Walking along the street in a dark old town, overgrown trees, winding paved streets, broken sandstone spewing old earth as wet mud with moss and some small blue-violet flowers that look nice and menacing like how death is romantic. It was dark so I couldn’t tell what it was so far away from a streetlight but it was whiter than anything else, not a piece of bark, was it? I thought but coming closer to it it was a shivering little thing that was flesh with a curved back and a head with some type of hair on its head. I stood there looking at it for a while, horrified, disgusted, confused. Is it dying, what the fuck is it? It was wet, could be from the rain an hour ago. It’s really more like a shaved lamb or a small horse-thing with a half-human head/face…it’s, I can’t describe it really but it is curled up in foetal position like a human baby, shivering and crying in a weird “heeeee heeeee hee hi hi hip” kind of sound which really does sound like a child thing and I reach my hand out and touch it and it’s cold and wet and smooth like a human and it reacts to my touch with a quick flinch and I thought it was just a piece of bark before this and now it’s maybe dying a little thing lying there in the dirt, naked (I guess) and cold and crying. I look around and there’s some headlights coming but that’s it, dark and winding up towards some houses with lights on but not many. “Hee hi hip heeee” it says, crying and shivering and curdled in a ball. Fuck. I pick it up and hold it close to me, like I know what to do with a baby. I look at its face, large eyes under closed lids, extended jaw and teeth, small nose shrunk into the skull, curly white hair on its head in one small patch, long neck into a thick small body with equal sized limbs, hands and feet one and the same, tucked up in half fists like baboon hands. But no hair expect for that tuft on the head. White skin, wet, cold, goose pimples, soft and young, like a baby born of a sheep, human and snake. Out from the night I am carrying a crying naked thing that is maybe hours or days or weeks old, dumped naked and scared in the night, a bastard child of rape or incest or something unholy.
I woke up and immediately thought of the thing next to me. I have a double bed and had wrapped it in some jumpers and placed it in the bed next to me. It seemed to calm down and sleep and now warm was not shivering so I let myself sleep. Now in the morning I looked at it and it was asleep, breathing heavily through its long nose. I took a shower and came back and it was gone. I looked over the bed and couldn’t see it but found it under the bed, alive and looking around, making a small “teet teet” sound. I put my hand under and it shifted away. I said ‘shhh shhh’ and reached over slowly, trying to get it’s limb or something or have it trust me enough to relax. It looked confused and scared, of course, making “tsch tsch tsch” sounds and I reached further towards it. It let me catch a limb, its back leg and slowly drag it closer, only just struggling and making a “eeeaaarr eeeaarrr” sound, slightly distressed. I had it pulled out and in the light, it looked right at me and I picked it up and put it on the bed, wrapped it in last nights jumpers and tried to quiet it’s nerves. It’s ears darted and the small body tried to pulse away from me but soon it relaxed, wether tired or content. I knew I couldn’t let it go again so tried to dress with it sort of in my arms and eventually got everything done and didn’t know what clothes to put on it so left it wrapped in the jumpers. I took it down with me to my car and got in, placing it on the passenger seat before changing my mind and putting it on my lap. It curled up and relaxed, I started the engine soon after that.
Waiting at the medical centre with it in my arms, sleeping, hopefully ok and not hypothermic or pneumonic or something. After forty-five minutes they call my name and I take it in with me. The doctor says “so what can I do for you today” and I just give the thing over to him.
“This is…this is…your…baby?”
“My baby? No. No, this…I found this last night and I…”
“Found?”
“Yes, I was…I was walking and I came across this…this…thing and I…”
“Thing? This is…your baby”
“What? No this…this is not my baby, it’s…”
“Sir, um, Mr Michelson, this…your child is very sick, she’s”
“She?!”
“Mr Michelson…your child has sever hypothermia. Okay we need to get her into protective care ASAP”
“Oh my god”
The doctor turns away, the child-thing in his arms and makes a call, a nurse comes in a takes it away, all so quick and he turns to me with
“Mister…John. Can I call you John”
“Ah, yeah sure, I mean, what’s”
“John, listen. We’ve, we’re going to help your daughter but you must realise what is happening here. I mean, she’s very ill and you’ve…you’ve clearly been neglecting her and by law we have to report it.”
“This is crazy I mean, I was trying to save it and I…I wrapped it up and I slept with it and I brought it right here, I mean…I…”
“John. I don’t know what to tell you. This, this child is your daughter. I can see it right here. Madeline. Her name is Madeline, John.”
“What? I…I found this…thing…last night, and I…”
Looking forward at the ground is just plain grey concrete and looking up is plain grey shiny metal bars and looking left and right is strange men I really don’t want to be near and its all clean and cold and hard and maybe half the people look away and they are going to call me soon for an interview and two people are pacing and one is cleaning dirt from under his nails, uncaring. I don’t feel so bad because there are lots of security freedoms, open windows, lights, minimal guards so I don’t feel too detained, well, not prison detained. I don’t care so much because this is so stupid. It’s maybe twenty or maybe forty minutes until a guy in a suit with a cop next to him says my name and I get up and they let me out and follow them unrestrained which makes me feel good. We walk along the corridors, many varying entrapments of people in different states of interrogation or processing and we get to a door and they open it and we go in. They gesture for me to sit and when I approach a chair they tell me to sit in the other one. There is a glass of water on the table and a tape recorder. The suited man and the police officer sit opposite me and say
“we’re going to start the recording, okay?”
“okay” I say.
And the officer presses the button down. In an obligatory gesture I sip the water. The officer starts
“My Michelson, we have detained you for gross neglect of your child, do you understand this”
“Yes, I have heard but”
“Good. Okay. This is Doctor George Kindle. He will be talking to you for most of this first session, “Doctor”
“Yes thank you officer. Okay Mr Michelson, John if I may?”
“John is fine”
“Great, okay, John.” pause “John, do you know that you have a daughter?”
“A daughter? No I don’t have a daughter!”
The doctor talks to the officer, I hear him say something but I can’t be sure if it’s ‘stress case cause’ or ‘stress crazed kill’ or ‘strained child kiss’ but none sound right.
“Your daughter, John, is dead. And we think you killed her. It’s called ‘Post Traumatic Stress disorder, and in women we call it post natal stress syndrome, but it differs between genders and timelines and situations, do you understand?”
“No I found… this…this…thing and I brought it in to the doctor and I … I don’t know, I wrapped it up and then, then I brought it in, I”
“Yes, we know what you did, John. Ok. I think I’ve heard enough. Officer, you can take him back to the holding cell.”
“Ok, what’s going on here, I mean really. What the fuck is going on?”
The officer gets up and stands behind me, guides me up and pulls my hands behind my back, putting cuffs back on me and leading me out. The doctor is sitting at the desk finishing writing a few lines on his clipboard.
“Doctor, what the hell is going on?”
“John I’ll be with you soon. We just need to look into this, okay”
“Yeah…yeah okay” And they lead me back down the corridors and I see a woman I think I know but I can’t be sure.
They tell me I have post natal depression. They tell me I killed my child, left her naked and alone outside. Took her for a walk with me and left her in a patch of wet grass, moss and mud in a dark corner of the neighbourhood. Not wanting to kill her, just to leave her there and let her go. But then, they say, I went back for her, and found her right where I’d left her, and picked her up and taken her home. Washed the mud off her and put her in bed with me. That I had hated her because her mother had left and I felt alone and trapped, that I hated her and wanted her to go away so I took her and left her naked and alone. That I had given her pneumonia and hypothermia and all that and then gone and picked her up and tried to take care of her and then the next day not knowing who she was took her to the doctor to bring her back to life but that it was too late. That I had killed her and that I was a murderer. That I had killed my child because my wife left me and I couldn’t handle it. That I was insane and crazy and would kill my child. But I know I was walking and saw a half-dead strange human thing dying in the mud and I tried to help the thing to live.
