Baby Bottle

He awoke reluctantly, his body screaming at him to lie back and sleep again, but it was ‘his turn’ and to ignore that would mean a scowl and a kick from a cold foot and possibly some choice words. Standing in a daze he set off as if on autopilot, muscle memory taking over whilst brain and cohesive thought caught up with the rest of him.

The crying was subsiding but he knew it would not last long, warm milky sustenance was the only thing that would pacify that insatiable squawking sound. Heading down stairs he cursed himself for not preparing it before he settled for the night. With eyes barely open and a brain barely functioning he opened the fridge, the blinding white light pierced every fibre of his being and caused him to mutter under his breath words that would turn the air several shades of blue including some that were hitherto unknown to man. Taking the milk out of the fridge he fumbled in the now over powering dark to find the bottle and kettle. His eyes slowly adjusted to the light of the witching hour and he set about the task at hand. The kettle on and the milk measured out into the fastidiously sterilised bottle, he remembered the scolding he received previously when it became apparent he had used just any bottle off the side. His eyes struggling to stay open and his entire body aching in protest he waited for that click which would mean the sweet succor of sleep was not far away.

The bottle made, the kitchen tidied and with the promise of returning to sleep looking that bit less likely now he started back to the stairs. He came to a juddering halt at the foot of the stairs with an unsettling sense of realisation that hit him, his entire body seemed to lose all control and he felt his legs buckle under him. He folded like a telescope as tears welled, hot and savagely stinging tore down his eyes, the bottle dropping to the floor spillings its warm milky contents.

The recollection began to play out in his mind like some perverse unwanted film. The night that was filled with blinding, crashing rain. They had been arguing, those damned shoes as if it mattered when all was said and done yet he had made his point and could not back down. The tyres losing traction as quickly as his concentration, the trees, the neck wrenching, limb smashing feeling of tumbling, head lolling from side to side as flashes of white pain blossomed over his entire body. The hospital, weeks of slipping in and out of sleep and feverish delirium, the pain and weeping parents delivering news that numbed his very soul, slipping in and out of consciousness. The funeral, two coffins both white, both decorative, one pitifully and painfully small.

He fell onto the bottom step and wept bitterly, how could he have been so stupid as to think that this was anything other than a cruel trick played by a mind that had yet to accept the awful truth of reality. He was alone and alone he would stay, nothing was going to remove the dagger that seemed to have lodged itself into his heart and twisted at every thought of his beloved and his child.

Then, he stopped dead, he felt a cold dread flash over his body like sweaty wildfire, his eyes had widened saucer like and his pupils mere pin pricks in a sea of deep azure. He felt the hair on his arms and neck stand up and a shiver flew down his body. He felt every muscle in his body tense, he wanted to look up but something primal at the back of his mind, some primitive survival instinct willed him not to. Overriding every instinct in his body he looked up, the crying had started again, the nursery light was on and a lullaby was softly being hummed as a shadow floated across the nursery wall.