Author Information
The Midwife
Mary Anne opens her eyes just before the clock strikes five. She rises, steady, and ties a bun on her head so that she may begin to work on the day’s chores. As she walks into the kitchen, her pale face illuminated by the gray morning and the autumn wind making her white gown flow on her heavy frame as she hears a sound echo in the misty dawn outside. Surprised, she leaves the farmhouse into the open field to see a magnificent light searing a few miles away. It pulses unnaturally, sending waves of light into the sky and she feels the ripples through her body, like a strange music.
Without thinking, she walks towards this light as the morning sun starts rising into the wheat field and the air grows warmer and stronger. She is but a lonely figure walking to the great unknown, threading slowly, but surely, like a moth to the flame.
As she edges closer to the top of the hill, she can see the source, something unnatural, foreign: a beacon of massive proportions, taller than any house. Its slick black marble surface seems to pulse with every color of the spectrum, and even more – shapes and voices seem to reach for the woman. They speak languages she does not comprehend and emit music that no one has heard before.
Eyes glazed, she starts swaying, first slowly, and then with joy, as a cosmic rhythm takes over her body. And then – the need for the warmth, the light, the music that is coming from this strange artifact, the desire fills her uncontrollably.
She reaches and her fingers touch the glossy material, her skin melts into a thousand beautiful shades of red, but she feels nothing. Instead, a warm feeling of joy invades her insides and she feels free.
Mary Anne melts into the object until there is nothing left of her.
Farmers and their wives and children hope the day will come for them to witness the strange phenomenon that has appeared in the wheat fields, and just like that woman, they will succumb to the joys and horror of something they will never understand.
