William Hayward 

Birth of the Petalída Galaxy

A feeling of suppyness in my right nipple woke me up to a rhythmic gulp/k-ahing noise coming from below my quilt. The hunger in the noise brought to mind an explorer falling upon a glass of water after a long barren period of wandering a desert or African plain and my hand trembled with a confused feeling of not wanting to disturb as it approached the quilt. Shadows flitted up and down and around the room like invisible children running around an invisible bonfire as I pulled it down. In the darkness I could only make out the basic shape of the something suckling firmly on my virgin nipple, a small conical thing that I coloured in by switching the bedside lamp on.

The thing the small conical thing was, was a limpet of a similar size and shape to any of the ones clinging to any of the rocks on any of the beaches. Standing with the same care I’d shown when removing the quilt, I went to the mirror. With the light on and the mirror being a mirror, I could see the limpet better. It was a dirty grey and the size of a fifty pence coin with a little rounded tip on top of its cone. It resembled a bizarre, organic nipple cover and pulsed as it supped on me. When I poked it gently with a finger, it pulsed harder, and the mouth its shell concealed grew warm, casting the image of a sun smiling into my head. Looking up at my reflection, I was shocked to see the shock I assumed I was feeling not being portrayed on my face and yet, somehow, was not shocked to see the calmness I was actually feeling written all over it; the calmness of a new mother, radiating off every pore. As soon as I saw the unsurprising calmness on my face, the confusing feeling in my limbs of not wanting to disturb became less confusing and more status quo and my heart followed my faces’ cue.

I was cradling my right breast when maternity punched me in the belly, making me bend in the middle and decide I would love the limpet forever and do all I could to raise it well. When I straightened, I was a mother and squeezed my breast accordingly to try to push more of whatever the limpet was consuming out for it.

“Drink up and don’t worry, I’ll make sure you have enough of whatever it is you're drinking in there. I’ll make sure you grow up big and strong. The biggest and strongest limpet there is. I’ll make sure.”

Tickling its shell, I walked to the kitchen. Opening the fridge, I went, “Aha!” and drank heavily from the bottle of milk in there. But milk didn't taste like milk had tasted the day before or any other previous day in my life. It tasted like the wet end of a snail, and I spat it out on the floor and threw the milk bottle across the kitchen to live in the bin. Diving back into the fridge, I took all the bottles and cartons of liquid in there out and lined them up on the table, sipping from each of them gently, gagging and spitting until I reached the spawn of many a crushed apple. The limpet’s sucks felt happier once some apple juice had been consumed. I went and lay back down in bed, feeling them follow the beat of my ever-loving heart.

The next morning my right breast was greatly reduced in mass, the skin shrivelled, puckered, loose. The limpet drank on just as strongly. Looking at its strength with a relieved smile, I marvelled at the love I felt for it.

“I love you, little limpet, more than I've ever loved anything in the world. You make my heart as light as a cloud and as dense as a sheep’s skull. If someone, say my father, was to say something cruel about you or raise a hand, I'd cut his cock off. I'd burn him to the ground like a common building and declare the sight an unsafe structure. That's what I'd do little limpet.”

Slapping a hand against my head, I groaned.

“I can't be calling you little limpet. It makes you like any old thing you could find any old where, not my child. You need a name.”

Getting out of bed, I paced the floor. My feet rubbed wood, my head considered.

“I think Alcaeus. Maybe? Possibly? It’s an important name. I saw it in a book once. And you’re clearly an important little thing. Entitled. Entitled to do great things. To make your mother proud. I think that’s right. Do you?”

My right breast deflated completely, turning into a puddle of flesh that could have been a breast still and could have been the discarded remnant of a water balloon fight as Alcaeus accepted its name enthusiastically. Holding Alcaeus as well as I could, I span around the room, humming a rhyme that could have been from my own childhood and my own mother and could have not been at all.

“Oh, little limpet, short and stout,

Eating on your rock, frigid with gout.

There is the sea, the sun, the moon!

Here comes the algae to fill you in the tomb.”

My singing sent the limpet’s feeding speed off into the stratosphere, its gulp/k-ahing becoming the shvooooooooooo of a hungry hoover. My left breast began to collapse in on itself and any worry about running out of what Alcaeus was drinking before he was grown that could have risen in me was covered in epoxy resin and preserved as an artefact of national unimportance. The accelerated feeding changed Alcaeus. Jerkily, as if in stop motion, I watched as the rounded tip that sat on the head of my nipple began to get more optical. A dome-like bud appearing with a lid and lashes. Already my Alcaeus was growing up. As my left breast began to resemble my right, a wondering of how much it would have to drink from me to complete all the changes it would have to complete before it could achieve all the great things it would achieve in its life took place in my mind. I would need apple juice, strength, and rest to be able to give it that much to drink, most of all apple juice and rest. To get one of those, I phoned my work. My boss, Mr Barren answered.

“Sir? It’s Regina here. I’m phoning to say I won’t be coming in today or for the foreseeable future.”

Mr Barren frowned through the line.

“I don’t understand.”

“I’ve become maternal and need to take leave for a currently up in the air amount of time.”

“You weren’t maternal yesterday.”

“Sir, I’ve always been maternal. But it took becoming so for me to see that.”

“Can you come in at least so I can see the child?”

“It’s important my new child has a well-rested mother to feed it. Coming in doesn’t sound restful. You may come to my house to see it.”

“Today?”

“Yes.”

“Right now?”

“Yes.”

Hanging up, I realised I’d been pacing the floor as I spoke on the phone and felt very ill. Wishing someone would fetch me apple juice from the fridge, I lay on the floor, very still, holding Alcaeus between a thumb and finger tenderly while whispering its name. Alcaeus drank like a skelephobic who’d discovered their own skeleton in response to my whispers and after a certain amount of time I heard the sound of a sticky eye being blinked. I saw the side of a green one looking out from my breast for the first time as a knock came on the front door.

Breathless with pride, I struggled up. Mr Barren walked into the house without looking at me when I opened the front door.

“Where is the child then?”

“It’s right here, Mr Barren. The apple of my eye, light of my life, eye of my womb. My precious jewel of the Nile.”

Mr Barren’s brows raised when he turned and saw Alcaeus. An implosion of amazement happened beneath the capillaries of his skin, fireworks going off as he saw my kiddiewink and its new eye in all their glory. Blinking aggressively, he got closer to my breast.

“Your child is quite something.”

“I’m in a moment of pride right now. The eye is new.”

Mr Barren mimicked the gulp/k-ahing sounds of the child, pursing his lips so his beard swallowed them before chuckling.

“It’s a hungry bugger. Sucking you dry, eh?”

I shrugged, a martyr, Joan of Arc, Gaia, and smiled blissfully.

“What’s its name?”

“Alcaeus.”

Mentioning Alcaeus’s name in front of a new person it could use its new eye to see sent it into a frenzy. My left breast completed its change into deflation and weakness bit so savagely at my knees that I fell to them.

“Miss Regina? You’ve fallen.”

“I’ve fallen.”

“Can you get up?”

I stretched a pome juice seeking hand towards the kitchen.

“Not without apple juice.”

Mr Barren ran to fetch a carton and touched the back of my head gently as I drank with almost the same hunger as Alcaeus, an expression on his face.

“I have a question. Does it have a father?”

I touched the back of the hand resting on the back of my head.

“I don’t have that answer.”

Mr Barren turned his hand, so it wasn’t the back I was touching but the palm. Blinking solemnly, he pointed at himself.

“I think you do.”

“You?”

“Me. I’ve looked into its eye. Now I feel parental.”

I considered my empty apple juice carton. I saw the benefits. But before I could nod, Mr Barren left me and began to make himself a bed on my settee, singing a gentle song about the joys and pressures of being a father and shaking his hips. While he worked on that, I decided it was time for me, as a responsible mother, to show Alcaeus the world it lived in. With strength back in my legs protecting my knees from savage bites, I went to the living room window and pointed Alcaeus’s eye at the hedge lining the pavement outside, at the horde of flies hovering over the thin branches. At a car, at a bicycle, at a skateboarder, all flying down the road. At a wispy cloud blinking cloudily down on the world and at the roulette wheel of emotions spinning on the faces passing the hedge.

“Look, it’s the world. It doesn’t look very big from this window but it’s very big. Bigger than me and you and your new father and it’s very interesting. You know what it means when something’s interesting? It means it makes you feel something you can’t explain. The world is very interesting.”

Another window, another view of the world for Alcaeus. An expansive blue sky being pierced by planes. A grey house’s greyness being infected by an old woman in a rainbow coloured coat. A dog with a collar and no lead being chased like it was a pumpkin rolling away from a patch on its own accord. A cat licking its furry anus as if it had never felt anything was interesting at all.

“You aren’t interesting, Alcaeus, because I can explain how you make me feel. I love you. You’re my child. But look at how interesting the world is. Look at the things you will get used to and try to remember that you should never get used to anything. That way you will always think of everything as interesting.”

Alcaeus blinked at the sights of interest, taking it all in, and then my right arm crumpled up in itself and became an empty tube of yoghurt encasing a narrow twig. I couldn’t move the arm once it had been drained. It fell to my side weakly, dead, deceased, a piece of desiccated poop floating through a breeze, weightless. Alcaeus’s shell flexed liquidly and grew in a spurt. Mr Barren stopped his singing when he saw and ushered me to his new bed to lie down. Touching my empty arm, he pinched some of the loose skin and smiled.

“Not a drop left in there. I’m proud of you. Our child is going to grow so big and strong. It’ll do important things once it’s big and strong. Do you feel that?”

“I feel that. I feel it sliding through my heart holes, telling me, ‘Your child is going to do great and important things that nobody else will be able to rival or match in at least the next hundred years or so, but only if you feed it so thoroughly you get drained dry’.”

Mr Barren lowered his head to kiss Alcaeus but stopped.

“What if it drains you dry before it’s big enough to do the great and important things?”

“I’ve thought about that. I almost worried. But I have faith. In apple juice and in rest. Praise be for apple juice and rest. With them, I’ll remain wet until it’s time to become dry. I’m lying down. Now get me some apple juice.”

We lay for a while, me on the settee drinking juice, Mr Barren on floor, both watching Alcaeus slowly drain my glair. There was no more change. I drank four cartons of apple juice but there was no more change. Mr Barren’s face, filling with fatherly concern for progress, turned to me and raised a finger as an idea occurred to him.

“Maybe it needs more of the world. You were showing it the world when it grew last time. We could go for a walk. You could rest after?”

With the help of my reflective phone screen, I stared straight into Alcaeus’s eye and saw how it moved from side to side, how it had taken my advice and was looking, almost desperately, for something new to interest it. I nodded, getting up and wrapping a shawl around my upper body, covering all but Alcaeus’s nipple. Mr Barren led the way from the house to the park, holding my one good wrist delicately but firmly while I angled my breast to show Alcaeus the sights on the way. There was no reaction from it we got to the park and I pointed its eye upon the dirty boating lake with no boats on it. That interested it. That made some growth happen. That brought on a suckle so furious two little arms sprouted from the sides of its shell. My remaining arm lost ability and mass, leaving it dangling from Mr Barren’s tight grip, uselessly. Alcaeus’s new arms were brown and pink in colour with oddly clean little fingernails. They waved around dramatically and beat against the side of my breast as if trying to play a broken bongo drum.

Mr Barren cried happily, waving his arms around in recognition. Kicking his legs in hope, we ran. Or he ran, and I let myself be swept along. Bursting into a clearing filled with orange leaves, we startled two squirrels arguing over a nut. They bumped heads and fell before fleeing into the trees with chirps that interested Alcaeus so much that a small leg half the size of a baby’s littlest finger popped out the bottom of its shell. Further we went, going past a small ice cream van with colourful characters painted on the side. It was playing a jingle that still made my heart race and the children lining up at the window of it were clutching money in grubby hands that would never achieve half as much as my child’s new hands would achieve over the years. The sight of their hands made me wish I could still raise mine to clasp the minuscule fingers of my child, but its hands were too busy waving with nonsensical joy at the sights confronting it to be clasped regardless. The ice cream van’s jingle caused Alcaeus’s one sproutling leg to shoot out into full existence and condemned one of mine to the grave. I fell out of Mr Barren’s grip, off the path and into a dirty ditch, rolling amongst a pile of orange leaves that tickled my deflated flesh.

Mr Barren spun, his eyes crazed, the arenaceous irises little hourglasses counting down an imagined period of time he’d determined as to when it would be too late for my body to further nurture Alcaeus. He startled and salivated at the mouth, pulling a carton of apple juice out from his coat pocket, and pouring it over my face, rambling.

“What are you doing? Resting or giving up? Come on, do your motherly duty properly. No rest until the child is grown now. It’ll be too late. No retreat or surrender. Drink. Get up. We need more of the world. More interest.”

“One of my legs has been drained. I can’t stand on it. Besides, Alcaeus is enjoying the leaves.”

Alcaeus’s arms were a blur of emotion and play as the leaves caressed its shell. Its eye blinked as if dancing the quickstep and it grabbed the edges of all the leaves it could, tossing them up in the air to fall, like lighter than air rain, back down on it.

“Alcaeus’s enjoyment is beside the point. Enjoyment isn’t interest. Enjoyment isn’t making any more legs grow.”

I wagged my eyebrows as if they were a disapproving finger.

“I have to teach Alcaeus how to enjoy life and have fun. To take pleasure as well as being interested in things. Fun and pleasure are important. I don’t want it to be a serious little thing, unable to take pleasure in any of its future greatness. Let it have fun for a bit now.”

Mr Barren’s face loomed a tapestry of disgust as he scooped me and Alcaeus away from the ditch and fun and began running again. Alcaeus’s hands stretched towards them both as it was taken away and drank from me like a circus owner who’d lost their big top.

“A mother clearly doesn’t know best. Growth and greatness are important. Nothing else. I didn’t become this child’s father to watch it have fun.”

I was being shaken too much by his running to reply so I turned my head and bit his chest as best I could to signal my distaste for what was happening. Mr Barren was in too much of a hurry pointing Alcaeus at every possible sight he thought would prompt growth to notice. A hissing swan, a dead fish, a crying child, a crying adult, a laughing adult, a pushchair, a lunch, a picnic, a moustache, a beard, a skirt, a dress, a shirt, a tie, a leather jacket, a woman in a fur coat reading The Golden Ass underneath a tree. Slowly, as the sights passed by, as if its interest was suddenly an unwilling emotion it wanted to hold back, Alcaeus grew another leg. It emerged like the head of a snail emerges from its body and looked weaker than the rest of its limbs, its limbs which much like my own dangled limply and without life.

Mr Barren crowed when he noticed the second leg breaking my heart and lowered his head to Alcaeus.

“Look. Growth. The start of greatness. Important things that I have given you. Not her. Me. And you’ll thank me when you’re older for all of them. You’ll say, ‘Thank you father for not wasting time and giving me these arms and legs and possibly even mouth and tongue. These things that have let me do so many great things. Thank you for removing distractions like fun and pleasure at a crucial time in my development.’”

I stretched my tongue down past Mr Barren’s shouting head to gently lick Alcaeus in comfort and one of its hands moved, reaching up to stroke my tongue. A bump on the floor interrupted the moment as Mr Barren dropped me, rolling me from the path and into a deserted patch of woodland, still talking.

“It will thank me, Miss Regina, for removing it from you, a soon to be empty carton. It will have to. I mean, what kind of father would I be if I risked it not growing to its full capabilities by leaving it to you? Someone who wanted to waste time with unimportant things. A good one? No, no.”

Fear gripped my heart.

“Don’t touch my child. You don’t understand.”

Mr Barren grabbed Alcaeus.

“I understand. I understand,” he murmured, tugging gently at first, but then harder as Alcaeus’s little hands tried to fight him off.

My breast’s loose skin stretched to absurd lengths before it began to fight against the tugging. Mr Barren had to take two steps back before I could feel resistance. When the resistance came, I wept. Pain doing a conga line up and down my spine. Mr Barren pulled at Alcaeus with the impatience of a child on a beach and as he pulled his face turned the colour of wet sand. He continued to whisper as he pulled.

“I understand, I understand…”

As I cried, I answered his whispers, as if they could be convinced to stop being whispers and become instead thoughts with no basis in reality.

“You don’t understand.”

No one in the park seemed aware of what was happening in a ditch just off the main path, no matter how loud I made my voice, or if they were aware of it they were ignoring it for the sake of having a good day not interrupted by crying or screams. The lack of interruption worked for Mr Barren. With only Alcaeus having the working limbs to try and fight him off he had all the time in the world to keep pulling with a certainty I and my nipple weren’t aware of.

“Everything comes off eventually, it’s all about how long you’re willing to tug for.”

Mr Barren’s hands weren’t hammers or any other kind of prising tools, but they had time and after a certain amount had passed, they managed to begin pulling my beloved child away from my nipple. For the first time since it had appeared, I felt its mouth slip, its firm little jaws come undone. With a screech from me and a wordless reaching with little hands for the swollen teat it was leaving behind, Alcaeus came off, leaving my nipple free to spurt something that resembled cloudy apple juice and smelt of dirt and running water out into the air.

The something that spurted out flew into the sky and took my sight and mind with it. It rose from the earth, going through and past stars and black holes, through and past suns and planets, through and past galaxies and universes, until it reached somewhere that wasn’t a galaxy or a universe, but a completely blank space. The something that spurted went to the middle of the blank space and spread out, spawning new planets and stars and suns and other things that didn’t yet have names. Spawning rocks the size of planets coated in limpets feeding and living and growing, all of them wearing my sight and mind like a hat.