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Biding Its Time Harvey Kennett
It was no normal pregnancy.
It began in March 1999, when my wife told me the good news after using a self-test kit from the chemist. A doctor’s appointment the next day confirmed it. We were both ecstatic at the news. It was 8 weeks in to its term, and it was expected in December of the same year.
In May 1999, my wife began to increase noticeably in size. I expected some expansion, but not on the scale she experienced. I caught her late one night; sitting in front of the refrigerator, with the door wide open. She was half-awake, yet had managed to consume nearly all of the contents. 2 large bars of chocolate, a family-pack of 8 yoghurts, 6 pints of milk, a dozen raw eggs, 4 slices of uncooked bacon and 4 pounds of cheese. The doctors at the hospital said that sometimes, pregnant mothers would crave large quantities of food for their baby and that this was abnormal, but nothing to worry about.
Over the course of the next 6 months, her nocturnal raids to the fridge grew more frequent. She grew from a svelte size 10, to an amorphous and obese size 22. The strangest thing was that she could not remember any of it. Thankfully, towards the end of November 1999, her eating returned to normal.
December came. And went.
In the first week of January 2000, the doctor advised us that the pregnancy would have to be induced. So she went in to hospital on Jan 7th, 2000.
Each time they tried to induce, her heart rate shot up to dangerously high levels, and her blood pressure escalated at the same time. They decided to go for a Caesarean.
Whenever the surgeon went anywhere near her with the scalpel, her blood pressure and heart rate accelerated, even though she was unconscious at the time.
The doctors were puzzled. It was decided that medical intervention was more dangerous to her and her baby, and that we should let nature take it’s course. So we were sent home, and told to wait for the waters to break.
Feb 2000 arrived and in the first week, with still no sign of the baby, we went back to the doctors. The scans confirmed that it wasn’t a phantom pregnancy. The baby looked all right, said the doctor, if a little on the large size. We went to hospital again to try and induce. This time, my wife was lucky to escape with her life. The stunned doctors kept her in for observation, but had to release her back home when she suffered some form of mental episode that they couldn’t control with any of their drugs. She was docile and calm when we returned home. We decided not to bother the doctors again and closed our doors to the world.
By June 2000, she had started eating heavily again, and by now, I could see the baby’s arms and legs moving around her stomach, like some grotesque imp trying to get out of a balloon. Fortunately, as her weight increased, so too did her capacity to host our child.
In November 2000, now 18 months in to the pregnancy, she was confined to bed. Her weight was now a massive 47 stones. It was hard to tell where the woman began and the whale ended.
I had to give up work to spend all my time looking after her, and keep the media away from the derelict farmhouse. I spent most of my waking hours bringing her food. Endless amounts of food.
In March 2001, we had a false alarm. The sheets of the bed were bloody and messy, but it was where one of her many bedsores had become infected with a sebaceous cyst and burst during the night.
August 2001 came and went, and now, some 27 months in to the pregnancy, we wondered if the child would ever be born. It now takes me 4 hours to bathe my beloved wife, and I have to use blunt pieces of wood to hold up the folds of fat to reach in to all the nooks and crevices. The smell is now unbearable. Yesterday, I found an infected cyst that had become infested with maggots on her left thigh. After tonight, I shall sleep in the spare room.
Coroner’s Report.
Mr. Wilkins, the deceased, was found partially eaten by Mrs. Wilkins (also deceased) on 18th September 2001. He appears to have suffocated after being crushed to death by his morbidly obese wife. I suspect that being unable to procure her own food, she ate the remains of her husband to sustain her child. Unfortunately, she too perished when her stomach lining exploded, coating the bedroom with the remains of her intestines. No sign of the child was found within Mrs. Wilkins, and forensic reports indicate that some sort of wild animal had made it’s way in to the bedroom and eaten the partially decomposed bodies of the subjects before disappearing. I await the dental evidence to positively identify the creature.
Signed Mr. Black, County Coroner.
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