Your hands tremble as you place the contraption of plastic and unknown fibers between your legs. You concentrate with every ounce of your energy, because you don’t want to screw this up. Your heart is pounding and so many thoughts are dancing off the walls of the inside of your skull that you feel dizzy and sick to your stomach.

Once the act has been completed and the all-knowing strip placed on the bathroom sink, you lean back against the cool porcelain toilet and allow yourself a few seconds of self reflection. You think back to the last pill you took, how much alcohol you drank, that line of coke you snorted two weeks ago. You feel the itch of a nicotine pulling at the inside of your chest, but resist the urge to light it up, because for all you know, the cyanide and battery acid within that tiny, deadly cylinder could be smothering the lungs of an unborn child.

You try not to start crying, because your father is sitting in the living room with a bottle of beer between his greasy pant legs, watching the third quarter of a college football game, and if he heard your soft weeps, he might try to investigate. The thought itself was terrifying, much less what it would actually be like if he discovered your activities in the tiny bathroom.

You bite the skin between your thumb and pointer finger to cure the urge to scream. You feel the pain of your skin being pinched between your teeth, feel the blood rising to the surface, the heat spreading across your palm and up your fingertips.

How could you have been so stupid?

Barely out of middle school and sleeping with men twice your age, just so that you can have a warm place to sleep at night when daddy feels like tossing you around, because he’s pissed that he can’t hold a job. The money is just a bonus.

It’s been two minutes, and a little color is starting to show. You watch the ink bleed across the pad, sinking into each pore with deadly force, constricting your heart with every half millimeter gained. You think you’re going to faint.

What will you do? Abortion seems like the best option. The child would end up being a crack baby, and you know it. If it didn’t die from withdrawals, it would probably starve. And if that wasn’t the killer, your father would surely make you give it up, or else send you away to the state. But could you bring yourself to take the life of a child? Could you let someone suck its tiny brains from its tiny skull into a tube from out between your legs? Could you live with yourself?

Probably not. You would always live your life knowing that you once had something growing inside of you, and you killed the only thing that would ever love you unconditionally. It would never leave you. You’d never survive.

The shape is starting to take focus. You didn’t look at the box on purpose. You didn’t want to know what to look for until it was done. It was smart, because you don’t know if what you think is happening is good or bad.

It’s clear now, and you stare at it. How could something so insignificant be so life-shattering in so many lives? Now you’re afraid to look at the box. The tears start to cascade down your face. You take a few shaky breaths and grab for the flimsy cardboard. You have to force the instructions in front of your face. You’re on your knees on the broken tile.

The results are negative.

You allow a low, forced breath to escape from your lungs, and place the loaded gun back in the cabinet.