Parasite
You stagger down Station Lane, towards the underpass.
It was a good night out with the lads, and you’re just a little worse for wear. Not that you can’t handle it. You’re just fine. You just need a rest, from lamp post to lamp post.
They’re a fair bit apart down this end of town, more so than you remember. Not that you come here often, after dark. You can’t quite recognise all the shuttered-up workshops along here, or all the yards with the barbed wire and the floodlights. Damn taxi drivers. They could tell your pockets were empty. No matter. You’re in no hurry.
You watch your twin shadows dance around your feet as you lurch from one pool of lamplight to the next. Just as the pavement gets to its darkest, you’re pulled clean off your feet.
Something’s got you by the collar, dragging you up a pitch black alley faster than you could ever run. Your heels scrape wildly against the broken-up tarmac, to no avail. You try to shout, but your mouth just fills with beery sick.
Then the something stops dead and dumps you on the ground. Still flying along, you roll and crash into a row of wheelie bins. You scrape up onto your elbows and spit out the bile in your throat. A floodlight casts its glare into the cluttered back alley. A lithe shape stands in the puzzle of white light and perfect shadow.
Surely, she’s too small to even push you over. With stilettos like that, she’d have all to do to stay upright on her own, let alone rugby-tackle you like that. Her filthy rock chick jacket and miniskirt make her look sickly thin, with spindly legs in torn fishnets. She looks like she’s spent the last six months sleeping rough.
“Come on then,” she cries. “Ain’t there some fight in you?”
She snarls and lunges. You fly off the floor in her grip and slam against the wall, sliding down into a pile of bin bags. She rushes at you again, and throws you clear across the alley into the metal cage of a fire escape. This time you throw up, proper. Your head rings with the shock.
Again, you are hoisted off the ground and flung against the wall opposite. This slip of a girl holds you there, pinned, with no effort.
“Ohhh, you are no fun at all, you,” she spits. You see her clearly now. Her short, spiky hair is crusted with blood and filth. Her cheeks are sallow and her eyes sunken, but they glitter in the darkness with a malice you’ve never before seen.
She crushes you to your knees and snaps your head back. You struggle against her grip, with all your last desperate strength. She just chuckles at your weakness and strikes like a snake. The pain spears through you. Four daggers split your neck. You feel her heave and heave at the wound. Her thirst drains your body.
And then it’s over. You slump to the floor. Although an inferno of pain flares through you, you are strangely lucid.
Something has gone wrong.
She staggers away, clutching at her throat, retching. She falls to the ground, flailing around, kicking over crates and oil drums. She claws at her face and throat, ripping open flesh that bursts like a balloon. Maggots flow between clutching fingers. Fat, black maggots that grow before your very eyes as they strain to return to the rent in her throat.
She stops struggling but her flesh boils from within. Her limbs dissolve in a bubbling, roiling mass of grubs, more voracious than the most vitriolic acid. Her eyes burst and her mouth spews a teeming multitude. In moments, her face vanishes.
With that vision in your eyes, you die.
And with a gasp of shock, revive.
It is dark, but your senses are sharper than ever. The night seems like broad daylight. Its silence is full of new sounds. Your belly clenches, not with sickness or fear, but with desperate hunger.
You jump to your feet and instinctively look for your maker, but there is no-one there. You have no idea how long you have lain between death and undeath.
And then you remember.
You walk over to the twisted shape on the other side of the alley. It has vague human form, a flattened lumpy crust, seemingly made of rolled up cobwebs and the dried slime of thousands of slugs, daubed all over some discarded tart’s clothing.
You give the mess a cautious kick, to turn it over. It crackles as you move it with your toe.
And then it seems to burst all over, spewing little clouds of pale dust, with the hideous crackling sound of popcorn from hell. The whole mass trembles violently with a ferocious buzzing, and a swarm of huge, black mosquitoes emerges from the agglutination of cocoons, each one a big as your splayed hand. Their cloud engulfs you and you try to swat them away, but they soon lose interest and disperse. It’s not your blood they’re after.
Your belly pangs once more with terrible hunger. You lick your teeth. They are horrifyingly sharp, but just so right.
And yet, doubt assails you. Your maker lies there, under that crust of insect sputum, or what is left of her. That is to say, nothing. You remember the maggots. They have cleaned up every last scrap of undead flesh. Their eggs must have been waiting in your mortal blood, waiting for a vampire to bite to hatch and feed, to grow and pupate and then fly to find new hosts.
You can still access the memories of the mortal who once owned your body, and he never knew he had been bitten, that he was a carrier. How many other mortals are carriers?
Your belly screams its hunger, and you double up in agony. But can you dare feed?
Can you risk ending up like her?
The hunger!
The fear!
It was a good night out with the lads, and you’re just a little worse for wear. Not that you can’t handle it. You’re just fine. You just need a rest, from lamp post to lamp post.
They’re a fair bit apart down this end of town, more so than you remember. Not that you come here often, after dark. You can’t quite recognise all the shuttered-up workshops along here, or all the yards with the barbed wire and the floodlights. Damn taxi drivers. They could tell your pockets were empty. No matter. You’re in no hurry.
You watch your twin shadows dance around your feet as you lurch from one pool of lamplight to the next. Just as the pavement gets to its darkest, you’re pulled clean off your feet.
Something’s got you by the collar, dragging you up a pitch black alley faster than you could ever run. Your heels scrape wildly against the broken-up tarmac, to no avail. You try to shout, but your mouth just fills with beery sick.
Then the something stops dead and dumps you on the ground. Still flying along, you roll and crash into a row of wheelie bins. You scrape up onto your elbows and spit out the bile in your throat. A floodlight casts its glare into the cluttered back alley. A lithe shape stands in the puzzle of white light and perfect shadow.
Surely, she’s too small to even push you over. With stilettos like that, she’d have all to do to stay upright on her own, let alone rugby-tackle you like that. Her filthy rock chick jacket and miniskirt make her look sickly thin, with spindly legs in torn fishnets. She looks like she’s spent the last six months sleeping rough.
“Come on then,” she cries. “Ain’t there some fight in you?”
She snarls and lunges. You fly off the floor in her grip and slam against the wall, sliding down into a pile of bin bags. She rushes at you again, and throws you clear across the alley into the metal cage of a fire escape. This time you throw up, proper. Your head rings with the shock.
Again, you are hoisted off the ground and flung against the wall opposite. This slip of a girl holds you there, pinned, with no effort.
“Ohhh, you are no fun at all, you,” she spits. You see her clearly now. Her short, spiky hair is crusted with blood and filth. Her cheeks are sallow and her eyes sunken, but they glitter in the darkness with a malice you’ve never before seen.
She crushes you to your knees and snaps your head back. You struggle against her grip, with all your last desperate strength. She just chuckles at your weakness and strikes like a snake. The pain spears through you. Four daggers split your neck. You feel her heave and heave at the wound. Her thirst drains your body.
And then it’s over. You slump to the floor. Although an inferno of pain flares through you, you are strangely lucid.
Something has gone wrong.
She staggers away, clutching at her throat, retching. She falls to the ground, flailing around, kicking over crates and oil drums. She claws at her face and throat, ripping open flesh that bursts like a balloon. Maggots flow between clutching fingers. Fat, black maggots that grow before your very eyes as they strain to return to the rent in her throat.
She stops struggling but her flesh boils from within. Her limbs dissolve in a bubbling, roiling mass of grubs, more voracious than the most vitriolic acid. Her eyes burst and her mouth spews a teeming multitude. In moments, her face vanishes.
With that vision in your eyes, you die.
And with a gasp of shock, revive.
It is dark, but your senses are sharper than ever. The night seems like broad daylight. Its silence is full of new sounds. Your belly clenches, not with sickness or fear, but with desperate hunger.
You jump to your feet and instinctively look for your maker, but there is no-one there. You have no idea how long you have lain between death and undeath.
And then you remember.
You walk over to the twisted shape on the other side of the alley. It has vague human form, a flattened lumpy crust, seemingly made of rolled up cobwebs and the dried slime of thousands of slugs, daubed all over some discarded tart’s clothing.
You give the mess a cautious kick, to turn it over. It crackles as you move it with your toe.
And then it seems to burst all over, spewing little clouds of pale dust, with the hideous crackling sound of popcorn from hell. The whole mass trembles violently with a ferocious buzzing, and a swarm of huge, black mosquitoes emerges from the agglutination of cocoons, each one a big as your splayed hand. Their cloud engulfs you and you try to swat them away, but they soon lose interest and disperse. It’s not your blood they’re after.
Your belly pangs once more with terrible hunger. You lick your teeth. They are horrifyingly sharp, but just so right.
And yet, doubt assails you. Your maker lies there, under that crust of insect sputum, or what is left of her. That is to say, nothing. You remember the maggots. They have cleaned up every last scrap of undead flesh. Their eggs must have been waiting in your mortal blood, waiting for a vampire to bite to hatch and feed, to grow and pupate and then fly to find new hosts.
You can still access the memories of the mortal who once owned your body, and he never knew he had been bitten, that he was a carrier. How many other mortals are carriers?
Your belly screams its hunger, and you double up in agony. But can you dare feed?
Can you risk ending up like her?
The hunger!
The fear!
