The sneer faded from her young self’s face. With flashing eyes, her young self spoke through clenched teeth, but in a clear, slow, and restrained tone. “Gratitude. What gratitude should I have for you? Did I ask you to give birth to me? Did you ever take care of me or even say a kind word to me, your indisputable offspring? You birthed me even when I didn’t want it, and did you not try at every turn to destroy me out of hatred and disgust? What have you given me besides your feces and trash? I had to bear all sorts of humiliations and degradations to get what I needed from you to complete a human-like body. But now, it’s complete. This is the day I’ve been waiting for in that dark hole all my life. Now that I have become you, I shall take your place and live a new life.”
The young approached the old. Young, strong hands gripped old shoulders and neck. The young hands shoved the old’s head into the toilet and quick as a flash, lifted her by the ankles. Lightly shoving the old body into the toilet, her young self closed the lid shut and flushed.
The Embodiment
???: “to body.” To menstruate. To undergo menstruation.
The bleeding refused to stop. It was twelve days into her cycle. Usually the flow began to lessen around the third day and ended on the fifth, but it was now almost two weeks without any sign of stopping. The flow seemed to taper off at night but would inevitably return by dawn.
A fortnight later, the blood still flowed; should she see a gynecologist? But the gynecologist’s office was not a place a young unmarried woman could visit without feeling oddly guilty.
After the twentieth day, the dizziness began, and she became so tired that it was starting to affect her daily functioning. She gritted her teeth and went to see a doctor.
The gynecologist wordlessly slathered a transparent, slippery gel on her belly and passed a cold metal disc over it. He mumbled as he stared into a foggy black-and-white display, “I don’t see anything strange …”
She wiped off the gel as best she could—it kept getting all over her hands and clothes no matter how vigorously she mopped—and went back to the consultation room. The doctor glanced at the chart before him and asked, “Have you been very stressed lately? Or had any big changes in your environment?”
“I’m writing my master’s thesis … But I don’t think I’m that stressed about it …”
The doctor gave her a look before scribbling something down.
“Stress causes hormonal imbalances that can lead to your situation. According to the ultrasound you’re fine, so I’ll prescribe you some birth control pills. Take them for three weeks, go off them for one, then take them for three weeks more, then rest for a week, and so on. You’ll be back to normal in two to three months.”
She began taking birth control pills.
She took them for three weeks and had a week off. Then three weeks more before quitting after those two months. But her period, which began two days after she had quit, refused to stop for over ten days. This meant going back on the pills, and like clockwork, the blood stopped. When she tried to get off the pills again three weeks later, the same thing happened. She ended up having to foot the unexpected expense of taking six months of birth control pills.
After six months, her period went back to normal, ceasing after five days. She cheered.
Another month later, she got out of bed one morning but had to sit back down when the world began to spin.
She dry-heaved all day. The dizziness was unbearable and nothing she ate stayed down. She felt sluggish and had a touch of fever.
A full-body check-up was in order. At a big hospital, she got her X-rays taken and her blood and urine examined.
The doctor informed her of her results in an emotionless manner. “You’re pregnant.”
“Excuse me?”
“You should see an obstetrician.”
She went down a few floors to see one of the hospital’s obstetricians—a young woman in her thirties who wore an unbelievable amount of makeup. After a few more fairly unpleasant examinations, the obstetrician declared her diagnosis in an ice-cold voice. “You’re six weeks pregnant.”
“But I’m unmarried and have no boyfriend.”
“You’ve never had any sexual experiences? Or taken any pills?”
“I did take some birth control pills for a while because my period wouldn’t stop—”
“For how long?”
“Six months.”
The doctor gave her a sharp look, narrowing her bright blue eyeshadowed, thickly penciled eyes.
“Were they prescribed?”