From dailyprompt: “ancient fertility rite.”

Warning: implied sexual violence. Also? Weird. Written in 15 minutes on Write-or-Die, with distractions.

“Come on, Jen,” Isaiah coaxed, tugging her hand, trying to urge her up the strangely symmetrical hill. “It’s an ancient fertility rite.”

“Do you really think we need fertility?” she complained, even as she gave in to his tugging. The path seemed to spiral the hill, though it looked, upon closer inspection, to be circular paths joined by short stairways. Everything looked ancient, like Isaiah’s mythical fertility rite, and yet nothing was falling down, the stairs were level, the paths smooth.

“Well, we’ve been trying,” he pointed out, “and trying, and trying…”

It had only been three months, but, instead of getting into it (again), she put on her best teasing expression. “I thought you were having fun with the ‘trying, and trying, and trying?'” And, just in case he thought she was complaining, she added, “I know I was. Am… are we going to try again here?”

“Something like that.”

She eyed him thoughtfully; over the last four weeks, he had been getting increasingly weird, squirrely, hiding things from her. At first, she’d thought it was another woman, or that, since he’d been complaining so much, the “pressure” of having a baby. Not that there ought to be pressure; she was only twenty-four. Time was not exactly running out.

“Ise, let’s just go home, please?” she tried. “It looks like it’s going to storm any moment now.” The stairs were getting steeper, and this was a lot more real exercise than the treadmill at the complex’s gym.

“If we do it right, it will do more than storm,” he murmured. Really frightened now, Jen tried to pull away, but his grip was implacable, and he’d gotten to full-out yanking when she dug her feet in. “Come on, Jen, don’t get stupid now, of all times.”

“Of all times? Ise, what are you talking about?” She let him yank her to the top of the hill, where the conical shape leveled into a slight depression, with a smaller cone of stone protruding from the top. That obelisk was maybe six feet tall, if one could gauge from the height of the frightened girls tied to either side of it. “Isaiah!”

But he was throwing her down on the ground, on a spot where, from the way the ground was indented, others had done the same, and the storm was beginning to open up as he pushed her legs open. “I’m sorry, Jen,” he muttered, “but I really, really, need that baby now.”

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