First born (standard:horror, 3409 words)
Author: Lev821	Added: Oct 30 2008	Views/Reads: 3269/2180	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Getting to see his child grown-up in the future is something he'll wish he'd never seen.

He squeezed his eyes tight and placed his palm over his ear in a vain
attempt to shut out the noise that felt like a hammer blow to his brain 
each time it ricocheted into the bedroom. He lay in his bed, in the 
darkness, facing the window, the warmth of the duvet cocooning him like 
a caterpillar. Rain lashed the window, and thunder rumbled away in the 
distance, but the shed door continued to bang away in the wind, and his 
mind told him that this weather was not going to go away anytime soon. 
It was here for the night, and that door was not going to stop. He lay 
there hoping it would, that it would just cease, as if the weather 
would take sympathy on him, and close and lock it for him, but he knew 
he was going to have to get up and go out there and lock it. 

He sighed loudly, put one leg out into the cold and swung the duvet
back. Standing up, he hurriedly put on his dressing gown and looked 
down at the sleeping form of his wife, who was currently immersed in 
dreamland, totally oblivious to any noise. He wondered if that had 
anything to do with her being seven months pregnant. Even in the gloom, 
he could see her swollen stomach, and hear her barely audible 
breathing. He smiled. It was his first. At 38, she 37, Miriam and Geoff 
Oswald awaited their first-born with eager anticipation, choosing 
names, shopping for clothes, as before then, both of them were 
career-minded, she choosing job security before settling down, he of a 
similar mind, but choosing the right time he wanted to do it, whilst 
maintaining his job as VAT assurance officer for the local council. She 
as a chartered secretary within the same department, but since then had 
transferred to a part-time position as a receptionist at a nearby 
medical walk-in centre. They knew that in order to maintain a 
successful relationship, then they could not work together, or be in 
the same environment often. Absence can be a virtue when it comes to 
cementing long-term relationships, and reduce the natural amount of 
hostilities such a union can produce. Yet, each of them with the career 
positions that they had and were in, were not suited to a meek 
individual who could not handle the pressure and the strains of the 
job. It meant that they were both as stubborn as each other, and 
arguments were frequent, yet, with the pregnancy, it had seemed to make 
Miriam worse. He couldn't do anything right, things she had for years 
simply ignored, such as leaving towels on the bathroom floor, not 
closing the front gate. He put it down to the turmoil of hormones that 
the pregnancy had on her mental state, and he believed would return to 
normal upon the birth. Everything would be fine once the baby arrived, 
he naively thought, rather like that of teenage mothers who upon 
discovering the hard way that their adolescent thinking of ‘It won't 
happen me' was proven wrong when they discovered that the pregnancy 
testing kit turned to blue. ‘They'll have to stay together now for the 
kid' their parents would say. ‘Maybe now they'll get married, now that 
there's a baby on the way'. Hence, the cloud of dust in the teenage 
father's wake, and single mothers pushing prams around bargain basement 
shops and markets. Yes, the baby would solve everything, Geoff thought. 
Only two months to go. 

Geoff was only five feet four, quite stocky with thinning wavy black
hair. His emerging bald patch he was sure was down to work, down to 
stress. At one point he actually thought that if it can be proved to be 
directly the cause, then he would have sued. Compensation culture 
occupied a sizeable piece of his mind, but he was rather apprehensive 
about it, and had not yet made a firm decision, but that decision was, 
he guessed, that he would do nothing about it because if he failed, it 
would be rather embarrassing. He hardly ever used a comb, because the 
hair always chose its own style, and he usually always wore dark, staid 
clothing, of little or no style whatsoever. His wife was no different 
in the fashion department. She was a fan of brown, and seemed to have 
bypassed the eighties, as her style and tastes had halted in the 
mid-seventies. She was a ‘Mother's daughter', a girl that simply became 
their mothers, bypassing adolescence. With her Victorian attitude to 
manners and erotica, and her dowdy appearance, there were not many men 
who gave her a second glance. 

He turned and walked out of the bedroom, and felt his way along the
wall, even though he had lived there for three years and could probably 
have done it with his eyes closed. He didn't want to turn on the light, 
so precariously made his way down the stairs and through into the 
kitchen. He shivered as his bare feet walked onto cold plastic flooring 
and shot a freezing bolt of chill through him. There was a small 
cupboard next to the fridge that stored various paraphernalia, such as 
a mop and bucket, pieces of carpet, and bottles of bleach. Old shoes 


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