Week 12 Storytelling: The Elephant Head Child

Pam was lonely. She had wanted a child for so long but her husband, Steven, never wanted children. She begged and begged for him to have a baby with her but his answer was always the same.

"I think that I was made to be a mother," Pam told Steven. She knew what his answer would be but she needed to continue to try.

"You know that I don't want children, Pam," Steven answered her. "We have discussed this before. The answer is still no."

Devastated, Pam decided to take a walk. She continued to walk until she came across a baby. She couldn't believe it. This was finally her chance to become a mother. She didn't need Steven's permission.

She cradled the baby into her arms and walked him home. She was relieved when she saw that Steven's car wasn't in the driveway. She took the baby inside and rocked him to sleep.

Steven walked in on Pam in the rocking chair.

"What are you doing, honey?" He asked. He walked calmly to where Pam was sitting. He looked into her arms and realized that she was rocking a baby doll.

"I'm rocking our new baby." Pam replied, with a smile on her face.

Steven was so confused. What was Pam thinking? Did she seriously think that this joke would make him want to have a real baby. Angrily, he grabbed the doll from Pam and threw it across the room. Pam screamed when she saw the doll's head pop right off of the body. She began to cry hysterically.

It was at that moment that Steven realized just how sick his wife actually was. She genuinely thought that the baby was real and he knew that he needed to find a way to fix it. He grabbed his wife and walked her to the bedroom.

"I'm so sorry, Pam." he said. "I will fix the baby. I promise you that he is fine."

Pam laid down and closed her eyes. She knew that her baby was going to be okay. Steven would make sure of it. He was going to be such a good daddy.

Steven looked at the head of the doll. He had thrown it so hard that the head was unsalvageable. He went to the garage and found a stuffed elephant. He took the head of the elephant and attached it to the doll.

He laid the doll next to Pam. He would let her take care of the doll and he would continue to take care of her, no matter how sick she was. He could pretend that the doll was a baby. He would do it if it meant that Pam would be happy.

Ganesha. Source: Tumblr

Author's note: I based this story off of the birth of Ganesha from the video Ganesha's Secret. In the video, it describes how Ganesha was born. Parvati scrubbed a paste off of her body and used it to make a doll. She breathed life into the doll and it became her child, Vinayaka. Shiva, Parvati's husband, did not know that the boy was the child that Parvati created and he beheads the boy. After seeing how devastated Parvati was about the boy's death, Shiva attached an elephant head to the boy's body to bring him back to life. The boy with the elephant head was renamed Ganesha. I wanted to change the story to be a bit more modern and more realistic. Since it wouldn't be realistic for the elephant head boy to be real, I had Pam have a psychotic break and think that the doll that she found was a baby. I also wanted her husband to be supportive of this fact after he realizes that she thinks the doll is real so he fixes it and decides that he is going to let his wife continue to care for this doll as if it was a real child.