In Persia lived a French couple, the husband working for the sultan as the French ambassador. Madeline and Frederick live a life of haughty luxury. Frederick was a strong good-looking man with clear skin and glossy blonde hair. He was a wonderful singer and musician and they would often sing together. Madeline was the opposite of Frederick, long thick hair falling down her back, and with soft curls weaved throughout it she was a vision, with creamy porcelain skin and sparkling green eyes.

They were friends, though they did not love each other. It had been an arranged marriage, a marriage for society both of them being upper class and wealthy they suited each other's needs, neither of them looking or caring for love.

But they did not love each other so Madeline felt no guilt when she'd spend an afternoon in bed with Frederick's colleague or the handsome stable boy. She was a housewife, bored and waiting for her husband to return home and they could go out to parties and meetings. She felt no concern about whether she got pregnant or not, until it happened.

She had not thought it through when she decided to take a shortcut through the dark alleyways of the foreign city. She had been out for a morning stroll around the town and was bored so she cut through a dark alleyway.

She saw diseased chickens in coops, most of them missing more than half their feathers and she shuddered when she saw the hungry beggar children. She was a shallow vain woman and screamed when they came to her, their palms out. She shooed them away and then cut though a dank passageway, hoping it was the way out.

She found fresh air and the road to her home. But a grimy hand placed itself on her shoulder and she screamed as she turned to see a living corpse a hold of her.

His eyes rolled and the right half of his face was terribly deformed, pockmarked and red. She shrieked but he covered her mouth as her eyes widened.

This man had hardly any hair, though he only looked eighteen years old, her own age. He grinned at her, a mouth completely devoid of teeth. A great black hole served as the nose that had never grown and his skin on his left side was like yellow flaking parchment, pulled and stretched over his face, like a living skull.

He forced her back into the dark passageway and then to the ground and laughed as he raped her, once then once again.

She lay shaking and crying as she gaped at his face. His expression changed from triumphant to anger and he yelled in frustration.

"I get it! You think I'm some madman! Because of this! This damned deformity!" he shouted in fury pointing to his deformed face and she whimpered. He shook his head.

"Please…"she said as she cried and he pulled her to his feet and pushed her out of the alleyway back into the sunlight.

She cried as she walked home, trying to make sense of the man. What was it that he called his face? A deformity? Did he mean he was born with it? What a monstrous gift to be given, for life. He didn't seem like an Arab and he spoke perfect English.

She tried to forget about that day, she pushed it from her mind and decided to be more careful with her shortcuts next time. She then continued on with her life.

The next month she was paralysed in fear, crying at what she had just realised. She had not bedded Frederick for months now and the past month she had been scared of having another affair after what had happened in the alleyway. That could only point to one man causing her illness every morning and her course being two weeks late.

She was with child.

She sent for a doctor and he confirmed it and was confused when she cried at the news.

When Frederick came home that day she sat him down and he asked what was the matter, she breathed slowly as she clutched her stomach in fear, knowing he would rage when she told him.

"I'm with child" the words spilled out and he looked at her funnily.

"How long?" he asked, confused and she gulped.

"One month so far" she said uneasily and his face whitened.

"We haven't…but…" he said slowly and she nodded.

"But it was not of my choice, I tried to fight him off but…" she began to protest but he slapped her face and her emerald earrings glittered in panic as they swung from her pierced lobes.

"Don't you think I don't know? Nadir, my colleague, came to me the other day and asked how have we been and I replied that we were fine and he chuckled and said some slide comment that I must be the only one my wife wasn't putting out for! You've had affair after affair! Don't you give me some bullshit story of rape and violation!" he shouted, picking up a vase and throwing it at the wall.

"I'm sorry!" she screamed but he grabbed her and pinned her against the wall, her sparkling green eyes filled with unveiled fear and she quivered at his angry touch.

"Sorry? Well guess what Madeline? So am I" he hissed and slapped her again. She fell to the floor and grabbed hold of the mantle piece, trying to get up but he kicked her shins and she fell. He kicked her stomach and she cried out in pain.

"No! The baby!" she screamed as tears poured down her cheeks.

"What some little bastard wont survive to see the light of day? You're more of a whore than I thought if you get knocked up then want to keep it!" he hissed threateningly into her ear and stormed out of the room, leaving Madeline to sob uncontrollably in a heap on the ground, clutching the small bump in her stomach with fear.

"Please let him live, please," she prayed silently "please don't kill my only child. Please, I fear Frederick is sterile, that he cannot give me a child. After two years of steady marriage he hasn't managed to provide me with a child. Please this is my only chance"

But for this Madeline was lucky and she thanked god every day when she realised how much her belly had swollen. She could feel the child kicking inside and this filled her with such joy though she knew Frederick would never love him.

Frederick was no longer her friend, with his pride wounded as his friends joked that his wife had to have an affair to get a child. He was now only cold and frosty to the lonely woman that married him. Madeline was once frivolous and vain, living her life in luxury, not giving a thought to the things that meant something. Now without her husband inviting her to accompany him to parties and dinners she sat at home in bed, fat and unwanted, the loneliest woman in Persia.

The day her baby was born was one she would never forget. Her water broke at one am and seven hours of contractions followed, her pain intermingled with the fear sprouted from the horror stories the midwives told of dead babies and miscarriages as they sat around, waiting.

She screamed and cried as she pushed the baby out of her and finally felt done and exhausted. She closed her eyes to the sounds of her child wailing but opened them suddenly to the youngest midwife screaming madly.

The baby was deformed, half of his face red and pockmarked and blistered, sparse hair only covering one side of his head. His right ear was just a lump of skin and cartilage and the right side of his nose spread and joined funnily to his face, as if it had melted and stretched the wrong way.

His whole left side of his face looked completely normal and healthy but his right side looked as if he had been burnt or corroded by acid. The only feature that remained the same for both sides were his blue eyes, the same as any baby's.

Madeline's eyes opened wide and she screamed and cried, shaking her head, her mind filling with dread and hatred at the monstrous baby now being placed gently into her arms.

"No! No!" she cried as the baby was placed in her arms.

Frederick came in to his wife's screaming and turned white as he saw the deformed baby in her arms and backed away slowly.

"Not only are you an adulteress but you can't give me a healthy child!" he said fearfully and backed out of the room as the midwives comforted the weeping Madeline.

"It looks as if its only surface, it's not hurting him or unhealthy. There was obviously something wrong. Tell me-early in the pregnancy you didn't fall onto your stomach did you?" one of the women asked her seriously as the baby suckled at Madeline's bosom.

"I might've" Madeline said faintly as she remembered that day when Frederick kicked her stomach as she told him of her pregnancy. She now stared with utter hatred at the ugly baby in her arms.

The thing was quiet and content in its mother's arms now but all Madeline wanted was for him to be taken away.

"That might've been it-we'll never know. What shall you call him?" the second midwife asked and Madeline hesitated.

She had planned to call him Charles, Charles Frederick Destler. But he didn't look like a Charles.

"Erik, Erik Charles Destler" and the midwives left the room and she glared at the baby, hatred building for the small child that had caused such hatred from her husband and rejection from her haughty friends. She glowered as her green eyes twinkled with fury.

"And may he regret ever being born"