Chapter 32:
Horrid 28. A Lullaby for the Unburied
HG's horrid shorts
The song didn't come from a music box. It came from the plumbing—a low, gurgling melody that sounded like someone humming through a throat full of swamp water. I followed the vibration to the bathtub and found the drain clogged with long, translucent ribbons of what I thought was silk. I pulled.
It wasn't silk. It was umbilical cord, cold and rubbery, miles of it coiling out of the pipes. And then came the voices. Thousands of tiny, wet whispers from the "almost-born," the ones who never got a name or a grave. They aren't sad; they’re spiteful. They began to climb out of the drain—limbless, translucent shapes with mouths that opened like lampreys. They don't want a mother; they want a body. They began to latch onto my ankles, their needle-teeth sinking into my calves to drink the life they were denied. I’m standing in the tub now, and the "lullaby" is getting louder, because they’ve finally reached my throat.
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