Sally awoke suddenly, sweating with nightmares that had already slithered into the shadows. She looked down at her belly, which seemed to have grown several inches in the last few hours, and felt her insides kick. Well it may not be human, she thought, but it was practicing for the premier league anyway.

            She hauled herself out of bed and into the bathroom, brushing aside flashbacks from her dream which seemed to have taken stills from every sci-fi flick ever made, tentacles and all, and put them into her gym class. Children’s bodies had merged with cyborgs and little green men, laughing chaotically while one face had grown bigger and bigger until it towered over her, its tiny legs and arms scrunched up below. It had all been so familiar. The children, the face, a boy’s face, eating her up, swallowing her whole, she unable to stop it, the well-known child devouring ….

            Sally turned around and vomited into the toilet. Morning sickness at 2am. Another thing that didn’t change, even if you were carrying an alien.

            Jeremy shivered as he opened the fridge and let its light bathe his face. He liked eating late at night, once he knew that his ‘dad’ (stepdad really, but his mum refused to call him that), was safely back from the pub, tucked up in bed and unlikely to bother him any more. He reached for a cold slab of chicken and sat at the table, trying to remember his dream. Jeremy usually forgot his dreams, but he wished he could have kept a hold of this one. It had been a great dream, he knew that, but his brain seemed to have fast-forwarded again and now he couldn’t recall anything except for a feeling of complete happiness. It wasn’t often you felt completely happy when you had a dead dad, a rubbish stepdad and a mum so jumpy she only let you out to go to school or see the shrink. She never allowed him near a normal doctor, only head doctors who had promised to cure his amnesia and failed. Jeremy loved his mum, but sometimes wished that she could just be a bit more ordinary. Maybe stop checking up on him all the time for instance, or crying so much.

            It would be gym club the next day and Jeremy quietly offered up a prayer of thanks as he contemplated Miss Jenks’ tanned legs climbing up the wall in front of him, or her firm fingers grabbing his stomach to steady him as he went over the vault. His mum had told him never to let anybody touch him, but, Jeremy reasoned, Miss Jenks was not ‘anybody.’ She was the ultimate woman, she was fantasy in the flesh. Most importantly, she was the one thing that made his life bearable these days.

            He gobbled up the last bits of chicken and licked the grease from his lips, then smacked them just as his dad used to do. Thinking of Miss Jenks appeared to have produced that increasingly regular sensation in his groin again, only now he did not have to worry about getting home from the bus stop. He scurried upstairs, each footstep rubbing just a little more between his already burning thighs.

            Niall knew that he would have to explain everything to Maddie at some point, but by the time the sleeping pills had worn off and she was awake enough to scream at him he would, he told himself, be the most famous and respected scientist on the planet. Maybe even off it. Either way, her petty wrath would not matter any more.

He adjusted his surgical mask and hoped that he had put on the mascara properly, as he had never done it before and was not precisely sure where the brush was meant to go. He felt quite smug at having got past the nurses, although a manly woman with gloopy mascara and a bad wig was not, he supposed, the strangest thing seen in this clinic. He’d found Maddie’s office easily, and slipped in without anybody raising an eyebrow. As long as this Miss Jenks didn’t look too hard, he might just get away with a scan before she realized what was happening. He was like a British Fox Mulder, like a supernatural James Bond. He was glad that Maddie always wore trousers, though, as he was not sure he could have coped with tights.

The door opened. Niall glanced down at his sister’s notes and smirked. It was perfect, as though the woman had fallen into his lap from the heavens, which, in a way of course, she had. He cleared his throat

‘Miss Sally Jenks?’ he said in his best falsetto, ‘Lovely to see you again. Just a few more tests today, so, shall we just....’ His words dried as he looked up and registered what had just waddled in. Stood before him, a vision of bloated loveliness, was the tomato soup woman, as stunning as the day before but swollen to the size of an elephant. Nothing grew that fast, not from this world anyway. Niall could feel his skin prickle.

‘You’re not Dr Jefferies,’ said Sally flatly. ‘You’re a man.’

All pretence discarded in the enormity of the moment, Niall flung off the mask and knelt at her feet. ‘I am Dr Jefferies, he declared., ‘just not the....er....well my sister’s the gynaecologist. I’m the other Dr Jefferies, leading light in exo-biology. Don’t be afraid, Madam, I’m here to help you.’ Impulsively, he grabbed Sally’s waist and pressed his head into her bulge where, far beneath layers of skin and muscle, he could hear the faint double thump of two hearts. ‘Incredible,’ he breathed, so awestruck that he even failed to notice he was holding the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Sally slapped him, hard.

‘Get off you freak,’ she snapped. She began to retreat as fast as her vast frame would let her, but Niall shuffled after, clinging to her hips until she gave up and instead turned around, stuck a fist under his chin and punched upwards. Niall gagged, temporarily incapacitated by a slipped wig and a bashed windpipe, but he grasped her ankle and let himself be pulled across the cheap NHS carpet, refusing to let go despite a number of electrical shocks.

‘Miss Jenks... Sally,’ he spluttered between mouthfuls of polyester rug, ‘please, just listen to me. I think I can help with the.... the extraterrestrial....’

‘I am not talking to a man about my bits,’ Sally interrupted, ‘Doctor or no doctor, I swear I’ll kick you right where it hurts if you don’t let me go this second. Now where’s Dr Jefferies? Tell me, or shall I call the manager or whoever it is and have you fired immediately.’

‘You can’t,’ Niall gagged. ‘You’re carrying an alien, I know all about it. If they find out, they’ll rip it out and stick it in a laboratory and you’ll never see it again.’ This, of course was exactly what Niall himself wanted to do, but he chose to omit this fact so as not to mar his heroic speech. ‘Only I can save you and keep you and your baby together. Please Miss Jenks, you have to trust me. I’ve studied exoWORD. I know what aliens look like and you’re going to need more help than a place like this’ll give you if your child tries to get born.’

He could see Sally hesitate. Fear and uncertainty glimmered in her eye, and Niall felt a stab of pity. It must be difficult, he mused, bearing the unknown inside you, not quite sure when or how it would come out. He continued in a more gentle tone. ‘The gestation is already so far accelerated....’

Sally exploded. ‘Gestation? Gestation? I’m a woman, not a pig, you swine, and I’m pregnant, not gestating.  I’m not listening to this, I’m late for gym!’

As he cursed himself for his scientific turn of phrase, the incensed Sally shook  totally free and ran out of the door, out of the clinic and down the street. She lumbered on, feeling her body groan beneath her but she ignored it. The calls of the nurses faded behind her as pain in her legs and chest pounded out in protest and her sweat dripped over her eyes, blinding her from everything. She knew was that she had to get back to the school hall, back to the gym where her children waited.  It was the only way to keep safe, she knew this, yet did not know why or how.  Across the next road she could glimpse the school and, almost smelling the disinfectant, she opened her mouth to cheer. But as she reached the gates, a pang like a great white slashing through her innards pulled her to the ground. Writhing on the pavement, her cheer mutated into a cry unstoppable and endless as, with another wrench, water flooded out from between her legs. Suddenly Sally began to struggle in earnest. It had begun. The baby, she realized, was coming.

Part Five will conclude our story shortly.