

“I love you, mother,” the sister said, turning to face her.

“Yes, we love you mother!” agreed the infant brother.

“I love you, I love you, I love you,” Sylvia said to them, pouring over them. As she reached out to embrace them, they helped themselves up with their tiny arms, stood and hugged her. Their eyes gleamed with taunting victory as they smiled at the shaman.

“No, Sylvia. These are not your children. This is Gemini, an evil spirit, twins. They have stolen the bodies of your children. They must be destroyed before they are allowed to flee into the world.”

“How dare you!” Sylvia shrieked at him, violent rage twisting her face. “You cannot have them! They are mine, my children! Get out! Get. OUT!”

The door blew open. The midwife, already wrapped tightly in her own oiled seal skin, was fleeing from the house, into the terrible blizzard beyond. Wind flung snow and freezing negative temperatures into the house. The shaman turned to William, desperation possessing every feature of his face.

“Please,” he begged. But William did nothing, unable to believe the scene he was witnessing with his own eyes. He had been paralyzed by palpable fear, frozen more completely by the terror which turned his blood to ice than the ice which was filling his house.

“Get out! Get out! Get out!” Sylvia was shrieking belligerently at the spirit man. She began to claw for the objects nearest to her and hurl them at him with all her strength. Defeated, the shaman shook his head and drew his hood up, then stepped out into the blizzard. William suddenly seemed to notice the door was open and once again wrestled it closed.

“He’s gone!”

“He’s gone!”

“Hurray!”

“Hurrah!” the twins chanted, breaking free from Sylvia’s grasp and dancing around in a circle, their tiny hands clasped and their umbilical cords bouncing after them obscenely. Their laughter had the sound of an infant’s bubbling laughter, but it was formed like the laughter of an adult and condescending, tainted.

“They are monsters,” William said. His eyes were glued to the dancing babies who laughed and taunted them. “Sylvia, sweetheart, my love. These are not our children. The shaman must be right. We can’t allow these creatures to live.” 

Sylvia howled with rage as William approached her. She scooped up a nearby vase and in one smooth motion hurled it at him with incredible force. It shattered against his head and he staggered backwards and fell to the ground. Blood from his split head ran down his face and mingled with tears. He shook his head in denial, suffering as he watched his wife reject him in exchange for this demon Gemini.

“Yay, kill him, kill him!”

“Kill daddy! Kill daddy!” the twins sang.

“I cannot watch this,” William muttered to himself, crawled to his feet and left the room.

Sylvia beckoned the babies closer, pulling her bloody nightgown away to reveal her breasts. She pulled them in, one at a time, and offered her nipples to them, encouraging them to nurse.

“Come, my sweet beautiful children. You must be hungry, please, come.”

The brother and sister cackled and grabbed her breasts with their tiny hands. They bit her hard and she gasped in pain. They clawed at her chest with their tiny nails, clawed until the soft nail beds broke and their nails ripped away from bloody fingers. As the sister clawed and bit painfully, the brother began to fondle her instead, licking her nipple sexually with the tip of his tongue.

“Stop!” Sylvia shouted, horrified. She pushed the babies away and they cackled again.

“We hate you!”

“We hate, hate, hate you!”

“Fat!”

“Ugly!”

“Whore!”

“Kill yourself!”

Sylvia collapsed to the ground and sobbed uncontrollably. Her body was heavy with exhaustion, the birth had drained her near to death.

“Kill yourself!”

“Kill yourself!”

“Kill yourself!”

She drug herself across the hardwood floor towards the shattered vase. She picked up a shard of broken glass with trembling hands and dragged it across her wrists, deep jagged gashes trailing behind the shard. William came back into the room, too late. She had lost too much blood already during the birth and the remaining threads of life had already unraveled. 

“No!” William howled. He crossed the room to her in one giant step and dropped to the ground beside her, horrible screaming sobs breaking free of his chest as he cradled her head in his lap.

“We killed her, we killed her!”

“Dead, dead, the whore is dead!” the twins sang, dancing around the room.

William’s head turned slowly around to see the twins. Anger, rage, unadulterated hatred consumed him, made his vision swim dangerously. 

“Uh-oh.”

“Daddy’s mad!”

William set the body of his wife gently on the floor. He rose to his feet. The twins turned and tried to run screaming in fear. Their tiny legs were hopelessly slow compared to the towering man. He picked up the boy first, scooping him up by the head and smashed his skull against the wall. He cornered the girl next.

“Daddy please! Please don’t kill us, we love you, we love you!”

William grabbed her by the arm and swung her around, dashing her head to bits against the brick fireplace where embers still glowed. 

His eyes were vacant as he crossed the room wordlessly, back towards the front door. He didn’t put on a jacket or even his boots. He stepped over the body of his wife, threw the door open, and walked out into the blizzard.

Brian lives in Hillsboro, Oregon with his partner and his two dogs. He spends most of his free time writing, reading, playing video games, and enjoying the beautiful outdoor landscapes of the Pacific Northwest. Travel is also important to him so he can add to his repertoire of experiences, biomes, and cultures.  He hopes to move out of the city and into the forest, where he can hide away and tell stories to anyone who cares to read them.