We never thought our daughter would be capable of harm.

That doesn’t excuse our actions. What we’ve willfully ignored over the years, that’s unforgivable. But I hope any parent reading this can at least relate to the overwhelming feeling that your child, no matter how monstrous, will always be innocent in your eyes.

We’d been trying for years to have one of our own. My husband, Dave, and me. So long, in fact, that sex had become like another occupation for us. We tracked my menstrual cycle. Waited for ovulation days when I’d pee on a stick and get a positive result. Then we’d make our way to pound-town, revisiting as often as we could to cut my dodgy egg off at the pass, until we were both wholly exhausted from the effort.

It was like that, every month, for at least a year and a half. It took as long for us to accept that we couldn’t get pregnant on our own. Our sex, our bodies, would not be enough.

Dave found us a fertility clinic. A friend of his who’d also struggled recommended it. I felt relieved to finally acknowledge we needed the help. Answering those questions during our first consultation at the clinic was like a confessional.

Yes, I did have an STD once. Okay, twice... Yes, I am not getting enough exercise during the week… Yes, my diet is heavily carb-based. And yes, I would do anything, change anything, be anything, to have a baby.

We held nothing back. We did all their tests. Explored every option. Spent all of our savings. And two years later, after pouring all of us into the pursuit of a baby bump, nothing.

I remember Dave holding me the day the IVF didn’t work, the two of us standing in the corridor of the clinic just holding each other. I remember repeating the words we’d said so many times together–this isn’t our fault–while still feeling like an absolute fucking failure.

That’s where she found us, our fertility specialist, at the bottom of a well. She offered her sympathies there in the corridor. Her eyes glassy, voice tight in her throat. She’d been with us through so much the loss had impacted her as well.

We thanked her for her condolences, then started for the exit. There was no more emotion left in either of us, no more tears, just cold acceptance. We were officially an infertile couple.

As we neared the exit, our specialist called out after us.

“This doesn’t need to be the end.”

I stopped while Dave kept on, either not hearing or not wanting to. The specialist was still standing right where we left her. So I let go of Dave’s hand and wandered back over to her.

“I appreciate all you’ve done,” I said. “I really do. But we’re completely out of money, and honestly, I don’t think this was ever going to happen for us.”

“I know of a place,” she started, her voice just above a whisper. “An institute that might be able to help with your situation.”

Dave was waiting at the exit, ready to leave. I signaled for him to wait just another minute. He shook his head, frustrated, ready to move on.

“Help us, how?” I asked.

“It’s highly experimental. The consent forms are insane. NDAs, all that kinda stuff. But the procedure worked for another infertile couple of mine. It actually worked, Elle.”

“They got pregnant?”

She paused for a moment, then chose her words carefully. “They have a child, yes.”

This jolted me. I was so sure at this point that I didn’t have any hope left, and yet, at the very mention of another chance, I was back at the poker table, ready to go all in again.

Dave took more convincing. I think in his mind he’d moved on a long time ago without telling me, so he wasn’t all that interested in trying another route, especially one that would require an NDA. But the longer he sat in the possibility of it - a baby of our own - he was willing to quiet his reservations and give this experimental hail mary a shot.

We arrived at the address. It was one of those generic office buildings you see off the freeway, just another glass monolith that held a variety of businesses inside. We took the elevator to the seventh floor, and opened the doors to The Nova Institute.

Ectogenesis. An artificial womb outside of the body. What NVI offered us, the infertiles, was the possibility of successful reproduction.

We took the informational packet home in a state of disbelief. After years of grasping for an ounce of control, suddenly we had control over everything. They even had a section in the packet where you could list the traits you’d like to see most pronounced in your offspring.

We laughed at the absurdity of it all. And then we drank. And drank some more.

“She should have your nose,” I said, slurring a bit. “Not my goblin hook.”

“What, no, I love your goblin hook,” Dave responded. “She’s also getting your teeth.”

“She can have my teeth, but not my nose.”

“How do you feel about freckles?”

“Yours are adorable.”

“Like a full body spread or just sprinkled around?”

“Maybe a darker pigmentation in general to lessen the chance of melanoma?”

“So fucking smart, yes!”

Back and forth we went, designing our baby together, like we were suddenly in that 90s Ethan Hawke movie. We wanted our baby’s traits to resemble ours, for the genetic similarities to be obvious to family and friends, but we also wanted her to have her own unique attributes. A body lovingly designed by us but one that belonged entirely to her.

Harper. Her name would be Harper and she would pluck every chord of our heartstrings. All we had to do was to sign on the many dotted lines. The absurdity waned at some point and all we were left with was an inevitable choice.

Harper was pulled from her artificial womb on a Tuesday morning in late December.

We were going for a Christmas baby but circumstances pushed the due date up a week. According to NVI, she developed faster than anticipated and was starting to tear the uterine tissues with the powerful strokes of her sport-ready limbs.

I was the first to hold her. Her eyes held the emerald glow of my late mothers. In my arms, my history, my future - all of it, all of me. I couldn’t stop the tears if I tried. And as I leaned back into Dave’s chest, we both witnessed the most incredible thing. Harper’s eyes, they locked onto mine, and filled with tears of her own. Our baby, we were so connected already.

We left their neonatal ward with the contractual understanding that we would only contact the pediatricians in their network should anything be out of the ordinary. Though that line between ordinary and atypical proved difficult to identify, especially considering we’d just walked out of a lab with a baby hatched from a biobag. So we were pretty much off book from the jump.

On the first night in her nursery, Harper slept nearly fifteen hours straight without moving once. Even after repeated assurances from NVI that this kind of comatose state was perfectly normal during the first phase of an ecto’s development, several times throughout the night, Dave and I found ourselves hunched over her crib, our hands inches from her nose to feel the wisp of warm breath against our knuckles.

She was fine. This was all fine, we tried assuring ourselves rather aggressively.

Somehow, we’d managed to convince our family and friends that Harper had been born from a surrogate mother. It was a lie, sure, but one we could live with. It was that or try and wade into an ethical minefield with the people we love. Everyone was just so happy for us anyway they didn’t bother to ask many questions. When Dave’s mother finally got a chance to hold Harper, I remember her saying the word, “perfect,” over and over again.

And to us, Harper was perfect. We were both on leave from our jobs for those first few months, so our baby girl was our entire world. Our friends had warned us that month one through three came at you like a wrecking ball, but that wasn’t our experience at all.

Harper took to the bottle of NVI-engineered formula immediately. Gained enough weight to get those adorable baby rolls. Slept through the night. And never, ever cried.

That last part was a bit uncomfortable at times. But again, we’d been assured that her development would not be like other children, so as strange as it was, it still felt right to us.

In full transparency, there were some other early warning signs I actively chose to ignore. Moments with Harper during her first years of her life where I felt this lurking sense that something might be very wrong with our daughter.

One night, for example, and I’m not proud to admit this, I pulled Harper roughly out of her crib hoping she would fuss or cry in my arms. Up until that point, I’d been able to let go of most parental expectations, but I couldn't surpress the desire for her to need me, and that started to come out in weird ways. Like waking her up in the middle of the night just to rock her back to sleep.

Harper’s eyes peeled open. They found mine. Instead of fussing she just stared back at me without expression as if she understood exactly what this late-night intrusion was all about.

I felt a coldness dig into my chest. It rippled through my body, swirling up to my head, wrapping around my brain, like the tendrils of a vine.

And that’s when I heard it, a voice booming inside me. Piercing. Spiteful.

“RELEASE ME.”

I immediately stood from the chair. Set Harper down in her crib with odd, jerky motions. Then staggered off toward the door, bumping into walls, as if walking for the first time.

It wasn’t until I was halfway to my bedroom that I started to wonder what exactly had just happened. I slipped into bed beside Dave and decided not to wake him. Instead, I closed my eyes and willed myself to forget the whole thing.

But the frequency of these kinds of occurrences become difficult to ignore.

One night, as Dave tells it, while I was out for work drinks, he was deciding between Giving Tree and Rainbow Fish for a bedtime story, when he was struck by a sudden desire to introduce more complex ideas to Harper.

He carried her into his study and pulled down an earmarked, heavily-noted copy of The Fountainhead. They stayed awake hours after her bedtime, Harper unmoving in his arms, while Dave read the chapters aloud, entranced by the act of revealing an individual’s true worth to our daughter’s developing mind.

That’s where I found him, working his way through the final chapters with Harper sitting up in his lap. I grabbed Dave’s arm when he wouldn’t respond to my voice. After some vigorous shaking, he finally snapped out of it. I asked questions he couldn’t fully answer.

And then there was the incident of the popsicle in the park.

We agreed on no sugar for the first few months of her development. We had even signed a form that we'd keep her diet to the NVI-formula until she was at least six months of age. But while walking through a local park with Harper strapped to my chest, I found myself inexplicably drawn to an ice cream cart.

After unwrapping a rainbow-colored frozen treat on a bench, my thoughts turned to Harper, and only her. I wanted her to partake in the joy of tasting a popsicle on a warm summer afternoon. Screw the contracts, I wanted my baby girl to devour the damn thing whole.

When Dave found us, returning from his tennis match in the park, I was seated on a bench absently holding the popsicle out for Harper to eat. Her face and onesie stained red.

“I thought she wasn’t supposed to–”

“FUCK OFF,” I yelled in a voice I didn’t recognize.

“...What?”

“Oh god. Why did I just… What am I doing, Dave?”

“Let’s just get her cleaned up. We have our appointment in an hour.”

For as often as we were caught in these uncomfortable situations, the short explanation, the one that stuck most often, was that neither of us knew what parenting would be like, so maybe grappling with these powerful, irrational desires was familiar to all who raised a kid.

Or maybe…

“How’s it going?” the Nova pediatrician asked, during our appointment.

“Wonderfully,” I responded. “She’s everything we hoped she would be. And more.”

“And more,” Dave parroted, giving my hand a loving squeeze.

Both of us were a little terrified of what might happen if we were honest about our experiences with Harper, so we focused on the positives and shared only what painted our family in the best possible light.

After a brief physical during which Harper lay motionless on the examination table, the pediatrician was satisfied with the results. So satisfied, in fact, that they wanted to introduce us to other couples who were also raising ecto children.

“What we’re learning,” started the pediatrician, “there are tremendous benefits to socialization between ectos. Both for the children, as well as the parents. What you are going through, each of you, is truly unique. I mean, there hasn’t been anything like this in human history. So, yeah, we’re recommending play-dates.”

She winked at us with a smile. And we smiled back at her. Everything was exactly as it should be.

The drive to the house in the hills was unbearably tense.

We had received the numbers of other couples with ecto children. We started a group text and one of the parents eventually offered to host a meet-up.

Harper had just turned three and was selectively mute. She only used language to underscore a point she was trying to make with nonverbal cues. There were other anomalies about her. In truth, they seemed to metastasize by the day. We worried she would be the odd ecto out.

“Here we are,” Dave said in an overly chipper voice.

“That’s the one,” I responded, my voice shaky. “What a beautiful home.”

Later in the day, several parents circled up around a sandbox shaped like a turtle, watching our kids stare at each other with quiet stoicism.

I found it comforting to know that Harper wasn’t the only one uninterested in playtime. I could tell the other parents in our huddle felt exactly the same. Turns out, we were all comparing our children to each other’s, and that did normalize it some, at least for me.

One of the other moms turned to me during a lull in the conversation. We had bonded earlier over a youtube channel we let our children watch against regulation, admitting we even spoke in the voice of the host at times at home, so she was ready to get a little more personal with me.

“Can I ask you something about Harper?”

“Anything,” I said, unconvincingly.

“I know this is gonna sound completely bananas, but… have you ever heard her say something to you without, like, using her voice?”

I felt the blood immediately leave my head. My breath locked in my chest.

“...Have you ever heard your daughter speak to you inside your head?”

Her eyes were searching mine. Desperate for someone to tell her she was not alone in this. Of course I knew exactly what she was talking about, but all I wanted to do at that moment was tell her she was bananas and probably just needed more sleep.

As I fumbled to find the right words, several feet away from us a child suddenly shrieked at her mother who was trying to coax her into the pool, drawing all of our attention.

The bony woman in a flower print dress waited until her child stopped screaming, then fell to her knees, clenched her fists, and started hitting herself in the face, one fist after the other, deliberate and robotic, like a windup toy.

I stood there, stunned, as the woman continued to pummel herself. Through the pain, she held a vacant gaze I immediately recognized. Within that look, I saw myself. All the moments when it felt as if I'd been ejected from my body while something else took hold.

Coming to my senses, I ran over to her, along with Dave and a few other parents. By the time we all got there, the woman’s face was already a bloody mess. I held her arms back while Dave tried to help bring her back to consciousness.

“Stop - stop hurting yourself!”

“...My baby doesn’t want to swim,” the woman managed to say at last, several teeth tumbling out of her mouth as her body went limp in my arms.

I noticed then that the backyard was oddly quiet. I looked up and realized it was suddenly only me and Dave there with this bloody-faced woman. The other parents had wandered off somewhere.

A fleshy smack echoed nearby. I turned and there beside a bed of lilacs stood the woman I was just in conversation with. She was now standing over her husband who had removed his pants and was on all fours in the dirt. She pulled her arm back and smacked his bare ass with that same absent look in her eyes, over and over again.

“What the actual fuck…” Dave rightly said.

I was about to tell him we needed to leave immediately, when I noticed he wasn’t actually watching the public spanking. Instead his eyes were on something else confounding.

One of the other couples was standing off by the snack table, stuffing each other's faces with handfuls of vegetables. They forced the raw carrots and broccoli down, gagging from the effort. They seemed to be entirely unaware of their actions, like puppets on strings.

And beside them, near a fountain, I found our hosts - the husband, who admitted to being a Crossfitter earlier, had his thick arms wrapped around his wife in a hug, squeezing her so tightly I could hear the bones of her ribcage snapping one by one.

I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. I felt a familiar tingling sensation against my back.

Behind me, the children were standing in the sandbox, staring at us with impassive faces. Harper’s eyes were set on mine. They seemed to glow.

The sensation against my back spread through my body. I could feel the icy tendrils worm their way into my brain. Digging deeper, in search of control.

My head suddenly spun toward Dave on its own.

I stared at him blankly, as a voice from deep within commanded me to -

“EAT YOUR DINNER.”

The last thing I remember is my eyes being directed toward a carving knife on the snack table behind Dave, and feeling compelled to use it to carve my husband into ribbons of flesh that I would then slurp up like spaghetti noodles.

“Elle…” David said, noticing me. “Why the hell are you smiling like that?”

I couldn’t respond. A fog had flushed my senses. My body was no longer mine.

Hours later, a woman in a black pantsuit shook me awake.

“Mrs. Parker?” she said. “Are you here with me?”

It took a minute to orient myself. My hands were restrained in chicken wire. There was blood on my dress. The backyard was teeming with police and paramedics. Some of the parents were being treated for wounds, others wheeled away on gurneys. Dave among them, alive, thank god, receiving bandages for several knife wounds - his face pale, aghast.

I would later learn from him that while I was under the control of our daughter, I had picked up a serving knife and tried to plunge it into his chest. He fended me off but we were both cut up badly in the process.

“I'm a contractor with The Nova Institute,” the woman said, her eyes hidden behind reflective aviators. “I have some questions for you about Harper.”

“...Where is she?” I asked, trying unsuccessfully to stand, my feet also bound in wire. “Where’s my baby?”

“That’s what I want to talk to you about. We recovered the other children, but Harper wasn’t among them. Now I need you to be very honest with me, Mrs Parker, because this situation is not good for either of us… Do you know where we can find your daughter?”

I glanced over at Dave just as he turned my direction. We traded a brief look and in that look I knew that Harper was now in possession of him. She was somewhere nearby, using him to avoid detection.

“I have no idea,” I told the woman. “But my daughter had nothing to do with this.”

The woman sighed. She rose to her feet, and looked down at me.

“I hate to break it to you, ma'am, but your fucking kid is not all right…”

She wandered off to speak to Dave as a paramedic swooped in to help me out of my restraints. I watched as Harper used Dave to explain that he had seen her leave through a side gate, so she would be far away by now.

My heart swelled. Our sweet baby girl realized she did need us after all.

Harper’s in our care now. We’ve moved several times since these events, so it won’t be possible to find us. We have our differences, like any family, but we’re working through them. Most importantly, we know what our daughter is, and what she’s not.

One day, when we release our baby to the world, I hope you are just as accepting as we have been. Otherwise, well, she does have a way of commanding a room.