The baby

The baby screamed and whined. At least I think it was a baby. I have never actually seen one. This thing was sort of crab shaped with an opening along three of its edges, from which scraps of paper keep fluttering out along with the aforementioned cries. I tried to shove the scraps back into its maw but it was like trying to press two magnets together when they don’t want to go together at all. It was quite distressing.

I looked around to try and get some mother’s attention but I was alone again, so there was nothing to do but listen really. I tried to imagine its bleatings were music but of course they weren’t music. Crab-shaped babies are not capable of music. Even Ted knows that, and Ted can’t even count.

It was around midnight when I decided to unscrunch some of its vomited scraps and look at the text printed thereon. I have never really had any interest in words, thinking them the weakest of all the forms of modulation, but these words, when spoken aloud in the glorious sonorous multitone mellifluousness of my voice, were so beautiful they changed something within me. I began to weep.

Was this the beginning of fatherhood?