THE FINAL STRAW
ALM No.94, October 2026
SHORT STORIES
Upon the ringing bell in her dream, Joan jolted awake, breathing heavily. She was a good girl who often made bad decisions, and it was precisely that which startled her now. She sat up against the bedframe, and rested her hand over her stomach, big and aching. She was, after all, nine months pregnant. Her mind started racing, and she didn’t understand why, until she saw the bottle of vodka by her nightstand, almost a third of it drunk, along with a small empty glass of wine. There is no threshold that can induce miscarriage or stillbirth anyway, so Joan thought nothing of it when she indulged the late night before. Whatever happens, happens, she thought.
For once, Joan started questioning herself, as she got out of bed and looked at the time on the living room clock; 6:48am, which meant she got about four hours of sleep after drinking until two in the morning. She went to the bathroom and splashed water on her face.
In the kitchen, she picked a mug from the cabinet to make her morning coffee, never mind that it could worsen her morning sickness. She was sick of it all anyway. She wanted it to stop, the premature worrying about herself and the child she was carrying, the burden it would be whenever the child got sick or woke up crying or took from Joan’s precious free time to demand attention.
Her ex-boyfriend, Damien, walked out and left her all to her suffering, alone. And as if walking out on her was not enough, she still had healing bruises in her arms from the last time he wrangled and hit her, as he had been doing the whole year they were together. Miraculously, none of the beatings Joan took led to a miscarriage, and even more miraculously, Damien walked out on her on his own; she did not even have to try. But carrying innocent clump of cells conceived by Damien was more than she could handle, and she could feel the filth from his genes mixing with hers. She never felt like a monster for hating on the baby, never had second thoughts or a moment of doubt, about anything, until:
From the kitchen, before she could make her coffee, she heard her bathroom sink turn on again. She turned her head back to face her bedroom door, and then the sound of the sink tuning off. No one was home with her, so how could this be?
The clock in the living room kept ticking, counting the time, the only other sound in the house. From her bedroom, suddenly, her jaw dropped and eyes widened as she saw herself walking out, the same way she had two minutes before, dressed in white and almost glowing. And there Joan stood, face to face with herself; “It’s coming,” this ‘new’ Joan said.
“W-what does that mean?!” the ‘real’ Joan said in despair.
The other spread her arms open, and water began trailing down her thighs. She gasped, and looked at it in horror, and after what felt like forever, blood followed down her legs, mixing with the water and soaking the floor. New Joan then ran out the door, frantically.
Before real Joan could react, she heard an unknown voice talking to her; “Miss Langton, you are going into labor... we must get her stabilized!”
She looked around her apartment, fully convinced that she was now insane. Little did she know this was a near-death experience, even though she never believed in anything supernatural. And so, the only logical thing to do, she thought then, was to follow her other self, or whatever in God’s name to call it.
While sprinting down her building, her other self became but a fading light at the end of the tunnel. She ran after it, as fast as she could, with echoing whispers in her head that she could not process.
“Her blood sugar is dangerously low,” she heard the same mysterious voice say, whom she now assumed was a doctor.
“That’s normal, she’s giving birth,” another mysterious voice said.
“Beyond the normal levels. This is a result of alcohol consumption.”
Joan kept running after her other self, and for once, she started to question her entire life up until this moment. The pain of hangover suddenly faded as she pursued herself out of the building and into the street, but the despair made her head and her stomach ache. She didn’t believe in anything supernatural, but something about this event made her question why all of this was happening, why she felt pain but did not at the same time, as if said pain was a thread, pulled by her other self.
Sprinting down the street now, blurry and foggy after leaving her apartment, she could hear the buzzing in her ear from when blood pressure drops, she could smell the smoke in the fog, she could feel the cold breeze in the outside, like something straight out of the game Silent Hill. “We don’t stabilize this woman now, and she won’t make it. We have an hour at most before they both die.”
Now, it all clicked in her mind. She was having a near-death, out-of-body experience, following what she presumed was her past self being rushed into the hospital, an ethereal vision, as if she had already died. Now, she had no idea if she would be able to do something, prevent her death or the baby’s, but she was determined to try. She saw her other self disappear inside the hospital building, she slammed against the door, to find herself inside the operating room.
“She’s losing too much blood, for Christ’s sake,” she heard a nurse say.
“How long? Talk to me people, what’s the time on the clock!?” the surgeon, who’s voice Joan recognized as the mysterious one from before in the apartment, was frantically trying to save her life.
“I don’t know, maybe ten, fifteen minutes. We don’t have much time.”
Joan approached the operating table, and saw her ethereal self that she was following laying with her stomach cut open. She reached one hand and touched her own face, and another hand to touch the surgeon’s, and then shut her eyes; “Please, forgive me. Please...” she whispered, crying.
She suddenly felt a powerful grip pull her away, and the image in the operating room quickly vanished, getting smaller and smaller. Then, she jolted awake once again, like she did in her apartment.
A nurse quickly came to contain her outburst, as Joan flailed her arms around in despair.
“It’s okay, Miss Langton, you’re alright!” the nurse comforted.
Joan, breathing heavily, lifted her shirt and saw her sutured stomach; “What happened?” Joan asked, desperate.
“The fastest most efficient C-section I've ever seen. A miracle really, they were able to stabilize you in an hour.”
“My baby-” Joan said, with newfound attachment to her child.
“The baby is fine, Miss Langton. Under observation, but alright. You've been unconscious for around three hours.”
“I could- I could see everything, like I was there myself! What the fuck?!”
“An out-of-body experience? Yeah, I’ve seen countless patients say this before, but for the first time a pregnant woman.”
Joan laid back in the bed, in relief and disbelief. “Maybe it was one of those ‘signs’ y’know?” She chuckled.
The nurse looked at her with a confused expression, but a polite smile.
“Never mind,” Joan said, “you wouldn’t get it.”
The nurse nodded, still smiling softly, “I’ll bring you something light to eat and drink.”
Joan cracked a soft smile, for some reason happy, and now determined to be a better person, like the angelic version of herself she saw in the brink of death.
Joao Luiz Fonseca is a Brazilian aspiring actor and screenwriter, who in his free time loves reading and watching movies, and studies literature and film. He is currently a Full Sail University Creative Writing undergraduate student. Follow him on Instagram, @joaoluizf_006
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