Short Story: Unwanted

For once my parents let me out! Out of the close walls of the apartment, out between the hovercar lanes and skyscrapers, out to the freedom of the park where green things grow and ducks cheer the waters. I run as fast as my little legs can take me until I’m bursting for air. The November chill floods my lungs with ice, but I don’t mind—not when I feel so alive.

I scuff my boots over patches of weeds in the graveled path until I catch my breath. One day, when I become a human citizen at age eighteen, I’ll come to the park every day if I want. Then I’ll have a name of my own, too. What will my parents call me? I hope Vivian—such a grown-up sounding name. I buzz my lips with the V’s. Vivian.

I reach the bend in the path where the duck pond comes into view at last. A man stands at the edge, and a skip perks my step. I have no money for seed to feed the ducks—and no one would accept money from a pre-human like me anyway—but perhaps this gentleman will spare me some of his treats. My feet leap into a run. “Sir! Sir! Can I help, too?”

He startles and drops something large in the water. Without a glance back, he sprints away. I don’t know how I’d scare a man twice my size, but then again, pre-humans shouldn’t even speak to adults other than their parents. I bite my lip, steps slowing, but then I run again to the bank to find what he left behind.

A cardboard box tips down under the surface of the water. I reach for it, but my short arms can’t make the distance. I plunge in. Freezing water funnels into my boots, but in two steps I wrap my arms around the box and wrest it from the pond. He must have plenty of birdseed inside for it to weigh so much!

I crawl back up on the shore and, with cold fingers, rip off the tape sealing the box. A curious quack sounds from the rushes a few yards away, but a faint mewling also tickles the outskirts of my hearing. I grin and call to the ducks, “Be right with you!”

I pull the flaps open and topple back onto my rear, staring. Four kittens huddle together in the box. Their eyes reflect the gray autumn sky, wide like mine. Their pale fur frizzes out around them as if in fright. A fifth kitten struggles out of the puddle on the other end of the box, its hair plastered to it by the frigid water. I scoop up the bedraggled creature in my cupped hands, and its shiver goes right through me. Poor little thing! I unzip my coat and slip it inside where its heart beats fast against mine.

A wind with the premonition of winter bites through my sodden pants. The kittens in the box squirm away from the air’s cold reach. I close the package and stretch my arms around it to run back home. Cargo drones buzz overhead—so much faster than my limited stride can carry me. But soon I hurry to the apartment’s narrow door in the towering wall of steel and concrete dwellings. The scanner catches my face while I’m still yards away, and its tinny voice announces, “Welcome. They are expecting you.”

The door slides open, and I squeeze the box into the cramped entryway. I dodge the stairs and dart into the family room. The pale light from the high window glints on the duct tape on the couch’s corners. Mother sits there with her face in her hands. I drop to the floor in front of her with the box at her feet. Her head jerks up. I shouldn’t interrupt her or speak without permission, but I can’t contain myself. “Look what I found!”

Mother leans forward to peer into the box. She has perfectly smooth skin except for the line that now draws a shadow between her eyebrows. Maybe when I grow up, I’ll look just like her, with her brown hair pulled back maturely in a ponytail.

Father enters from the kitchen, a chipped mug of instant coffee in hand. He halts. “What is she doing back already?”

Mother reaches toward one of the kittens, but her hand sidetracks to the edge of the waterlogged box. “Where did you get this?”

“A man dropped it in the pond at the park.” I put my hand to my chest to stable the squirming kitten there. Its dampness has soaked through my shirt but no longer has the edge of the outdoors’ cold.

Mother strokes a fuzzy head. “That’s awful! How could someone drown these little dears?”

The chill runs from my wet toes up to my heart. “You mean, he was going to—to—”

I’d scared him into dropping the box, hadn’t I? Or had he run because he meant to drop it anyway? The thought of the dark water closing overhead is too much to bear. I could never let that happen. “Can we keep them?”

“Well, they are so cute—”

Father interrupts her with a gentle hand on her shoulder and gives her the coffee mug. “We can’t afford to keep them. We hardly have enough to make ends meet as it is. We have to get rid of them.”

A pang goes through my gut. Of course I can’t argue, but my voice whispers anyhow, “You’re not going to kill them?”

“What? No, of course not. I’ll message a shelter.” He opens his pocketcom.

My stomach settles. Mother pets one of the kittens, and I reach in to do the same, bringing our heads close so I smell the coffee on her breath. I murmur, “How could someone do something so terrible?”

Mother pulls back from me and the box. Her eyes glisten. “Sometimes people do terrible things. It’s hard, but we can choose to forgive them.”

“Welcome. They are expecting you.” The door’s faint greeting precedes a cargo drone pulling up next to my face. Father sets the box inside the transport, closes the lid, and presses a button. Before I can even speak a word, all that’s left of the box of kittens is a wet stain on the carpet. I can’t move for the suddenness of it all. Father’s eye catches on the splatters of mud radiating all around me from my boots. He frowns and waves a hand. “Go upstairs.”

I bolt for the steps, but a prick on my stomach stops me partway up. My hands jump to my coat. The last kitten! I unzip my coat an inch, and she stares up at me with round eyes blue like the spring sky. I stroke her head, the softest thing my fingers have ever touched. She reaches for my finger with her lips as if hungry.

Father said we couldn’t keep the kittens. He told me to go upstairs. A pre-human can’t decide anything—it has to do as it’s told. But….

I creep back down the stairs and loop through the hall on the other side back to the kitchen. A door closes off the living room, but I tiptoe across the laminate floor anyway. None of the walls in the small apartment hold in much sound. Father’s voice comes through clear enough. “This is exactly what I was talking about. Look at this mess. We’re not supposed to let her out on her own. But keeping charge of her twenty-four/seven—it’s a huge responsibility.”

I freeze with hand on the refrigerator. I’ve tracked mud all over the floor here, too. I don’t want to cause any more trouble. As soon as I feed the kitten, I’ll clean up everything. Maybe then they won’t mind so much. I pop open the refrigerator. The stark white shelves prop up a wilting head of lettuce, a ketchup jar, and a half-empty carton of eggs. I pull the jug of milk from the door.

“But, Jim—”

“We’re barely halfway through the maturation period, and it’s already too much. How are we going to handle her as she grows to the next phase? Let’s face it. We’re just not ready for this.”

My gut twists, but surely my parents can’t regret having me. I’ll just have to grow up faster somehow—take care of more things myself, like this one. I evaluate the jug of milk and the kitten half its size. Perhaps I can find a small bottle, one of the old ones from when I was little. Well, littler. I slip out of my boots and climb onto the counter to reach the high cabinet above the fridge.

“I know.” Mother’s voice comes fainter. “This wasn’t part of the plan. The timing….”

I push the cabinet door open. There, the bottle with the nozzle stands in the far corner. I support the kitten with one hand and stretch out my other arm.

“We had dreams, didn’t we, Darling?” Father’s tone has softened, too. “You with your design career, me with my degree, and then we’d travel the world, just the two of us. Remember?”

The two of us. They’re planning for when I’m grown and gone—they must be. My stomach sinks, but when I’m an adult, maybe I won’t miss them so much, either. I reach around an old coffee pot and a mug missing its handle. My fingertips brush the top of the bottle.

Father’s voice drops to a whisper at the lowest range of my hearing. “We can still have that life. So long as we don’t have her.”

I go rigid. The bottle tips over under my fingers. Part of me fears they heard even as the majority of me wants to scream. They want to get rid of me now. How could they?

“Jim, are you sure? Would it really be…ok?”

“We’ve talked about this. She’s not a person like you and me. She won’t feel a thing. And then, maybe later, when we’re ready, we can start again.”

The floor swirls below me. I latch onto the refrigerator. The people in all the world who should care about me the most…don’t. I sway at the edge of a bottomless pit, about to fall. Their next words distort in the depths of the blackness, impossible to understand. A meow pulls me back from the brink. I climb down from the counter with knees shaking and clutch the kitten. There’s no shelter to take me. I’m my parents’ property until I come of age—they can discard me whenever they choose. And if they do…my life is over before it begins.

I don’t know how long I stand there, searching for any reason to give them in my defense, before Father’s voice breaks through my jumble of thoughts. “There. I’ve messaged the aborters.”

I tense like a spring. It’s too late—they decided. I rush to the front door and push the button. It turns red. “Access denied.”

“Let me out!”

“Access denied.”

I pound on the door. I can’t even leave this apartment without permission. What can I do? Even if I did get out, I can’t take transport, handle money, even speak to an adult. I’ll get turned in for sure. And then—death.

“Welcome. They are expecting you.”

Father and Mother appear next to me. I jump back unbalanced, and the door opens. I catch myself on the doorstep. A large transport box hovers outside, and two men in white coats open its hatch. Darkness fills the inside, and a sterile chemical scent strangles me.

My heartbeat pulses like electricity through my body. “No—no, no, no!”

The men’s fingers squeeze into my arms. I jerk away, drag my sock feet on the concrete. With a yowl, the kitten tumbles from my coat to the pavement.

“Please don’t do this!” My scream tears my throat.

Mother stares at the ground. “It’s for the best.”

Father puts his arm around her and pulls her close. A flicker in his eye hardens to resolve, and he clenches his jaw tight. The kitten sits on the doorstep beside them, staring at me with those luminous eyes, so full of life that no one will extinguish.

All my existence, I’ve had no choice—no say in anything, no power now even to stop my own end.

And I see that somehow, my parents think they have no better choice than this either—sometimes people do terrible things.

But as the men shove me into the container, I remember the one choice Mother offered me. It’s hard, but we can choose to forgive them. Then the blackness closes in.

Postscript

About 862,320 abortions are performed in the United States each year.

That’s about 2,362 a day.*

The unborn are alive—they grow through cellular reproduction and react to stimuli.

The unborn are human—their parents are human, and they have a DNA fingerprint unique to humanity.

Living humans—like you and me—have value. They have the same right to life that all humans share.

If you have participated in an abortion, please know that God and your baby are willing to forgive you. You can find resources to help you here: https://www.jfaweb.org/healing-after-abortion

*See abortion statistics and organizations cited at https://www.jfaweb.org/facts

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