Sweet Child of Mine

He was the sweetest child in the world, there was no doubt about it. The moment he was born, people gathered around the nursery, pointing at his sleeping form and crooning. What gorgeous hair! What beautiful lips! What adorable chubby cheeks! Fathers ignored their own newborn children in favor of that tiny, perfect babe. Mothers toddled to the glass and pressed their faces against it, crying for their poor fortune. How much better life would be if that was their own child!

The nurse that delivered him was amazed when she first held him in her arms. His skin was creamy and white, not that mottled pink every other baby sported. At first, she thought he was dead, his eyes shut and his dark brown curls matted against his skull. As soon as she held him, however, she knew he was just fine. He opened his eyes and looked at her with all of the intelligence of an adult, breathing calmly and wrapping his tiny infant fingers around a loose strand of her thin blond hair.

He never once cried, and his mother worried from her bed, sitting up and crying out at the nurse that so lovingly cradled her child. "My baby, what's wrong with him," her voice was weak and her eyes fluttered as she exhaustively fumbled at the bedsheets she was swaddled in. The nurse glared at her over this perfect babe's head and snapped at the woman. There was nothing wrong with this child, and there never would be. Reluctantly, the nurse snipped the child's umbilical cord and set him gently in the nursery, lovingly kissing his head and promising she would come back for him.

Later that night, the nurse quickly tiptoed back into the mother's room, a hospital-issued pillow clutched calmly in her hands. She mothered the mother silently and cleanly, with no one the wiser. The child would be hers no matter what she had to do for it. She would kill a thousand women to get her hands on that lovely little boy. Swiftly, she crept back into the nursery, bending over the tiny crib that held her angel. Crooning, she told the baby boy stories of how she would love him as he grew, and how well taken care of he would be.

The nurse didn't even hear the man sliding into the nursery behind her, a scalpel held firmly in his left hand. She didn't even feel the cold steel slide delicately around her slender throat, didn't feel the two sides of her skin part cleanly when so gently coaxed by the clean blade, didn't feel the slick gush of blood out of her throat as she happily died, her fingertips gently caressing the perfect child's gorgeous face even in the throes of death. The man who had so proficiently murdered the nurse stepped over her dying body, a look of absolute adoration plastered on his face. Without a word, he picked the child up into his arms and stole out of the hospital. Behind him, every nurse and doctor in the maternity ward went insane looking for him.

It was a serene summers night outside, warm enough for the man to carry the child back to his apartment, leaving his car and his very pregnant wife back at the hospital he had so deftly escaped from. When he arrived back at his apartment, he did not sleep. Instead, he sat the tiny beautiful boy on the bed and watched him. For fourteen days he watched the child, only moving to feet it and bathe it and give it all of the care it needed and more. The babe was the center of his universe. Soon, his wife came home, with a mouthful of angry words to toss at her neglectful husband and tiny babe of her own to care for.

"You left me alone at the hospital, to have a baby all on my own? Not a word from you. I thought you were dead, Adam!" She threw her purse ferociously at her husband, who had yet to even look at her. The baby in the stroller she had been so lovingly attentive to before opening the door was left back at the entrance to the apartment, the child inside it woken by its mother's piercing shrieks. When the mother walked up to kick the man she suddenly and violently despised, she laid eyes on the most perfect child she had ever seen. It was a tiny, glowing white child with huge black eyes and the most flawless dark curls on the face of the earth. Without hesitation, she leapt toward her weakened, starved husband and choked the last bit of life out of him, desperate to lay her lips against the child, watching as his face turned increasingly blue and frantic the tighter she pulled her longing fingers around his neck.

The police came knocking on the apartment door not much longer afterward. Terrified by the vicious noise in the apartment beside them, the family next door had dialed 911, reporting domestic abuse. Cautiously, hands on the guns that rested at their hips, the two police men entered the apartment. Upon entering, their noses were assaulted by several awful smells. Rot, death, and the smell of someone who had been sitting in their own filth for two weeks wafted through the air of the stuffy apartment. It didn't take long for the officers to see the destruction that had occurred in this place, the gaunt, dead husband dragged halfheartedly into the hallway, his hair matted with blood. The younger officer swayed on his feet, threatening to faint.

"Listen, Trudeau, sir, I have a pregnant wife at home. I can't do this. I can't get killed in here," his plea was quiet and despondent, but the elder officer simply waved the man forward. They could hear cooing in the bedroom down the hall and, stepping over the dead man that lay at the entrance, entered the open door to the room. Immediately upon entering, the elder officer bent down and vomited, the scene that met his eyes too much for even someone as experienced as him to handle. Blood was smeared on the wall where a dead baby - lying there, at the floor, its face a smashed mess - had been mercilessly beaten. On the bed was a chubby woman, obviously the woman had both born and killed the child that lay at the officer's feet, one of her hands black with the blood of her murdered baby. Cradled in her arms, pressed firmly against a firm, swollen breast, was a rotten baby, its skin blue and its mouth puffed up with death. She was whispering to it sweetly, the most contented look in her face.

The younger officer, however, was calm. It was clear what he must do. That woman held an angel, and he wanted it. Such a perfect child had never existed before. The decision was easy to make. Pulling out his gun, quickly, he shot the woman once in her head, delighting int he explosion of gorgeous crimson that fanned out behind her. The younger man's companion turned, a look of confusion on his face. Immediately, he was met with two bullets to the left eye. Smiling, the younger man watched his friend slide back against the already bloodied wall behind him. That baby would be his, and no one would stop him from taking it now.