The Baby Had Horns

The baby had horns. He still had scales like Trav and Pella, still had fins on his back, but from his fish head protruded little spikes. He was wrinkly and slimy, but Trav thought he might have considered him to be cute if only he could get past the horns.

To Trav, it happened in slow motion, a thousand memories of a happy marriage and a thousand visions of his future all shattering in front of him, one by one.

His wife had noticed them too, he saw, her piscine eyes wide with horror. Trav looked at her, and he knew she knew he had connected the dots. The scales adorning her arms and hands were turning from their normal blue hue to purple with stress.

“Trav wait,” she said, “Just listen–”

But Trav was already out of the room ignoring his wife’s pleas. He made his way to the nearest hydrotube station and took the first one to Arjun Mehra’s house, the rush of water in the tube propelling him forward.

He banged on the door until Arjun answered. “Trav,” he said confused. “What’s up?”

Trav’s eyes went to Arjun’s horns, fully formed and surrounded by curly black hair. For a moment, he just stared, disoriented, unsure what he came here to do. Then an unbidden image flashed in his mind, of Arjun on top of his wife.

Trav socked him in his stupid goat face as hard as he could.

“Ow, what the shit, man!” Arjun yelped, doubled over, hands covering his face.

At the same time, Trav howled at the pain in his fist. “Pella had her baby,” he growled.

“Congratulations? What is–”

“He has horns.”

Trav turned away, but not before he comprehension dawning on Arjun’s face.

“Wait, I don’t know how–Trav, it was just–” Arjun was blubbering as he tried to staunch the bleeding with the sleeve of his designer sweatshirt. Prick.

Trav and Pella’s own house was very close to Arjun’s. He walked, holding his fist, his clothes still wet from the hydrotube, but it was a comfortable sort of wet for someone of his species.

By the time he got to his house he was breathing heavily, scales purpling. Once he had bandaged his fist, he went straight to the basement and hauled a suitcase up to his and Pella’s bedroom, throwing open the drawers of their wardrobe, the doors of their closet, to gather his clothes and toss them into the suitcase. On top of the wardrobe was a picture of him and Pella at their honeymoon in the underwater city Newkirk, the place of origin for their kind. Trav’s parents had moved from there to the land when Trav was a very young age. They’d never bothered to take their son to visit their homeland, assimilating to the land culture and never looking back. It had been an expensive trip for him and Pella to take, and Trav had wanted to go somewhere cheaper, but Pella convinced him it would be worth it.

In the picture, their posterior fins were around each other, sharp teeth stretched into wide smiles, scales shining their natural blue with happiness, almost glowing with the sheen of the water. Other humanoid fish, tourists and residents, were caught in motion in the background, swimming and looking at ease in their natural habitat. Trav had an urge to cry out, or fall to his knees, anything to abate the stabbing pain in his chest, but he only continued balling up his clothes and hurling them into the suitcase. Goddamn Arjun Mehra, Trav thought, tears of rage picking at his eyes. He’d always thought Pella’s friendship with Arjun was worrisome–even when he and Pella met up with Arjun and his wife, Pella and Arjun were always disappearing together. He supposed she had quite a bit in common with Arjun, namely, a taste for luxury. But Trav never thought it would go any further than friendship. What did she see in him that Trav was missing? God, those horns were so ugly.

It all came down to the horns. Thankfully, the baby didn’t seem to have retained any other goat-like features, at least not visibly. But the horns were enough. Trav balled his fist, his fins tightening, and threw a pair of underwear into the suitcase particularly aggressively. How could Pella do this to their child?

Before Pella became pregnant and after visiting Newkirk, she and Trav had agreed that they would bring their future child to see the city every few years, an experience Trav now deeply wished he had himself despite not even having the desire to until he lived with three roommates like him in college.

He thought back to his own childhood and schooling experience. Trav had grown up in an area that had conspicuously lacked humanoid fish like himself, perhaps because his parents had wanted to distance themselves as much as possible from their origins. While his classmates hailed from diverse groups, they predominantly had land animal characteristics–goat heads like that bastard Arjun, or hooves, or wings, beaks, and feathers for the avians. He recalled being one of two of his kind in grade school, which, granted, was a class of 18. Every Friday at recess, there would be a race, and every Friday, Trav and the other fish kid would come in last because their legs were not made to run; it was their fins that gave them their speed and strength, but only in the water. They called him Treadmill Trav, because he ran so slow he never moved forward. What was so frustrating to Trav was that this wasn’t true–he was only marginally slower than the rest of them. But that was kids for you. They took the slightest difference about you and blew it up so that difference was who you were.

They stopped racing by fifth grade, but Trav didn’t shake off his nickname until high school. He moved to a bigger city, but his grade of 240 students still only consisted of four like him, with whom he avoided associating to increase his chances of fitting in with the rest of the population. It had been fruitless. Even to this day, Trav despised looking back at his teenage years, when he was friendless, dateless, and now he felt guilty for rejecting the others like him who were definitely struggling with the same issues.

The baby would have a harder time than him, he knew. To avoid what Trav had been through, he and Pella had moved to a district teeming with fish people. But mixed species were rare–not inherently negative for any reason–but in this world, rare was enough of a reason to be negative. The horns would give the child away immediately at school, and would give away Trav’s lack of biological connection to it as well, making him an outcast all over again. He considered having the horns surgically removed, but somehow that seemed worse than anything that could happen because of them.

Often throughout Pella’s pregnancy, he had imagined what life with his son would be like: taking his child to his first day at a school where he knew he would have belonged, teaching his son to swim once his posterior fin had grown to its full size (which was a cultural milestone for his people), building family traditions, and trips to Newkirk. Now, he reimagined the same sequence of milestones, and tried to picture his fictional son with horns in each image. But as the vision of his son changed, so too did the milestones themselves, Arjun Mehra creeping into the fantasy, introducing the boy to his own customs, whatever they were. In all of these scenes Trav had wanted to give his son a life where he was connected to the larger world, where he accepted his identity and heritage, a life that had taken Trav a long time to have himself. He felt inadequate now, unsure of how to proceed now that his son’s cultural education would have to be broader, to compensate for the horns. I suppose Pella and Arjun have it covered, he thought bitterly.

The suitcase was full, though half his clothes still remained in the room. He shut it and lifted it off the bed, rolling it out of the room and down the hallway to the front door. On the way, he passed the baby’s nursery. He stopped for a moment, baggage tilted behind him, willing himself , begging himself not to go in. But he had to take a last look.

It was a very small room, more of a storage than a bedroom, repurposed to be the nursery. He and Pella had considered moving to a bigger house before she was due, but he had convinced her they would make do with this cupboard for now.

The back of the room was slanted, a skylight taking up the top half of the wall. The light from it was cast perfectly on the baby’s crib.

Trav peered into it, a basic wooden crib with a soft, almost plush mattress resting on the bottom of it. Instead of buying a new crib from one of those upscale furniture shops that Arjun Mehra probably shopped at, Trav had insisted on building this crib himself, to Pella’s disdain.

The crib was empty except for the mattress, strangely empty to Trav. He imagined what it would be like if the baby was actually in the crib, napping, or perhaps awake but lying on its back, tiny arms and legs kicking out. He wiped his eyes. My beautiful baby that isn’t mine. He knew what his next stop would be.

#

Trav entered the novelty store, which was empty save for the cashier. He walked right past the greeting card aisle, past the party supplies and pranks, to the back of the store where plush toys lined the shelves. There were teddy bears and stuffed frogs and ducks, some with scales like himself, some with hooves, some with tails, some with a combination of more than one animal appendage–very progressive. Trav searched until he found the perfect plushie: a little soft panda, its body wrapped in reflective green scales, and at its brow, a pair of green horns. It was the only one of its kind, and Trav was surprised to find it there at all.

Trav checked out with the toy. The woman at the cash register, two tentacles sprouting from her back, was unnecessarily perky.

“Awww, what a cute toy! Would you like that wrapped?”

“Sure.” Trav was mesmerized by her tentacles doing other tasks behind her, grabbing some decorative tissue paper and a bag, while her human hands rang up his item at the register.

She handed him the bag. “Is this for a little one?”

Trav thought that question was quite intrusive. “Yes, my wife just had a baby.”

She beamed. “Congratulations! You’re very lucky!”

“It’s not mine,” Trav said gruffly.

“Oh.” That seemed to put an end to her bouncy attitude. “I’m sorry?” she said, confused. “Would you like to add a message?”

#

Trav returned to the hospital, dragging his suitcase into the room where his wife was resting, the baby missing. It must have been in the nursery.

Pella sat up. “Trav! Oh, I’ve been so worried; I’m so glad you’re back–” She noticed the suitcase, voice going up an octave with urgency. “Please, please just listen to me; it was only once and we used protection; I don’t know how this happened–”

Trav put his hand up and she paused. “I don’t want to hear any explanations, Pella.” He gave her the bag with the gift in it.

“What’s this?” she said, bleary, looking inside the bag. She pulled out the stuffed animal and stared at it for a moment. Then she opened the little card that came with it, attached to the tail of the panda. It read, From your Trav. She stared at the card, silent, an eternity passing. Then, “Oh, Trav,” she broke down in a whisper. “I’m so sorry,” she cried, “I’m so, so, sorry.”

Trav bit back his own tears. “It’s just something small for him.” He bet Arjun Mehra would buy his son a designer panda.

Trav went to see the baby before he left. In the nursery, he peered through the glass at all the newborns, trying to pick out which one was his–or wasn’t his. Finally, he spotted him, a little bundle wrapped up in a blanket, peacefully sleeping. From here, he could barely see his horns, but he knew they were there.