“How hard is it to choose the right leaf to pee on? Really?” Catherine grumbled, feeling the chill of the evening breeze cut at her face. She rubbed her hands over her thick green parka sleeves and shivered unhappily. “Come on, Tigger!” She called out to her dog, her long brown hair swinging forward in her braid as she folded her arms and leaned towards the tree line. “Come on, boy. Mama has a hot chocolate and warm couch waiting for us to watch trashy TV on…” Catherine jerked as she heard the loud barking of her precious dog and pulled her side arm from her thigh holster. “You don’t sound happy…something’s not right.” The last time Tigger howled and barked like that, he’d come across someone trying to sneak up on her in town, and they nearly lost a hand. Tigger was a softie, but a trained guard dog when it mattered. If he thought Mama was in danger, Tigger had the bite to match his bark. He wouldn’t bark like that over something like a smell or a squirrel. Catherine narrowed her icy blue eyes and slowly moved through the trees towards the sound of her dog barking. She held her pistol down by her side and raised her left hand with her torch to light her path. “Tigger? Where are you, boy?” He barked in response to his name, and Catherine followed the noise. What she found when she got there was so shocking that it rooted her to the spot. Tigger was circling and barking at a long wicker basket propped up against the base of a tree. It looked like it was handcrafted—a bundle of blankets of mismatched colours that did not belong together. And the unnerving thing was…something was moving inside the basket….

“What the fu…” Catherine looked around her first, using the torch to see if anyone else was there in the shadows. After a few heavy moments of dread and silence, with only Tigger’s barking to break it, Catherine found her feet taking her closer to the basket. She lowered to one knee and braced her left hand on the tree, pinning her torch to it. There was something in the back of her head, perhaps an instinctive part of her, that knew what she was about to discover as she pried back the top muslin blanket. “Oh shit…Tigger? Did you just go and find a damn baby?” She glared at her dog, like it was entirely Tigger’s fault she had come across a strange baby in the woods. Said oversized teddy bear was now sitting beside her and panting happily. Now that Mama was looking at the wriggling pink thing, there was no need to bark at it anymore. “What is a baby even doing in the middle of the forest at night anyway?!” Catherine felt a headache coming on and shoved her pistol into the holster on her belt. She looked down at the baby, really looking at it this time and realised it wasn’t a newborn. Namely, because he sat up. Yes, he, a naked little boy with a full head of soft, wispy brown hair and big brown eyes, sat up and reached for her. He cried and his hands opened and closed with grabbing motions. “Jeez, you’re bare ass naked, at night, in the forest?!? You’ll catch your death!” Catherine hurried to bundle the blankets around the little boy and lifted him up into her arms. He was cold and shivering so she held him close and rubbed her hand up and down his back. Tiny little fists pawed at her to get a purchase and gripped her jacket. “Hold on.” She unzipped her coat and wrapped that around him as well. “Come Tigger. We need to get home and warm this little guy up.” Cathy looked around one last time, looking for any evidence of, well, anyone that this baby could belong to. In the middle of the woods. You know? So she could pull her pistol out and shoot them in the ass. 

Who left a baby, naked, in nothing but blankets, in a basket on the forest floor where wolves or coyotes could get at the defenceless little thing? Someone who needed to be shot, that’s who. “Come on, boy. Heel. Let’s go.” Catherine used both arms to secure the little boy to her chest, awkwardly holding the torch in one of her hands to light up the way. She moved as quickly and safely as she could back towards the lodge. The little boy’s cries lowered to sniffling and she shushed him gently. “You’re okay now, little guy. Let’s get you warm. Then we can look into what I have that you can eat.” Next on her list was taking him to see a doctor and the police. This baby didn’t just magically appear from thin air. He had to belong to someone. Hopefully, someone responsible and who was missing their baby terribly. Not someone who happily left them out in the woods to die of the cold or starvation. It was awkward unlocking the door with a baby nestled under her coat, but she managed it. Tigger obliviously barged in first and made a beeline for his bed in front of the log fire in the living room. “That’s not a bad idea.” She hurried after Tigger and lowered herself to sit with her legs crossed beside the dog bed. “Okay, little guy. Let’s warm you up.” She opened her coat to inspect the baby boy, and she practically swallowed her own tongue in shock.

The thing that sat on her lap was not a baby. Well, actually, it was, but of no species she recognised. Catherine’s mouth was open in horror as she stared down at a little creature with soft brown fur covering his body. His feet were grey hooves and matched the grey bat wings flexing on his back. They were too small to fly with, entirely out of proportion. On his head were a pair of tiny little deer horns and he had the floppy ears of a rabbit. His big brown eyes were darker, near black, and his mouth twitched like a rabbit. He even made the cute teeth-clicking noise that sounded like he was sucking them at her. Finally, he had a tiny little tail that reminded her of a fuzzy cat’s tail, but it forked at the end and swayed behind him. “What…the…actual…fuck?” Her icy eyes were wide as she took stock of what she was looking at. Fuzzy little paw-like hands lifted up, making the same grabby motions as earlier and the baby cried like, well, like a baby. “Oh, n-no, don’t cry.” It felt like she was going on autopilot as she reached for the…baby? Whatever it was, it was clearly a baby version of it’s kind. “Hey, it’s okay. You’re safe now.” She took her coat off and slowly moved it to blanket around the baby. 

Whatever it was, it was still a baby. A vulnerable little thing that was crying. She found him in the middle of a forest. A coyote or wolf would happily snatch and tear this little thing to pieces for a snack. Or at least, they would have, if Catherine had left him out there. “This is something out of a shitty sci-fi show.” She felt her marbles starting to clack and threaten to fall out of her ears. “The girl walks at night in the forest. Girl finds a monster baby…girl takes monster baby home…girl gets killed by either the monster baby’s mama or the government agents that need her to disappear. Shit.” The baby cried even louder and opened and closed it’s tiny little hands, looking right at Catherine. It felt like the baby was looking right into her soul. “Well, shit, it’s done now, isn’t it? Come here.” She was just wondering how to lower the coat around the baby when he wriggled his shoulders and shifted back into a human-looking baby. Pink, naked, baby fat galore, and squishy cheeks to boot. “Well damn. You can just change at will, can you? Well, alrighty then. Either you’re a magical monster baby, or I’m losing my mind.” She shrugged and wondered absently if it was the latter. Not necessarily because she was seeing a baby that could transform and have fur, a tail, rabbit ears, hooves, wings and horns, but because she had no intention of putting it back where she found it… Why didn’t she do the right thing in the name of self-preservation and chuck the monster back into the woods?

Catherine swallowed thickly. She knew why. She knew exactly why. It was the same reason she wrapped the little boy up in her coat and lifted him into her arms to rock to sleep. It’s because having a baby in my arms has been my single dream for such a long time, and is the only thing I can never have. Not naturally. 

Catherine had been diagnosed as a teenager with a congenital uterine condition. Her uterus hadn’t formed properly, so even though she had ovaries and healthy eggs, she could never get pregnant. She hardly had periods either, so she took her wins where she could get them. Because of this condition, she knew she’d never naturally have children. But I have a plan. I’m going to save up and then I’m going to adopt. I am going to be a mama one day. I’ll be a kickass mother. Catherine couldn’t pretend that there wasn’t a part of her that wasn’t sad about knowing she didn’t have a choice about getting pregnant herself, but she had no intention of letting that hold her back. She was the youngest of 13 and therefore had lots of nieces and nephews to see to her broodiness when it popped up to point out the progression of her biological clock. Still? Catherine had a plan, and she was determined to carry it out at the right time. Everyone who knew her knew she planned to adopt.

Is that why I did this with hardly any hesitation? She looked down at the now-sleeping little boy in her arms. Is that why I did the one thing every horror film has ever tried to teach us? Don’t take an alien or a monster home with you. No matter how cute or harmless it looks, it ends in a shitshow. Fuck. But the kid would have died out there. He didn’t choose to be…abandoned in the woods. If I handed him in to the cops or to a doctor, some secret agency would get their hands on him. God knows what they would do to him.

Inside her mind, Catherine saw herself taking the safety off her pistol and standing between this innocent little (monster) baby and everyone else. “I’ve known you for all of five minutes, and I’m apparently keeping you. Shit. Shiiiiiiiit. Shit. Okay.” Catherine turned to look down at her dog, who was on his back and wiggling his belly for affection. “Oh, and this is all your fault. I told you to go pee, not fetch me a baby.” Catherine tried to hold the scowl, then huffed and carefully gave him a belly scratch without jostling the baby. “Okay. So, I’m surrendering here. I won’t put you back in the woods to be picked off by a wolf or a coyote. I won’t hand you in to the authorities, as they’d put you in a cage if you’re lucky and dissect you if you’re not. So that only leaves option number three.” 

Catherine felt a smile spread across her face. “You’re going to have to stay with me.” He was asleep but one of his podgy little hands reached up from the bundle of her coat, subconsciously reaching for comfort. Catherine sniggered as she shifted the baby to lie in her left arm and used her right hand to press the pad of her finger to one of those seeking poddy hands. She smiled as her finger was grasped and the baby purred happily up at her in his sleep. Oh yes, he purred. “Lord knows I barely get satellite out here. I…am in the middle of nowhere. Wait. I am in the middle of nowhere.” Catherine paused and chuckled. “Shit, kid, if you were going to be found by anyone out here, you got found by the one person the mailman won’t even come out to visit for fear of getting lost in the forest. I can hide you. I really can.”

She awkwardly got up onto her knees and then her feet to walk over to the kitchen. “I could order baby stuff to my PO box, collect it and drive it back here…I’ll have to hide you, kid, so no one sees you.” She poured a glass of milk, grabbed a packaged syringe left over from the last time she had to give Tigger worming medication, and carried them and the baby over to sit on her sofa. Tigger jumped up onto ‘his cushion’, and curled up to go to sleep. Catherine settled with the baby in her left arm, filled a syringe, and awkwardly teased the end past the baby’s lips. One thing she knew well, being the the 13th youngest sibling, was about caring for babies. Even asleep, babies had a suckling and swallowing reflex. “I have no idea when you last ate or drank anything. You look old enough for cow’s milk.” She only released a couple of drops at first, but then the baby opened his eyes and clasped the syringe like it was a bottle. It even sucked with enough force to make the plunger shoot forward. “Wow…you just inhaled that kid. Right. I’ll get you some more.” She gently wrestled the syringe back, ignoring the way the baby cried, and filled it again. After the third syringe was drained, the baby seemed to calm down, like he knew the milk was going to keep coming. Once the glass was empty, the baby cried, and Catherine gawked. “More? Seriously? You better not throw up.”

That night was a learning curve for Catherine. She found that the baby drank far more milk than the internet said he should, and he belched like a champion for it. Sometimes throwing up milk as well, but a little spit-up was expected. She remembered with a face palm that she was meant to burp him and made sure to actively pat his back to help get the air up. She had far less vomit showers after that point. Catherine didn’t have a crib, but she did have a big plastic laundry basket. Catherine wrapped the little boy in a couple of her T-shirts, planning to buy proper baby blankets tomorrow, and settled him in the laundry basket. He slept silently. Catherine didn’t like that. She found herself staring at the boy with fearful thoughts in her head. Like, is he still breathing? Will he wake up when he’s hungry? She has no nappies, so when he wets himself, what would she do?

By the time she fell asleep, Catherine was exhausted. So tired, she didn’t feel the bed shift as the baby crawled under the covers and snuggled next to her to get skin-to-skin contact.