MORE BLOOD!
***
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Also by Anton Palmer
DADDY’S GIRL – A Psychological Horror
“Something’s wrong!”
The woman’s screams were loud enough to wake the dead, but the thick basement walls ensured that every agonised decibel remained cocooned within the small, underground room. Panting hard, the woman’s hair was matted with sweat, her face burning and sheathed in perspiration.
“Please, Samuel, call an ambulance – let me go to the hospital.”
Samuel stroked his wife’s hand and brought it up to his lips, planting a gentle kiss on her slender fingers. “There’s no necessity for a hospital, my darling. The Lord will take care of you.”
The woman yelled again as another contraction hit her. Samuel watched, impassive, as a gush of bright red blood poured from his wife’s vagina, pooling in a shiny wet puddle before slowly soaking into the already saturated mattress beneath her. He remained calm, smiled, and dabbed at her brow with a damp sponge.
“Samuel…at least call a doctor…” The woman was sobbing now, her tears mingling with the sweat of several hours’ fruitless labour. “Please! I’m begging you...something’s not right. I can feel it!”
Her husband stood up from the small stool he had been squatting on and stretched, the bones of his spine cracking in a satisfying manner as he did so. He looked down at his wife, wet and glistening with sweat, on the blood-soaked mattress that had been lain on the dirt floor of the basement. He spoke slowly, carefully, “If something is not right - then it is God’s will. You are being punished for your sins.”
“What sins? Have I not been a good and faithful wife to you?”
Samuel bent down and angrily slapped her blood-splashed thighs. “The sin of fornication!”
“What? I have only ever…fornicated…with you – my husband in the eyes of the Lord!”
He slowly shook his head at her, as if in despair or disbelief, “Fornication for any purpose other than procreation is a sin. Yet you…you dirty slut! You fornicated even after you knew you were with child.”
“With you, my love. With you… I didn’t do it on my own!” The tears flowed even faster, the woman now fully aware that she could never win this argument.
“I am not to blame. “ Her husband continued, “You tempted me with your vile lust! But the Lord knows that I was just the innocent victim of your foul wantonness.”
“Samuel…please…it wasn’t my fault. It was the hormones…”
“Hormones are just God’s way of testing you! If you loved God enough he would have given you the strength to resist your filthy, disgusting urges. But you didn’t…and now the Lord is punishing you for it.”
He bent down and mopped her brow once more, the anger suddenly leaving his voice. “But don’t worry my darling…the child will be safe. I’ll see to that.”
“What do you mean?”
Samuel looked at his wrist-watch in the gloomy light of the weak bulb hanging from a joist above his head. “I’ll give you ten more minutes – any longer and I fear for the baby’s wellbeing. If the child isn’t out by then…” He held up a gleaming scalpel. His wife shuddered, knowing her husband fully intended to cut the baby out of her womb, if necessary. And also knowing that the unborn child was far more important to him than she was.
Another, even stronger contraction gripped her and she shrieked long and hard, bearing down with all her remaining strength as she stared with wide eyes at the wooden crucifix attached to the wall opposite. The cross burned its image into her retinas as she prayed for Jesus, God…anyone, to give her the strength to deliver her baby safely.
More blood, darker this time, oozed from between her gore-spattered thighs, followed by a spray of urine and a sloppy lump of reeking faecal matter. Samuel picked up the excrement with a paper towel and dumped it into a metal bucket behind him, before wiping the excess blood and piss from the mattress with a piece of old rag. The woman panted, breathless and exhausted, sweat flooding from every pore. Samuel again dabbed at her face gently with his sponge.
“Please, my husband. Please call an ambulance…our child is guaranteed to be delivered safely in the hospital. So much better than this dirty basement…”
Samuel threw the sponge down onto the blood-soaked mattress, his face suddenly contorting into a mask of scarlet rage. “And what do you think all those doctors and midwives will say when they see the marks on your body?”
He rolled her onto her flank and traced his fingers along the trails of angry red scars on her back and buttocks as if to remind her of their existence. Scars from the many floggings he had given her, down here in this very basement, to beat her sins from her body. Similar wounds adorned Samuel’s own body – his, self-inflicted, during regular bouts of purging his own sins.
”They won’t understand. They won’t understand our ways. They will lock us up! Take the child into care – to be raised by…heathens or paedophiles…”
His wife rolled onto her back and turned her head to one side, attempting to bury her face into the filthy mattress – knowing her case was futile. Samuel grasped her hand and bent down to plant a gentle kiss on her wet forehead.
“It’s time.”
“Oh no, Samuel, please…no! Please give me more time, I can do this… I’m your wife for Christ’s sake!”
The woman immediately clamped a hand over her mouth, terror filling her eyes, but she knew it was too late – the blasphemy had been uttered.
Samuel stood above her, sucking in
