She peered into the bedroom cautiously, and ever so quietly.
The infant kicked his fluffy toy lamb in his sleep. Other small cloth animals lined the bottom edge of the cradle, staring lifelessly – a goat, a bunny, a fawn. All white except the auburn deer. The baby was reacting to something in a dream only he could know, and then he was still again.
A breeze from the open window shook the wind chime mobile above the cradle. Carved screech owls with outstretched wings danced on their strings for a moment as a tinkling accidental melody subtly rang out.
“Darling?” the mother asked in a breathy whisper.
She stepped into the pitch black room and easily located the infant’s cradle in the corner. Maternal instinct. The cradle was near the window, but it was equally dark outside. The room was warm, however. She looked down upon the bundled little baby and smiled. The baby that looked so cozy and comfortable. The baby that now seemed unusually quiet and completely motionless. She grasped the railing in a panic, shaking the cradle. The owl figures fluttered again. The mother froze with fear. She was all too aware of the grim reports of sudden unexplained infant deaths. Innumerable, in fact.
That night alone – a suburban home near Blueshade. Twin girls. Parental shrieks, followed by a swarm of neighbors and confused paramedics. Soon after, a farmhouse in a nearby field of alfalfa – a stunned grandmother collapsing. A little boy lost. Then a grandmother’s heart attack.
She gazed down at the baby in abject terror, still too stunned to move. Is he even breathing? She stared intently, fear and panic mounting. Ah, there. She caught a subtle twitch, then a tiny hitch of breath. The little boy was only sleeping, quite soundly. She felt his cheek. Warm. His baggy yellow pajamas had migrated upward. Printed lion faces smiled up at her as she pulled the collar away from his face.
“My baby, my love. So delicate, so lovely, so perfect. Healthy, warm, and…alive.”
The woman’s voice was as soothing and melodic as the chimes. She sighed. Smiling, she slowly lifted the infant out of his cradle, and he started to stir. She gently held his trembling body to her warm chest. The baby cooed, lightly squirming and smiling as his eyelids fluttered. His chubby fingers brushed against her bosom. She knew he must certainly feel quite safe and very loved, because he truly was.
“The days are so very, very long, sweet little child…” she lamented. “Come, my dear baby, give Mommy a goodnight kiss.”
Knowing the sleepy infant could scarcely understand her spoken words, she did not wait for a reply. She gently kissed the smiling baby on the forehead. Her full lips barely grazed his skin ever so softly. The boy relaxed. She thought she heard him giggle.
Or gurgle?
She stared at him in terror, her eyes growing wider. The gurgling quickly became a brief, choking cough. Suddenly the infant was silent. His body was very still. His wriggling arms dropped down.
“Well. You’re not my baby,” she said wearily.
She carefully placed the dead child back in his cradle in pained resignation. She tucked the fuzzy white bunny into his arms, and covered his tiny, cooling limbs with his thick blue blanket. With burning tears stinging her bright emerald eyes, she wept vague apologies and futile reassurances she knew he could not hear. She paced around the cradle in a dreadful manner she had become quite accustomed to.
The dark clouds parted for a moment, allowing bright moonlight to silhouette her tall, sinewy figure as she angrily faced the window. Her bare breasts rose and fell heavily as her deep breathing grew faster and labored.
“Why do you die?” she cried out. She clenched her fists tightly until fresh blood dripped from her palms. “Why must you always DIE?” she screamed.
The deepening roar reverberated throughout the room. Her vast wings beat violently together, knocking toys off shelves. She gnashed her gleaming fangs in rage. She turned towards the crib and glared in madness. Her lavender-hued flesh grew cold, colder even than the autumn night. Her skin broke out in imperceptible scales.
“Why must this happen to me?” she cried out in crazed confusion. “I alone must suffer? For all eternity? And why must these precious children perish? Why?” she demanded of no one in particular.
“Damn you all!”
Her emotions had grown over time, and were becoming overwhelming. She was increasingly boiling with uncontrollable hateful insanity. Who to blame? The universe? HIM? She roared in deathly defiance. “Vile tyrant! Am I left with no progeny of my own? Hast thou doomed mine very womb?“
Again she rapidly thrashed those powerful leathery wings, storming about the room in pure fury. Within her trembling lovely face her enormous eyes burned green flame. Her sharp talons scraped the ground as her sleek muscular body paced madly. Her long flowing hair whipped around in her maelstrom. She moaned a low howl of excruciating agony. She tore at herself mindlessly with clawed slender hands.
She sensed someone hiding in the hallway, surely a shocked worried parent, shivering in abject fear, too terrified to enter the room, let alone confront her. It was a familiar reaction, a primal response to her sheer presence, and likely for the best.
Across the many lands, for countless lifetimes, she had searched. Sometimes randomly, sometimes purposefully, she had searched. And in recent centuries, always with horrified desperation. The past week was difficult as ever.
A small village in the desolate tundra, her brief visit after dusk followed by shrill cries of anguish that seemed to follow her for hours. Shortly before dawn, a lonely hut near the edge of the Amazon made far lonelier. One dark evening in a remote hospital ward, four newborn infants at once. The previous night – an opulent villa near Lake Geneva, a pretty adolescent’s endless wailing, hours of cradling a cold lifeless body, and then the glass of milk filled to the brim with sleeping pills.
So much death. Inexplicably, she had lingered there to make herself watch it all. She cursed her bleak existence, a pure living hell, surely too much for any lone entity to bear.
Always the wrong children, the wrong bloodline. Where were mine? When she was merely flesh she bore her spawn herself. In the later eras her offspring would randomly materialize within different mothers. In modern times they became increasingly rare. And now? Her babies were not to be found anywhere, if indeed any still existed.
She wiped her eyes and wondered if anyone could truly understand her unspeakable pain. If anyone on the miserable human-infested planet could even conceive of her unimaginable despair. Surely aeons must have passed since she actually last held a child, any child, that didn’t instantly perish.
And those terrible false labels imposed upon her… Succubus. Monster. Demon. Did anyone among the wretched human race even know who she really was? Remember that still she lived on, all these woeful countless epochs later? That she was forever and ever oh so cruelly alone?
The nightmare woman shook her lovely head aggressively and snarled defiantly towards the heavens. After one final glance at the infant, she turned towards the window. With sudden intense force and speed, she burst through the frame, not bothering to revert to ethereal form. The entire wall of the nursery exploded outwards, her powerful corporeal body tearing through splintered wood and shards of glass. A frightening inhuman shriek echoed throughout the chilly evening skies, a volcanic screech that reverberated for miles.
“I was the original woman! The first Mommy!” she screamed, “It’s not fair! Curse you all!”
She thrashed her dark lavender wings and wailed. She was certain she would eventually find some of her evasive offspring someday. Her unholy spawn. Somewhere on that gigantic accursed planet her beloved babies were waiting for her. Surely at least one single, lonely, lost child crying for its true Mother. She drifted away into the dark stormy clouds, lightning flashing around her as the vast despondent sky enveloped her beautiful monstrous physique.
Lilith flew onward to seek out the children that were not of Eve.
P.S. Traum is an author with a range of styles who has had more than three dozen short stories published since 2020 in several small press genre publications, including Tales from the Moonlit Path, Black Hare Press, Hellbound Books, Red Cape, and Horrorsmith. In 2025, Hellish Hotblooded Horrors, my collection of horror short stories, was published.
Pubished 5/10/26