Danse Macabre--chapter 18

So Anita goes into the bathroom. pees in the cup, and sticks the pregnancy test in. This whole sequence is rather good. It's rather well paced, you get the sense of the passage of time and her nerviousness, and even the endless repition serves to put your teeth on edge, so you're in the same shoes as Anita. It works.

...right up until she reads the results, and I had to reread the paragraph three times to find where it says the test is positive. Because it's not the test that's important, kids. It's how Anita feels about it.

As for her reaction...yeah. All I can see is this:



So after panicking for a few minutes and thinking about how lucky the men are because they don't know that the world's ended (seriously. She says this) Claudia comes in and notices the positive pregnancy test. She has to help carry Anita out of the bathroom.

Richard is happy that Anita might be pregnant. Anita takes this as a deathly offensive reaction.  Anita, you've already stated that you'll be keeping the baby (for the pregnancy anyway) so let him be happy. The only question right now is who will raise the kid (which won't happen because she isn't actually pregnant).

Micah wistfully wishes he could have his own kid, but he got fixed, so...and Richard finally sticks his foot in it.

“Why did you have yourself fixed?” Richard asked. “You’re not thirty yet, why would you do that to yourself?” 

Well fuck you too, dick. And of course this is just so we can segue into "My life is more fucked up than yours."

Micah wrapped his arms around me, held me close. “My old alpha, Chimera, liked pregnant shapeshifters. If one of the women came up pregnant by someone else, someone she cared for, Chimera would take her until she lost the baby. He got off on taking her from her lover, from fucking her while she was pregnant with someone else’s child, and from her losing it.”

Congradulations, that's the most fucked up thing I've ever heard off.

Richard then boo-hoos that he's left out, but he can't deal with a poly relationship, and it's time for us to start fighting again. He points out that everything with Jean Claude is about sex. That's fair. Micah jumps to Jean Claude's defense. And then all of a sudden Anita and Richard are making out, and everybody comes over for a snuggle. They dog-pile onto Richard for a few minutes and he comes up looking like he just got a hit off a really great bong. But he won't be sleeping with Anita because he doesn't like group sex. He heads off to bed with Clay and the chapter ends.