Croatoan (short story)

"Croatoan" is a short story by Harlan Ellison, published in 1975 in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and anthologized in Strange Wine in 1978. The story was short-listed for a Hugo Award, and won a Locus Award. The story is also used for a specimen of analysis by Stephen King in Danse Macabre.

The story's narrator is forced by a hysterical girlfriend to descend into New York City's sewers, into which he has just flushed her aborted baby. Arriving there, he finds that fetuses populate the sewers, along with an animal population composed of similarly disposed-of crocodiles, whom the fetuses ride, and the word "Croatoan", crudely lettered on a wall near the entrance to the sewer. The story ends with the narrator's hysterical realization: "I am the one they have been looking for all along....They call me father."

"Croatoan" was also carved into a tree at the deserted Roanoke colony, possibly referring to a nearby island the colonists may have fled to.

In the story's introduction, Ellison states that the story is neither for nor against abortion, but rather a promotion of personal responsibility. He goes on to say that after writing the story he had a vasectomy.