Dependent relationships? Can't tell me anything new. Fear of the unknown? I've been there. You'll never understand those things until you remember the months before your birth.

I remember those well, after taking up the study of hypnotism to sleep fewer hours each night. I'm a busy man, and I heard people who hypnotize themselves can stay in a trance for a few hours and wake up completely refreshed. I also found it enhances my memory to my beginnings, to the womb.

Swimming in that blackened ocean with such limited maneuverability, tied to the wall of my mother's uterus. I didn't know much of anything at the time.

I slept, kicked and listened. Listened for those echoes from the outside world, trying to understand these disconnected noises through the inches of meat. All I could understand was the emotional content of those voices. The raised, angry voices, the apathetic voice of a bored secretary. and the one I heard most often, my host. Her voice was very soft. Let me tell you what it's like to hear voices from outside and have no idea what they are. It's like being schizophrenic. We've all been crazy.

Those months left some scars on my personality. You know how when you're in bed at night, and you see some imposing shadow in the corner, and you get frightened, and investigate, and find it's just your damned coat rack? How anticlimactic it feels? Your ignorance scared you, and the effect lingers.

At some times, I started changing, and I didn't understand it. Some new growth started sprouting out of my body, though I still couldn't see it. It felt soft and thick, like the stuff already on my head. It smelled like hell whenever it was wet, which was all the time.

My ears got longer, and I felt my soft skull shifting. My mouth was moving forward from my eyes. Imagine every bone, muscle and organ in your body being pulled apart. Shifting into a completely new, elongated shape. Do you know why muscle gets bigger when you work out? Scarification. My muscles were getting about three times as large. Do the math.

It still hurts every time it happens, mind you, but I understand the source of my pain now. Half the pain then was sheer terror of not knowing what was happening, horrible fear. Like accelerated puberty without warning.The host's voice changed. It sounded terrible, and full of rage. Incomprehensible.

The movement started. Not the soft, rhythmic movement of the host's normal steps. The hard, frenzied and rapid movement of four feet moving upon the ground. I felt dangerously close to whatever was beneath me. I could sense it. I could feel the vibrations of her feet, pounding the ground with desperate fervor.

We were moving horribly fast. I didn't know where. Imagine waking up in the trunk of a car. A car moving about 120 miles per hour, and making random, very sharp turns. Often driving over speed bumps and railroad tracks, causing you to jar around in uncontrolled motion.

That's what it's like to be in the womb of a fast-moving woman. Please, if you're pregnant, be gentle. I can feel the pain of my brothers.

More rapid-pounding footsteps. More sudden changes of direction. Everything's a blur. All I can hear is the footsteps, the panting. And then we charge, headfirst, into something solid. It snaps open, with a loud creak.

Then the screaming starts. I can feel her rage through the cord that so hinders my movement. I do not fear prison. I have been there. This rage was sheer hate, sheer aimless violence that needed some source of venting. Any source. Tonight would be different from these other nights.

I don't feel the ground below us anymore. We're moving forward, fast. I feel her arms moving forward, swiping down. I hear fresh screaming, of confusion, pain, terror. A woman. I can feel mother bite down.

That horrible screaming stops. I was screaming too, at that point. Or crying might be a better description. The sound, that fearful sound. I recognize it. I've heard it countless times. It is the sound of disbelief, the mind's inability to comprehend death coming to them.

I'm shaking now. I need to leave this prison. Gain some control of my destiny. I want to find out what's happening outside of me. I start swimming, or attempting to. Downward. I must find the exit!

As I move further downward, I can feel her pain. Her screams. Screaming seems to be the theme of the night. I'm sorry mother, should I quit moving? Or do you want me to help you with this problem, whatever it is? You must need me.

So i keep on moving, and I start seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. For the first time, my eyes are in use. Everything is a cloudy haze, and my eyes are overcome by this shock. More screaming. She definitely needs me. I close my eyes and move further on. Bravery comes easily to the ignorant.

My head is out. And I open my eyes a small amount. I see the body before me, on the floor. I can't make anything in particular out, but I see no movement, and have an instinctive revulsion. But I press on. Gotta finish what I started. And soon my entire body falls out onto the floor, leaving the blackness I've known.

I am also suffocating. Lord, this is a shocking night. I summon forth all my will to breathe. And nothing happens. My heart is beating rapidly. Adrenaline at work. In the fear of the moment, my first breath comes to me. A pathetic little cry.

I am covered in hair, and I see a bloody scene before me. My mother picks me up in her arms, holding me gently. I understand. I am, for the moment, a beast. I see love in the eyes above me, death in the eyes below me.