Pretty Baby

“I did it. I killed my baby, and I don’t regret it. She deserved a worse death than I gave her.” Karla’s voice was strong and sure, though her words spoke volumes of her instability. The day was Thursday, December 23; a cold day, but was okay. Cold was okay. Karla sat curled up under a blanket against the plummeting temperatures. She could always just turn up the heat, but what was the point? Cold was good…cold was numbing. There could never be too much numbing in the world.

“She was a terrible child, you know. Always crying…always wanting something. If she wasn’t thirsty, she was hungry. If she wasn’t hungry, she needed to be changed. If she didn’t need that, it was something else…always something else. She even cried when she was tired! Noise, noise, noise, all the time! She deserved to die…she did.” Her voice cracked, as she began a deep, hacking coughing fit. Stupid cold whether…always making people sick. Why couldn’t it be summer again? No one likes cold weather. Warmth is always best; like a warm hug that melts away all the pain…

Karla sat up, to tame down the coughing fit with a tall glass of cold water. She like the cold…cold was good. Why couldn’t everything be cold? She reached up and undid the sparkly green hair pin, letting her raven black hair fall around her waist in gentle waves. Across the room, the tall mirror showed a pale face. She barely recognized the dull, flat grey eyes that sat deep into a pale, greying face. Had she always been that thin? Had her cheek bones always stuck out so far, making her look like a scrawny bird; was she really that ugly now?

It was the retched baby’s fault. Karla had a perfect life, until that monstrosity decided to invade her body. She was real pretty too, until she got fat. Funny…people had always flocked around her, loving who she was. And then, people gave her such dirty looks while she was pregnant. She was 16, she was pregnant; she just fell into the stereotype. Who she was before, none of that mattered. It didn’t matter who she was, only what she had done.

Truthfully, the brat wasn’t even her fault. Her cousin was to blame. He was the one that got drunk. He was the one that drugged her drink at the Halloween party last year. He was the one that raped her, out in the cold, dirty woods behind Grammy’s house. And he was the one that laughed and told everyone how crazy Karla was when she tried telling her parents. “Crazy Karla! She knocks herself up, and blames it on her COUSIN! Ha-ha!!”Everyone just assumed she was another stupid girl who made a few stupid mistakes.

Unfortunately, her dad wasn’t too keen on the idea of having a teen mom living under his roof. At first, he just tried beating the child out of her. Then he got sober, and realized how that would look to the neighbors. If his daughter died, people would talk; they wouldn’t say nice things. He certainly couldn’t ruin his perfect image! So he came up with a better plan. He decided to kick her out; a simple, easy, and cheap way to get rid of the nuisance and protect his image, all at once.

Sense then, Karla had been bouncing around homes a bit. For a while, she stayed with her friend Jacky. Then Jacky’s mom found out she was pregnant, and she didn’t want that kind of influence around her daughter. That’s pretty much how it all went; she would stay for a while with a friend, until the ‘rents kicked her out.

“It’s entirely all that brat’s fault…She was a horrible little thing! So ungrateful! I went through things no sixteen year old should have to go through; all to bring a little bundle of worthlessness into this world! And how was I repaid? The useless brat couldn’t even be healthy! Always crying…always crying! It never shut up! I told the thing I needed my meds…I told her I needed quite. I couldn’t afford my meds! She could have just shut up…but no! She just wouldn’t SHUT-UP!” She screamed and through her hair pin, shattering the mirror into a million tiny, glittering pieces. They feel to the ground, like so many glass tear drops.

The room was quite, save the sound of Karla’s labored breathing. She looked into the corner, at the small figure wrapped in a pink blanket. It didn’t move…it didn’t make a sound. For once in her short life, she was blissfully quiet.

Karla looked down at her bloody hands, for perhaps the 20^th time that day.

“I had to kill her…she made me.”