Bland Story Studios, Kain Story a Voice. This is Addison Peacock and you're
listening to The Wicked Library. Warning. The Wicked Library is a horror fiction
podcast created for a mature audience. Our stories contain graphic descriptions of pain,
murder, violence, blood, betrayal, and inhumanity. Monsters win, people
die, and hope is often shattered. There is also beauty, heart,
catharsis, and raw emotion. Fear may be deeply personal, but we all
share. If at any time a story takes you to a place too dark,
turn on the lights, press pause or press stop, and always remember
that, unlike in the real world, these nightmares and your participation in them,
are under your control. Welcome to the Wicked Library. I'm Daniel Floytech,
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you love possible at Patreon dot com Forward slash Wicked Library. Now, let's
get wicked with today's dark tale, told by Addison Peacock, featuring a custom
score by Niko Vites of the Inky Pop prints Her drowned envy by alexis to
bond spears of grass, all damp with dew clung to my bare feet,
grass so wet it feels like it should be cold, but nothing is cold
anymore. The dawning sun hangs swollen in the sky, mirroring my overrighte belly,
making my blood enameled thighs glow in the orange light. I lacker the
field and crimson with each step, marching across the endless green toward the birthing
pond, trying not to crumple in pain. Halfway the way, so many
women do, careful not to slip on the ruby's slick landscape, already soggy
and oversaturated, cutting through thick, swampy air. I have to make it
to the pond, birth the baby underwater, wait for it to rise.
His face will cut through the surface, his round baby belly will be a
smooth little island. Only the strongest will surface, the ones who can survive
this new world, this wet sky and weighty damp. There hasn't been a
baby strong enough to float for as long as I can remember, not since
I was a child myself, not a single baby born with the lungs to
buoy them to life. I've pictured this moment a thousand times, and now
that it's here, I am more certain than ever. I will be the
one. I will know motherhood, prove that life can persist, that this
dampness won't drown out mankind. My baby will mean there's a future. I
will be the woman who ushers in hope for humanity. So many have been
denied, but not me. I refuse to fail. I will not return
without a child. I am owed that much fruitless births are expected. And
though the women who carried these doomed things inside of them, who hoped for
a child and bled and cried for nothing, returned home in defeat, at
least they have people to return to. I have nothing, no one.
I have always been alone. And here I stand at the mouth of the
birthing pond, in the middle of an empty pasture. I'm afraid of the
solitude that surrounds me. Most women say that's the worst part. But I
am as alone anywhere else. As I am here alone in this silent morning,
alone in the shallow water, my body quakes. It's coming soon.
I am alone for the last time. Reeds bend toward me, too sodden
to stand upright, collapsing under the weight of the air. They look as
if they are bowing. They bow to my baby as it crowns, defiant
and determined and ready to breathe. You will live, I say, between
cries, you are the one. Beads of salt water drop from my brow
and into the freshwater pond that's seen so many should be mothers and their sweat,
so many grieving women and their tears, so much salt and sacrifice,
so much blood and death, and never new life in return. But today
is different, Today is mine. All the breath rushes from my lungs as
I push and contract, push and wail into the suffocating air, that thick,
foggy air, as heavy as glass, shattering to liquid shards against the
force of my screams. I duck down beneath the pond. Water lie flat
against its silty bottom, paint it red. Blood spools from my body,
dissipating like smoke, rising and dancing in the ripples of my contractions, sanguine
flames, engulfing me until all I am is inferno. One last scream boils
from my mouth as bubbled chaos explodes against the stifled air above. The baby
is out, and I dragged myself above the surface, gasping for breath,
waiting for him to meet me. Slowly he floats to the algae freckled surface,
rising like mercury. His back breaks through to the wet air above.
Turned the wrong way. He doesn't scream, he doesn't breathe. I lift
his tiny body, heavier than it should be. His face is slack ray,
his eyes are swollen, and his lips are cold. Nothing is cold
anymore, except my son. I try to shake him to life, but
his head only lolls loose limp. The baby is dead. The pond rises
with my tears. Reeds shake behind me, announcing that I am no longer
alone, not even a moment to spend with my misery. I'm going to
bury the baby in the bank of the pond. It's a rushed job,
sloppy, but the intrusion jars me with panic. I suck sounds of grief
back into my mouth and hide. A woman approaches, fighting her way through
the wet canary grass. Wails like bolts of lightning, slice through my fresh
anguish, my sorrow overshadowed by bellowing hope, still searing with the pain of
a torn body, still trailing blood. I keep silent. The woman enters
the water, unaware of my eyes on her, and sits with her knees
bent into herself, shoulder deep. I don't need to see her face to
know, even from behind, she's unmistakable feline. Those cries that sound like
bird's song, that hair that water falls down her back, soft and clean,
silky even in the dense, disgusting air. If it wasn't for all
this water, this constant, hovering vapor. Feleine would have seen what everyone
else could see. But mirrors have long since become obsolete, two beaded with
dewy specks of condensation to show anything but a clouded silhouette like Feleine. I've
never seen my own face, but I know enough to be envious. With
fingers that were never quite as long and slender as hers, I've traced my
features, lashes that don't feel rich and lush the way hers are, Lips
easily lost beneath my touch, not like the plump, pink pillows that stretch
across Pheleine's face when she smiles, which is all the time. Besides,
I can tell from the way people look at me that I'm no great beauty.
Feleine has everything, and now she will have a baby too. It
was always going to be her. This baby will be the one, the
baby born of Feleine's perfection, born of a woman whose life has never known
sorrow or failure or want. It should have been me. Screams shake the
earth for hours, and I stay stone, still out of sight, hidden
beneath the drooping reeds. I am folded too, quietly, quivering from the
pain of birth that shreds my body. But I'm too focused on this endless
aching moment to succumb and make a sound. Not even a whimper leaves my
lips. I will be a mother. I just have to be patient.
Not until the sky turns black does Feleine deliver. Her cries halt for a
moment, and everything is silent with anticipation. The air, for once is
light, made of a million angels, all holding their breath. The darkness
of a moonless night blankets the field, the pond Felene. But when an
unfamiliar pitch ruptures the emptiness, I know exactly what it is. Victory Feline
dissolves into laughter. All the stars that hid in the black sky, wading
with hope and worry, reveal themselves and shine down on her. The pond
dances in celebration under their twinkling light. She is the first mother of the
New World. Her blood, red as rose petals, blooms in the water,
its feckined fragrance concealing the sharp tang of my congealing placenta rotting in the
marsh, unceremoniously discarded in my hurry to hide the salt of faline sweat joins
the sweet smell of birth blood, earthy and rich, swallowing the vinegar stench
of denied motherhood. I emerge through the reeds at last, wielding the rock
I've been gripping for what feels like forever. I returned to town, met
with thunderous applause. Tears streamed down, faces already beaded with moisture. Sprays
of waterfly from clapping hands. I hold new life in my arms. Humanity
may yet survive because of me. I will never be alone again because of
him. They all watched through the windows, too devastated by habit to hope
as two women left for the pond. But they are used to women not
returning, and no alarms are raised when Feleine does not follow my arrival.
Childbirth is perilous, even in easy times. They might not even notice she's
still gone. Feilene has never been overlooked. If only she were alive to
see it, to feel the invisibilit that is so familiar to me. No
one even mentions her name when they realize she hasn't come home. They'll all
assume she didn't make it through her birth. So many women don't. But
the first time she'll be ordinary. They have no reason to think. She's
lying at the bottom of the pond, head caved in just above her loved
eye. Motherhood is everything I knew it would be. The baby takes to
latching easily, painlessly. He sleeps through the night and rises with the sun.
He cous and smiles like he understands the miracle. He is. A
month of laughter and peace, Mother and baby, Me and him, and
the glory of dreams come true. For a full cycle of the moon.
I know, unflemished joy, never alone anymore. Now it's me and him.
It isn't until the emptiness of a black sky that he cries, the
first time a moonless night blankets our home. I try to sing to him,
try to comfort him. I tell him that he's mine and we will
be together always, that I love him and no harm will ever come,
That he is the start of a new world, that he is so special,
my baby. But he does not stop. He pulls away, shrieking
and howling, tries to free himself of my grasp. I offer him my
breast, and my motherly instincts are strong, so attuned to him, so
natural. I was made for this. No one has to teach me a
thing. I doubt anyone would have anything to teach. The last generation of
mother's is gone, unable to withstand the wet air in old age, no
one still living would have any experience to share. There There, I whisper,
maybe he is only hungry. The pain from his suckle strikes hard.
My milk is too hot as it passes through me into his eager mouth.
He sucks greedily from my body, but it struggles to reach him, and
he sucks harder. It feels curdled, clumpy. Pain radiates through my body
and I pull away. Mother's milk dribbles down his chin, But it's wrong.
It's gray and watery, murky silt speckled peppered with sediment. A slight
green tint coats it like varnish. He cries again and reaches for more.
Though it hurts, I endure. I cannot stand to see my prints.
Unhappy. Grains of dirt leave my body and tears fall from my eyes.
Failine could never persist through this pain. I was made for motherhood. This
is as it had to be. I wipe algae from his chin. The
baby does not stop. Until morning. I put the knight behind me.
It had to have been a bad dream, despite the linger skuld in my
body that insists otherwise. Another month passes, all giggles and glee. He
is growing and becoming so strong, a hearty baby, a survivor, a
champion. But under the darkness of another moonless sky, he cries again,
screaming wailing animal sounds that pierce my skull, unnatural sounds no baby should make.
I try to convince myself that I'm dreaming again, but I know that's
not true. I try to convince myself that there are some things new mothers
can't be prepared for. Maybe this is normal. But the scent of blood
fills my nose, that sweet blood, Falen's blood, too sweet, too
floral, And I remember the stink of my own after birth, like rot
and vinegar and garbage. I push those memories away. This is my baby.
There is nothing to worry about. There there, I whisper. Baby
is only hungry. He latches and suckles, and I am incinerated. Fire
rips through me. Everything burns. I remember the cold lips of my firstborn
and remember to be grateful for the heat. Heat means he's alive, greedy
boy, He's taken more than his stomach can fit. Baby spits up,
spewing cloudy gray filth from his precious mouth, and the night pulls away from
me. As I collapse in pain, the morning light reveals crusts of blood
over my breast, the bed drenched and filtered. Dead tadpoles streak the sheets,
algae and marsh grass cling to my body. My baby's face is smeared
in grime and blood clots, the cloying sweetness of decaying reeds, the copper
tang of a weeping womb. When the black sky night comes a third time,
I embraced to expect it. If such is the price of motherhood,
I accept. The pain of pond water feedings is torturous, but it's one
night. I should appreciate the reminder that water brought him safely into the world.
It marks the miracle of his birth, a commemoration made by my own
body. With the darkness come his tears. I raise him to my breast,
exhausted already from the anticipation of pain. He suckles, but I have
nothing to give. His screams rattle my spine, his hands grab tiny fingernails
scraping across my skin. His face goes red with fury at a hunger I
can't satisfy. Soft strokes against his downy head aren't enough to soothe him.
Sweet melodies sung only slightly out of key don't calm him. My voice isn't
as beautiful as Phealine's, isn't a voice made for singing. Herresses and lullabies
aren't what he wants anyway. He wants to be fed. I try again
and again, but I am empty. He only cries harder. I know
what he needs, and if he can't get it from me, he'll still
have it. Baby, will get his water all the way across the field,
over the wet grass, and deeper into the mist, through the soggy
shield of reed, back to where we first came into each other's lives.
Here at the pond's edge, the fog is thick. Sheets of suspended liquid
turn the air to glass, heavy, almost solid with moisture. The vapors
that hover around me pick up what little gleam the stars offer and reflect their
light, making a mirror of the haze. I see my reflection for the
first time. I see my own body, my face, the baby wails
in my arms, but I am so struck by this revelation I barely hear
him. The figure before me is a bit gauzy, just clear enough to
see that I am st breaking. My lips are full and plum, purple,
stunning. My eyes are light and milky, unlike any I've ever seen.
My cheeks, though sunken low, even in the darkness of the night,
a glitter like. My skin is made of dewdrops. In the mirror
of the fog, my baby is so much more still than when I look
down at the kicking boy in my arm. In the mirror, he's sleeping.
He's smaller, too, like when he was new. Baby reaches grabs
at the reflection. He smiles, even though this is his night to cry,
a smile bigger than I've ever seen. His wails are giggles now,
and he stretches forward toward the fog with eager little fingers. His reflection does
not mirror his impatience. Spell Bound by my own beauty, I lean in
to inspect the blurry image more closely. He squeals with joy as my movement
brings him nearer. Even at this distance, it is difficult to make out
the details of my face and the gossamer glass. I step forward, too
mesmerized to notice the tangle of reeds at my feet. Caught in the knot,
I tumble forward, shattering the mist. With the baby in my arms.
I can't use my hands to break the fall. I will not let
him go. My arms clasp tighter around him to shield him from the impact,
and I plunge through the surface of the pond, down to the bottom,
where a red stained rock waits for me. A hollow thud drums against
my skull, and my vision goes black as the night. Cracked bone leaks
brain fluid, blood swells, my eye, lid shut still. I cling
to the baby. I cling to him until there is no strength in my
arms, until something pulls him away and he is gone. Blood and salt
and silt fill my lungs, and all I feel is cold. All I
hear is the sound of laughter, layered laughter, mirrored giggles, a voice
I know, like bird song, so much more beautiful than mine, A
harmonized blur of happy sounds, falling farther and farther away until they vanish.
I'm left with the familiar scent of blood and the familiar silence of solitude.
I shut my eyes in the murk of the pond, knowing I will never
open them again. Thank you for listening to episode number twelve oh eight.
Today's author was Alexis Dubon with her tale Her Drowned Envy. Today's story was
told by Addison Peacock. I'm Daniel Foytek and I've been your host today.
Our resident composer and executive producer is Niko Vettes of the Inky Pop. Print.
Artwork for today's episode was created by Greg Schaeffer. To find out more
about The Wicked Library and other Ninth Story Studio shows, visit the Wickedlibrary dot
com and ninth Story dot com. If you'd like to help keep this collection
of dark tales coming, please support The Wicked Library on Patreon at Patreon dot
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