I
I am holding a lump of clay in my arms. The room around me is unfamiliar—clean and sterile, it reeks of disinfectant. The lump in my arms starts to move. I notice that the lump has a human face—barely formed, but still alarmingly human. My thighs feel sore and stiff, I sneak a hand under the covers around my torso and my fingers come away wet and sticky. Blood. The lump in my arms has started wailing. Underneath my palm, its heart beats in a fluttering, Plathian rhythm: I am, I am, I am. I realise with a sharp awareness that this lump, this baby, this human baby, belongs to me. Panic seizes my throat. I do not recall being pregnant, I have not had sex in months— years, if I am being honest with myself. But I know without a doubt, without anyone having told me, that this baby is mine. Its face is disgusting I think, covered in blood and remnants of insides that smell like my own. I see in a corner of the room, a metal sink and a dish of water. I move, carefully cradling the child, my child, against my chest. My palms are wet and slippery but it isn’t until my vision starts to get blurry that I realize I am crying. I limp my way across the room and lay my child into the pail of water. It yells and protests, my tears keep falling, my fingers are shaking. My voice is hoarse as I say, Hush, it’s okay, you’re okay over and over again. I wipe at my baby’s face with the water and turn around in search of a towel to wrap it in. When I turn back, my baby has fallen into the sink—empty just a second ago, now full to the brim with water. I can hear its muffled screams from inside the water—bloody water, with my insides swirling around it. I reach inside the water for my baby but the sink is suddenly bottomless, my baby sinks deeper and deeper until my sobs are louder in my ears than its wailing, until my wet palms cannot reach its slippery body. The bloody water swirls around the sink, I cannot see my child inside anymore. I scream and scream and scream.
I open my eyes and clutch at my chest. My bed, the fan on the ceiling, my blue blanket signal to me that I am home, in my room. My palms are trembling still, and my thighs are still damp. This time too when I reach between my legs, my fingers come away wet. But in the soft glow of my lamp, I see that it is sweat, not blood. I keep blinking at the ceiling, a newborn’s wailing ringing sharp behind my ears. A dream then. I am still childless, still celibate. I exhale in relief. Reaching for my phone, I open Instagram on reflex. Explosive weapons caused record child deaths last year, reads an Al Jazeera post. At least 20,000 children have been killed in Israel’s genocidal war since October 7, 2023. I scroll down on my feed and come across a reel of a cat playing with her two kittens. I stare at their grey furry bodies for a while and then click my phone shut.
I am cold all over, the sweat on my body settling on me like ice on dead fish. Shrugging my blanket off I walk myself to the kitchen, pour shitty instant coffee in a cup and stir water into it. I blow air onto the cup, caress it in my palms, hold it against my chest, letting its warmth calm me, seep into me. I make my daily morning call to my mother. She answers after three rings. I tap my fingers incessantly against my coffee cup and pace a circle around my living room as I tell her about my dream. Stop watching those horror movies, she tells me. But Ma, I didn’t, I protest indignantly. In my head, unbidden: an image of a limb sticking out beneath rubbles and stone, its fingers twisted into a tiny fist, the hint of a sweater visible behind its wrist—baby blue wool. I shake my head. Dreams don’t mean anything beta, I hear my mom saying. Don’t overthink it. Have you eaten? No, not yet. I realize too late that I should have just lied, but I am not very quick on my feet today. You haven’t eaten? It’s nearly afternoon!
My mother says, predictably. Yes, yes I know. I am going now. Acha, bye. I hang up and slurp the last bitter dredges of my coffee.
I step into the shower, letting the water run slightly hotter than my skin can usually bear. The steam rises toward the ceiling, settles on the mirror, drifts out the tiny window. I shut my eyes and tilt my face up toward the mouth of the faucet. I see a bicycle, muddy, white sneakers, open drains, pebbled pathways, a toothy grin pinned beneath hollow eyes. A shudder goes through me. I open my eyes and stare instead at the water swirling around the drain—reptilian, graceful.
II
When I was a child, we lived in a two-storey house in a colony at the edge of our city. Open drains ran like rivers on both sides of the ragged, uneven road. Out of the drains grew weeds, the water thick with tar and algae. It is hard to reconcile with death sometimes, when confronted with how easily, and impossibly, life grows. About ten steps down our house, the road swelled some twelve inches above the ground for no determinable reason and then dipped back to an even plain. About twenty steps ahead of this mound was my kindergarten to which my mother would walk me every morning, hand in hand, and pick me up at day break. On the way, we would point at insects and butterflies hovering over the weeds, hop over pebbles on the road, stop to pet stray dogs and goats.
Every believable account of a childhood must contain horrors of at least one kind. Here is one of mine: a man dragging his rickety bicycle atop the mound near my house, dressed always in a checkered shirt, black trousers, and ratty old white sneakers. There was probably nothing outwardly frightening about this man except a grin that never slipped off his face. His eyes, which possessed no hint of humour, stared unblinking into the distance. No one knew who this man was, which was strange in our small colony where everyone knew everyone. Nor was it clear where the man went on his bicycle; he never spoke to anyone or bought anything or called on a house. There were legends about him. Some said that his family had disowned him because he was mentally ill. Some said that he had arrived in town to find work and shunned from all opportunities, was driven to madness. Some said that he had lost his children in the flood and then lost his mind. The worst of the rumours, spoken in hushed whispers around town, was that the man had stabbed his children to death, that if you looked closely enough you would find that his muddy shoes were actually caked in clotted blood which he had never bothered to wash away.
As children, we were forbidden to speak to him. As children, we were inclined to disobey. We wanted answers, a confirmation of the multiple legends that soared about him. We wanted veneration and celebration from our adults. Most of all, we wanted our streets to be rid of the man, or more accurately, to be rid of the fear of the man. We would conspire to corner him on our own tiny bicycles, push him toward the edge of the road such that he would have no way to escape our questions other than falling into the open drain. It was a terrifying, delicious thrill, dreaming about one-upping this man who haunted our dreams and terrorized our streets.
One afternoon at my kindergarten, all the children had been picked up but there was still no sign of my mother. I paced around the school compound under the watchful eye of the guard, growing more and more agitated, tense and resentful. I felt forgotten, abandoned, and alone. I will never speak to my mother again, I thought. I managed to slip away when the guard went inside to lock the classrooms, and trotted toward my house looking anxiously over my back for the man on the bicycle. As soon as I reached the bottom of the mound, I saw him—his sneakers caked in mud or blood, the wheel of his bicycle, his knuckles gripping its handles, and finally his grin, plastered tight across his face. A chill ran down my spine as his eyes met mine. His bicycle screeched over the mound, the drains gurgled around us. I remained frozen, clutching the straps of my school bag in my fists, all plans of cornering him wiped out from my brain. I was sure that he had come to find me now that my mother had forgotten about me, that he would take me somewhere no one would ever find me, that no one would even remember to look for me now. His face crouched down to mine, his hollow gaze burrowing inside me. He murmured something that I couldn’t decipher. Just then, I saw my mother running towards me and I finally let out a scream.
I never saw that man again.
III
I am at the metro station when my sister calls me to say that she wants to try having a baby. It has been three years now since her wedding. I am not getting any younger, she tells me. But having a baby? In this economy? I joke. On the inside, I feel my heart pick up pace in a way that signifies dread. Once upon a time, I had dreamed of this moment—a child to spoil, someone to whom I’d give my old Enid Blytons and Winnie the Poohs, shower with fuzzy socks and sweaters, teach about feminism. Now, as I am getting hit in my sternum with a briefcase, a long-braided ponytail in my face, my heartbeat suffocating amidst a swarm of bodies heading either to work or to find work, my limbs entangled and indecipherable from other limbs around me, I find it hard to locate a space that would hold this unborn child. Outside the tinted glass of my metro coach, I see that the sky is a grim cloud of smoke. Birds circle morosely around a construction site full of cement and debris, searching perhaps for the trees that were felled here last week. In Delhi, it seems the pandemic never passed. People are advised to walk around with masks and stay indoors as much as possible, to take meetings on Google Meet and breathe the scent of air purifiers. Sometimes, through the smog of my city, it is hard to see what tomorrow might bring. On the phone my sister had told me, children are the future.
When we were kids, our mother used to tell us a story about a benevolent queen who had lost all her fortune. Her palace was seized from her reins and her children shipped off to Burma to work on plantations. She had then walked around town, her hair wild as a storm, bare feet dragging above gravel, hands grasping the pearls around her neck, the sole remnants of her past. Door to door she went, asking for her children, giving odd descriptions of them—my little boy who speaks to crows, have you seen him? Have you seen my girl, my sweet girl who sings at night and makes it rain? People felt for her but no one dared face the wrath of those who ruled the palace now. Anyone who spoke a word against the new palace had their children taken away—to plantations, to dungeons, to gallows. And so, every day, every door would turn the queen away. Every night, every mother would tuck her children in bed while she—her past erased, her future stolen—haunted the streets, wailing, singing, walking.
Weeks, months, years passed. A drought wreaked havoc on the town. Crops dried up, the ground shrunk, and vultures circled above dying cattle. The new palace cared little about the townspeople, hoarded food in their granaries which grew mold but never made it to hungry stomachs. The queen now sat at the town square with her wild hair and tattered robes, laid her pearls down before her and counted the beads until the sun dulled beneath the horizon. Then one night, crows circled over the town square round and round, swooped in, and flew away with the pearls as the queen slept. A sweet melody rang through town, rousing children from their beds. Clouds thundered, lightning dazzled, the melody rose to join their symphony and then, the sky broke. Rain poured over the town, seeping beneath cracks on the barren ground. Streams swelled, dogs drank from puddles, leaves sparkled, fields danced, paper boats swam in drains. Others who were without homes had crawled under temporary awnings. The queen however, stayed put, her drenched robes clinging to her bosom, her eyes glued to the horizon. Through the fog and downpour, two figures swam into her vision: son and daughter, hand in hand, her pearls glistening around their necks. Children are the future.
IV
At around seven in the evening, I come home from work. I have spent the entire day in conversation with a girl whose father has been wrongfully prosecuted under narcotics charges for speaking up against violence by border security forces. After recounting the circumstances leading up to his arrest, the girl asked me, he is a good man, he wanted justice not only for himself but for the people around him—will you also report this to the human rights commission? I will try my best, I told her, knowing that his story would most likely be forgotten as soon as it was reported. By everyone except her. But then, what is history without memory?
In my country, we believe that cobras mate for life. We believe also that cobras never forget. If you kill a cobra, it is entirely probable that its partner will seek you out and exact revenge. People are known to have nightmarish visions before death finally consumes them: gritty, lonely alleyways, horrors from their past, their dead rising from their graves whispering: I am, I am, I am. So it is advisable to either never kill a cobra, or if compelled to do so, to kill its partner too. To eradicate memory is to escape consequences. To eradicate the past is to annihilate the future.
I wake when it is still dark outside. There is debris all around me: broken sheds, wheels, utensils, stones, toys. There is a loud explosion in the sky and shrapnel falls on houses without roofs. I recognize my two-storey house, even without its upper level. How am I back here, at the edge of a city I haven’t visited in over a decade? There is an unbearable stench of flesh and blood wafting from the drains. I see dead animals—cats, dogs, goats. On one side of the road, I see the severed head of a gazelle. I hear screams and cries from afar as I crouch alone under a ledge. And then I notice—atop the mound, the familiar screech of a bicycle, sneakers caked in mud, hollow eyes, that toothy grin. There are rows of children behind the man on the bicycle, appearing to follow him outside the edge of the city, their eyes downcast, their faces white as the moon. I remain frozen under the ledge again as the man draws closer and his eyes find mine, his grin doesn’t shift even as he opens his mouth in a murmur—and this time I hear him even over the sounds of bombs and cries—an empty, raspy voice: children are the problem.
Prachi Lohia (she/her) is an independent researcher and writer based in Bangalore. Her writing has been longlisted for the Oxford Flash Fiction Prize 2025. Her story ‘Call for a Blow Job’ was deemed a first place winner at a contest hosted by the London Writer’s Salon. She periodically updates a newsletter on Substack.