Winter seemed reluctant to release its hold, Melody thought as she pressed herself against a stone wall on a busy street. On a cold and windy day at the end of April, Melody held her breath as the pain unfurled from her cunt up over her abdomen. She felt the monster pressing himself against her perineum, and in that moment she knew fate could repeat itself. She felt herself unzipping.

Melody braced herself against the wall to ready herself for the next wave. She moaned with resignation but she did not call for help. The waves had been building since long before her perpetrator had buried himself inside her, thrusting all the plans of the universe deep within her. Nine months after the fact Melody still had scars from the recursive tracks the dirty bricks had left on her back.

Nine long months had passed like eons for Melody, who carried this growing seed deep within her. The first month she stared in disbelief into her clean panties. The second she bought a pack of men’s t-shirts to cloak her growing belly against the scorching late summer heat. By the third she began stealing food in the hopes of curbing her superhuman hunger. Then the months tumbled by against her will. Changes came and she accommodated. Melody kept her head and no one ever was the wiser.

Melody sucked in her breath as the jagged teeth of the zipper continued their slow unwrenching. Passersby eyed her curiously but no one interfered. Finally the zipper fell apart and all that remained was the cold, dark nut of fear about to be loosed onto the pavement. Melody hoped for the best as the monster came barreling out of her vagina and hit the ground with a shriek.

The baby left her wide open. Melody couldn’t stop the torrent of humanity funneling into her gaping belly like water spinning down a drain. The elderly black lady zipped by along with a half-dozen yellow taxis, a food truck, and a horse-drawn carriage. It was a busy time of day. Melody was powerless over it.

Without thinking, she bent down and lifted her baby’s small bloody body, his skin thin as parchment, and curled him deep within her black wool coat. She looked into his small face and the scrunched lines revealed a secret message. Melody didn’t want to admit to anyone how much she hated him, so she decided to love him instead. That quickly, her reality flipped inside out.

Melody wiped her tears and looked up at the sky. Swirls of blue were beginning to show among the clouds, the same shade as her baby boy’s eyes. Love wins, she thought as a kind-faced older man stopped in front of her. He looked into her tear-stained face and down into the bundle in her arms and shock radiated from his eyes.

“Miss? May I help?”

How was the gentleman to know those were the wrong words? Surely he didn’t know that a handful of words whispered in just a certain tone could throw her back against a dirty brick wall nine months in the past. Surely he only meant well. But Melody couldn’t make sense of it. Fight or flight took over, and this time Melody chose flight. She ran clutching her baby boy close, reluctant to release her hold on him. This time would be different, Melody resolved. She dashed away, thrilled by the cold April wind and the new life in her arms.

He left the music playing in a loop around the clock. Slick, sultry, honey-drenched, the tune mesmerized him every time, submerging him in his story. When the words came to him like this, Frank Portishead lengthened his name to Franklin and donned his fake moustache and silver-rimmed monocle. He found getting into character helped.

Mornings he’d spend clacking away on the keys in time with the music, writing scene after scene. Frank regulated his composure while the clear-eyed detective did the math in a leather-bound wingback, the heavy-eyed girls danced in evening gowns and jewels, the tuxedoed waiters positively dripped with champagne, and the earnest secretaries in underbust corsets solved crimes.

Lunchtime, he’d don his overcoat and step out, securing his creations with a key that he kept chained at his waist. Today Franklin paused on the front walk to admire two young hares, rump to rump like dueling pistols, crouched by the gate. A thousand flowers bloomed in the background. Franklin captured it all through his imaginary view-finder and felt like a man as he strode toward the unsuspecting bunnies, frightening them off with a thump. He continued on through the gate and took a leisurely bite in a café overlooking his favorite bridge, crumbling above a lazy stream.

He was quite a character, Franklin Portishead was.

Franklin would follow up his lunch with a snifter of brandy and a waltz by the stream. The world was big. He’d snap a few mental pictures and return to his abode to dice out the finer points of his morning’s work.

Franklin Portishead was a formidable editor.

By evening, as Franklin swayed to the music and oiled his hair, meticulously knotted his cravat, and slipped on his evening jacket, he felt the beginning of forever opening in his mind. He’d venture out to the evening’s soirée, and wander until a lucky lady took note of his dramatis personae. It never took long and Franklin Portishead never left a soirée alone.

Nights always ended the same way: With the lovely lady du jour lying spread-eagled on his poster bed, tied with his cravat, belt, a leftover stretch of jute, and his key-chain. Franklin would loom over her with a glistening bottle of vodka in his right hand and his jaunty walking stick in his left.

Frank’s abandoned typewriter would gather dust in a corner while Franklin attended to his fait accompli.

Frank always felt guilty in the mornings. He’d take his newspaper and coffee in his leather-bound wingback in the drawing room and let the music settle his soul while he occasionally looked out the window at the bunnies cavorting again at the front gate.

Finally he’d gulp the dregs of his coffee, scuttle to the window, give the glass a rap to scare off the bunnies, return to the scene of the crime, and brush the dust from his typewriter. Writing, his raison d’être, Frank would sigh with resignation as he pasted Franklin’s handlebar moustache to his upper lip and began to type.