Member-only story
Dystopia’s Child
(Previously published in “LUMINA” vol. XVIII)
You don’t know who you are, really. The name you were born with, the names of your parents, or grandparents. You don’t know if you have siblings, or the name of the city you come from. There’s a story about how you got to where you are today, some fairy tale of how you got to be part of the family you now call your own. You don’t know if you believe it.
You know that babies come from a woman’s body. You know that a man has something to do with the woman’s body that makes the baby. You have ideas about how all this works, but you might be wrong. How the baby gets into the woman’s body and how it gets out seems a little bit like a story. Sometimes people call it a miracle.
People call thisa miracle too. Miracle sounds like mirror. You wish that you could look in the mirror and see a face that looks like the other faces in your family. Where does your face come from?
Sometimes people have everything. The dream house, car, job, wardrobe, life — but they don’t have bodies that will make babies. Or sometimes they’re good at making the babies, but the babies don’t make it to be actual babies. Just half-formed little creatures with lungs the size of butterfly wings, who give up and stop breathing long before there’s real air to take in. Sometimes there are people who don’t mean to make babies but…
