Jake Demming lay in bed having drifted off to quiet slumber less than an hour before. Jake dreamed of things that most eight year old kids dream of — taking his bike off road, struggling up the long hill tucked away in the woods and then pausing ever so briefly before taking a deep breath and zooming down the other side, wind blowing his hair straight back as he gained speed approaching a wicked left turn bordered by low brush thick with thorns, cranking on the handle bars, his wheel slightly sliding off the trail as he navigated the turn like the pros he saw on TV, contorting his body to keep his balance as he readied himself for the ramp that lay just ahead…Just as his front tire was in that crease between the hard packed dirt and the upward slope of the plywood ramp, he felt something. He didn’t realize he felt something but he did feel it, and at the very instant the feeling registered in his sleeping brain, the woods, the bike, the ramp, everything, vanished, not in a slow fade as he had seen on TV programs in the movies, but in an instant, like the power switch to the dream projector had simply been clicked to the “off” position.

Jake opened his eyes and standing at the foot of his bed was a girl. She wore a blue dress that looked something like the dress he had seen Cinderella wear in that old cartoon his mom had made him watch. Her hair was not combed but it also wasn’t messy. She looked to be about Jake’s age. She didn’t say a word. She just stared at him, and he stared back as if their blue eyes were connected together by an imperceptibly thin wire. He had a weird feeling that he knew her, but he also couldn’t remember ever having see her. As Jake tried to figure out how he knew this girl, she smiled, just a little, and the smile brought a smile to Jake’s own face. The two children’s smile-off ended when she spoke.

“Your mom hurt me,” the girl said as the smile melted away from her face, replaced by a look of pain.

“My mom? She wouldn’t hurt anyone,” Jake said in defense of his mother.

“She did, Jake.”

“How do you know my name?”

“My name is Carole,” the girl replied without answering Jake’s question.

Until now, Jake hadn’t been afraid of this girl but suddenly he felt a sense of danger. He shivered from head to foot. Even though it felt like his whole body was swaying like a sapling in a strong breeze, the movement of his body would be barely perceptible to another witnessing this scene. Oddly though no scream materialized either in his head or in his throat. Indeed, he was perfectly quiet, even his breathing, though slightly quickened was still nearly silent.

“Tell her, Jake. Tell her she hurt me,” Carole implored with a slight quavering in her voice. This made Carole seem less frightening for sure, but it also made Jake more confused.

“This doesn’t make sense. It’s all weird. I’m dreaming. I’m not telling my mom about this. She’ll think I’m bonkers and make me go talk to a doctor or a priest or…something! No, I’m not telling her or dad or anyone anything about this. I’m going back to sleep and forget this ever happened.”

When the last word left his mouth, Carole disappeared. He blinked and rubbed his eyes. He wasn’t sure whether she had been there and…disappeared…or whether she had never been and was nothing more than a character from a misplaced bad dream trying to trespass on his awesome dirt bike ride for the ages. Regardless, he resolved to snuggle back into the mattress and try to resume his ride, knowing full well that dreams once interrupted never came back to the dreamer in the same detail if they ever did materialize again.

Jake tossed and turned for a short time, although to him it seemed like an eternity before he was even close to returning to sleep. Finally, the slow descent into unconsciousness began and Jake’s thoughts gradually become soft and rounded on the edges and lacking any definite form. Within a few more minutes, Jake experienced the last little involuntary jump of the body (a quick twitch of his left leg to be exact) that one sometimes experiences before crossing over into the world of regenerative sleep.

How long he remained in that blissful empty nothingness he would never know. However, in what seemed like an instant to his slumbering mind, he again entered a world of dreams where images and sounds from his daily life whirled about waiting for his mind to organize them into something resembling reality. In an instant, he was again face to face with Carole. She no longer looked sad or hurt. Now, she possessed a look of pure anger, and when he looked into her eyes, the blue shimmer he had seen before was gone and replaced with solid black. As he looked deeper into the blackness, he saw images of blood and broken bones floating into a bottomless pit of darkness. That image of violence and doom floated through Jake’s mind for the rest of the night making it impossible for him to sleep in any true sense of the word. When he awoke, the first word on his lips was “Carole” and the last dreamy image to exit his brain was her angry face.

Jake’s mom, known to the world as Barbara Ryder before she became Barbara Demming and then simply “Jake’s mom,” called Jake to breakfast. Jake, still sleepy and confused, rubbed his face with his still slightly sweaty palms, and came down to the kitchen and climbed up on a stool at the counter while mom stood and quietly drank coffee. Jake ate his breakfast silently for a few minutes as he struggled to form a plan for addressing this with his mother.

Finally, Jake just blurted out, “Who is Carole, mom?”

“I don’t know,” Barbara replied honestly. “Why do you ask?”

Jake realized he had to be careful how he explained this to his mother. He couldn’t just come out and say this strange girl showed up in his bedroom accusing his mom of hurting her. So, he explained the visit to his mother by describing it all as a weird dream.

Barbara’s face changed a tiny bit, but it was enough for Jake to notice. Her brow furrowed just enough to be perceptible, her posture suddenly became just a bit better, and her breathing skipped a beat — just for a half second.

“Jake, that’s such a weird dream. I have no idea who Carole is,” she lied.

“OK. I just hope she doesn’t show up again. She was weird,” Jake said as he hopped off the stool to go get dressed so he and his friends could enjoy this pleasantly warm Saturday.

Barbara wondered whether she should bring this up with her husband, Brad. She decided against it.

Brad Demming was lying on the couch in the television room watching a college football game he wasn’t particularly interested in through fluttering eyes. He saw the blue and orange team marching down the increasingly liquid looking field as the red and black team’s shimmering defensive players tried in vain to stop the march. A pass down the sideline to a wide open receiver faded into blackness and silence. Brad was asleep. Should either Barbara or Jake wander into the room and accuse him of sleeping, we would protest that he was merely resting his eyes, but neither Barb nor Jake interrupted his sleep, and they wouldn’t have believed him if they had. Instead, when he opened his eyes, he saw a teenage girl sitting in the reclining chair a few feet away.

The girl was a pretty blonde with her hair done up in a bun and a small stone of some sort resting on the side of her nose. As Brad’s eyes opened, the smiling girl just stared at him. Before he could ask who she was, she said, “Hey, dad.” A look of confusion spread across his face, and the girl offered something of an explanation, “It’s me, Carole.” The look of confusion changed into a look of panic. Brad knew he wasn’t awake but was instead in the middle of a nightmare and tried with all of his mental might to wake himself up.

“You’re not sleeping, dad. You’re awake. It’s me. It’s your daughter. It’s Carole.”

“I don’t have a daughter,” he responded somewhat weekly.

“You did,” she replied.

“Carole died,” Brad said.

“You might want to talk to Judith about that,” she responded.

“What? What are you talking about?”

“Just talk to her.”

Brad and Barb had known each other their entire lives. Barb’s family moved into the house across the street from Brad’s when they were each but toddlers. They had become fast friends and that friendship eventually flowered into a teen romance. Barb’s mom, Judith, didn’t approve of the relationship, so Barb sneaked around to see Brad. They would meet at the movies or at the Hamburger Pit or just about anywhere else they could see each other without getting caught by Judith. When they were 16, they had sex for the first time. Barb became pregnant and told Brad about it. They were scared and happy and confused but mostly happy. The baby’s name would be Carole or Carl, depending on what sex it was, and they would rely on their families to help them raise it while they finished school and established themselves in the world. That plan was halted when Barb began to bleed early in the pregnancy and had to go to the hospital. She lost the baby and went into a deep depression. Judith wouldn’t let Brad see Barb, and it was weeks before she was able to meet up with him in secret. They held each other and cried and declared how much they loved each other and promised never to leave each other. Some years later after they both finished their educations and began their careers, they married over Judith’s objections and moved to another town within the same county. They rarely talked to Judith after their marriage and never actually saw her, and they were happier for it.

“Promise me that you’ll talk to Judith, dad,” Carole pleaded.

Brad made no such promise and instead closed his eyes and shook his head in an effort to wake himself up. When his eyes opened, Carole was still there, smiling. In a moment, she began to shimmer just as the football players had earlier and before she disappeared, she said, “I love you, daddy.”

Brad went to the bedroom and Barb was lying in bed reading when he said, “I just saw Carole,” he said as he began to dress for bed.

Barb went pale and then turned scarlet before she responded, “Carole who?”

“Our daughter. Carole. It was the weirdest dream ever. She came to me and told me that I needed to talk to Judith.”

“My mother? Why on earth would you need to talk to Judith,” Barb asked.

“I don’t know. She just said I should talk to her.”

“Please don’t talk to that woman,” Barb begged. “She is poison and we don’t need to invite that into our house.”

“I won’t. I hate that woman and wouldn’t talk to her if you paid me to,” he said as he turned out the light.

For the next week brad saw Carole in his dream each night. Each time she pleaded with him to talk to Judith. The thought of talking to that woman made his blood boil, but the look in Carole’s eyes haunted Brad, and he began to feel that the only way to the make the dreams stop was to talk to Judith. So, he decided that he would talk to her, but he wouldn’t tell Barb about it first. To do so would just upset her, and if it turned out to be nothing, there would be no reason to put Barb through that.

Brad drove to Judith’s house on a cloudy and cold Saturday. Barb and Jake had gone shopping, leaving Brad home alone to watch football. Barb said they would probably be gone for a few hours as she kissed him on her way out the door. Brad waited for her car to turn out of the driveway and then waited another five minutes before he got into his car and drove to Judith’s.

Brad knocked on the door, shaking just slightly.

Judith opened the door. “It’s you,” she said with more contempt than Brad thought humanly possibly to display. “What do you want?”

“I need to talk to you. Can I come in?”

“The last time we talked, you told me to never step foot on your property,” she reminded him. “Why should I let you in my home now?”

“I only need a minute,” Brad reassured her.

“Ask me what you have to ask me where you stand. You cross that threshold and I’ll blow your head off.”

Brad believed her. “I need to talk to you about Carole,” he said,

“Carole? Who in the hell is Carole?”

“It’s my daughter..our daughter…Barb and I’s daughter,” he stammered.

“I didn’t know you had a daughter. Congratulations. Now leave,” she ordered.

“It’s the baby Barb lost when we were kids,” he said.

“Baby? There was no baby. Didn’t she tell you about it?”

“No,” Brad said as he shook his head.

“She aborted it,” Judith said as if she was merely stating the atomic weight of oxygen.

“Aborted? What are you talking about,” he demanded.

“She had an abortion. She came home pregnant and said that she was going to keep it and raise it with you. I told her that she could keep the baby but she wouldn’t be living here. I didn’t want that thing in my house.”

“Thing? It was a baby. It was MY baby,” Brad corrected her.

“It wasn’t a baby. It was a fetus. A clump of cells. It was a lifetime of regret and shame and poverty waiting to happen,” Judith sneered. “Between the two of you, you couldn’t raise a pet rock. So, I told her that she either got rid of it or she got out. No in between. Naturally, she got rid of it. What was she going to do? Rely on you? I agreed that we would tell you that she lost it because we both knew you were too stupid to figure it out.”

Brad envisioned wrapping his hands around Judith’s neck and snapping it like a pencil. His face was red and he noticeably shook, and this caused Judith to smile. She enjoyed the pain she had inflicted and this chance encounter would give her pleasure for many days. Before this escalated any further, Brad turned around and walked to his car.

“Tell Barb I said hello,” Judith called after him.

Judith sat in her chair watching a television show. She was most definitely awake and very much interested in finding out who killed the grocery store owner’s wife. All signs pointed to the grocery owner, but the cute girl with the really powerful computer believed he was innocent and she had the data to prove it. Judith believed that the store manager did it because he wasn’t given a raise.

“Hi, grandma,” Judith heard from behind her. “Whatcha watching?”

Judith got out of her chair and saw a young woman standing in her living room. The woman was blonde and very pretty. She wore a business suit that looked expensive. She carried a handbag made of leather and bore the insignia of a very expensive designer. This wasn’t the kind of person Judith expected to make an unlawful entry into her home, and rather than scared, she was confused and angry.

“Who are you, and why are you calling me grandma?”

“It’s me Carole.”

“More of this Carole nonsense? Did Brad put you up to this? I always knew that boy was crazy. You can either get out of my house or I’ll call the cops,” Judith said.

“Dad doesn’t know I’m here, and you’re not going to call the cops, either,” Carole informed her.

“I’m not putting up with this,” Judith declared as she moved toward the telephone.

After her first step, Judith lost her balance and fell straight to the floor. She couldn’t move, but she was in no pain. The more she struggled, the more she looked like a helpless baby animal who hadn’t gotten the hang of their limbs trying to scurry to the safety of their mother.

“This is what I would have become,” Carole said. “I would have been a successful business woman and I would have had children of my own and I would have known what it was to love. Instead, all I know is hate, and the hate that I have burns especially hot for you, Judith,” the last word providing auditory emphasis of the point Carole was making.

“You weren’t a child. You were a lump of cells. Nothing more than a parasite in my daughter’s body,” Judith said now fearful.

At that moment, Judith found herself outside. It was sunny and she was standing on a green, well manicured lawn surrounded by woods. She didn’t know where this was; she had never been here before. Across the grass was a baby — brand new to the world. It was sitting in a bassinet looking at the world in front of it.

Judith heard what sounded like a helicopter, first faint but now growing louder, and she saw a shadow descending from above, but when she looked up all she could see was the pure bright light of the sun. The shadow grew closer and darker in unison with the growing sound of the helicopter. Just as the world was about to turn dark, the baby was lifted out of its bassinet. The child didn’t scream at first, but quickly she could hear the baby screams over the sound of the helicopter. The scream grew so loud that it hurt her hears and that’s when she saw the baby’s limbs ripped from its body. Now the screams were so loud that she thought for sure that her ears would burst from the pressure. At that instant, the child’s head ripped open and its contents started whirling around like an egg being scrambled, the force so great that it flew off into the trees and dripped from its branches. Now, the single child’s scream amplified and grew and sounded like the screams of a million children, all whaling in pain, all begging for mercy.

Judith closed her eyes, but she couldn’t keep the screams from invading her brain. How long the screams lasted, Judith didn’t know, but it seemed like it went on for days. When the screaming finally stopped, she opened her eyes. The trees turned red with blood with only specks of green visible here and there. She looked down, and the green grass she had been standing on was now a pit. Her feet were covered with blood and the blood covered all of the formerly green lawn. Suddenly, the blood began to rise and in an instant it was covering her knees. Bits of broken bone and torn skin and hunks of muscle and sinew bumped against her shins, and suddenly the screaming started again. Except this time, the screams were Judith’s alone and those screams never ended.

Barbara heard of her mother’s passing the day after Carole’s visit with Judith. Barbara didn’t feel sorrow. Instead, she felt relief that her mother’s malevolent presence was now gone forever. The official cause of death would be a heart attack, but according to the paramedics on the scene and the medical examiner himself, it looked from Judith’s face like she was scared to death.

Barbara and Brad talked it out and each apologized to the other. Brad for going to Judith behind Barbara’s back and Barbara for not having told Brad the truth long before. They both decided that they would tell Jake that Carole was, in fact, his sister and that she had miscarried. It was a lie, and they hated to tell him that lie, but how does one explain to such a young child that she wasn’t miscarried but was aborted? Maybe that was a discussion for another day.

After Judith died, Carole no longer appeared before any of the Demmings. Instead, she lived in their memories, and yes, regrets. They each talked to Carole in their moments of need, and although Carole never answered, they each believed that she heard their voices and found comfort in them as she rested in peace and waited for them to reunite as the family they should have been.

Author’s note:

I am a pro choice person. I believe that women have the right to autonomy over their bodies and that the government shouldn’t restrict that autonomy, even in the case of pregnancy. However, the growing movement toward celebrating one’s abortion got me to thinking that perhaps we have lost sight of the fact that, whether you want to call it a person or not, abortion does end a human life. This story is my attempt to think through this idea and to answer for myself, what if the life being ended could speak for itself.