Our Hideous Progeny

by C.E. McGill

I could understand, then, Henry’s reluctance to return to a house so infused with his father’s spirit. Not in a literal sense, of course – I am not one to believe in hauntings – but I do believe that a person’s absence in a house can be felt just as strongly as their presence.

It was as if I was uncovering her, I thought; bit by bit, grain by grain.

‘Perhaps, then, God is not benevolent and inattentive but all-knowing and cruel.’

‘We shall steal fire from the heavens, and I shall not repent, even for one minute – for what sort of god would condemn us to such a cold world without it?

Whenever a woman without children loved an animal or a cause or anything else – anything else besides that which she ought to love most in the world, that which she ought to spend all her days trying and longing for – it was thought to be a substitute for what she did not have. No matter that all three of us had looked upon the Creature with pride and joy; I alone was not its creator, or its artist, or its inventor, but merely a mother, most qualified to care for it not due to any intelligence or observation on my part, but due to the perversion of some natural urge.

Had all my work since then merely been ‘filling time’? Was every idea that sprang from my mind, every thing that I had ever fashioned with my own two hands, simply a means of filling the void of my barren, childless life?

‘Oh, you frightful thing,’ I murmured as I reached forward and took the wet pencil from between its teeth. ‘You beautiful, unnatural thing.’

‘You really do love that wretched thing, don’t you? This . . . Creature.’ Hesitantly, I laid my hand over hers. ‘I do. It’s hideous, I know, but I do.’

What I understood was this: I cared for the Creature, yes. I loved it, as one might very well love a child – or a symphony, or a masterpiece, or a beloved pet raised from infancy, or anything else perfect and beautiful that one has helped shepherd into the world. What I despised was the notion that it was a replacement – some inferior substitute to that which I ought to have brought forth by natural means, through agony and blood. The hollow that our poor daughter had left inside my heart was one that might never be filled. But – and here was a thought I had kept buried for a very long time, too afraid even to think it – I was still not sure how much of that grief belonged to her, and how much belonged to the version of myself I had hoped to find alongside her. The bliss of motherhood. The completeness I would finally feel, holding her in my arms. The knowledge that I had at last completed the task for which God, or Nature, had made me. But was I ever truly made for motherhood, with thoughts as selfish as these?

Nature was the realm of woman, so it was said, reason and science the realm of man; yet never had I felt so made for anything as when I had stood in my gloves and apron, lightning sparking between my fingers, striking life into inanimate matter.

‘My darling, my glorious little monster!’