He slammed the grass carp onto the cutting board and raised the knife. The blunt edge came down. Thud. Thud. The gills slowed; the tail kept twitching. 

He flipped the knife. The blade pressed against the anus at the belly’s base—an entry point he knew well, like the swollen, pulsing opening he had once touched between his wife’s legs. His finger slid inside, guts spilling into the plastic bag. The fish’s mouth snapped open and shut, mechanical. 

Something was watching him. 

In the window, behind the glass: his wife’s legs spread, a pink mass sliding out. The baby’s mouth wide, crying. Something rose from it—surely sound—but all he could see was the image. He remembered the scissors in his hand, the warm towel, the tiny navel. Was that when the infection began? 

He severed the gill nerve. The fish finally stilled. Blood curled through the wood grain, like soaked sheets beneath a birthing bed. They couldn’t afford a midwife. He had delivered the child himself. The boy cried nonstop— then stopped. 

Running water flushed the hollow belly. The pale flesh quivered. He recoiled. The fish slipped from his hands. For a moment, he saw that newborn again.

Huina Zheng is a college essay coach and an editor. Her stories appear in Baltimore Review, Variant Literature, and more. Nominated three times for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, she lives in Guangzhou, China with her family.