Baby was born into a warm pile of rotting leaves, a bundle of possibility inside a shiny gel capsule. Beetles and roaches crawled around her, over her, slipped off of her shimmering coat.
Divide.
Divide.
Divide.
Birds sang overhead but did not go near the pile of rotting leaves. Baby became a ring of translucent body segments, with hair-fine probosces extending into the void in the middle of the segments.
Divide.
Divide.
Divide.
Knotty little bundles of nerves developed in each body segment. They branched out toward the skin, and Baby began to feel her surroundings. The sunlight filtering through the trees warmed her all the way through. Baby got too big, and the gel capsule around her ruptured. She speared a cockroach. It wriggled on the end of her proboscis until it could no longer move.
Mother returned to the pile of rotting leaves, engorged from her recent meal. She stooped low over the leaves, toward Baby and her sisters. Baby’s probosces extended toward Mother’s body. The first one reached her, pierced her tough hide, found the nurturing blood inside her. Mother didn’t mind.
Eat, Baby. Big and strong.
Mother stalked the woods for three days like that, carrying Baby and her sisters. She found an injured bird and sucked it dry, but the offspring needed more, more, more.
There were swellings, and then stubby appendages, and then limbs coming out of Baby’s segments.
Divide.
Divide.
Divide.
Mother was old and frail now, almost an empty shell. Her limbs dug into the dirt and she could no longer lift them. Her loose, wrinkled hide collapsed. She gave all of herself for the survival of her children. She regretted nothing.
They fell off of her desiccated husk. Two of the seven writhed on the ground, unable to get control of their limbs. The sun would make them hot and dry, and without sustenance, they would die before dusk the next day. Ants crawled over them, ready to carve them up.
Baby rolled over a couple of times, but finally got her bearings. Her limbs worked when turned in either direction. Her top and bottom were as indistinguishable as her front and back, left and right. She ran. She hungered.
She sensed a juicy squirrel and scrabbled up a pine tree after it.
Jeff, who had been drinking beer by the campfire for hours, did not notice the thing scrabbling up the tree he was urinating on until the loose bark gave way.
Baby tried to jab her sharp limbs into the tree to hold on, but it was no use. She fell and fell and finally landed with a thud.
Jeff jumped back and cursed. His pulse deafening in his ears, he stared at Baby, disoriented, grasping for purchase on the ground a few feet from him. He ran back to the tent, his pants still unzipped. He tripped on the way, went down on his hands and knees, and quickly scrambled to his feet again. His friends laughed at him until they saw the look on his face.
No time to explain.
He grabbed the hatchet and cautiously walked back the way he had come. They stood up, peering in that direction, making confused grunting noises.
Baby regained her footing. She was standing up on all eleven limbs, her probosces reaching inquisitively in Jeff’s direction, when the hatchet blade cleaved her apart. Her limbs were still wriggling, so Jeff struck again, separating her body into two distinct pieces.
Divide.
Divide.
Divide.
He hacked and hacked until what was left was unrecognizable but still very frightening, pieces of nothing he’d ever seen before.
What he still did not see was the virus that had been floating around, impotent, in Baby’s blood, now infiltrating and desecrating the membranes of his skin cells.