Now

The baby is chewing her fingers. She’ll put anything (a phone, a tube of barrier cream, your house keys, an empty blister pack of Methlyphenidate XR, 40mg) into her mouth if you let her. She’s at that stage. It reminds me of something hideous I saw on Instagram at 2 am a few nights ago, some confected nightmare that struck me as obviously AI-generated pablum, and as infinitely, hypnotically nasty in its emptiness. In my sleeplessness, I’ve found myself recalling that clip repeatedly.

Now the baby’s drooling all over her hand. She drools a lot these days. She’s rubbing her eyes, so she must be tired. She’s staring at nothing in particular.

But then a new wave of energy issues from some engine inside her. She’s smacking the play mat with her fists. She’s kicking her feet. The energy intensifies. Without teeth she bites her fingers. Then she wedges her whole fist into her mouth.

Now, that hand free, she’s reaching for her feet. One of her socks, pale lilac, second- or third-hand, has fallen from her right foot, because she’s always kicking her feet about. She pulls that foot to her face and studies it. Then she puts it in her mouth. I laugh. I first noticed her do this yesterday: the way she tries to gnaw her feet.

Laughing, I get up off the sofa and leave her momentarily to it. This will prove a mistake.

I go into the kitchen and put the kettle on. I skim Reddit on my phone as I wait for the kettle to boil. I follow a handful of parenting forums. I wouldn’t describe them as useful, exactly, but they can be quite entertaining all the same. I see a made-up word I can’t pronounce with the half dozen brain cells sleeplessness hasn’t yet destroyed, and as I’m failing to process this word, I hear a sound from the living room, from the baby. It’s an odd sound.

The kettle clicks and I pour boiling water into an empty cup. I forgot the tea bag. I toss one in and leave it to brew. I’m pretty sure that’s the wrong way round.

As I step back into the living room, my life stops. I stop, too. I can’t believe what I’m seeing because it is entirely impossible and therefore unbelievable. You wouldn’t believe it, either. I can only stare in horror. But I think I saw something about this online, in what, later, we’ll think of as the early days of this thing.

My daughter has drawn both of her feet into her mouth. She’s working steadily. Her neck bulging, she looks like a snake eating some medium-sized bird or mammal. She has passed her own ankles.

I don’t know what to do. What would anyone do when confronted with something categorically impossible? They would freeze, or scream. They might suspect some trick. I’ve frozen. She’s way past her ankles now. In gulp after gulp her knees disappear. Fat thighs vanish into a mouth opened wider than any human mouth ought to go. Then her hips. There’s a smoothness to this process, an atrocious sinuosity.

*

Something breaks in me. Perhaps it’s broken in you, too. I hear it click the way the kettle clicked. I rush to my daughter’s side. What was I thinking? I wasn’t thinking, of course – I was watching.

Part of me thinks I shouldn’t touch her, shouldn’t interfere with something I don’t understand, but this is my daughter. She’s working quickly. Her mouth, impossibly, has reached her upper back.

I pick her up and realise I don’t know how to hold her. I fall back down on the sofa.

The mouth – for now of my daughter there is only mouth – is closing in on the soft back of her head, the warmth of her neck, the uneven blonde hair which curls out in delicate tufts around her ears. The lips of the mouth are creeping over the crown of her head. This isn’t possible; nonetheless, it’s happening. A moment ago I was holding something that still looked like my daughter in my lap.

Impossibilities accumulate: now the mouth is floating above my lap. My daughter’s face has almost completely disappeared. The jaw muscles work ruthlessly. I’m covered in drool. The lips are closing in on the jaw. The back of the lips on the front of the lips. I close my eyes. Somewhere a key turns in a lock. The front door opens, closes.

I open my eyes to find my wife staring at me in bafflement.

‘What’s wrong?’ she says. ‘Is something wrong?’

__________

Seán Padraic Birnie is a writer from Brighton. His debut collection, I Would Haunt You If I Could, was published by Undertow Publications in 2021. His work has appeared in places such as ergot, Interzone, Remains, and Cōnfingō, and has been reprinted in Best British Short Stories, The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror, and The Best Weird Fiction of the Year. He is on Bluesky and Instagram @seanbirnie. For more information, see seanbirnie.com.