Talk Vomit

By Sarena Kuhn

First of all, before anything of an occult nature occurs, the other mothers notice. 

They see your daughter sitting all alone on a dirty rug, and they tell everyone on their email list (that’s right, they have an email list, and you’re not included) that you are late and your daughter is alone and the entire neighborhood should be concerned about this. It’s your fault, for trying to do it all without a man. It’s your fault because if you had a man — when you had a man — you couldn’t keep him. 

While you are flying down the highway, watching the clock and taking a hands-free call, the daycare workers make sure everyone else is gone, that no one is there to witness what happens next. They — they’ve changed now, into vampires or human traffickers or unethical scientists or ghosts — tie your daughters’ tiny wrists to a chair and tell her it’s her mother’s fault that this is happening. 

When you are pulled over by highway patrol and consider making a fool of yourself, unbuttoning your top a little and playing dumb about the speed limit, they hold your daughter’s eyes open and make her watch beheadings, snuff and torture videos. 

When you are making a last-minute deposit at the bank because it’ll be closed by the time you pick her up, they are extracting her blood with syringes, they are pulling every strand of hair out from her beautiful head with tweezers. They are going to use the hair for a demonic ritual, of course. The rest they will donate to Locks of Love. Your daughter cries and squirms in the chair, and they tell her it will all be alright and that her mother will be coming for her soon. 

When it feels like you’ve been hitting every possible red light since you’ve exited the freeway, they are putting her in a box, folding up all her limbs and poking air holes into the cardboard. They are shipping her away, off to a place where bad things happen to little girls, God knows that could be anywhere. 

Your real daughter is lost in transit somewhere, and the one you find waiting for you at daycare — that is, when you finally get there — is a replacement, a body snatcher, an enemy. By the time you make it into the building, the sun has already set. The staff tell you that pick up ends at 6. You check your clock and see 6:30. One more time and they call the police. 

You apologize profusely, and you take your daughter’s hand. You tell her she gets ice cream before dinner tonight. She’s cold to you, though. She’s different. When you walk to the car, you can’t shake off the feeling that something terrible has happened. Your daughter, as kind and perfect as you’ve always known her, throws her backpack in the trunk and climbs into the backseat. When you check for her presence in your rearview mirror, you are met with eyes you’ve never known, eyes that give you nightmares for the next five nights. 

You pull out of the parking space and head home. Now, all the traffic lights are green. 

What have you done

What have you done 

What have you done?