Short Story: Saving Baby, by Damien Kane

They left their broken down car. The freezing wind whipped at her clothes and stung her face like a bad session of acupuncture. It was a bitter and cruel day, and they were lost. Evening was approaching and the temperature had dropped substantially. Panic started to set in.

After an hour of ill luck, she looked at baby. Her face was red and her soft baby flesh was molten with cold. They huddled together on the snowy floor of the icy wilderness, crying. “What can we do?” Lisa cried.

Mark replied, “You have to go on alone. I’m too fat and you’ll make better time alone.”

“I’m not leaving you,” she told him, shielding her eyes from the elements.

He pulled out his fishing knife. “Cut me open. Put baby inside me and you go look for help. She’ll be warmer that way.”

“Where did you get that!” she cried.

The snow lashed at her skin like thousands of small whips. He passed the knife to her and said, “If you don’t, we’re all dead. Baby will be warm. You’ll be quicker without me.”

Tears streamed down her face. They felt warm. She took the knife in her numb hand and watched him remove his coat and lift up his jumper. Trembling, she sliced open his stomach and placed the four week-old baby into his warm, steaming viscera. “She’ll be warmer like this,” he said through the blood and agony.

She wrapped them up and kissed him. It was like kissing the inside of a freezer. “Now go,” he ordered.

She dared not turn back and put all her effort into finding help. It took until midnight in the frozen wasteland to find help in the form of a police patrol car. She flagged it down feeling overwhelmed by happiness. “That way,” she sobbed. “Please!”

After an hour, they found him. His clothes were shredded and his body lay mauled on the floor. Baby had disappeared from the large rent in his stomach. The policeman checked his pulse. “He’s dead.”

“My baby!” the woman cried. “The wolves killed them both!”

“Likely story,” the policeman replied, noticing blood on her hands, reaching for his gun.