The
Egg
by
William Becker
Genre:
Horror
When
it comes to having kids, there are no such things as mistakes, just
“surprises” or even to quote the late Bob Ross, “Happy
accidents.” May Dawes isn’t so sure about that when she gets
pregnant, considering she isn’t attracted to men and has never had
sex with a man. The beauty of childbirth becomes much less
beautiful when her child is revealed not to be a child at all, but a
strange, alien egg that seems to be driving her every action. THE EGG
is a horrific and hopeless journey into maternal instinct,
depression, obsession, and loneliness.
The crimson lights in my room make her hair seem red without any
intruding natural light. My head is in her lap, her skinny jeans
comfortable against my shoulder-length hair. My eyes are closed, almost
as if not seeing the moment will make it slow down or last eternally. I
wish I could hold onto the moment forever or hold it in a photograph,
dipping my impressionable heart in whenever I need to feel real. She’s
playing with my hair and in the background is the sound of “Plan 9 From
Outer Space” playing at an overwhelming volume, practically screaming
out from the television. It’s just noise to me, filling the air with a
distraction that only serves to deviate from our impassioned silence.
Everything is okay. Her short nails grazing along each strain of my
hair is enough to make me want to fall asleep. Everything about her
feels right. Her perfume has mostly faded after a long day with me, but
the scent is more comforting than anything else in the entire world. My
mind flashes back to prom, when we told my parents that we were going
“as friends.” That’s where the smell takes me. Other times, the smell
takes me back to my first kiss with her, when time seemed to shatter and
my stomach felt like a glove for a little frantic demon inside of me.
It’s nostalgic and makes me miss her, even though she’s right next to
me.
I’m drifting between being awake and being asleep. When I
open my eyes, she’s looking down at me, only she doesn’t seem as
unstrained as me. She’s turned the TV volume down. The sun has gone
down, making the room completely red with my LED lights that have been
tacked up along the ceiling.
“May,” she whispers flatly, the
words cutting through the silence like a gunshot. Her voice is cracked
and dry. The words seem like they are struggling to escape her throat.
Something immediately seems to shatter the serenity.
“Yeah?” I say back, barely having the strength to open my eyes.
“Can
we talk?” She asks without any hint of emotion. Something inside of me
drops. In situations like this, it’s usually nothing important, but her
saying stuff like that always makes me anxious. It’s usually related to
an insecurity or something stupidly minor that I end up laughing about,
questioning why I was even worried to begin with. This time, something
actually feels horribly wrong. Suddenly, I’m thrown out of my comfort
zone.
William
Becker is a young horror author with a mind for weirder sides of the
universe. With an emphasis on complex and layered storylines that tug
harshly on the reader to search for deeper meanings in the vein of
Silent Hill and David Lynch, Becker is a force to be reckoned within
the horror world. His works are constantly unfathomable, throwing
terror into places never before seen, while also providing compelling
storylines that transcend the predictable jumpscares of the popular
modern horror.
His first novel, WEEPING OF THE CAVERNS, was
written when he was 14. After eight months of writing, editing, and
revising, the story arrived soon after his 15th birthday. During the
writing sessions for his debut novel, he also wrote an
ultra-controversial short story known as THE WHITE SHADE that focused
on the horrors of a shooting. Living in a modern climate, it was
impossible for THE WHITE SHADE to see the light of day. Following a
psychedelic stint that consisted of bingeing David Lynch movies,
weird art, and considering the depth of the allegory of the cave
wall, he returned to writing with a second story, THE BLACK BOX, and
soon after, his second novel, GREY SKIES.
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