Monday, April 9, 2012

Buyer's Remorse

            When the shit was cleaned up, the blood wiped off, and the screaming had ceased, he got a good look at the little thing that came out of his wife. Newborns are never a pretty sight, the product of pain dancing with an epidural in the midst of crisis—Nero playing his anachronistic fiddle while Rome is up in smoke. However, he could just tell, this baby is going to be ugly, and will probably remain ugly. Such an assumption he begrudgingly made with guilt shooting through his chest.
            He asked himself how this could happen. His wife and him were by no means ugly people, coming from beautiful stock of ancestors with symmetrical features. This infant was the third begat from their union. Each sibling prior came out in a backdrop of glories, with angel trumpets, and cherub banners. Beautiful babies who will get by on talent and their looks. He loved their potential, speculating on the future. Yet, as much as he wished, and as hard as he tried, he didn’t think he could love this child in the same regards as its predecessors. Was he this shallow? He thought he wasn’t, but his dismay slowly grew into contempt with enough sunlight and water.
            Doctors and Nurses were congratulating him on such, “a beautiful baby.” Smug, lying, motherfuckers he thought of them. They were probably in the hallway snickering, while his wife was half-delirious in the relief from pain. The physicians knew he was going to provide for this child, keep it sustained in a world already competitive in over-population, like it was some sick joke. It couldn’t just be his eyes that were seeing this. He wished for his wife to be of able mind so he could say, “Look honey, look at this disgusting thing that came out of you,” but she was too relieved to think straight, so she saw double, swimming in hazy thoughts. And there he stood with this child he did not think he could love, rejected before it made any controversial life decisions. This wasn’t just some phase. Sometimes ugly ducklings grew into swans, but swans could be just as ugly.

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