It’s not every day that a UFO lands in your backyard and aliens ask you to give birth to a creature that will grow up to destroy your planet. So of course I said yes.
I deliberated, of course. On the one hand, I had given birth before. My pregnancy had been difficult, and this go round would only be tougher since I was still emotionally broken about being left by the only man who had ever made me feel loved. On the other hand, most things in life, such as attaining orgasm, are easier without a man, so I decided what the hell. Let’s prove something to the universe. Let the first interspecies mom be a single mom, and may she kick ass.
The aliens inserted the baby into my stomach via methods they wiped from my memory. They also wiped their explanation as to why it was imperative that a human give birth to Earth’s once and final doom. Ultimately, that was all kosher with me. How a five pound alien monster entered my body is not something I need to know, let alone see.
Why it was important for me, specifically, to give birth to the little guy – Zarnod, they said I had to name him Zarnod: Destroyer of Worlds, prophesied end of the planet Earth – wasn’t important for me to know either. As long as the aliens knew why they had chosen me, I was satisfied, although deep down I feared that choosing me had been arbitrary. In not knowing, I was able, for the first time since my marriage had fallen apart, to believe I was special.
Now, I have to be honest, I thought the aliens would impregnate me and leave. I thought, unlike my relationship with my ex-husband, the aliens and I had established trust I could count on. I thought I’d get my fifteen seconds of fame, you know, get interviewed on Ellen, date Taylor Swift for a couple of weeks, do my day as mayor of my hometown. Then I’d have an abortion.
Instead, the aliens insisted on remaining by my side at all times, rendering an abortion all but impossible. When I asked for even one moment alone, they told me I had no idea how dangerous an alien pregnancy could be, which, unfortunately, I couldn’t deny.
Turns out I wasn’t the only person who didn’t want the world to end. Anti-abortion conservatives flocked to my aid. They demanded the demon baby be killed. There was no way that Zarnod: Destroyer of Worlds, could be born. The mere possibility of his birth was blasphemous, threatening to usher in an era in which people could mate with any consenting intelligent being they pleased.
Opposing the anti-abortion advocates were pro-choice liberals, with their pleas to let Zarnod live. Who were we to decide that an innocent apocalyptic monster had no right to life? Who were we to trust an alien prophesy and preemptively declare that Zarnod could not grow to overcome the curse of his birth?
Unfortunately, I had to side with the conservatives on this one. Kill the bastard, save the planet, worry about being able to screw some of these oddly cute aliens later.
As you can imagine, things got ugly. I became a Supreme Court case. News stations all over the world talked about how I was the devil incarnate. People tried to kill me, although the aliens had technology to protect me and my little apocalypse just fine. Zarnod had to be born. Without Zarnod, there could be no end.
I asked the aliens why there had to be an end.
They told me it was the bidding of the ancient scrolls.
‘And?’ I asked.
That was it, they said.
‘Do the scrolls specifically state why my world must end?’
They did not.
‘And why do you listen to the scrolls?’
They said the scrolls are, were, and always would be the way.
As a final question, I asked if there was any possibility that Zarnod would not grow up into an Earth-annihilating monster.
The aliens said no. They had created the embryo themselves. My child would be Zarnod, he would breathe the mother fires of the universe entire, and he would not be stopped.
When I shared this information on my weekly podcast, Zarpod (conveniently translated into over twenty-five different languages), the entire human race, finally, somehow, found themselves 100% on the same side of an argument, all calling for me to disbelieve the ancient writings of an alien god and kill my baby.
At that point I was eight and a half months pregnant. I had seen ultrasounds. I had felt the little monstrosity kick and his scales push against my insides to the point at which I simultaneously couldn’t breathe and couldn’t stop having orgasms. Needless to say, I was attached.
Which didn’t matter, of course. Whether I wanted to move forward with the pregnancy or not had ceased to be my choice. The aliens protected me, especially from myself. They cared for me and made me feel that, while I would forever be the creator of doom, that perhaps I was special, that I wasn’t someone you cheat on with a substitute middle school lunch lady named Fran, wasn’t someone you leave in the middle of the night without a word, only a sticky note on the fridge saying, ‘I promise I’m not a bad guy.’
Such I gave birth to Zarnod.
Such the aliens convinced me to breastfeed my little end of days, lest I set an entire universe of mothers back millions of years.
Such my child grew to destroy the Earth, everything except for one particularly well located Waffle House, a cat named Mrs. Flufflesworth (who the aliens had grown very fond of during their time on Earth), and the one thing Zarnod had grown to love most, since Zarnod’s willingness to destroy the Earth very much relied on his personal happiness. That thing, of course, bless my sweet child, was me.