CONTEST HONORABLE MENTION: “Skink” by Wilson Krause

Skink

By Wilson Krause

Did you know that lizards of the family Scincidae have developed a process during reproduction that is analogous to the mammalian placenta? Not for a live birth, by any means — they are lizards, after all — but the young are nourished within the womb. Isn’t that something? A lizard embryo and a human embryo share a kindred experience; nurtured by nature. Of course we’re far more complicated than Scincidae; twice the genome, not to mention that we can conceive of God, and don’t get me started on the process of invention. But I’ve always liked lizards.

There was a family of them ambling around in that highway ditch after the crash. That’s what I remember noticing. One of them crawled over Lizzie’s face. Crawled over her belly.

Scincidae have a gestation period somewhere in the ballpark of three months. Small nests, small clutches of eggs, and the community guarding it. Imagine that, being an expecting mother lizard and having your friends and neighbors stand watch around the cradle. They say it takes a village…

I study the Blotched Blue-Tongued Skink, Tiliqua nigrolutea. I take measurements of their neckless bodies, I feel the way their scales interlock and shift. I take mucus samples from their thick, navy tongues. I had to choose from the dozens in the lab, settling on Beth, my largest female, 47.8 centimeters long, 15.3 ounces. One year and three months old, by my nearest estimate. She’s going to do nicely.

The ultrasound told us it was going to be a baby girl, small but healthy. They told us it would go without complication, and maybe it would’ve had we made it to the hospital. Had the truck seen us around the corner. Had she been in the back instead of the passenger seat…

I didn’t have a village. I had only myself and time alone to weep in her stillness. Time to make an extraction. Call me a desecrator, call me the Oviraptor, whatever you like, but don’t you dare call me wrong. The science, the theory, is sound. It worked, to an extent, with mouse embryos, and I have the eggs to try again and again. Beth is sedated in the lab and I am ready to begin. Convergent evolution at its finest: these creatures evolving just so, their stars aligning with my own, at this day, at this hour. I have fertilized the eggs already, gently readying them within the temporary womb of the syringe. This is merely an exercise of my humanity, my dominion over every living thing that creepeth upon the Earth.

I wonder if my daughter will come out with scales?

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