The Last Seat.

 

Frank Mercer had never hidden his contempt for women.

He believed they belonged in kitchens, behind vacuum cleaners, or waiting obediently in bedrooms. Whenever a woman challenged him, he laughed and told her equality had made her ungrateful. Of all women, however, he reserved his greatest cruelty for those who were pregnant.

“They chose it,” he often said. “Why should the rest of us suffer?”

One bitter November evening, Frank boarded the T-train after work. The carriage was crowded, but he managed to claim the final empty seat. At the next station, a heavily pregnant young woman stepped aboard.

She stood beside him, one hand gripping the rail and the other resting protectively upon her swollen belly. Her face was pale with exhaustion.

Frank noticed her looking at his seat.

“You expect me to stand because you’re pregnant?” he sneered loudly. “You wanted equal rights. Now you’ve got them.”

Several passengers turned away in embarrassment.

The young woman did not.

She stared directly at Frank. Something ancient and merciless seemed to awaken behind her dark eyes.

“You believe pregnancy deserves no kindness?” she asked softly.

“That’s right.”

“And you think the pain belongs only to those foolish enough to choose it?”

Frank smirked. “Now you understand.”

The lights inside the carriage flickered.

For a moment, the windows reflected not the passengers but a row of pale women dressed in hospital gowns. Each of them stared at Frank.

Then the lights steadied, and the reflections vanished.

The pregnant woman leaned closer.

“Before this ends,” she whispered, “you will beg for the kindness you refused to give.”

The train stopped. The doors opened, although they had not reached a station. Beyond them lay only darkness.

The woman stepped out and disappeared.

Frank dismissed the encounter as the ravings of a lunatic. By the time he reached home, he had almost forgotten her.

That night, he fell asleep in front of the television.

He awoke screaming.

Blinding white lights shone above him. The sharp odour of disinfectant filled his nostrils, and a machine beeped steadily beside his bed.

Frank tried to sit up, but an enormous weight dragged at his abdomen.

He looked down.

His Body was no longer his own.

He was wearing a hospital gown. Long brown hair clung damply to his face, and beneath the thin fabric rose the unmistakable shape of a full-term pregnancy.

“No,” he whispered.

A contraction seized him.

Pain crushed his Body from within. Frank screamed until his throat burned. Nurses hurried into the room, but none responded when he demanded an explanation.

They called him Emily.

They told him to breathe.

They assured him that everything he was experiencing was perfectly natural.

Hours later, after enduring an agony he had once mocked, Frank heard the cry of a newborn child. Before he could see the baby’s face, darkness swallowed the room.

He awoke in his own bed.

For several trembling minutes, he convinced himself that it had been a nightmare. Then he noticed the hospital identification band around his wrist.

EMILY CARTER, it read.

The following night, Frank refused to sleep. He drank coffee, paced through the house and kept every light burning.

At precisely midnight, something moved beneath his stomach.

His abdomen expanded beneath his shirt.

The walls dissolved around him.

Once again, he awoke in a hospital—but in another woman’s Body.

This time, the nurses called him Maria.

The next night, he was Hannah.

Then Aisha.

Then Catherine.

Every morning, Frank returned home with another hospital band fastened around his wrist. Each night, he became a different woman facing the same terrifying ordeal.

Some labours lasted hours. Others seemed to continue for days. Sometimes he was surrounded by caring relatives whose faces he did not recognise. Sometimes he was utterly alone.

Yet the babies were always taken away before he could hold them.

Weeks passed.

Frank stopped going to work. He tore the bedroom apart, afraid that sleep might find him hiding beneath the furniture. He swallowed handfuls of caffeine tablets and stood beneath freezing showers.

Nothing helped.

Whenever midnight came, the hospital claimed him.

Soon the curse followed him into daylight. He heard babies crying from empty rooms. Sometimes, his reflection showed a frightened pregnant woman staring back at him. On crowded trains, every passenger appeared to have the witch’s dark, merciless eyes.

At last, Frank returned to the station where he had met her.

For seven nights, he waited.

On the eighth, she appeared at the far end of the platform. She was no longer pregnant. She wore a black coat and carried a sleeping infant in her arms.

Frank fell to his knees.

“Please,” he sobbed. “Make it stop.”

The woman regarded him coldly.

“Why?”

“Because I can’t bear it anymore.”

“That is not an apology.”

“I’m sorry!”

“You are sorry for your suffering,” she replied. “You have not yet learned to care about theirs.”

The station lights went out.

When they returned, the witch was gone.

That night, Frank awoke in another hospital room. This time, however, no nurses came when he called. The corridor beyond his door was dark, and the other beds held the women whose bodies he had inhabited.

Emily. Maria. Hannah. Aisha. Catherine.

Hundreds more stretched into the darkness.

All were silent.

All were staring at him.

The pregnant woman from the train stood at the foot of his bed.

“How many times must you suffer before another person’s pain matters as much as your own?” she asked.

Frank looked at the women surrounding him. For the first time, he did not think about escape. He thought about the fear each woman must have felt, the strength it had taken to endure and the cruelty of being dismissed when compassion would have cost so little.

Tears rolled down his unfamiliar face.

“I don’t know,” he whispered. “But I understand why I should have given up my seat.”

The witch smiled.

It was not a comforting smile.

“Then perhaps tomorrow,” she said, “you will learn the meaning of kindness.”

The contraction began.

The women around him opened their mouths, and a single terrible scream shook the hospital.

Frank awoke the following morning on the T-train.

He was sitting in the same seat.

The same pregnant woman stood beside him.

No time appeared to have passed.

Frank leapt to his feet and offered her the seat with trembling hands.

She sat down without speaking.

“Is it over?” he whispered.

The woman looked up at him.

From somewhere deep within the train came the faint cry of a newborn baby.

“That,” she said, resting one hand upon her belly, “depends on what you do when no witch is watching.”

The train entered a tunnel.

The lights flickered.

For one dreadful second, Frank felt something move inside his stomach.

Then the darkness swallowed him once more.