To Be One With You: An Anthology of Parasitic Horror

by Murr

  Wednesday, August 10th, 6:40 p.m.

  The inflatable pool chair he lounges on has seen better days, but he couldn’t be more comfortable. His eleventh or twelfth can of beer is getting warm; he should’ve grabbed a coozie (Aunt Vickie has a drawer full of them in her kitchen).

  Her pool is in need of cleaning. He floats amidst cigarette butts, leaves, twigs, a couple aluminum cans, and an overall filmy scum clings to the top. But the water feels great, and he’s not thinking one bit about his possession, intent to sell, and paraphernalia charges.

  Jess said she’d be getting off work a couple hours ago. Where’s she? He leans back into the slick, crinkly plastic. She’ll get here when she gets here and, if he’s not too drunk, she’ll be glad she did. He is an exquisite lover after half a case of beer.

  Wednesday, August 10th, 3:30 p.m.

  Jer reads in his aunt’s curly cue cursive:

  Jeremiah, thanks so much for minding the house while we’re on our honeymoon!!! Sunny needs 2 scoops of dry cat food in the morning. If he don’t wanna eat that there’s a little wet food in the fridge. Please change his kitty litter every couple days. There’s a whole bunch of plastic bags for his turds in the cabinet under the sink. The pots need about a half-gallon of water daily, and I like to turn the sprinkler on for the lawn about 7 every night. Please bring in the mail. Help yourself to any food you want. There’s bread in the freezer and meat in the fridge. Cindy called and said not to leave any alcohol in the house while you are here but I won’t tell if you don’t. There’s a case of beer in the fridge. She’s punctuated this sentence with a smiley face.

  The pool. I wouldn’t swim in there if I were you. The cleaners were supposed to come up from Kalispell last week but we haven’t heard a peep out of them.

  Any questions at all, just give us a call on my cell. XOXOXOXO

  Thursday, August 11th, 10:43 p.m.

  He wakes in the bed without Jess, who won’t return any of his phone calls. In the hallway, he hears a thumping against the floor. He turns on the lamp on Aunt Vickie’s nightstand and gets up to see what the commotion is.

  “Oh, shit, Sunny,” he says. “Stop that!” he commands, but the cat ignores him. Anything beyond the bat Sunny’s drug in from outside is irrelevant—unworthy of his attention.

  “Sunny,” Jer says, but without any real concern. It’s odd he isn’t more upset about a half-dead bat in the house.

  The cat has the bat pinned. It flails helplessly under his front legs. Sunny has shredded the little bat’s wings with his claws.

  Jer feels a strange feeling of approval as he watches his aunt’s cat spray urine at the bat’s mouth and nose. He’s glad to see the dark yellow stream splatter against the coarse fur of the little bat’s face.

  He reflects on the scene below him for a few seconds, and then he gets his a-ha moment: the cat is making the bat like him, isn’t he? Just as Jer made the cat like him by serving him his blood, the cat is pissing into the bat’s mouth and nose with the same intention. They infect you, the parasites. The nature of the infection? They make you a version of themselves, and then you infect the live things around you, to make them a version of yourself. It’s reproduction. Why didn’t he understand earlier? Spreading the infection from the bugs in the pool is a form of copulation.

  He feels the same tension he felt when he sliced his hand open to give the cat his blood, except now it feels more intense. He has that feeling akin to hunger, to horniness. He has got to relieve himself.

  Jer puts on pants. He marches down the hallway to the kitchen, where he turns on the light. Standing over the trashcan, he rips the bandage off his hand and tosses it in the garbage. He stretches out his hand so the hard, dry seal of his scab breaks. He spreads the incision wide with his fingers, so his blood babbles out the wound. Then he grabs a steak knife out of Aunt Vickie’s knife block and puts it in his pocket. As he strides out the front door, through the front lawn, he opens and closes his fist to get as much blood flowing out of his hand as possible.

  Mr. and Mrs. Lakoff, next door to Aunt Vickie, must be in bed. All their lights are off. Standing on their astroturfed porch, Jer takes a deep, excited breath. Then he pounds on the front door.

  Thursday, August 11th, 10:52 p.m.

  “That’s a pretty nasty cut. A doctor ought to at least take a look at it if nothing else,” Mr. Lakoff says.

  “Do you think you could drive me to the emergency room? I’m sorry it’s so late.”

  “Hang on,” Mr. Lakoff says, “just let me get dressed. We’ll get some bandages for you.”

  He turns and Jer fingers the knife in his pocket. His back is to him. It’s the perfect opportunity. But a part of Jer’s brain—a non-parasitic part—causes him to hesitate. It causes him to feel horrible about what he’s doing. In no way do these nice old people deserve what he’s going to do to them. Why can’t he just give his infected blood to animals? That’s a lot easier than spreading it to people. He could go donate blood, but the tests he’d have to take would detect the aberration in his system—and it wouldn’t be anywhere near as satisfying.

  As Mr. Lakoff walks to his bedroom to get changed, Mrs. Lakoff steps forward.

  “My heavens, Jeremiah, that’s a nasty cut,” she says, rubbing her eyes and yawning. “Won’t you come inside? I have to admit, the sight of blood repels me. So, excuse me for looking away from you. Do you need some water, dear?”

  Jer reaches in his pocket and fingers the knife again. His urge is explosive, but she is so nice. He will feel primordially ecstatic when he cuts her and pushes his open wound against hers.

  “Oh, no thank you,” he says.

  He needs to give vent to his instincts. Why control it? Why deny the urge? He lets himself be overcome and bursts toward the old woman, tackles her, and slices open her arm with the serrated blade. She screams violently. “DALE! DALE! AGHHH!”

  Mr. Lakoff runs out of the bedroom with half his shirt buttoned and tears Jer off his wife, but not before Jer smears his mutilated hand all over the cut he’s carved into her. She will be like him and the cat and the bat and the bugs in the pool.

  A veteran of the Vietnam War, Mr. Lakoff still knows his hand-to-hand combat. He swings his fist at Jer. He wraps his leg around Jer’s. He then pushes a pressure point, causing Jer to drop his knife. He socks him in the jaw and Jer’s face explodes in pain.

  There’s no way he can get his knife, because Lakoff puts him in a headlock. Jer slithers his neck around enough to bite Lakoff’s leathery old arm. The old man wails and recoils as Jer squeezes his teeth till he wonders if they’ll break. He chomps down till he tastes blood—warm and thick and coppery.

  Lakoff cries out in pain and curses him and throws him halfway across the room. Jer rolls to his feet and runs into the old man and manages—thank God—to press his wound into Mr. Lakoff’s bleeding teeth marks. Blood to blood. It’s orgasmic. It’s better than coming. It is relief, par excellence.

  Friday, August 12th, 1:39 a.m.

  He calls Jess from the precinct phone. It’s his one call. It goes to voicemail.

  “Hey, baby, it’s me.” He knows he’s already had his last chance with her, and it’s for the best that it will be over between them. She will want to sever her ties, and that is hard to stomach. Life without Jess. No more hearing her husky laugh. No more crosswords at the diner. Those moans she makes when she eats. Her impressions of cartoon characters. Her pretty feet. He’d infect her. He’d make her like him and Sunny and the bat and Mr. and Mrs. Lakoff, and whoever or whatever all of them happen to infect. Jail is the best place for him, because it will be very difficult to spread it while confined to a cell.

  “I’m back in jail,” he says into the phone, “and it’s really hard to explain what I’ve been going through.

  “I honestly don’t want to be bailed out. I don’t want a lawyer, or nothing. This is where I belong and this is where I’m going to stay for a while. I’m really, really sorry, Jess.”

  The thought of
melding blood with her is suddenly blocking out all other thoughts. The phone is pressed to his face but he’s not saying anything.

  He is surrounded by living things that are not like him but so easily could be—will be—must be. All they need is your—our—blood.

  Finally, a non-parasitic part of him says, “I love you,” and he hangs up.

  Adam Millard

  Adam Millard is the author of twenty-six novels, twelve novellas, and more than two hundred short stories, which can be found in various collections, magazines, and anthologies. Probably best known for his post-apocalyptic and comedy-horror fiction, Adam also writes fantasy/horror for children, as well as bizarro fiction for several publishers. His work has recently been translated for the German market.

  TONGUE by Adam Millard

  “Will you be my best man?” Dan said, handing me a beer so cold I almost dropped it. We were alone in the kitchen; Alice and Zoe were in the living room, most likely discussing dresses, hen-night plans, and the best agency from which to order a reputable male stripper.

  Dan and I had been friends since school, and though I was the obvious choice, I’d never expected him to ask me to be best man at their forthcoming wedding. It was, I thought, a role more suited to one of his three brothers.

  “Me?” I said, trailing a finger through the ice-cold condensation on the side of my beer.

  “Of course, you,” Dan said, as if I should have seen this coming. “You’re my oldest mate.” He cracked his own beer open and knocked half of it back in one thirsty gulp.

  I decided to take this opportunity to talk my way out of it, or at least try. “What about Calvin? He loves all that public speaking bollocks. This is right up his street.” As Dan’s oldest brother, and one of the funniest guys I’d ever met, I couldn’t think of a better person for the job, but Dan was already shaking his head, and shaking it hard.

  “Fuck that,” he said. “I mean, he’s funny, and he’s good in front of an audience, but… I wouldn’t trust him. Not the way I trust you.”

  I didn’t quite know what to say to that. That he was making a terrible mistake? That I would most likely be up there in front of all those people with a microphone and a dumb look on my face, stammering like English wasn’t my first language, or even my second?

  “I’ve never done a speech before,” I told him. All at once I wished I hadn’t come into the kitchen, presenting my friend with this opportunity to accost me. I wished I’d have stayed in the living room with the girls; I could have steered them in the direction of a fireman with a foot-long hose. Now I had this to deal with, and I knew there was no way of getting out of it.

  “It’s easy,” Dan said as he wiped beer from his chin. “You tell a few jokes, say something nice about Alice, and then finish up with a toast. Piece of piss, mate.”

  It didn’t sound like a piece of piss to me. it sounded like a waking nightmare, the kind of thing that could only end badly. My heart was already racing at the thought of it. All those faces staring at me expectantly, all those people not laughing when they should be and laughing when they shouldn’t be, and me turning a strange shade of beetroot and wishing I’d stayed the fuck out of the kitchen…

  “It would mean the world to me. And to Alice,” Dan said. “She loves you and Zoe, and I know she’d be gutted if you couldn’t do it.”

  Well, fuck, I thought. How could I say no now? Clearly Dan and Alice had already made their minds up. They wanted me to give this damn speech, and though it wouldn’t ruin their wedding if I were to say no, that Dan would have no choice but to ask one of his brothers to take the reins, I would feel as if I’d let them down.

  “Fine,” I said, finally opening my beer. “I’ll try not to screw it up, mate.” We chinked cans, and returned to the living room, one of us beaming like the Cheshire Cat and the other wide-eyed and haunted.

  What had I let myself in for?

  *

  Later that night, Zoe and I were getting ready for bed. We were both a little drunk, and more than a little tired, but I knew something was on the cards. Me offering to be Dan’s best man had stirred something in Zoe, made me irresistible to her. I’ll never understand how women’s minds work, but no sooner were we in bed than Zoe was reaching beneath the covers, grabbing hold of me and working away at me as if this was our final night on earth.

  I exhaled, pulling her close to me. We rarely made love anymore, so when it did happen, I never complained or turned it down. “Lie on your back,” I whispered, and Zoe moaned. She knew what was coming; I’m nothing if not a considerate lover. Not having regular sex meant I would most likely be the only one of us to orgasm, and quickly, if I wasn’t careful.

  This way, I could ensure Zoe came first, and then I’d move in for the coup de grâce, or as I liked to think of it, the best two minutes of my week.

  Beneath the covers it was warm, and it wasn’t long before Zoe was writhing around, pulling my face deeper into her. I buried my tongue in deep, flicked at her expertly, making sure to quicken or slow my tongue according to the noises she made. By the time she climaxed, I was sweating and just as breathless as she was. I crawled up onto her, and though I tried to pace myself, it wasn’t long before I too orgasmed. I rolled off, and we lay there, panting and neither of us speaking for a while.

  I was in a pleasant doze, thinking of nothing in particular, when Zoe said, “I’m so pleased you said yes to Dan.”

  “Huh?”

  “The best man thing,” she said. “I didn’t think you’d do it, what with your fear of public speaking, but I’m pleased you said yes. They really wanted you—”

  “Yeah, I got that from Dan,” I said, cutting her off. “They didn’t really leave me much of a choice.”

  Though it was dark in the bedroom, I knew Zoe was now facing me, for I could feel her warm breath on the side of my face. “You’ll be just fine,” she said. “And besides, it’s not like you don’t have time to prepare. It’s two weeks until the wedding. I’m sure you can write something hilarious in two weeks.”

  I fucking doubt it, I thought, suddenly wishing Zoe hadn’t broached the subject when I was trying to get to sleep. Now I would have to lie in the dark, silently panicking and trying to figure out ways of letting Dan and Alice down gently, for there was no way I could give a speech in front of a room of people, most of whom were strangers to me.

  But fear of being Dan’s best man was not the only thing keeping me awake that night. There was a strange tingling sensation all across my tongue, not wholly unpleasant, but rather a numbness that I attributed to the oral sex I’d just performed on Zoe.

  Running my tongue across my teeth, trying to feel something—anything—I fell asleep shortly thereafter, not knowing that when I awoke, my whole world would be on its way to Hell in a hand basket.

  *

  I went to work as normal, but by lunchtime my tongue had swollen to twice its normal size. I could barely speak, let alone string together coherent sentences, and so when Mr Whittaker summoned me to his office at one in the afternoon, I knew the shit was about to hit the fan.

  “You can’t answer the phone like that,” he said, motioning to my face. “A couple of your colleagues are really concerned about you. Said you’ve been lisping, that they can’t understand what you’re saying. Have you had some sort of stroke, Mr Cavendish?”

  I told him that no, I had not, not that I was aware of, after which he simply sat staring at me for a moment before speaking. “Well, I see where they’re coming from. You’re barely intelligible. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re in the throes of some kind of allergic reaction. Are you allergic to anything, Mr Cavendish?”

  “I thon’t think tho,” I said. I couldn’t very well tell my boss that the reason for my sudden and strange affliction was my girlfriend’s pussy, not if I wanted to keep hold of my job. And perhaps that wasn’t what it was, at all. There were hundreds of possible explanations for my tongue swelling up like this. Maybe I was allergic to something? Maybe the b
eer I’d consumed at Dan’s last night was cheap counterfeit stuff—it wouldn’t be the first time, and Dan did have an expensive wedding to pay for—and now my tongue was about to drop off because it wasn’t used to Bulgarian bleach? Could it be that, at some point, I had been stung by a bee or a wasp? I’d seen pictures on the internet of people’s whole heads swelling up twice the size after a bee sting. But, surely, I would know if I had been stung by a bee, or a wasp, a hornet or a fucking scorpion.

  “I’d like for you to take the rest of the day off,” Mr Whittaker said. “Go see a doctor or… something, I don’t know, but you’re no use to me on sales. People will think you’re taking the piss out of them.”

  “Taking the pith?” I said.

  “Exactly!” Mr Whittaker said. “Go and get yourself sorted. That tongue of yours is not right. I can only hope that it is not infectious, and that the rest of the team doesn’t come down with it.” He pointed toward the door, with the intention of seeing me walk through it, and since I didn’t want to disappoint him, I took my leave without further ado.

  Mr Whittaker was right. I had to see a doctor, try to find out the reason for the sudden swelling, for in less than two weeks’ time I had to give a very important speech, and currently I couldn’t put three words together without drooling all down my chin.

  *

  “And what did he say?” Zoe asked as I collapsed onto the sofa next to her, exhausted and humiliated. It had been a long and arduous day, and I just wanted to relax, perhaps doze in front of the television, but not before I gave my girlfriend the rundown of what had transpired at the doctor’s that afternoon.

  “He thaid there’th no reathon for it,” I said, or at least tried to say. It was growing increasingly difficult to talk. Even my inner monologue had started to lisp. “Reckonth I might have bit it in my thleep, and that it thould go down eventually.”