POPULATION EXPLOSION CONTINUES

By Alejandro Manuel Espinoza

“…but I haven’t ovulated at all for the past six months.”

Mrs. Tickerman gripped her purse tightly, a little worried, her lips dry and quivering, her eyes red from sleepless nights of sex.

“The solution we gave you stops the ovulation process until you qualify for procreation.”

The man speaking to her was calm – but he trembled. His mind conflicted with his body – his vibe gave off a radiating uneasiness. The environment around them felt too thick to move in.

“Oh, my goodness… even our rights as humans have been stolen – we have to be chosen, categorized, and proved eligible to have kids… What the hell exactly don’t I qualify for?!”

The man clicked his pen rapidly and then set it beside him suddenly, his motion abrupt – as if stopping himself.

“Ma’am, the recent influx in population – well, more accumulating than recent, called for the P.R act, which you know prohibits the unauthorized production of human offspring.”

The man frowned at the dehumanization of his words.

“I mean, the birthing of children.”

He reached for his pen, but then laid his palm on the cold steel desk.

“Your file indicates that you aren’t eligible for childbirth because; in your late twenties, you chose to have an abortion. You know this, Mrs. Tickerman, this is the third time I’ve had to tell you this.”

“That was before the goddamn law…”

She slammed her hand on the desk – red in the face.

“And I was young – so have some goddamn respect!”

“Ma’am – being young does not constitute stupidity – what the law is saying is that you were offered the chance to bear children and you aborted it; you can’t have children. Another factor is your age – there are various risks involved – women in their late forties to early fifties often experience complications with pregnancy.”

The man leaned back in his chair. He looked around the washed out and faded cubicle, smelling the office air.

You could die, Trudy Tickerman. Do you want to die?”

She was silent for a moment.

“I want to be a mother.”

Her voice choked on the word “mother.”

“I know that I want to be a mother.”

She bit her lip.

“And if that means death – even if I die before I hold my baby – I would have been a mother.”

The man twisted his pen in between his fingers and ran his tongue along his front teeth.

“I’m sorry – I can’t give you an activator.”

He sat forward in his chair.

“The population benefits much more from the destruction of life than the creation of it. The more anxious mothers we have, the more hungry mouths feed off of the dwindling resources of the planet.”

“If you let more anxious mothers have children, then maybe it wouldn’t be such a damn problem,”

She exclaimed.

“…you let all these negligent people just recklessly have children until you feel the need to cut them off due to eligibility factors…I want a child now. Nothing in my past should conflict with that.”

The man sat, thoughtful and quiet.

“Ma’am…”

“You are stealing things from women – What do women even have anymore that is unique to them and them only? I want it – that unique sense of a life growing inside – I feel no different than a man – perhaps even lesser of a woman.”

“Mrs. Tickerman, I didn’t take anything from you – the people you want to be pissed off with are the women who squander their birthright to have children – they neglect their kids and they help with the annunciation of human rights-violating laws.”

He leaned in toward her. 

“Hate the disease, not the doctor that diagnoses it.”

He leaned back once again in his big chair.

“I’ve got a three o’ clock appointment, you have to leave.”

Mrs. Trudy Tickerman rose out of her chair – tearless.

“You take away our right to have children and we are a disease – diseases destroy and consume…humans,”

She said, picking up her purse,

“Create life. If I am to hate the disease I am to hate myself – me and the generation of self loathing and infertile mothers – who will ceaselessly destroy themselves – deadening the nerve areas of what is or was womanhood.”

The man looked away as she spoke, staring at nothing in particular. He had only heard her leave, walking past the long line of desiring mothers that stretched long past the cubicle, and only .1 percent of them would be eligible to create new life.