by Ade Grant
“Good lad,” the therapist said, his voice sounding almost hungry. “Focus on all the aspects you’d like to be rid of. Can you do that?”
Indeed he could, there was so much about himself that he found disgusting, repulsive and shameful. So much in his brain that had become wired in the wrong way, grown in the wrong directions. The idea that they could be removed, pruned back, truths weeded out, seemed the only clean path to take.
“Focus. Focus. You are aboard that ship. Searching... Searching.. Where’s the island? Guide me to it..”
And indeed, he was almost upon that ship, with the salty wind in his hair and the open ocean stretched out ahead. Great islands containing his horrors and shames lay scattered across the horizon. He guided the sails as the ship soared towards them, eager to tackle the para-
WASP
-tackle the parasite-
WASP
-parasite within-
WASP!
His mind swelled with a billion screams. It were as if every thought ever concocted chose that moment to rush into his head. The ocean swelled and grew furious, the islands blown apart in showers of stone and dirt that blotted out the sky like a billion locusts.
As if awoken from a dream, he was back in the office, the illusion gone. The therapist’s mouth hung agape and his eyes were droopy, looking like a well-fed cat in peaceful digestion. [The Mariner] vomited, clutching his head as it began to pound and throb.
The screams echoed in his mind as one vast roar, yet slowly singular voices were heard, disorientated and alone in the seething mass, a cathedral full of lost minds, their fearful voices mixing amongst the rafters.
Was he having a mental breakdown? Was this a brain haemorrhage? He longed to howl for help, a scream to match the ones in his head, but his voice box was frozen in panic. [The Mariner] tried to stagger away, but collapsed forward, body crumpling against the glass window. Perhaps he could bang against the pane for help? Perhaps a good Samaritan would notice and come running?
But the streets of London offered no relief. The bustling, pushing, grabbing, seething mass of commuters, tourists and locals no longer heaved against one another. Now they too lay sprawled on the ground, grasping their heads in their hands as if trying to prevent an explosion within. Some thrashed on the concrete, fingers dug deep into their ears, others simply tried to out-yell the sudden noise. But neither could blot out the screams, they were coming from inside.
He was with them. He could feel their anguish and confusion. In one instant he was aware, yet unaware, connected somehow to not just the people below, howling in the street, but everyone, every last thinking mind in the world moulding into one entity.
And the overriding feeling of this entity was loathing. Loathing, fear and disgust.
Just as he thought the screams could get no more intense, their wailing was amplified into one of pain. The collective was splitting, a great tearing taking place, driving the mass into an agonised fury, a psychic earthquake trembling both body and mind.
The therapist, still appearing fed and sated, slowly opened his eyes, realisation dawning like a frosty chill. He leapt to his feet, mouth open, shuffling like a dog caught with a stolen sausage, torn between feast and flight.
The tension in [the Mariner]’s head was immense, and suddenly whole sections of him seemed to depart, dragged off by the screaming voices. His name, his history, a lifetime of thoughts and feelings, all extinguished in one brutal rip. In an instant they were gone, leaving only ugliness, only those feelings inside that had tormented him since his life began. And they swelled to fill the void.
As abruptly as they’d arrived, the screams were gone.
He slipped to the ground, body absorbed by the carpet. Weak, limp and scared, vast sections of his brain continued to desert. He felt like a puddle evaporating on a sweltering day.
He tried to grab onto something, some aspect of himself that wasn’t being stolen, some part other than the disgust, the hateful thoughts left untouched in his head, the masochism, insecurity, the addiction to sexual pain, anything but all that filth, but all he could grasp was the ship and the ocean and the search and the islands and the Neptune and the-
Water surrounded him, carrying his body like a leaf. Dimly he could hear the sounds of windows cracking as the room filled, and soon he was dragged away by the torrent, out into the abyss, into a life he no longer remembered, and into a world broken in two.
41
THE NATURE OF THINGS
GROANS AND SCREAMS CONTINUED TO issue through the midnight air, yet between the two figures hung a silence that continued as the memories settled in the Mariner’s head. The Pope looked somewhat relieved, as if he’d finally passed a bout of unpleasant gas.
“I’ve returned what I took. What else is gone, went with the Wasp. That I cannot bring back, it has been born and flown into the Soup. Not far though, it’s hovering just beyond, unable to leave its birthplace behind.” The Pope spoke whilst the Mariner lay in the mud, trembling from the memories now running riot in his head.
“You!” the Mariner gasped. “You were him, my therapist! You stole a part of me!”
“Not a part of you,” the Pope explained. “A part of the Wasp. Your mind is a parasite, shared by every human being, for it is not a multitude of parasites, but a single vast one: The Wasp. Mankind was its host. Your world is its nursery.”
“My mind is a parasite?”
“Yes. You are skin and bone and guttural instinct. All those disgustingly fleshy things. The Wasp exists beyond that. You are genes, the Wasp is memes. Every thought, memory and word dancing about in that dome of yours, is part of the Wasp. Each one connected, like single cells, unaware of their significance in the larger creature. A larger creature that slept as it grew.
“For the Wasp, you humans were a host, organisms chosen by its mother to nurse her infant. She laid her eggs inside you and they’ve grown. Language, inventions, science, all these a part of the Wasp’s being, gestating inside you for so long, you believe it natural, ignoring its true parasitic nature.
“You see, without the Wasp in your head you quickly revert to your natural state, a mindless creature, hateful in its desperation to regain the thoughts once believed its own, memories that have since burst forth.”
The Mariner struggled to understand. “But the Mindless are infected with something. Aren’t they?”
The Pope laughed. “Quite the reverse, it is you who are infected, not them. You still carry some of that parasite, they do not. You call them ‘Mindless’, I would simply call them, ‘human’.
He continued, smirking at the Mariner’s discomfort. “Any fledgling Wasp needs a birthing-ground, a stable environment for the hosts to nurture their parasitic child. So a reality is spun, one based on rules and laws of cause and effect. In each nest the precise nature of things is different, but it’s this stability that helps it grow, and as it grows the world it has created hardens. But it’s all an illusion, your world a fabrication, a merely temporary cocoon.
“Now the Wasp is awake and the cocoon degrades; there is no more use for it, it’s a broken shell, and through the ruins others now scavenge .
“I see you still don’t understand, let me explain. There are more creatures beyond the cocoon than just the Wasp. The Gradelding is one. It has been waiting for an age to get inside and feast upon you monkeys, but the cocoon has protected the Wasp and by extension, you. Now the cocoon is weak, and the Gradelding hungry.
“I, on the other hand, have lived inside with you, just as I have done in many other cocoons during my life. I am a parasite.” The Pope gave a small flourishing bow. “One parasite feeding off another. Ironic isn’t it? I drink from the Wasp; so tiny and insignificant to such a vast and stupid creature, that I remain undetected. Unfortunately every time I feed, there is the slightest chance the Wasp will wake. The mosquito can feed off the man safely in the dead of night countless times, but occasionally, one in a hundred-thousand, the man will feel an itch.
&nb
sp; “In your case, the Wasp itched.
“Don’t look at me like that! I’m not responsible, you are. Hateful, ugly thoughts are the most tasty, it is why I draw these deranged monkeys to me even now. I’d drunk from many before I found you, and I’ve drunk from many since, but on that blasted day I tried to drink the ugliness from your head and the Wasp awoke, sensing the tiny wound, its full attention focused upon the minuscule puncture.
“The Wasp looked at you.” The Pope pointed an accusatory finger. “Its first waking thought in its weighty mind was to comprehend yours, to see what you see, feel what you feel. The stupid creature was spooked. It looked at its own deformed body, saw the filth in your head, a part of its own form, and was horrified.
“A Wasp is supposed to wake in its maturity and leave the host. Such was this baby’s panic, that it tore itself asunder rather than remain connected to you. It split itself in two, taking as much away as it dared, and leaving ugly chunks behind. Since then it has been slowly taking more, little by little, with the precision of a food phobic. Yet still the world remains, in all its degrading glory. And the Wasp is still scared. You still disgust it.”
“I’m not Donald Traill?” he asked from the mud below.
The Pope laughed, long and cruelly. “Of course not! That was just a story stuck in your head as it happened! This fantasy of yours about finding an island: some psycho-babble I used to prep your mind for my feeding! Nothing more.” The Pope laughed at the absurdity. “I can’t believe you’ve been actually looking for a metaphorical island! All this time!”
“But,” he stammered, “I’ve been sailing on the Neptune. That’s my ship. It has a memory, a past, sins of its own!”
“You got the ship eh?” he giggled, suddenly curious as a collector might be at the mention of a rare butterfly. “Well isn’t that interesting. In the moment of the tearing, when the Wasp fled from the brains of humanity, the cocoon was blasted apart and weakened. Suddenly things that were no longer remembered, thoughts taken away with the Wasp, began to vanish. Without the memes there can be no representation, the cocoon cannot be sustained. Memes are the seeds of the tree. But it seems what your mind was so concerned about at the moment of its waking, became real. What you believed, the Wasp believed, suddenly crafting the cocoon to suit the new perspective. It made the water. The islands. And. So it seems, your ship.”
“So when the stars vanished?”
“Most of the memories of stars were gone, and the cocoon could no longer support them. I must say, watching the world slowly crumble is terribly... fascinating.”
The Mariner, still unable to rise, grasped at the Pope’s feet. “Please, you have to tell me how to make it right! How can I undo this?”
The Pope looked down at him with a mixture of pity and revulsion. “Have some dignity! Don’t be a caterpillar, lamenting the birth of its parasite larvae! The Wasp has woken and will not be tempted back into slumber. What’s departed has gone for good.”
The Pope glanced about, his demeanour changing as if something had just crossed his mind. Where once there had been a smug superiority, there now lingered an uneasy suspicion. “You should leave. Like a dying patient, the Wasp is obsessed with the source of its infection: you. I wouldn’t want its gaze upon me, not while the cocoon is collapsing.”
“Where can I find the Wasp?”
“You can’t. It’s not a thing of flesh. Memes not genes, remember?”
“It must be watching somehow. There must be a way to reach it?”
The Pope eyed him carefully. “The world shrinks as lands are forgotten, yet because of that waterfall you created, this damn ocean rises every day. That place is a rupture, the site of the Wasp’s waking. I would go there if you want the Wasp to see you again. That’s the clearest break to the Soup beyond. But it doesn’t want to see you, my poor misguided monkey, its enormous stupid mind may be obsessed with you, but it loathes you even more.”
Straightening and glancing stealthily about, the Pope assessed his surroundings as if he’d been secretly conspiring with an enemy. The Mariner was surprised to be reminded of the cult about him, the screams of pain and ecstasy, the whippings cuttings and burnings. Hunger returned to the parasite’s eyes.
“I’ve got to return to my guests. The Wasp left scraps in their heads that it was too scared to take. Stupid thing! Those are the juicy bits!” He leaned down and patted the Mariner like a scared dog. “If I were you, monkey, I would get out of here. Once I’m done, there won’t be much left of the Wasp in their brains. You should flee, you’re infected and not well received by those who are returned to health.”
The Pope began to leave, but the Mariner cried out, provoking him to look back at him a final time.
“But what about Grace? Please, tell me that? What was special about Grace?”
The parasitic Pope paused, his grin faltering for a moment. “Who’s that?”
“A girl. We brought the zoo back together. But... she died.”
Irritation crossed the Pope’s face, a moment of uncertainty and frustration alive in a flash, but soon after the creases smoothed and eyes once more softened with supreme confidence. “There’s nothing special about this ‘Grace’,” he dismissed, shaking his head. “And nothing can ever come back.”
42
THE LAST SUPPER
THERE IS NO TRUTH. ONLY the Wasp.
There is no truth. Only the Wasp.
He ran into the night, unaware of the direction, just certain he had to get as far as possible from the Pope and his terrible encampment. Behind, in a small illuminated circle, the Pope was at work, sucking the last remains of the Wasp from the cultists’ heads. Soon they would be Mindless, parasite-free beasts, mankind in its natural form, and then they’d come for him.
There is no truth.
Without torch, weapon or coat, he sprinted across the moors. Somewhere in the shadows, a predator stalked, something bestial and heavy, its tread squelching underfoot. A few guttural growls penetrated the darkness, but the Mariner did not slow, he did not turn, he was running from something far more terrible, something far more horrifying than any creature from the Soup beyond.
There is no truth. Only the Wasp.
He realised he was babbling, saying the words over and over again as if it were a chant to banish the dark. Somewhere far behind, carried by the wind, he heard screams of rage. They reminded him of the screams he’d heard long ago, when the Wasp had united every mind for that brief moment of its own difficult birth. But of course these were different. These were the Mindless, sent mad by the loss of their beloved Wasp and eager to tear open another man’s head to try to bring it back.
Sight was gone now, just numbing black. His legs span as he ran, the ground beneath an illusion, imagined resistance in an eternity of space. Ahead, through the darkness, he saw Grace, blood-stained and sad, lip split from repeated strikes of his fist. Tetrazzini grinned from behind, wrapping one burned arm around her torso and pulling her close. The image hovered, conjured by his traumatised, sensory- deprived brain and no matter how fast he ran, it didn’t budge. But it did swirl and change, one minute it was Grace, the next it was Beth relaxing in a bath whilst slicing her arm…
Absinth, dressed in the Oracle’s garb, eyes and nose gnawed to bloody craters..
Heidi, lying back on a bed, calling to him, legs open and inviting…
Isabel, her jaw broken and eyes cold and dead…
And finally his mother, leaning forward with a pillow ready to snuff out the last few breaths in his chest.
The Mariner tumbled, hitting the scrub below, boots sucked by mud and brow torn by bitter heather. Panic stricken, starved and terrified, his consciousness did the only thing it could do in such a situation. Abandon ship.
There is no truth. Only the Wasp.
It did not return for some time.
A wet muzzle probed his neck, quick hot breaths tickling his skin and teasing him awake. An animal was at him, a scavenger trying to eat him whilst he slumbered
.
He struggled from sleep, his confused mind already grappling for the word like a light switch. Gradelding! But another phrase pushed it aside, mocking all other possible thoughts.
There is no Gradelding. Only the Wasp.
He woke screaming, thrashing like a madman.
About him the chill moor cut his skin. No Gradelding sat at his side, no huge monster about to feast on his flesh. However there was a small one, equally fearsome in stature, if not in size.
“Blluuuueeeeeeegghhh!” the Tasmanian devil burped in angry defiance, its whole body shuffling back with the exertion of the scream. Once done, it allowed its haunch to drop to the ground, sitting proudly as if having delivered a world-class speech.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, amazed. The reply came not from the devil, but from another behind him.
“Arf!”
Sitting up he saw Grace’s brood gathered around like a small protective pack. Relief brought the faintest of dehydrated tears.
“You’ve found me! How did you – arrgh!” he yelled as a devil angrily bit him on the leg. It stared up, a scowl on its furry face. “I don’t have any fucking food! Look at me! You’re supposed to be rescuing me!”
“Bluuurrrgh!!”
“Arf!”
“Raaaaggghh!”
He collapsed back into the mud, weak and frustrated. “So you found me. But you’re about as fucking useless as you were before! I could never get you to do anything, the only one who could was-” he paused, suddenly realising that he hadn’t seen the devils since that night with Heidi and Grace. “Oh.”
The devils were watching him closely, and although it could have been a projection of his own guilt, he could swear they looked crestfallen.
“I’m sorry. I really am.”
“Arf!”
“What do you want from me?” he yelled through a hoarse throat. “If you’re not here to help, just let me die!” He swung an arm, hoping to scare them off, but not a single beast moved. Instead they continued their vigil, panting short little breaths. “Don’t you understand? We’re in the middle of nowhere!”
