Everyday

And so the transformation begins…

Who doesn’t love October and, more specifically, Halloween? Uh… Jehovah’s Witnesses I guess. But seriously, who cares about them? Probably not even Jehovah. I mean the dude needs his privacy, right? It must be kind of annoying having those perverts witnessing everything! Hey-oh! Ha ha ha! I’m so goddamn funny! But I digress.

So, for this entire month, every Friday I’ll be posting some kind of horror story. This week’s story is self-standing (no cliffhanger), but the others will likely be more of the serial type story, much like last year. This week’s tale (throws magic dust on the fire, courtesy of ‘Are You Afraid of the Dark’) is, well, pretty depressing. I guess I wanted to show that there’s enough horror in everyday tragedy to warrant attention. You really don’t need vengeful spirits, murderously unstable individuals or excessive violence and gore (i.e. all things to look forward to on my blog this month) to show some scary and disturbing shit. So that’s what I tried to do with this short piece. And if you find it dismal and disheartening, well you can look forward to the typically fun torrents of blood coming your way in the following weeks. Gotta love the catharsis of a good ole fashioned gore-fest!

But for now, let’s get depressed!

Everyday

Ironically, the child’s docile nature was a large part of what made it so beautiful. With his head resting contentedly on his mother’s shoulder, the serenity of both the child and his mother was practically tangible. His pale, almost paper-thin eyelids didn’t rise or even flutter; his mouth seemed permanently fixed in a subtle smile that appeared to posit some truly attainable condition of peacefulness. The dribbling, manic glee of a newborn was gone. So was the volatile, screaming despondency that, for better or worse, seems expected from a child of that age. After four months, it was almost as if the baby had miraculously matured beyond that obligatory bipolar phase, inexplicably settling in to a static and passive state.

One could only attribute this to his mother’s perpetual and ardent love—a love that seemed to come so naturally. All the parenting books in the world couldn’t teach the kind of enviable connection she seemed to have with her son. Of course people just assumed that with the tragedy endured by the poor woman, it was simply God or Karma or some unexplainable universal force compensating her for the seemingly endless trauma that plagued her life prior to the child’s birth.

In a small town, hardships and tragedies generally aren’t kept a secret for very long. Particularly when they happen to good people. Everyone knew how badly the Simons wanted a child. Everyone knew about their trouble conceiving. Everyone knew about the first time the pregnancy took. And everyone knew about the subsequent miscarriage. It’s hard to hide devastation, and the air around the couple after the miscarriage was laden with it.

The sorrow and pity of the neighbors and fellow community members was clear and uncomfortable. Few people have the social grace to interact with a couple in the midst of such despair—at least without making them feel even lonelier and more discomfited. Communities are fickle and no one wants to be reminded of the detrimental nature of common tragedy if they can avoid it. As a result, the Simons became something like outcasts… until the news that a second pregnancy had provided them with a new sense of hope.

Glowing with the refreshing prospect of salvation, neighbors and community members couldn’t line up fast enough to offer their congratulations. As draining as it can be to interact with those steeped in misery, it can be equally as invigorating being around those with optimism and faith. Despite their previous heartbreak, the Simons seemed to have so much certainty regarding the new child, like it was something owed to them, like they were sure the world wasn’t cruel enough to take a second baby from their anticipating arms.

But calamity has a funny way of throwing you curveballs. In this instance, the curveball’s name was Glioblastoma. One of the most aggressive types of brain tumor in humans, this brooding cancer seemed to come out of nowhere. As Jason Simon found out, sometimes Glioblastoma can be asymptomatic until the tumor has grown to a massive size. It was only at this point that Jason began to experience excruciating headaches, nausea, vomiting and memory loss. By the time he made it to a doctor, there was nothing that could be done—not that there is typically much that can be done to stave off this kind of tumor. His only hope was that he’d live long enough to see the birth of his son.

He died eleven days before the child was born, just over three months after he was diagnosed with the disease.

Marissa Simon’s reaction to her husband’s diagnosis and eventual death was so modest, it caused a lot of concern from close friends and family members. She would plead with them, saying she was fine—that she just wanted to enjoy the remaining few days of expectation before her son was born. “Jason’s love will always be with us. I’m naming the boy Jason, so every time I look at my son, every time I say his name, I’ll be reminded of the husband and father who helped give me this beautiful gift.”

And so, just eight days after she buried her husband, Marissa gave birth to a beautiful, perfectly healthy baby boy. With eyes as blue as her late husband’s and skin as porcelain-pale as her own, Jason’s birth brought so much relief and happiness to a collection of people who hadn’t felt a brimming smile grace their lips in the better part of a year.

Jason was a big, jubilant baby. Of course he had his moments of shrieking, crying, ill-tempered cheerlessness, but even these seemed to come as a blessing to Marissa. After all, normal babies cry. Normal babies get unhappy. Normal babies vomit on your shirt and throw tantrums in the grocery store. But every moment of typical baby dreariness was just a reminder that Jason was a living, breathing son with the expected temperament of a newborn. There were no surprises, no evident birth defects and nothing that would lead Marissa to believe she’d have anything but a healthy boy for the foreseeable future. And with this thought constantly in the back of her mind, Marissa’s loving interaction with Jason, even during his most trying times, was never anything short of amazing.

And then, miraculously, those trying times seemed to vanish. Previously, friends and neighbors could attest to seeing Marissa and little Jason at the store while the baby cried seemingly inconsolably and Marissa patiently diffused the situation with the motherly affection that Jason seemed to respond so well to. They also noticed when Jason was giddy with life, bouncing up and down with extraordinary energy, gurgling and smiling, reaching to grab his mother like she was the only thing in the world that mattered. Marissa would smile back and calm the exuberance of these gleefully manic episodes like she was a natural sedative, like her warmth registered in a way that just seemed to saturate Jason with tranquility.

After about four months of these public episodes, which ran the gamut from general vivacity to flat-out misbehaving, Jason seemed to calm down immensely. For a few days, any time he was with Marissa in the store, or in his stroller, or in a café, he seemed to be resting peacefully, his dramatic (yet altogether normal) changes in disposition surrendering to peaceful slumber. As he rested on his mother’s shoulder, casual acquaintances would comment on the strikingly passive nature of the child. “Oh, he just looks like he’s giving you no trouble at all.” “What a beautiful, peaceful child.” “What’s your secret? I wish my boy was so well-behaved.” “He sleeps all day? Does that mean he keeps you up all night?”

Marissa would field the questions as personably as always, generally responding in a hushed whisper and adding, “If you don’t mind… I’d prefer not to wake him,” politely encouraging her admirers to keep their voice down and give the little boy a bit of space.

The following week, Marissa and Jason were nowhere to be found. Family members and close friends began calling incessantly. After days of voicemails with no response, Marissa’s sister, Joanne, arrived at the Simon house with a policeman. They knocked and rang the doorbell for more than three minutes. Eventually, Joanne used the spare key given to her by Marissa to open the front door, undoubtedly concerned for what she might find inside.

Both of them noticed the stench immediately as they entered the house. Joanne started to cry as she called out for Marissa and the child. All the shades in the house were drawn, allowing only traces of light to filter through their heavy fabric. Besides the overt stink, the air was stale, as if no doors or windows had been opened for weeks. As the two climbed the stairs towards the bedrooms, the rotten smell worsened. The police officer asked Joanne to remain downstairs, but she refused. Both of them knew what they were going to find, but Joanne was insistent. “I need to see them,” she said through mucus and tears.

All the bedroom doors on the second floor were closed. They moved towards the nursery first, pausing in front of the door before Joanne took the lead and burst into the room. The odor was nauseating. The officer doubled over, managing to choke down his vomit before it splattered on the bedroom floor. Joanne just stood there, staring through the dark room towards the crib and the chair positioned next to it. Marissa sat in the chair with Jason in her arms, the infant’s head perched in its familiar position on his mother’s shoulder. Both were clearly dead and had been for days. A few flies had settled ominously on the discolored flesh clinging to the faces of the mother and her son. Even with just a quick glance, it was evident the child was significantly more decomposed. Joanne fell to the floor and began to sob uncontrollably as the officer used his handheld radio to alert the proper authorities.

The coroner’s report concluded that Jason had been dead for nearly two weeks. This timeline implied that Marissa had been carrying around her dead child for days, accounting for his excessively docile behavior in the week before both him and Marissa went missing. There was no apparent explanation for the infant’s passing, leading the coroner to pronounce the likely cause of death as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, better known as Crib Death.

Marissa’s death was less of a mystery. The coroner found significant amounts of various sedatives in her system. It was clear the grief of losing her son was just too overwhelming, particularly with no husband or father to shoulder his share of the anguish. The pain was all hers. And sometimes that pain can be too much for a single person.

So after days of refusing to accept her son’s passing, she finally did so, falling asleep with love in her arms for the last time.