Life is Warm and Buttery: Prologue

The fat man pushed into the wall belly first. His hips turned with contact, rolling him around until he was flat on his back. The crying child remained secure in his heavy arms.

Sweat flooded his eyebrows and stung his eyes. One arm was allowed release to wipe this perspiration. After a single wipe, the arm returned to the safety of the newborn.

The crying echoed through the stairwell loudly. Concrete walls provide effective reflection. Two deep breaths and the fat man resumed his hurried descent, stomping loudly to help block the cries. There were six floors left to go. He would stumble again and hit the wall, but the child remained secure in his obese bosom.

The fat man knew something about mothers. He knew how they could be cruel. This sweaty fat man saw through the myth of the loving mother. He'd never known any as a child nor as an adult. Poked and prodded, mocked and abused, this thief, this kidnapper, this panicked father recognized a lack of motherly love. He saw it in the face of this child's mother. He couldn't let it happen again.

Here was a fat man, a fat boy, a loser, an idiot, an unreliable employee and all around piece of shit. There came a woman, not fat, but ugly. She had ugliness that reeked of suicide and wine. She was sick and the fat man thought she might let him take care of her. But she wouldn't, even after she was pregnant with his son. Instead, she lived rough and deadly, trying to kill the infection in her womb. The child would be dead. She wouldn't raise a son of his. She'd kill it or sell it. And then she gave birth.

When the doctor showed her bundle of joy, she complained about the pain. She begged for drugs she knew she would get. True disgust crusted her lips when she heard her son begging for her poison milk. She held the infant away from her, away from her lactating breast. Her eyes shuddered with this burden. And the fat man recognized the look.

He burst through the exit and entered the alley, the child's screams still echoing in the stairwell behind them. He caught his balance without the assistance of the walls and looked around them. An ambulance sat idle with lights flashing, its crew busy inside with their own unloved body. The fat man knew where he was heading. He could make it on foot.





OK, that does it for tonight. I was gonna have the kid left on a convent's doorstep, but that's old. I'll try think of something different. If not I can always come back to the convent.