The Wicked Library · 9th Story Studios LLC

TWL 1208: “Her Drowned Envy”, by Alexis Dubon

December 27, 2023·30 min·2 clips

A mother must birth underwater and wait to see whether her baby can float.

1. The Wicked Library episode “Her Drowned Envy” presents Alexis Dubon’s horror story about motherhood in a waterlogged future. 2. Addison Peacock narrates Alexis Dubon’s story, while Daniel Feutek introduces and closes episode 1208 for The Wicked Library. 3. The story asks what a woman will sacrifice to become a mother when newborns must survive an underwater birth. 4. The unnamed narrator walks barefoot through wet grass toward a birthing pond while her overripe pregnancy causes severe pain. 5. The narrator explains that babies must surface and float because no strong newborn has survived the pond for as long as she remembers. 6. The narrator believes her child will prove that life can persist and give humanity a future. 7. The narrator reaches the pond alone and gives birth beneath the water, filling the pond with blood. 8. The newborn rises to the surface turned incorrectly, silent, and lifeless in the narrator’s hands. 9. Faelene enters the pond after the narrator’s failed birth, and the narrator identifies her by her birdsong-like cries and long hair. 10. The narrator envies Faelene’s perceived beauty and expects Faelene’s child to become the successful newborn. 11. The narrator describes Faelene’s laughter after childbirth as a public victory beneath the stars. 12. The narrator returns to town carrying new life while Faelene remains absent from the community. 13. The baby feeds easily for a month, sleeps through the night, and smiles while the narrator celebrates motherhood. 14. During a moonless night, the baby’s feeding produces gray, watery milk speckled with silt and algae. 15. Another nighttime feeding leaves blood, dead tadpoles, marsh grass, and grime across the narrator’s bed and body. 16. The narrator accepts the painful pond-water feedings because she believes suffering proves the baby is alive. 17. The narrator later sees her reflection in fog at the pond and discovers a face with plum-purple lips and milky eyes. 18. The baby reaches happily toward the reflection, while the narrator becomes absorbed in the first image she has seen of her own face. 19. The Wicked Library delivers Alexis Dubon’s story as atmospheric first-person body horror with custom music by Nico Viteze. 20. Listeners seeking restrained contemporary horror may appreciate this episode, while audiences avoiding graphic birth and violence may skip it.

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