Overture

      We cannot see a thing; the curtain has not even risen yet, though there seems to be a lot going on behind it.  Someone, Captain Walker or perhaps Jack Stan Parkhurst, it is hard to hear, has gone missing down a well.  Wait, it might be that he is not missing but merely stuck.  Either way, the good captain is not here to listen to the sounds of childbirth, awful and repetitive.  Even without seeing a single image, no trace of blood, there is no avoiding the inevitability of death for whomever will make themselves known to us.  Until we see and hear more, we do not feel it is prudent to speculate any further.

It’s a Boy

      Captain Walker, soaking wet and sea green, punches his body into the delivery room, the wall behind him now a ragged hole.  His wife, post-partum, passes on.

      Captain Walker, a puddle forming at his feet, notices the baby in the nurse’s arms.  “It’s a boy!” the woman shouts, but he cannot hear her because the baby, right at this moment, spontaneously ignites.  The nurse shouts again, “It’s a boy!” and tosses the baby towards him, a comet streaking across the night sky, intent on crashing into something solid and unsuspecting.

      Captain Walker snatches the child out of the air.  Steam rises from his body as the baby smolders in his arms.  Other than a lack of fingernails, the baby, extinguished but alive, is fine.  “A son,” the captain whispers, “a son, a son, a son.”