The Birth

I wrote the following story in 2018–2019 as part of a creative writing course taught by Stratos Myrogiannis. No artificial intelligence was used in its writing.

Chapter 1

“I was giving birth to myself for at least twelve hours”.

Spy is sitting on a metallic silver chair next to the window audiotaping her life story with an old iPhone while watching the city drowning. Two days ago a large cesspool overflowed because of lack of maintenance and sewage filled the streets. An epidemic outbreak of flesh-eating bacteria occurred so children and the elderly have been in quarantine until further notice. Spy is in no danger, she is neither old nor a child. She is a young woman with brown hair and sweet blue eyes who enjoys watching pedestrians crossing miasmic streams of sewage in order to get across the road. And that’s strange because she is not a vengeful person. On the contrary she is quite a pacifist. But she feels well around actual dirt. It soothes her. Sewage is the greatest form of dirt; a pulp of by-products that’s been rejected from human bodies and has been hidden underground.

She opens the window. The city stinks. It has the smell of decomposed squirrels that died while eating decomposed peaches. Well, not quite. Sort of, but at the same time it has a more vague odour. It’s something abstract. A post-industrial smell, reflecting today’s tragedies. It is the proof of a greatly divided society. Take a random person and try explaining to him the concept of class division in Marxist terms. Then lead him to Spy’s open window and suggest him to take a deep breath. Social inequality is far more understandable when you smell it.

Spy always feels strange when she opens the window. Whenever she sees a homeless or a junkie or a boy prostitute and his client covered up in a sheet in the street corner, she starts scratching her head. It’s a funny sight: a cute lady with rosy cheeks and sea-blue eyes opens the window, gazes at the streets for a few minutes and suddenly passes her slim fingers through her hair and scratches her scalp. She digs and digs, deeper and deeper. The first layer of skin is peeled off but Spy isn’t satisfied yet. The fingers keep on scratching, until the first drops of blood are spilled onto the rug. When Spy realises that her head is seriously bleeding, she decides that’s enough. She feels fulfilled, as if she has just participated in a Roman feast.

The phone rings. Spy closes the window, wraps up a towel around her bleeding head and picks it up.

“Yes? Hello Dr. Dorin, how are you? I am fine thank you. Amoeba? She’s lying down. Ι wasn’t feeling very well this morning so she lied down. I am not sure. I think it might be some kind of microbes from the sewage flood. Yes, I know having a rest is good for me. How are your parents? Did you fix the blinds in their living room? It’s not safe for two old people to live alone in a sunless apartment. Will you see Shun today? Remember to tell her to watch the last episode of BBC’s Earth Planet. Sir David Attenborough will talk about pandas. Yes. I don’t know. Are you worried about the flood? Ok. I will. Bye”.

Dr Dorin is the most important person in Spy and Amoeba’s life. A true gentleman. His red soft fur gives Spy a sense of purpose. His Transylvanian accent is consoling. He is a gynecologist who studied at the Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Bucharest. 

Dr Dorin is a squirrel, but unlike other animals, he managed to overcome the species division barriers and became a scientist. That’s why Spy loves him so much. Because he is a true Enlightenment figure. His fate is not determined by the fact that he is an animal, hence a secondary class citizen, but by his thought and free will. 

Most rodents end up working as cleaners in hostels or public hospitals. The lucky ones, who are handsome and have long, fluffy tales, might even work as models in telemarketing shows that sell smart bathrobes and smart knickers. It is remarkable to see beautiful squirrel-toddlers playing around oak trees and just by watching them to be able to predict their future.

– “You see the short one with the white spots? He will work as a supermarket cashier in Englewood or West Pullman. The one next to him is meant to pursue a career in house-painting or truck-driving” –

Poor old squirrels.
 
But Dr Dorin is nothing like that. He is a genuine outsider, one of the most charismatic creatures Spy has ever met. He was the one who told her to accept her pregnancy when she found out about it. He was the one that guided Amoeba through breastfeeding. Without him both mother and baby would have suffered. When Amoeba was born Spy’s body was in pain. It was Dr Dorin’s idea to try to tempt the baby into breastfeeding by putting sugar crystals on Spy’s nipples. Amoeba’s baffled half-closed eyes started moving slowly. Her pupils dilated. With Dr Dorin there to encourage her, she pinched the sugar flakes, licked them, and continued pinching them until the flakes were mixed with milk drops. This was the first time Spy tasted herself through Amoeba’s mouth. 

Chapter 2

Amoeba is a great baby. She is really quiet and -if needed- really funny. Whenever she feels a heavy atmosphere or understands that silence is not soothing but more of a burden, she immediately tries to change the negative mood. When Spy stares at the melancholic city from the window of the living-room like magnetised, Amoeba always finds a way to get her attention: she shouts, screams, cries, laughs, gets the hiccups, tries to stand on her feet, pantomimes, crawls inside the crib, coughs, sneezes, blushes. She even stops breathing until both her and her mother almost suffocate. Then the smart baby knows that Spy will stop paying attention to the ugliness of reality and she will run into the room without further delay to stop the nonsense and save them both from dying.
 
During the sewage outbreak Spy was sitting at her usual seat by the window. She was really absorbed by a drug-addicted bird outside the Commerzbank shooting heroin. It was a fairly big sparrow, almost the size of a robin, with a brown crest, a black stripe in his face that made him look like Zoro and a pale yellow deplumed belly full of piercings. His name was Jock. His pronunciation was Scottish. His addiction was severe. He never slept. He was awake 24 hours a day and spent most of his time in the side door of the bank looking at the customers’ feet. Thousands of feet, walking rashly in and out of the financial institution. In and out. In and out. Jock was looking at them mesmerized, fully aware of his addiction, incapable of reducing his pain, tired and lonely. Despite his sickness though, he had the odd belief that as long as the feet kept on moving, his heart would continue ticking. The most painful moments for Jock were during week nights when nobody approached the bank, not even to use the ATM. At that time, he stood still and cold, like a piece of marble. 

Spy wasn’t fond of junkies, but she felt sympathy for Jock, with his clumsy walking and his dirty plumage, all covered up with a bunch of weird, punkish safety pins. She liked the way Jock was looking at the customers’ feet, like they were some kind of moving gods that come and go, in and out of his life. She liked the idea that a junkie sparrow was able to concentrate on something so ephemeral like the ebbing and flowing of people.

Amoeba started crying softly inside her room. She knew that her mother was watching at Jock and wanted to distract her. Spy heard her. She walked away from the window, entered the bedroom and unzipped her blouse. It was breastfeeding time, the best time of the day. Both mother and baby were feeling satisfied during breastfeeding. Amoeba was looking at her mother’s breasts with the same craving Jock looks at heroin. Whenever she touched her nipples with her mouth, she felt growing bigger. It was as if the milk was going directly to her fingers and toes and helped lengthen her body.

– “I was giving birth to myself for at least twelve hours” –

Spy remembered the first phrase of the story she had started audiotaping. Suddenly she wasn’t in the mood to feed.

“Come on baby alien, breastfeeding is over”, she muttered, while putting back on her bra. It was one of dozens moodswings she experienced during an ordinary day.

She placed Amoeba on the changing table, changed her diaper, put some talc on her chubby legs and dressed her up with a romper with sketches of legendary gangsters: Pablo Escobar, Griselda Blanco, John Dillinger, Frank Costello, Lucky Luciano were scattered all over Amoeba’s little romper.

 “There. Perfect. Now my love, it’s time for a stroll. You are about to meet a very special relative. Are you ready, Amoeba?”, asked Spy.

Amoeba was ready. For a baby at her age, three and a half months old, she was unexpectedly ready to meet anyone and everyone.

 “Let’s go”, the baby thought while, at the same time, the mother pronounced the actual words.

Spy wrapped Amoeba around her body with a big brown cloth, wore a trench coat and a pair of rain boots, opened the door and found herself splashing in the dirty sewage waters. The city was a repulsive mixture of animals and people trying to survive with the least possible dignity. A young guy with a sparse mustache, carrying a briefcase, was walking into the one and only Bauhaus building, a rare example of modernist architecture in a city filled with so soppy neo-classical and neo-romantic structures, that almost made you puke. The beautiful steel-and-glass construction housed the Institution for the Illiterate Mammals, a money laundering entity that controlled almost every business in the city, from retail shops to nursery schools.

Spy passed by the entrance of the building and looked at the hurried young man as he was going in. His mustache was a piece of art. So perfectly combed that you could discern every single strand of hair. The doorman, a lanky old deer with dirty antlers that smelled like Old Spice cologne, opened the door for him while taking a deep bow.

It was such a disappointment to see a beautiful wild animal curtsying in front of a 23-year-old-schmuck that Spy, Amoeba and Jock who was standing at his usual spot outside the bank monitoring the situation, simultaneously spat.

Imagine the scene: a junky-sparrow with a plumage filled with punkish pins, a depressed mother with rosy cheeks and a baby with chubby legs, simultaneously spitting on the ground to express their loathing against the gesture of a beautiful deer that is obliged to bow down before a corrupted young man.

In case you are wondering, yes, Jock could have been a brilliant activist or even a social scientist, if, instead of being a bird, he was a human (in fact, on the rare occasions he has been functional, he could thoroughly explain to you why society’s structure was based on the diversion of species). Yes, Spy could have been a really happy and fun person, if only she was not depressed since she was an embryo. And, yes, Amoeba could have been a carefree baby whose only concern is to eat, fart and sleep if only she was not her mother’s clone.   

However, facts are facts. And time passes by quickly. Spy knows that she has to hurry or else she’s going to miss the bus. She holds Amoeba tight, takes a deep breath and runs. The bus stop is only 500 yards away. The soft grey afternoon light makes everything look a little worse than they really are. Spy would normally notice that, but for the time being she doesn’t care. She runs like a coyote to catch the bus. She runs and runs and feels the blood pumping in her veins. Amoeba enjoys her mother’s energy and feels herself like a baby coyote overpassing the obstacles of life to reach the target; which, in this case, is the old bus-stop, on the corner of Manor Ave and Lewisham Way. 

Spy arrived on time, feeling like a true champion.

Kudos, mama, thought Amoeba and looked at her mother’s eyes with gratitude.

Chapter 3 

The bus arrived on time. It was an old vehicle with big windows and huge tires, painted in yellow and terracotta colours. Both the front and back doors opened for the passengers to get on and off. Spy climbed the steps while carrying Amoeba in her arms and paid for two tickets, one for a human adult and one for a human baby, six pounds in total.

If Spy and Amoeba were animals, let’s say turtles, they would have paid 10 pounds in total. Prices for members of the animal kingdom were much higher, I’m afraid. Something that has to do with an old law that no one has ever changed. Drivers Union had been complaining about this disgrace for quite some time now.

The actual turtles that were sitting on the third row of the bus anticipated the money transaction between Spy and the driver, and looked Spy and Amoeba with bitterness.

Spy’s heart started ticking anxiously. Amoeba felt her pulse speeding up, at the same time. Neither of them liked the idea that they were monitored by a bunch of heart-broken jealous turtles.

Spy moved towards the back of the bus. She found a seat by the window, next to a fifteen year old drag horse dressed as a unicorn. The animal was really handsome. She had painted her brown body in white and had put a fake helically horn in the middle of her forehead sprinkled with sugar. Amoeba didn’t stop licking the horn until, three quarters of an hour later, she and Spy got off the bus.

Mother and daughter found themselves in a totally different place than the one they were coming from. This district -at the northern parts of the city, away from the dodgy center- was nicer, cleaner, with more compassion and less social inequality. Here the smell had nothing to do with decomposed squirrels eating decomposed peaches. It was all about young healthy squirrels eating fresh nuts from the trees.

The sun was shining. The clouds were whiter than white. Outside the legendary Alberta’s bakery you could see a long queue formed by all sorts of creatures waiting to buy the famous cupcakes with the silky chocolate cream cheese topping.

For Amoeba’s baby eyes, this neighborhood was a paradise.

For Spy’s adult eyes, this neighborhood was a phony paradise with good cupcakes.

“This is no God’s quarter, baby. It is the devil’s ghetto”, said Spy while crossing the street.  

So, where was that devil?, you might ask.

Half a mile away from the bus stop, at the corner of Richmond and Queen’s roads, in the dark blue block of flats, at the third apartment on the left. There, the devil in person was tucked in a fluffy bergere chair reading a magazine.

The devil was actually Spy’s mother, a person with a rare sense of indifference about anything but her thoughts. Her name was Anna. She was a 65 year old lady with gray hair and milky eyes. At an early age, she started suffering from kyphosis, a problem she would never overcome.

The day Spy decided to pay her respects to her mother along with her clone daughter, Anna was wearing a long-sleeved pink velvet robe, pink velvet slippers and a pink velvet bonnet. She was a nightmare dressed in pink velvet. 

Spy rang the bell and Anna got off her chair.

Her pacing was so slow that by the time she reached the door, she almost forgot why she got up.

Spy’s second ring reminded her mother to open the door.

So it happened. Anna opened the door. 

 – “Mother, hello”, said the daughter.

– “Oh, it’s you. Hello, Spy. How are you? And who might that be?”, asked Anna while looking at her grand-daughter.

– “Well, this is the famous Amoeba, my beautiful chubby baby”.

 – “Oh. Ok. She’s cute. And from what I can see, she’s wearing a rather unusual romper. It’s full of criminals”.

 – “She’s fond of them. She’s a gangsta baby”.

– “I see”.

– “What’s up? What were you doing?”.

– “Nothing in particular. I’m just gathering my thoughts from here and there”.

 Spy entered the house, took out her rain boots and trench coat and sat on the couch.

 – “Would you like something to drink, Spy?”, her mother asked.

 – “Yes please, I’d like a cup of coffee”.

Pink Anna dragged her feathery slippers to the kitchen to prepare a quick brunch with coffee, biscuits, wild berries and soft pepper cheese. Despite her bad character, she was an excellent host. She could prepare the most sophisticated meal in the blink of an eye. 

Spy switched on the TV. Almost every program was garbage. Beauty pageants, celebrity reality shows, love making reality shows, heartbreaking reality shows, a whole bunch of crap reality shows suitable for cretins.

Only the state television aired a somewhat decent program, which included documentaries, knowledge competitions, old Hollywood movies and classic Disney animation. It was a pity that funny creatures like Goofy, Clarabelelle, Horatius and all the other guys were no longer playing in Disney movies.

– “Mom?”.

 – “Yes, Spy?”.

 – “Didn’t you tell me that you saw Bambi, the Disney deer, on the train a few years ago?”

– “Yes”, Anna shouted from the kitchen and a few moments later she entered the living room holding a vast tray with aromatic filter coffee and all the other goodies I mentioned before.

It’s a strange feeling when a person you feel disgusted by treats you well.

Anna gently placed the tray on the table and sat next to Spy who was sitting next to Amoeba. It was funny watching the three of them sitting together. Not only did they not resemble each other as members of the same family as they were, but they barely seemed to be of the same culture. Anna was a French-type figure, an intellectual who spent hours reflecting on things, but, at the same time, she loved life and all its juicy fruits. She was a hybrid, something between Michel Foucault and Marquis de Sade, materialistic, hedonistic, bitter, cryptic and envious of people’s joy. An eccentric old vamp obsessed with pink velvet.

Spy had more of a Scandinavian vibe. She was quiet and shy, beautiful but didn’t have a clue about it (meaning that she looked like a rose but felt like a sea onion). As for her character, it was quite a challenge. If Anna was cryptic, Spy was an enigma. Her thoughts were wrapped up in foil, hidden in a wooden box and stowed in a remote mountain shelter somewhere in the Alps. Only if you could prove to her that you preferred squirrels from the dodgy center rather than the suburbian ones, that you empathised with punky junkies and that you hated pink velvet, she was willing to open up that box for you.

And there also was Amoeba. What a charming little person. With flabby legs, squishy tommy, soft hair, aromatic skin. Her heart was pure yet mature, like a Japanese Kami who lived peacefully throughout the eternity. Despite her young age, Amoeba carried the wisdom of an old soul. She accepted anything in life as it was.

So there you go. You have an aggressive grandmother, a depressed beautiful mother and her wise human clone.

Chapter 4

“Mother, have you seen Dr Dorin lately?”

“This old fool? No, I haven’t seen him for a while. I am not really fond of him”.
Spy knew that, so she changed the subject.

“What time is it?”, she asked her mother.
Anna looked at her fancy antique watch.

“Two o’ clock”.

“Oh. I have to feed Amoeba. Do you mind?”. Anna’s face suddenly changed. Small lines of resentment cracked her red tinted cheeks.

“Of course I mind, what did you expect, Spy?”, said Anna in a tone that a genuine Anglican Puritan of the 17th century would use. “Do you think it’s decent to undress in front of your mother and let a baby suck on your breasts?”.

“Well, I think the least decent thing that has happened to me is that I have been raised by you. Anything else seems minor”, Spy answered and instantly started scratching her head. The beloved habit was back. Spy kept scratching and scratching her skull. Pieces of skin started popping out of her beautiful brown coiffure. Suddenly she looked like nature’s failure. Her attractive face was nothing more than a symptom of anger. Anna noticed Spy’s transformation and didn’t like it. One thing she couldn’t stand was the uncontrollable feelings. So, she softened her position on the breastfeeding issue.

“My god Spy, don’t get so nervous. You can feed the baby, if you have to. Just cover your body with a cloth or something”.

So it happened.

Don’t be surprised, incidents like the following happened almost every time Anna and Spy got together. Spy increased the volume of the television. It was news time. Thank God, no more beauty pageants.

“What’s that?”.

“What, Spy?”, said Anna absent-mindedly. She was on the brink of losing herself in her thoughts on Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation, a book that she thought was a theoretical representation of her family’s situation.

“That on TV”, said Spy. Anna stared at the television for a second.

“Oh, it’s the nursery home old cartoons live in”, she finally said.

“Which old cartoons?”, asked Spy curiously.

“You know. The ones in the Disney movies you used to watch when you were young”. Spy was shocked. So shocked, in fact, that Amoeba sucked on a bit of electricity along with the breast milk.

“Are you telling me that Mickey Mouse lives there?”. Anna smiled.

“No, not the ones that played leading roles. The supporting actors. I think Horatius Horsecollar has lived there for a few years now, I am not sure about Clarabelle, though. Gus Gus and Jaq Jaq from Cinderella. Shere Khan. Dale. Jiminy Cricket. Some oysters from Alice in Wonderland. And Goofy”.

“Goofy? The Goofy?”, asked Spy while surprised.

“Yes, the Goofy. The one and only”, answered Anna, who knew how much Spy loved Disney cartoons during her childhood. At one point, I think when Spy was around nine, she even thought that Disney was her father and that all of his cartoon creations were her siblings and cousins.

“And why do they live there?”, Spy asked her mother.

“Why do people live in nursing homes, Spy? Either because they don’t have the means to support their own house or because they don’t want to stay all day alone. Cartoons don’t differ in that matter from human beings”, answered Anna.

“Have you ever been there, mom?”.

“Yes”, answered Anna feeling as if her pink velvetness was slowly fading from her robe, slippers and bonnet. It was the second time Spy was calling her mοm, thus admitting that they had a mother-daughter relationship and not an AnnaVsSpy relationship nor a FrenchVsSwedish or a Pink VelvetVsRose-Disguised-as-Sea-Onion relationship.

“How come?”, asked Spy while dragging Anna out of her self-soothing thoughts. Anna realised that if she wanted to hear the word “mom“ again this evening or in general, she’d better concentrate on the conversation. She cleared her voice and answered with that soft tone of hers.

“Every once in a while they used to present a musical or a theatrical performance. You know, for old times sake. I think back in the day Dr Dorin was friends with Louie, Donald’s nephew. Louie told Dorin that the amateur theatrical group of the shelter was presenting Don Quixote”.

“Hahahaha”. Spy laughed her heart out.

“I laughed too when I heard it”, said Anna while watching Amoeba finishing her lunch. Amoeba noticed that her grandmother was staring at her and gently removed her lips from Spy’s breast.

“Who played Don Quixote?”, Spy finally asked after she stopped laughing.

“Guess”, answered Anna.

“Mmm. Not Goofy…”.

“No. Although Goofy is an excellent dramatic actor”.

“Who, then?”

“It was Horatius Horsecollar, also a great dramatic performer. Sancho Panza was performed by Shere Khan and Dulcinea by Ariel, the little mermaid”. Spy’s pupils were dilated. She looked like a frog ready to ribbit.

“Wow, what a great cast! I would really like to have been able to see this play”.

“You can go to the next one if you want. During the holiday season, I think they will present “A Christmas Carol”, Anna said, while secretly hoping they could go together. Like mother and daughter, that is like two separate people with two sets of feet, two noses, two mouths. Funny thing, she thought. The identity problems in a situation so strange as Spy’s and hers appear when they are apart. When they are together, Spy is Spy and Anna is Anna. And the little tit-sucker is the little tit-sucker.

“No way!”, shouted Spy, while her big blue eyes were shining.

“Way, indeed, Spy”, said Anna. “If I knew it would be so easy to make you smile, I would have mentioned it earlier”. Spy flinched for a moment, but Amoeba gave her a great big bite on the boob and she immediately found her self-control.

“Would you like to know who will play Ebenezer Scrooge?”, asked Anna.

“No. I wanna find out while watching the play. Let’s go mother. The three of us. You, me and Amoeba”.

“Ok. Sounds fun”, replied Anna and for the first time after a long time she felt like a human.

Chapter 5
On the other side of town, Jock stood still at his usual spot outside the bank, watching the customers shoon. He paid meticulous attention to a pair of brown Oxfords with refined shoelaces. It is his favorite pair of shoes, soft, elegant, with an exquisite leather scent.

How a drag-addicted sparrow, who loves punk music and had pierced his whole plumage with safety pins, appreciates the smell and feel of a classy pair of shoes is beyond my understanding. The fact is, though, that Jock loved the Oxfords almost as much as Johnny Ramone’s guitar.

When Spy got out of the train station on her way home from her majesty Pink Anna’s palace, she noticed the happy look on Jock’s face. Τhen she looked at the man who was standing in front of him wearing the shoes. It was the new deputy director of the bank. Jock would see him every day. He would be able to admire his brown, black and grey Oxfords, to smell the leather or even play with the shoelaces every single day. “Wow, Jock”, thought Spy and felt an unusual sense of happiness that wasn’t at all her thing.

A quarter of an hour later, after stepping on piles of dead pigeons who had just died from unknown reasons and were lying on the side of the road until further notice from the health department, Spy found her way home. The burden of not arguing with Anna for once was too big for her to bear. She layed on the couch and fell asleep instantly.

She dreamt that she went to the theatre with her mother and daughter. The three of them wore the same dress and their heads were struggling to come out of the neck warmer so they could breathe. Anna’s head was a half-bitten apple, Spy’s head was a yellow piece of cheese with holes in it and Amoeba’s head was a deserted wasp nest. This awful creature, with the three uncanny heads fighting with each other all the time, was wearing a tight black dress like the ones widows wear. The creature managed to reach the cash desk and asked for one ticket. After the clerk argued that she had three heads so she had to pay for three tickets, Spannamoeba got offended and turned around to leave. Suddenly the lanky old deer who smelled like Old Spice cologne appeared out of nowhere and started kissing Amoeba, shoving his head inside her wasp nest. When realising what was happening, Anna and Spy started screaming and calling the deer a pedophile but the deer pushed his antlers into their mouths and continued kissing the baby.

Spy woke up covered in sweat.

THE END







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This text is a work of fiction, satire, and fan fiction. The Disney characters mentioned are the intellectual property of The Walt Disney Company. Their alternative portrayal is strictly for entertainment and humorous purposes. This is a non-commercial website with no official affiliation or connection to the company.