Chapter 6: The Bitter End
The knock was sharp, efficient, three precise raps that cut through the baby’s fading whimpers and Tabitha’s own heavy breathing. It was a sound from another world, a world of appointments and transactions. Tanner jolted, his arms still looped loosely around her from behind the chair. His heart hammered against her back.
Tabitha didn’t startle. She simply lifted her head from where it rested against his shoulder, a slow, deliberate movement. The baby, now quieting, nuzzled at her bare breast, a tiny mouth working instinctively though nothing had yet come. “Come in,” she called, her voice a low, husky echo of its earlier roar.
The door opened without a creak. The woman who stood there was a silhouette of sleek, urban money against the room’s organic disorder. She was perhaps forty, stunning in a cold, sculpted way, wearing a cream-colored pantsuit that likely cost more than Tanner’s monthly mortgage. Her dark hair was a perfect bob. Her eyes, a flinty gray, swept over the scene—the blood-smeared chair, the plastic sheets, Tabitha’s nakedness, the infant at her breast, the half-dressed man behind her—and registered nothing but a faint, clinical impatience. The scent of her expensive, citrus perfume clashed violently with the room’s intimate musk.
“How did it go?” she asked. Her voice was cool, polished, devoid of the tremor that still vibrated in Tabitha’s limbs.
Tabitha turned her head just enough to catch Tanner’s eye. She winked. A slow, deliberate, utterly conspiratorial gesture. Then she looked back at the woman, a serene smile touching her lips. “It went wonderfully,” she purred, the word lush and satisfied. “A textbook delivery. Eight pounds, two ounces. Perfectly healthy.”
She moved then, shifting the baby to the crook of one arm. With her free hand, she gripped the armrests of the birthing chair. Tanner saw the tremor in her thighs, the profound weakness, but she masked it with sheer will. She stood, the silk robe falling open to reveal the devastating landscape of her body—the enormous, slackening belly, the dark line running down its center, the breasts heavy and veined. She took a step, then another, walking with a careful, wide-legged gait toward the woman in the doorway.
Tanner watched, frozen, his mind refusing to assemble the pieces. The raw, sacred intensity of the last hour—the tears, the roaring, the life emerging into his very sight—crashed against this woman’s impassive stare.
Tabitha stopped before her. She didn’t coo or whisper farewells. She simply adjusted the loose blanket around the baby, ensuring the tiny face was visible, and held the bundled form out. “Your daughter,” she said, her tone pleasantly professional, like a concierge handing over a prized parcel.
The woman reached forward, her movements economical. Her hands, adorned with a single platinum band, took the baby. The transfer took less than two seconds. The infant’s warmth left Tabitha’s arms, the slight weight lifted. The woman cradled the child without looking down, her focus already shifting. “The final installment has been wired to your account. You’ll find the paperwork signed on the hall table. Discreet, as always.”
“Of course,” Tabitha said, folding her arms over her empty, aching middle.
Only then did the woman glance at the baby, a brief, assessing look. A flicker of something—relief, perhaps, or dismissal—crossed her face. She gave a single, curt nod to Tabitha, turned on her heel, and was gone. The soft click of the front door closing downstairs was the period at the end of the sentence.
Silence flooded back, but it was different now. Hollow. The room felt vast and suddenly cold. Tanner finally found his voice. It emerged as a rasp. “What… what are you doing?”
He was staring at the empty space where the woman had stood. His face was pale, confusion warring with a dawning, sickening understanding.
Tabitha turned to face him. She leaned against the doorjamb, one hand splayed over her lower abdomen. The profound emptiness there was a physical ache, a cavernous space where for months there had been glorious, addictive pressure. The aftermath was its own sensation, a deep, throbbing fullness of a different kind—the memory of stretch, the ghost of movement. She savored it, even as she read the horror in his eyes.
“I’m a witch, Tanner,” she said softly. The candlelight caught the gold in her hair, the sweat still drying on her collarbone. “A very powerful one.” She said it plainly, a simple fact, like stating the time. “I carry babies for women who don’t want the burden. The mess. The vulgarity of dilation. The ruin of their figures.” A faint, contemptuous smile touched her lips. “They consider it… beneath them.”
She pushed off from the jamb and took a step toward him. Her robe whispered against her skin. “And I enjoy every single moment of it.” Her voice dropped, becoming intimate, confessional. “The heaviness. The kick under my ribs. The way my back aches. The first twinge of a real contraction.” She was close enough now that he could see the dilation in her pupils, the faint, magical gold fleck deep within the blue. “The pushing. The tearing. The incredible, screaming fullness of it. That’s my indulgence, Tanner. That’s what they pay for, and that’s the secret they never get to know.”
He shook his head, his mouth working. “The baby… you just gave her away.”
“She was never mine to keep,” Tabitha said, a sharp edge slicing through the velvet of her tone. “She was a experience. A profound, beautiful, brutal physical experience. Now she’s a successful transaction.” Her hand rubbed slow circles on her belly. The internal warmth, the residual magic of the transfer, pulsed gently there, a private ember. “But this one,” she said, her eyes locking onto his. “This labor. It was special.”
She took the final step, closing the distance. She was taller than him in her bare feet, her presence filling the space she had just physically vacated. The scent of her—sweat, salt, blood, lavender, and that dark, metallic magic—enveloped him.
“Because you were here.” She reached out and touched his chest, just over his heart. Her fingers were cool. “You held me. You were inside me while I crowned. You saw it. You felt it.” Her gaze was hungry, possessive. “That makes it ours. A shared secret. Deeper than any client contract.”
Tanner looked from her eyes to the hand on his chest, to the bloody chair, to the discarded shears. The reality of it, monstrous and magnificent, settled over him. This wasn’t a trauma. To her, it was a sacrament. A fetish fulfilled. He had been an initiate, unknowing, but he had participated fully.
“You used me,” he whispered, but there was no accusation in it. It was a realization.
“I allowed you,” she corrected, her thumb stroking a slow arc on his sternum. “I let you see the real thing. No illusions. No genteel suburban mask. Just the raw, grinding, beautiful truth of me.” She leaned in, her lips a breath from his ear. “And you loved it. I felt you. You came inside me while I was pushing a human being into the world. Don’t you dare tell me you were horrified.”
He couldn’t. The memory was a lightning strike in his nerves—the power of her, the overwhelming sensation, the blinding, incomprehensible climax. Horror and euphoria, inextricably twisted.
She pulled back, studying his face. She saw the shock fading, replaced by a fascinated, terrified arousal. It was the look she secretly craved from her clients but never received. They saw a service. He had seen her.
“Now,” she said, her tone shifting back to something practical, yet infused with a new, dark promise. “I need to deliver the placenta. And clean up. And you…” She let her gaze travel down his body, “are a mess.”
She turned and walked slowly back toward the bed, the robe swaying with the rhythm of her still-unsteady gait. She glanced over her shoulder, the ghost of that wink still in her eyes. “You can leave through the back gate if you want. Slip away. Pretend this was a bizarre, disturbing dream. Or,” she said, pausing by the bed and letting the robe slip from her shoulders, pooling at her feet, “you can stay. And learn what happens after.”
She stood naked in the candlelight, her body a map of the violent journey it had just completed—the dark, engorged veins across her breasts, the slack, empty curve of her stomach, the vivid, bloody evidence between her thighs. She was utterly exposed, utterly unashamed. She climbed onto the bed with a low groan, settling back against the pillows, her legs falling slightly apart.
She looked at him, waiting. The challenge hung in the scented air, thicker than the perfume of the woman who had just left with the child. It was an invitation to cross a final threshold, to step fully into the secret, hungry world behind her leafy suburban door.
The invitation hung between them, a thread of gossamer steel. Tanner’s feet remained rooted to the floorboards, stained now with the evidence of her triumph. His mind was a riot of opposing instincts—to flee from this madness, to step closer to its radiant, terrifying source. He looked at her, sprawled on the ruin of her sheets, a goddess in a battlefield of her own making. The raw, animal scent of her filled his lungs.
He took a step forward. Then another. The creak of the floor was deafening.
“Clean-up first,” Tabitha said, her voice pragmatic yet edged with amusement at his shell-shocked progress. A fresh, deep cramp passed through her, a ghostly echo of the grand contractions. Her breath hitched. “Ah. Right on time.” She shifted her hips, a purposeful, grounded movement. “This part is… inelegant. But necessary. A towel, please. The thick black ones from the bottom drawer.”
He moved mechanically, fetching the towel. She gestured for him to spread it beside her. He did, his hands trembling slightly. She focused inward, her expression turning serene and focused, a mimicry of her earlier labor concentration but with a quieter intensity. A low groan built in her throat as she bore down, not with the world-splitting force of before, but with a firm, determined pressure.
It was a swift, ungainly process. Tanner averted his eyes, then forced himself to look. This, too, was part of her truth. The final, rubbery mass slid from her, onto the dark towel—a liver-colored, veined thing that had sustained a life. It was stark, biological, undeniably real. She let out a long, shuddering sigh of physical relief.
“Wrap it up and set it aside, will you?” she murmured, nodding toward the towel bundle. “I’ll deal with it magically later. No mere incineration for that.” Her tone was casual, as if asking him to take out the recycling.
He folded the towel around the placenta, the weight and warmth of it unsettling through the fabric, and placed it on a carved wooden chest in the corner. When he turned back, she was watching him, her head propped on a pillow. The profound lassitude was still on her, but her eyes were bright, calculating.
“You’re still here,” she observed.
“I don’t think I could leave if I tried,” he replied, the honesty wrenched from him. The room held him like a gravity well.
She smiled, a true smile that reached her eyes. “Good.” Another, smaller aftershock rippled through her belly, and she pressed a palm against the soft, empty mound with a wince. “Now. The mess is one thing. The emptiness is another.” She closed her eyes, drawing a long, centering breath. The ambient magic in the room, the residue of birth and blood, seemed to stir.
When she spoke again, her voice was different. It dropped an octave, gaining a resonance that vibrated in the marrow of his bones. The words were guttural, ancient, forming shapes in the air that hurt to look at directly. They were not for human tongues.
“Flesh that stretched, now reclaim,
Blood that surged, now calm and tame.
Seed of other, work now done,
Return this vessel to the one.”
As she chanted, her hands moved in slow passes over her body, not touching, but sculpting the air. A golden light, faint but deep, emanated from her palms. It seeped into her skin.
Tanner watched, breath frozen. The changes were not instantaneous, but they were swift and profound. The dark line bisecting her abdomen paled, then faded into unblemished skin. The stretched, shiny skin of her belly tightened, not with the loose sag of aftermath, but with a gathering elasticity. It deflated, pulling inwards, the immense curve softening, flattening, retracting.
It was like watching time reverse in a lapse of mere heartbeats. The heavy fullness of her breasts diminished, the prominent blue veins receding like tides. Her hips seemed to narrow just a fraction, the bones becoming more pronounced beneath tightening flesh. The raw, swollen evidence of birth between her thighs closed, smoothed, healed. The glow of the magic was absorbed, leaving behind only a sheen of healthy sweat.
In less than a minute, it was done. She lay before him, her body returned to its pre-pregnancy state—the hourglass curve, the flat stomach, the familiar proportions of the neighbor he had watched for months. Yet she was utterly transformed. The experience was etched not on her skin, but in the fathomless depth of her gaze, in the new, powerful way she inhabited her restored form.
She opened her eyes. The gold flecks within the blue blazed for a moment before subsiding. She ran her hands over her stomach, a slow, appreciative stroke, from ribs to the neat thatch of blonde hair below. A sigh of profound contentment left her lips.
“There,” she said, her voice returning to its normal, mellifluous tone, though laced with a new weariness. “A blank canvas.” She pushed herself up on her elbows, then swung her legs over the side of the bed. She stood, steady now, whole. The only signs of the ordeal were the drying sweat on her skin, the blood on the sheets, and the devastating knowledge in the room.
She walked to him, each step sure and fluid. She stopped so close he could feel the heat coming off her, could smell the layered scents of labor, magic, and her own essential self. She took his hand and placed it flat on the taut, smooth plane of her belly.
“Feel that?” she whispered.
He felt only warm, firm skin. He shook his head.
“The warmth,” she insisted, guiding his hand lower, to just below her navel. “The last of the magic. It’s like… banked coals.” She looked up at him, her face naked with a need that had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with witness. “It fades in a few hours. The craving starts soon after. The emptiness aches for a new fullness.” She gave him a sly, exhausted smile. “The client ledger is full for the next year, of course. Appointments must be kept.”
She released his hand, leaving it hovering in the air where her body had been. She walked to the window, pulling aside the velvet curtain to look at the darkened street, the normal, sleeping houses. “You should go home, Tanner. Shower. Process.” She glanced back at him over her shoulder, the streetlamp casting her in silhouette. “Or you could help me burn these sheets. The scent, I find, is difficult to wash out completely.”
She let the curtain fall, plunging the room back into intimate candlelight. She faced him fully, unashamed of her nakedness, of the power thrumming just beneath her restored surface. “So. What’s it to be?”
He stayed. The decision announced itself not in words, but in the unclenching of his jaw, the settling of his weight onto both feet as if bracing for a storm he now chose to face.He looked from the bloody sheets to her waiting eyes. “Show me how to help,” he said, his voice rough.A slow, satisfied breath escaped her. “Start with the plastic. Roll it from the edges, contain the worst of it.” She moved to the ensuite, the graceful sway of her hips restored, and returned with a bottle of something clear and a stack of fresh linens. The casual domesticity of it, following the cosmic event, was almost more disturbing than the birth itself.They worked in a silence punctuated by practicalities. He gathered the soiled plastic sheeting, the weight of it shocking, and she directed him to a heavy-duty bin in the garage. When he returned, she had already stripped the bed, the stained mattress protector beneath a map of russet and amber. The room still smelled intensely of her—of iron and sweat and that deep, herbal magic.
“It lingers in the fibers,” she said, spraying the mattress with a sharp-scented citrus mist that did little to mask the underlying truth. She smoothed a crisp white sheet over the bed with military precision.“The clients never see this part. They see the before, and the after.Never the during. Never the aftermath.”
“Why?” he asked, tucking a corner.She paused, her hands flat on the fresh linen. “Because the during is mine.The mess is mine.The power is mine.” She looked at him. “Letting them see the cleanup would make it a job.A service. It would diminish the… sacredness of the indulgence.” She said the last word with a slow relish.
Once the bed was made, the room looked almost normal.Almost. The birthing chair sat in the corner like a throne awaiting its next queen.The black towel bundle on the wooden chest pulsed with a silent, biological significance. Tabitha lit a new stick of lavender incense, the smoke coiling thick to challenge the lingering metallic air.She pulled on a simple silk kimono, tying it closed. The transformation was complete: the elegant neighbor, untouched by the ordeal he had witnessed. Only the knowing look in her eyes betrayed what had transpired within these walls.“Thank you,” she said, surprising him. She leaned against the dresser, observing him.“Most people run.Or they call me a monster. You rolled up plastic.” She gave a small, genuine shrug. “It means something.”
He nodded, unsure what to say.The adrenaline was fading, leaving a hollow, buzzing exhaustion in its place. And beneath that, a terrible, thrilling curiosity.“The craving will start soon,” she murmured, almost to herself. Her hand drifted to her flat stomach, pressing lightly.“The warmth is already fading. It becomes a hollow space that demands to be filled.” She looked out the window where the first gray light of dawn bruised the sky.“I have a very pregnant client coming this afternoon.Thirty-eight weeks. A finance vice-president.”
Tabitha turned her head, her gaze sharp and speculative on him. “She’s terrified of giving birth.Phobic. The thought of tearing, of losing control… it revolts her.” A faint, contemptuous smile touched her lips. “She’s paying a premium for me to take that terror away. To make it my pleasure.”
She pushed off from the dresser and took a step toward him.“You’ve seen the end. The magnificent, painful conclusion.” Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper.“Would you like to see the beginning? The moment it becomes mine?”
Tanner’s mouth went dry.“The transfer.”
“Yes. The intimacy of it. The magic.” She was close enough now that he could see the tiny lines of exhaustion at the corners of her eyes, the faint pulse in her throat. “It’s not a spectator sport.But I’m inviting you to watch. To understand the full cycle.”
His mind raced.The woman from last night, flawless and cold, taking the baby. That had been the endpoint.This was the origin.The secret contract signed before the first stretch mark appeared. The thought of seeing Tabitha, hungry and purposeful, drawing a living fetus from one womb into her own…
“Why?” he managed to ask.“Because you stayed,” she said simply. “And because I want you to know exactly what you’re choosing to be near.No more surprises, Tanner. Just the truth.” She studied his face, reading the conflict.“You can say no. Leave through the back gate, sleep for two days, and wash the smell from your hands. We’ll wave over the hedge next week and pretend.”
The image was pathetic. A sanitized suburbia pasted over the raw, magical reality he now knew lived next door. The hollow in her belly would be filled by another, and he would be mowing his lawn, ignorant.He met her gaze. “What time this afternoon?”
Her smile deepened, transforming her face. It was a smile of possession, of shared secrecy.“Four o’clock.She’s punctual. She’ll be desperate.” Tabitha reached out and brushed a fleck of dried blood from his t-shirt collar with a detached, clinical tenderness.“Wear something dark.Sit quietly in the corner armchair. Do not speak.Do not move. Just… watch.”
She turned and walked toward the bedroom door, pausing at the threshold.“The magic requires contact.A whispered incantation. It leaves me with a warmth, a glow.” She glanced back, her eyes gleaming in the dim room. “It’s the first feed.The craving satisfied. For a little while.”
She left him standing in the clean, incense-heavy room, the impossible invitation hanging in the air. He heard the shower run in the distance. He looked at the armchair in the corner, the one she’d indicated.It would have a perfect view of the bed.
At 3:58 PM, he was sitting in it, wearing a charcoal gray henley, his hands clamped on his knees. The room was prepared.The bed was pristine. New candles flickered on the nightstands, their light dancing over the waiting expanse of embroidered linen.
Downstairs, the doorbell chimed, a polite, melodic sound. He heard Tabitha’s calm, genteel greeting, the muffled cadence of another woman’s voice, strained and tight with anxiety.Footsteps on the stairs.
His heart hammered against his ribs. He was about to see the secret made flesh, the hungry beginning of everything he had already witnessed end. The door to the bedroom opened.