by Murr
Dr. Lassiter looked up, then, and Jamie saw that his eyes were silver, flat, like ten pence coins staring back at him. ‘The answer to that, Jamie, is into the millions.’
‘You knew what I was thinking?’
Again that smile. Jamie found himself uncomfortably reminded of a shark showing its teeth.
‘Of course,’ he said, delighted with the opportunity to show off. ‘You’re part of me, now.’
‘Part of you?’ Jamie asked. He took a step back, prompting another grin. He looked to his father, standing at his side, and saw that his father looked… vacant. His face was blank, his jaw slack, he just stood there. Empty. ‘Is that what…?’
‘You looked like earlier?’ Lassiter asked, and now he laughed. ‘Well yes, actually. That’s exactly what you looked like.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I needed to download data from your…implants. Like I’m doing from your father, now.’
His father twitched, a shiver of silver gleaming in his vacant eyes, and then was still.
‘Are you hurting him?’ Jamie asked.
‘No, he’s not in pain,’ the doctor said. ‘He’s not much of anything right now, to be honest.’
Jamie thought about it. He watched Dr. Lassiter as the doctor watched him, a smile playing on his lips. The doctor’s eyes were almost pure silver now, his skin smooth, poreless. There was something unnerving about that gaze, something… ‘You’re not human, are you?’ he asked, finally.
Dr. Lassiter laughed. ‘And the boy wins the prize!’ He took a step closer, and now Jamie could see the motion under that skin. ‘Not anymore, no. I was the first test subject for these… implants.’
‘You keep calling them that,’ Jamie burst out, ‘but they’re alive, aren’t they? They’re not just machines.’
‘Yes,’ the doctor said, and nodded. ‘They are. I call them silverfish jokingly to my colleagues and patients, but that’s essentially what they are. I took a few of the bugs and started toying with their genetics, adding technology here and there, A.I.…’
‘A.I.?’
‘Of a sort.’ The doctor looked confused now, as if he couldn’t quite remember the specifics of what he’d done. ‘I’m not quite sure, to be honest. It’s almost as if I was… guided.’
The skin on his face rippled, as if the shoal inside was nervous, and the doctor’s face fogged over, went blank. When his eyes focused once more, he said, ‘so, what were we talking about? Ah yes, the silverfish. They’re quite something, aren’t they?’
Jamie nodded, eyeing the doctor warily. He edged back towards the bedroom door, but his father was there to stop him.
‘That won’t do any good, son,’ he said cheerily. ‘It’s too late, now.’
‘Too late?’ Jamie watched as his father tried, and failed, to process the question. He stood there, opening and closing his mouth, like some kind of puppet. ‘What did you do?’
Lassiter had the good grace to look appalled at what he saw. ‘That’s not me,’ he said, ‘I don’t know why they’re making him do that.’ He went vacant himself, then, and Jamie saw his silver eyes flashing from side to side as if trying to read really fast. Then he was back, and afraid. ‘They’re going to take him to the next stage,’ he said.
‘The next stage? What’s that?’
‘I don’t know,’ the doctor answered. ‘I really don’t.’
He went blank again, and Jamie’s dad was starting to roll down. That was the only way Jamie could think to describe it. His head was lowering, as if he was trying to go into the position for a forward roll, but from standing. He just kept rolling forward, his head and torso moving in a fashion that shouldn’t be humanly possible. As he did this, he was exuding something – a silver, shining kind of mucus that was hardening as it touched the air, forming a shell around him.
Jamie and the doctor both watched, aghast, as the man was cocooned, their final image his shocked face as he realized on some level what was happening to him.
‘Is that going to happen to us?’ Jamie asked, and was gratified to see the fear on Dr. Lassiter’s previously smug face.
‘I don’t… I don’t know,’ the man gasped, and Jamie saw that his eyes were only part silver now, as if he was trying to reassert himself – his essential human-self – over the silverfish coursing through his veins. He started to shudder, and through gritted teeth forced out one phrase. ‘Jamie… run!’
Jamie tried, but his legs locked him into position with a suddenness that almost made him topple over, and he was forced to watch as Dr. Lassiter started to go through the same process. The man was screaming; he wasn’t going to go quietly, as Jamie’s father had. Jamie cried out at a surge of pain in his legs, as if a million pins had been forced into his nerve endings, and then he too was rolling forward, rolling down, watching as he was encased in his own silver shell, ready for whatever came next.
Lying there, cocooned, Jamie tried to assemble his thoughts, tried to work out how to escape, but his thoughts were like quicksilver, flitting past and then gone. That whooshing was louder now, and it quickly became the only thing in his brain – or what was left of it. He could sense something else’s thoughts swimming around in the ether, his own flesh responding to their commands in a way he couldn’t withstand. His skin was hardening, becoming a shell, and he could feel prickling running all along both his sides as protuberances broke through and started to grow. They itched. He took a deep breath, or tried to, and felt his ribs starting to liquefy; he could breathe, but it was different now, almost as if he had… gills? Something like that, anyway. He couldn’t think, couldn’t feel, anything other than the whoosh whoosh in his head, his body. His head was full of silver, and he knew nothing then but the urge to flit, to find another, bigger host, be part of the shoal.
ENDS
Paul Kane
Paul Kane is the award-winning, bestselling author and editor of over seventy books
– including the Arrowhead trilogy (gathered together in the sellout Hooded Man
omnibus, revolving around a post-apocalyptic version of Robin Hood), The Butterfly
Man and Other Stories, Hellbound Hearts, The Mammoth Book of Body Horror and
Pain Cages (an Amazon #1 bestseller). His non-fiction books include The Hellraiser
Films and Their Legacy and Voices in the Dark, and his genre journalism has
appeared in the likes of SFX, Rue Morgue and DeathRay. He has been a Guest at
Alt.Fiction five times, was a Guest at the first SFX Weekender, at Thought Bubble in
2011, Derbyshire Literary Festival and Off the Shelf in 2012, Monster Mash and
Event Horizon in 2013, Edge-Lit in 2014, HorrorCon, HorrorFest and Grimm Up
North in 2015, The Dublin Ghost Story Festival and Sledge-Lit in 2016, plus IMATS
Olympia and Celluloid Screams in 2017, as well as being a panellist at FantasyCon
and the World Fantasy Convention, and a fiction judge at the Sci-Fi London festival.
A former British Fantasy Society Special Publications Editor, he is currently serving
as co-chair for the UK chapter of The Horror Writers Association. His work has been
optioned and adapted for the big and small screen, including for US network
primetime television, and his audio work includes the full cast drama adaptation of
The Hellbound Heart for Bafflegab, starring Tom Meeten (The Ghoul), Neve
McIntosh (Doctor Who) and Alice Lowe (Prevenge), and the Robin of Sherwood
adventure The Red Lord for Spiteful Puppet/ITV narrated by Ian Ogilvy (Return of
the Saint). Paul’s latest novels are Lunar (set to be turned into a feature film), the
Y.A. story The Rainbow Man (as P.B. Kane), the sequel to RED – Blood RED – the
award-winning hit Sherlock Holmes & the Servants of Hell and Before (a recent
Amazon Top 5 dark fantasy bestseller). He lives in Derbyshire, UK, with his wife
Marie O’Regan and hi
s family. Find out more at his site www.shadow-writer.co.uk
which has featured Guest Writers such as Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Charlaine
Harris, Robert Kirkman, Dean Koontz and Guillermo del Toro.
CRAVINGS by Paul Kane
That hunger. Believe me, it’s the worst.
The cravings, so intense you don’t know whether to laugh or cry. When you’re starving, ravenous. When you realize you’ve just got to eat, to devour – shovel it all into your mouth right away, sometimes swallowing it without even chewing. Because you’re eating for two, right? Because you have this thing inside you that’s reliant on you, that’s feeding on you, even as you feed it.
I should have just stayed in that Friday night all those months ago. That’s all it took, one night and your whole world is turned upside down. Only a few moments really when you get right down to it, not that I can remember the actual deed. I’ve had flashes sometimes, but… I don’t know, it doesn’t really matter now, does it? What’s done is done, that’s what my old grandma used to say. No use crying over spilt milk. Oh, but I did anyway – mainly because it was like a tanker-full rather than a bottle or a glass.
I’ve cried, dear Christ how I’ve cried.
Shouldn’t have gone. Shouldn’t have listened to Brenda – it was her stupid idea, and she’s had her fair share of those in the past. Especially when we were at uni, the amount of crazy things we did back then we wouldn’t have dreamed of before we left home. Well, I wouldn’t have anyway. That’s where I met her actually, Freshers’ Week. I’d arrived all shy and wet behind the ears, and suddenly there was this girl who not only knew the ropes, she’d climbed up them, down them, tied them into knots…
“So you are…?”
“Melissa. Mel.”
“Okay, Melissa, Mel. Wanna have some fun before you hit the books?”
And we certainly had that. In pub after pub, nightclub after nightclub. Drink, some drugs… and guys. There was no shortage of those. When I moved away from home, my parents thought I had my head on straight – and I probably did, till I came across Brenda. After that, it wasn’t so much on straight as back to front. I’m guessing my story isn’t that much different to a lot of people’s who went off to get a degree, or try to – I barely scraped it in the end because of the mistakes I made at the start, and a fat lot of good it did me out there in the real world getting a job anyway. Then again, what was I thinking with History of Art? Working in a gallery or something? Was never going to happen.
But, in any event, that’s how I met her, at Haylington University. That’s also where I met Gavin. I thought he was a pretty decent guy, compared to some of the losers I’d ended up with anyway. Didn’t know they were losers at the time, obviously – who does? Wouldn’t have been hanging around with them if I had… or maybe I would, because when you’re in the love haze you just can’t see it, can you? Gav had been part of an extended group I’d known for ages, that Brenda and I sometimes went out with. I never really saw him, though, you know what I mean? Not until that night when a couple of guys were trying it on, and I couldn’t see any of my mates around to help me out; not even Bren, who was probably in some corner somewhere with her tongue jammed down a bloke’s throat.
But Gav stepped in, like a knight in techno-coloured armour – at least that’s what he looked like under the lights in there.
“Are these idiots bothering you?” he said.
“Like you wouldn’t believe,” I told him. They weren’t bothering me after that. Backed off holding their hands up in surrender. The better man had won. “Thanks,” I said. And then Gav asked me what I was drinking… We ended up chatting till dawn, once we’d left that place – because we couldn’t hear ourselves think – and found an all night café.
After that we were pretty much inseparable, and whenever I went out with Brenda, Gav was always there too. Kept me on the straight and narrow, more or less. When my course finished, I ended up staying in that town – as did Brenda – and I ended up moving in with Gav. We were practically living together by that time anyway, so it just seemed like the next logical step. My folks were all right about it, or said they were – though maybe that was just because I didn’t give a toss whether they were or not. And that was that, life went on. Gav got a job working in IT, which was what he’d studied, and I managed to get something working at a call centre. I soon packed that in because of the hours and crappy pay, and found myself a receptionist’s job at the local dentists. Transferable skills, you see – using phones and all that. I was lucky to get it, liked the people there, and I got free dental. Even paid for driving lessons and a little car of my own (Gav’s was a company one).
I was like, hey, look at me, doing the whole adult thing. Winning at life…
Silly bitch.
I still went out every now and again, except it was to coffee shops in the daytime mainly with Bren – to have a natter. She was still a bit of a party animal, still “on the scene” and hadn’t really settled down with the one guy; in fact at any given time would have a few on the go. I used to look at her and think, God I’m glad that’s not me anymore. I’m so glad I’ve got Gav.
But people change, situations change. You’re not the same person in your late 20s you are at the beginning of them, or even in the middle. And men get bored. With some it takes a few weeks, with others even less. With some it takes a while. The longer he stayed with that firm, the more Gav used to go out with “the lads” he knew from it. At first only at weekends, then more and more in the week. Like he was actively trying not to spend time with me.
Then the emergencies at work started up, the conferences he would get sent on – and I later found out he volunteered for. I used to trust him, would joke that I could put him in a room full of naked women and he’d only want to cover them up because he thought they looked cold. We don’t really know anyone though, do we?
I’ll admit, it did make me a bit nuts for a while. I’d do the checking the phone thing that I swore I’d never do, demand to know exactly where he’d been and with who, though I very rarely got a straight answer. In the end the inevitable happened, and I came back to the flat to find he’d just packed up his stuff and left. Not without having somewhere else to live, of course. Men don’t let go of one branch till they have the next one firmly in their grip. Turned out he’d shacked up with one of the women he’d been seeing over the years – and there were a lot, trust me. This one worked at a solicitors they provided IT support for…fucking slut!
Why do we do that, why do we always blame the other women? It was Gav who was cheating: on me. She was a bit of a slut, though, by all accounts. I saw her once when I went round to theirs, waiting until they were both home to confront them on the driveway of her house. Ranting and raving, going mad at them and – can you believe it? – asking what I could do to get Gav back. Begging. Ridiculous…
Mum and dad didn’t help either, with all their talk about fish and the sea. Concerned that I was going to slip into some kind of depression like I used to do in my teens, and have another episode. But at least it stopped them from asking when I was going to make an honest man out of Gav – the answer to that: never, wasn’t possible – or when they could expect the grandkids to come along. That one’s almost laugh out loud funny now… not.
You can imagine what state I was in after all that, which is probably why I agreed to that night out. Dr Brenda’s prescription to get over Gav and his antics.
“You know what you need, don’t you?”
“Gav’s head on a plate?”
“A good old-fashioned night on the tiles, like we used to have.” Like Brenda still had, although I got the sense that she would have done anything to have me with her again. “Hasn’t been the same without you,” she confessed. When everything else fails, flattery and all out guilt-tripping will usually do the trick. “It’ll be fun,” Brenda assured me, although I was less than convinced.
Fun like in the old days, now that 30 was on the horizon, just sounded
sad and pathetic. I much preferred a cuppa and the soaps now to dancing the night away to some thumping beat, getting smashed out of my skull. In the end, I said yes more to shut her up than anything. I could always leave early if I wasn’t into it, get a cab and get back to my lonely sobbing into my tea. Much less sad and pathetic.
“You never know, you might even meet another fella,” Brenda had said. “Get you back on that horse again.”
That was the last thing I wanted, or needed. Riding of any description. And I told Brenda so, got her to promise that if I did come out with her she’d leave all that alone. Not try and set me up with anyone; it was my one and only condition.
In your condition…
“Oh… all right, just us girls. But you don’t know what you’re missing.”
I knew full well. Could live without knowing. Would live a lot longer without–
Brenda came round at 6 to “help” me get ready. Brought some of her clothes for me to choose from, because mine were woefully out of date and not at all appropriate for painting the town red – which meant that they covered up more than 20% of your body and didn’t leave you freezing to death when you came out of the club again. Of all of them, I went for the simplest – you can’t really go wrong with the little black dress, can you? Though I would have preferred it not to be quite so little. If the hem had been a bit longer, like somewhere in the region of my knees instead of just past my waist. Same went for the cleavage, which left very little to the imagination. Okay, nothing at all if I’m being honest.
“I can’t really get away with this kind of stuff anymore, Bren,” I told her.
“Rubbish,” she said, shushing me so she could put the finishing touches to my make-up, which apparently involved drawing my eyebrows on so thick it looked like they’d been marker-penned, and painting my lips so red it looked like I’d been wounded. A bleeding cut, to match my bleeding heart…
