Cramps

Lois curled around her bloated belly. Her stomach felt like it was bursting from the inside, like the worst gas attack she had ever had in her life. The reporter could feel her heart pound in her chest, last lingering remnants of panic from the dream...and that wasn't all she could feel.

Tentatively, Lois probed her sore tummy. It was noticeably more distended than when she had gone to sleep, and her fingers felt something hard beneath the skin...it wasn't like fat or a food belly at all.

Crawling off the bed, Lois put a kettle of water on to boil on the stove and began digging through the box with her winter clothes in the closet.

"Not pregnant," she muttered to herself, tossing mittens and scarves. "Just a dream. Just bloated. Too much food on an empty stomach gives you bad dreams, indigestion. Ebenezer Scrooge and ghost of pregnancies past and all that." With a grunt of triumph, Lois found what she was looking for: a hot water bottle.

Lois stared at the gravid idol as the kettle ticked, waiting for it to whistle. The more she looked at the thing, the less she liked it. The statue seemed to squat on her bed; belly and breasts totally out of proportion to the stub of a head, the crude, puffy vulva. She wondered who would make such a thing, and why.

The kettle whistled. Lois filled the rubber bag over the sink and then sat down at the chair in front of the kitchen table, wresting the warm device on her stomach. Relief was not immediate—but as Lois felt the heat radiate down through her skin to sore muscles and flesh, her cramping died down over a long couple of minutes.

She closed her eyes and laid her head back...but the dream flashed behind the dark of her lies, and Lois sighed. Boredom was sneaking in, fingers itching to get on social media, visit a website, anything...but Lois knew she should be working.

Through the doorway to her bedroom, the reporter could spy the fertility idol. Staring back at her with sightless eyes, a grotesque parody of her current bloated condition...and something stirred in Lois' brain.

"Who did make you? Why?" The reporter muttered. She opened her laptop, working with one hand so that she could hold the hot water bottle in place. Privately, she also considered searching for information about her condition—maybe a better solution to these cramps. "One way or another...let's find out." the reporter said as she opened her web browser.