The Pram

by Joe Hill

my wife miscarried in the bathroom. I mopped up the blood myself, used a whole tub of Lysol Wipes, and now it feels like we live in a morgue. Thanks for asking.

The Sin-Planters believed wild spaces were more holy than any church a man could build?

It never once crossed his mind that he was depressed, too, that he had also lost a child.

Their branches curved above him like the blackened ribs of some monstrous creature, the ancient bones of a beached megalodon.

First comes love, then comes miscarriage, then comes Willy with a lonesome bottle of red in a baby carriage.

He didn’t feel they had lost a baby; it had been stolen from them, along with their daydreams, their whole idea of the future.

The unfairness of it angered Willy. It made him want to strangle someone. God, perhaps. Give him some nails—Willy would crucify the unjust bastard all over again.

The universe had settled into the business of taking things away from him:

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, he thought. It’s an impossible baby.

He heard a bony thud on the exposed cherrywood floor. There was a second thud after that and a third, the sound of something crawling through the dark. It was the child, he knew. His child, the one he had been raising over the last month on his walks along the bridle path. He had nursed it on his resentments and it had gorged itself—he had no doubt he had raised a big, strong, healthy boy.