Horror - Short

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs.  No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.

All rights reserved. Babyhouse Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

BABYHOUSE

The path by the old mill is weedy gravel, overgrown so far that the blooms atop the strands of grass paint dewy smudges just above the blown-out knees of the boy’s pajama pants. The boy has been living in the woods for six weeks, ever since escaping the confines of the house that never really felt like home.

Nobody came looking, but he didn’t know that. He’d hid up trees, beneath stumps where rainwater washed fresh smelling caves, and, once, in a garbage dumpster when he heard a vehicle headed down the dead-end road where the house was located.

He didn’t know where his father was or how to find him, but his sisters and brothers, his mother too, were all dead. One midwife, a cameraperson, and a boom operator had perished as well, though not the way his siblings had.

The boy closes his eyes, staring at the back of the house, which is quickly going to seed. He’s tired of living outside and wishes things could return to the way they were.

They used to live in a trailer, and as far as the boy knew, life had been good. But then they flew to America for a paternity test show, and the boy’s father—who, surprise surprise, was not his father—kicked them out. They stayed in shelters, and once beneath an overpass in a tent with a man who called himself Goro.

Things had bounced back: the boy and his mother in supportive housing, the boy attending school on the regular, his mother working part-time at a No Frills grocery. It had seemed almost good until the bald man from TV offered stardom to his mother.

“Think Jon and Kate, but Canadian, and with more kids,” he said. “And don’t forget, two hundred thousand dollars.”

So, they’d moved to the house with the lab in back and ceilings high enough for good angles and better lighting. The boy was six when his mother initially began blooming at the belly, and at first, he was excited for a brother or sister, but when he asked which it was, his mother laughed and said, “Both!”

Dr. Adams and four midwives came to the house on delivery day. Ten babies slipped out the strained, bloody, fishy-smelling woman. The babies did not cry. The babies did not whine. Instead, they studied the world around them.

The boy backed into the hallway, suddenly worried. He reached the rear wall, where the house ended and production began. He leaned against the confessional room door and listened. It was a man at first:

“…like machines, is what I’m saying. You know, the research the Nazis were doing…”

He rolled away, unwilling to hear more; everybody with even half a brain knew Nazis were bad news.

Months later, he awakened in the middle of the night to the sounds of violence. Screaming. Since they’d come, he’d expected something bad. He broke from his little bedroom with its low ceiling and poor lighting and made for the living room. His mother was glassy-eyed on the big white couch, staring blankly across the room. Her robe was pulled down and one of the babies was chewing their way through her milk-heavy left breast. The man on camera looked away, but had his camera directed, poised, gathering the morbidly fascinating event.

“Shit!” he shouted, spinning the camera as he jerked his body away from the sudden pain in his ankle. One of the babies had latched a suckling mouth to his anklebone. The man tugged and kicked, trying to free the baby. The baby’s body went limp, slapping wetly as they flopped.

“Let go!”

The camera fell when the cameraman decided to drill the baby. The first shot was spongy, forgiving. The baby didn’t let go. The second shot drove the baby’s head pancake flat. And still.

“Help!”

It was no good. There were too many babies, the others couldn’t risk it.

“Help! Ah!” The man was down, the flesh from the front of his foot gone.

The boy watched it all and wondered at how and why. It wasn’t until the crew started bashing the ravenous babies into a sludgy pink slop with tablets and tripods and makeup kits that he wondered what they might do to him, if they ever caught him.

That was then.

Now, he is too hungry and tired and defeated to avoid it any further. He creeps around the front, skirting the corner, putting his back to the plastic siding, trying to dodge any attention from the cameras—how could he know the entire production had been abandoned? He follows around until he reaches the rear door, finding it closed and locked, but the doorframe is sufficiently splintered to allow entry with but a smidge of force.

It's steamy hot inside, and the fishy scent is heavy on the atmosphere. He can hear the groaning susurrations of motion throughout the home. He’d been back before, but only as far as the windows; he knows something has survived.

“Okay, you buggers,” he says, trying to sound like his father, trying to sound tough enough that he feels tough, instead of like the hungry boy who has eaten nothing but blackberries and mushrooms for months. “You buggers leave me alone.”

He reaches for a light switch, knowing there’s power, never questioning that it might’ve been turned off. The bright bulbs high overhead light to reveal the writhing mass the babies has become. Sixteen eyes blink in unison, while two others remain half-lidded and dopey—two eyes had disappeared in battle with the crew. Ten toothy maws open to whine in gut-twisting harmony. Arms and legs stretch beneath the fleshy blob and lift it like a spider.

It charges at the boy, skittering and gushy, and he holds out a hand, knowing the mass was never real babies, never ignorant as real babies. “Stop! I’m in charge! I’m your big brother…”

—

“Welcome to Cine-Watch! I’m Luna and he’s Phil, and we’re here to react to movies, television, and music. What do you have for us today, Phil?”

Luna is more plain than pretty. She’s trim, in her late-twenties, with shaggy brown hair. She wears thick sweaters as if the YouTube game never pays quite enough to heat her home. Phil is a chubby thirty-something with close-set eyes and a wide nose, not quite ugly, but miles from handsome. He has tiny hands and big opinions. He runs the outfit, cultivates the donor page, and knows his channel would sink without Luna, because women are the magic ingredient to viewership.

“We have a Patreon poll winner: The Terror of Babyhouse.”

“Ooh, cool! This was shot like ten kilometres from my place.”

Phil grins. “Extra creepy since you’re pregnant, huh? And don’t dox yourself, Luna…”

Luna’s mouth becomes a tight pink slash. “Right.”

“If you’d like to take part in polls, watch full-length reactions, and interact with us, head on over to our Patreon page for exclusives, but before you go, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and comment. Now, let’s get into the movie.”

As the video fills the screen, the pair sit in mostly quiet, occasionally quipping a factoid or cracking a joke. The film is shorter than Hollywood blockbusters and has virtually none of the budget.

“You know, some people believe this is actually footage from a real event,” Phil says.

“I heard that, too! Remember that other movie we did, Blair Witch? They did that with promo there as well.”

Phil nods. “Same as Amityville Horror.”

Luna pulls a face. “Well, maybe they marketed the book that way, but the movie was just a movie. Or am I forgetting something?”

On screen, the feral boy has just flicked the light switch to reveal the writhing mass of flesh, all eyes and mouths and wriggling fingers rising from pudgy hands. “Stop!” he says. “I’m in charge! I’m your big brother!—Hey!”

The mass jitters forward like stop motion; a wash of chunky fluid spilling from its sides as if exhaled from gills. It reeks of sweetly rotting meat and sun-baked trout. The boy backs a step, and the mass leaps. Four baby mouths full of serrated teeth latch onto the boy’s hip. He falls, screaming at an octave reserved for pre-pubescence. Blood gushes and the mass rumbles all over as if gleeful at his taste, their little eyes bouncing around in a ghoulishly comedic dance, the tongue of unfed mouths reaching, reaching, reaching. The arms shiver and swing, chubby little elbow creases capturing sprayed blood. Its feet thump a wet parade through the boy’s gushing blood.

The boy has disappeared beneath the mass but for his left arm, which dangles centimetres from the floor until crunching, rending, sending it flailing in half-circles before dropping with a soggy thunk, severed in a jagged, boney line just below the shoulder.

The camera rocks roughly, as if the cameraperson has only now realised being that near this creature is dangerous business. Once steadied, the shot plays backward down a hall and through the front door, all the while the mass of flesh follows, shuffling spider-like on its fat little limbs, the mouths gnashing wetly through chunks of boymeat. The mass pauses on the threshold of the door before twisting itself to fit and venturing outside.

Roll credits.

“What I’d like to know was how did anyone believe this was real?” Luna says.

Phil shrugs. “People will believe just about anything if they see it on Facebook.”

“I guess,” Luna says, not currently looking anywhere near the camera, instead to the little bump of her belly. She’d been trying for years to become pregnant, and finally, after searching out solutions all over the country and beyond, she visited a local doctor; she was pregnant inside a month. “What was that doctor’s name again, the one from the beginning? Adams?”

She puts a hand to her tummy and feels the ghost of a kick.

XX