The Pregnant Baby Boy

He wakes everyone up at 7 am every day. He screams and screams until he is picked up and fed milk. He is rocked back and forth, held, and poops his pants. He is changed, but this will change. He doesn’t know it yet, but he’s growing. The guards of his cradle will soon disappear, and so will his diaper. He will have to learn how to wipe his own ass and ask for food instead of crying for it, but he’s a stubborn fellow, and one night while his parents slept, a fairy came to visit him and grant him any wish. It said, “Look deep within your heart and tell me the one thing you’d like.” This was difficult. He understood, but had never spoken before, and said, “Mama,” and just like that, the baby boy was pregnant. His parents were horrified. Their 8-month-old child was 8 months pregnant in a fortnight. His weight doubled, and baby food is enough for one baby, but for a pregnant baby, it was not enough. The parents talked about an abortion.

“He’s only eight months old!”

“And you think that’s old enough to have a child?”

“We had him when you were 18.”

“Years, Vernon, 18 years. This is 8 months.”

“Is it against the law?”

“You know it is! It’s why we kept him in the first place! We can’t afford to drive to California.”

“Well, we’re going to have to now.”

“What do you suggest we do?”

“I think we should have an abortion fundraiser.”

“Ok.”

“I love you.”

“I love you.”

Gladys and Vernon got busy posting signs that read Our Babies Abortion Fundraiser: Funds for California. Many folks turned up, but most out of curiosity, and the sheriff’s department out of moral legality.

“What in God’s Christ is going on here?”

“Sheriff, it’s our baby.”

“You can’t kill a child. That’s not an abortion.”

“No, Sheriff, you don’t understand. Our baby is pregnant.”

He took out his pistol and demanded to see what they were talking about. They brought him upstairs, into their son's room, and all the Sheriff could say was, “That’s a third-trimester pregnancy. That’s illegal, even in Godless California.”

Gladys wept, and so did the baby.

“I can’t even pick it up,” she shouted.

“Honey,” said Vernon. “Let's not take this out on Sheriff Chiksndix. There’s got to be something we can do.”

“I know what you can do,” said Sheriff Chiksndix. “Give it up for adoption. It’s the right thing.”

“Which one?” asked Gladys.

The Sheriff tilted his head and thought about that. He scratched his temple with his revolver and accidentally blew his head off. The sound, the chaos, the screaming, sent the baby into labor. With the help of the curious outside, they loaded the child into the back of their Nat Geo and dialed 911 and told them about how the Sheriff blew his head off. Deputy Dan radioed for an ambulance and, believing Sheriff Chiksndix was the best shot in the tri-county area, did not believe for one second that the Sheriff accidentally blew his head off while two adults covered in his blood at their abortion fundraiser hopped in their car and burned rubber. He radioed that he was in pursuit.

“Careful, Deputy,” said one of the curious civilians. “There is a pregnant child in that car.”

“A what?”

“There’s a pregnant baby in the car.”

“Well, with all due respect, Llewelyn, that doesn’t make much sense.”

“Nothing does, Deputy Dan. Kill it! Send it back to Satan’s horns!”

He, too, burned rubber.

“Has everyone gone crazy!”

During the high-speed highway pursuit, Deputy Dan withdrew his revolver and showed it to Vernon. “Pull over or I am going to have to shoot your tire!”

“No!”

“Why?”

“This is my kid and grandchild!”

“It’s not born yet!”

“No, but it will be you son-of-bitch! You holier-than-thou gila-monster!”

“Gila-monster?”

Having not looked forward for over twenty seconds, Deputy Dan ran right into the back of a semi-truck that immediately hit the brakes, sending him through his window. Neither Gladys nor Vernon was happy about that. They were going to vote for Dan in the next Sheriff’s election.

They pulled up to the hospital, and still not having lost all of her pregnancy weight, the staff brought her a wheelchair, but she pointed to the backseat of their car and said, “My babies.”

They wore hospital gowns, all three of them, and it wasn’t until the actual staff came out and grabbed them that Vernon and Gladys realized that these men were patients running around with an empty wheelchair. “Can our luck get any worse?” asked Vernon. “I don’t think so,” said Gladys, just as what appeared to be the sun came hovering down, glistening, flapping its dragonfly-like wings. “What is that?” asked Vernon. “I don’t know,” said Gladys, and the last patient to be caught told them it was a fairy, and that a fairy would grant you a wish; the fairy concurred. “Name anything," it said, "And it shall be done, just like your baby boy when he said, ‘Mama.’”

It was as if the Star of Bethlehem had come down and kissed them on the cheeks.

“Jeez, Gladys, what do we say?”

She looked up and thought about it. Thought of all the death, their worries, hopes, and fears. She looked at Vernon, and then their child, who had a baby coming out of its ass, and said, “World peace, for all time.”

There was never another war after that. No one ever again died in battle, and every country on Earth appreciated and respected their global neighbors, but Vernon divorced Gladys and fell into alcoholism. Their son, Elvis, gave birth to a healthy baby boy named Jesse Garon. Together, they would reinvent popular music and culture at large with gyrating hips, greasy hair, and rock n’ roll harmonies. Vernon never forgave Gladys, even as he watched his boys sing "Jailhouse Rock" from a prison in Angola, Louisiana.