Parasite Milk

by Carlton Mellick III

  “Elder How?” Mick asks. “He’s the cluster fruit farmer, right?”

  Bolgot nods. “He also has a few more delicacies I thought you might be interested in.”

  “Oh yeah, like what?” Mick asks.

  “Well, for starters, he raises hogcocks,” he says. “Have you heard of hogcocks?”

  Mick shakes his head. “What are they?”

  Bolgot smiles. “They’ll be perfect for your show. You have nothing like them on Earth.”

  “Are they giant dicks with legs or something?” Mick asks.

  He shakes his head. “No, they are amphibious pig-like mammals that have multiple eyeballs growing all over their body. Many different foods are made from them, but they are mostly bred for their eyeballs which are used in many stews and jellies. And because their eyes regenerate, it is a very stable food source in rural areas.”

  Mick nods, thinking it over. “Sounds promising. How come I’ve never heard of them before?”

  “They’re very rare, even to Kynarians,” Bolgot says. “It’s a bit like eating armadillo in the United States. Most Kynarians wouldn’t even think to eat hogcock eyes, especially anyone from the city.”

  “Well, let’s go check it out,” Mick says.

  Bolgot wraps his arm around Mick and leads him toward his snail-truck, leaving me to carry all of our equipment by myself.

  The cluster fruit farm is amazing. Spiky blueberry-colored trees stretch for miles across the rolling landscape. Rainbow lollipop flowers speckle the fields of bubble grass. Kynarian workers walk on thirty-foot stilts, harvesting fruit with the precision of acrobats. It’s one of the most breathtaking scenes I’ve seen since arriving on Kynaria.

  “Rice, get some shots of this,” Mick tells me, pointing at the fruit grove. “Get all of it.”

  “On it,” I tell him.

  I set two trunk-sized cases on the ground, pulling out the camera equipment. Four eye-shaped drones come to life the second I put the televisor over my eyes and flip on the control switch. I send them up into the air, hovering over the cluster fruit trees, recording as they go.

  “Film everything you can,” Mick says. “The workers. The fruit trees. The whole property. And definitely get the hogcocks if you can find them.”

  I just nod, too focused on directing four cameras at once to respond.

  He says, “We’re going to go meet with the old guy.”

  Then they leave me alone with my work.

  Ever since the United Planets made first contact with Earth five years ago, there’s been massive leaps in our technology. We went from cell phones and arguing with each other like idiots on the internet to teleporting across the galaxy and operating robots with our minds practically overnight. One day, all I had to worry about was holding a camera steady, and the next I had to learn how to become a one-man camera crew with a neuro-interface implanted into the side of my brain.

  Using mostly just my thoughts, I’m able to pilot the four drones—or eyebots as Mick likes to call them—far over the cluster fruit farm, panning across the landscape and zooming in on the workers as they pick the spiky blue melon-sized fruits.

  When I’m finished with the grove, I scan the air for any sign of the livestock. Since I’ve never seen a hogcock before, I have no idea what to be looking for other than some animal with a lot of eyes. I remember Bolgot saying they are amphibious, so I assume they’ll be near some water.

  I send one drone far behind the ranch, discovering a large gated area with a small pond and several fat pink frog-looking creatures wobbling along the water. Zooming in, they definitely have to be hogcocks. Their eyes are bigger than I expected, like grapefruit-sized fish eyes. They also are three times larger than the largest pigs back on Earth. I understand the resemblance, though. If I had to describe them to anyone I’d say they were frog-pigs covered in eyes.

  As I pan across the hogcock pen, I see a woman walking among the beasts. She is pink and purple, exactly like the flowery woman I slept with last night. I zoom in on her. She’s definitely the same species. She has the same skin, the same tail, the same blue leaf hair. She must be one of the farm workers.

  I want Mick to see her. I want to show him that I really did sleep with a beautiful nymph woman last night and that she wasn’t just some hallucinatory vision put in my head by a telepathic sex-slug.

  I’m sure he’ll be really impressed.

  Down the hill, Mick and Bolgot are deep in conversation with some old mushroom man as they stroll through his property. I decide not to interrupt them and continue on my way, heading toward the back of the ranch to the hogcock pen.

  But when I arrive, I don’t see the flower woman anywhere. I just see the weird pig creatures blinking at me with their bunches of eyes. I send the eyebots to scan over me, but she seems to be gone. I wonder if maybe Mick was right. Maybe I did imagine her.

  I look back and see Mick and the Kynarians heading toward me. Too bad the woman isn’t here. They would have gotten here right in time. But before I give up, I catch a glimpse of her again from one of the eyebots. She’s rolling over a hogcock, trying to clean its belly or something.

  A smile spreads across my face. I don’t know why. These women are such perfect creatures. Being able to see one of them again brings me joy. Unfortunately, it also brings me another erection. I try to cover it up before the other men arrive.

  Her scent fills the air and I breathe it in deeply. This woman smells different from the one last night. Her scent is richer, more robust. It kind of reminds me of lilac and cardamom.

  I go to the fence and climb up to get a better look at her, but when I see her I’m so shocked I nearly drop the eyebots out of the air.

  “What the fuck…” I say.

  The woman is on top of one of the hogcocks, straddling it, rubbing against it. My first thought is that she’s trying to hold it down, maybe to pull out an infected tooth or trim its nails. But then I realize her skin is illuminated as she presses herself against the animal’s greasy belly. She’s fucking it. Just as the woman had done with me last night, she is making love to this horrific eyeball-pig creature.

  When Mick and the Kynarians get to me, Mick yells, “What the hell are you doing up there, Rice?”

  I don’t know what to say. My mouth is just hanging open.

  I point my finger at the mushroom nymph and say, “She… She is…” But that’s all I can get out.

  When the old farmer sees what I’m pointing at, he freaks out. Even though I can’t understand Kynarian I can tell that he’s absolutely pissed. If that woman actually is one of his field hands and is having sex with his livestock, I imagine he’d be pretty pissed off about it.

  Elder How grabs what looks to be a fire extinguisher from the side of the fence and races into the pen. He sprays the woman until she rolls off of the hogcock and runs away. He chases after her, spraying her until she’s soaked.

  “What’s going on?” Mick asks, trying to climb up on the fence with me to get a better look.

  Through the drone cameras, I’m able to see that the old farmer isn’t actually spraying the nymph with water. It’s some kind of corrosive poison. As she tries to run away, her leaf-like hair falls out, her skin melts from her body, her muscles slide off her bones.

  I don’t know what to do except stand here as the farmer murders the beautiful woman right in front of us. Her high-pitched screams fill the air. It’s like I’m watching a pre-abolition slave getting executed by a plantation owner for stealing a loaf of bread. When the woman falls on the ground, he continues spraying her until she doesn’t move anymore, until she’s just a puddle of soup in the dirt.

  As Elder How leaves the pen, he takes the hogcock that the woman slept with and separates it from the others.

  “What the hell was that?” Mick asks.

  Bolgot translates and the old Kynarian responds.

  “He says it was a jelly bug,” Bolgot tells us. “They’re horrible, disgusting creatures.”

  “What the hell
’s a jelly bug?” Mick asks.

  “It’s an invasive species that showed up within the past few years,” Bolgot says. “They were accidentally introduced to our eco-system by travelers from some other world. Now they’re wreaking havoc across the countryside.”

  “What do they do?” Mick asks.

  “They breed with the livestock and spread all sorts of horrible diseases. They’re very dangerous. Elder How has lost thirty of his herd to jelly bugs in this season alone.”

  As I hear this, my hands shiver. My skin crawls. I nearly crash an eyebot into a tree. I’m not sure I heard this correctly. Are they saying that the woman I slept with last night was one of these jelly bugs?

  “Wait…” I say to Bolgot. “I saw it. That was no bug. It was a woman. It looked almost human.”

  Bolgot shakes his head. “Don’t let its looks fool you. It’s not an intelligent species. It’s not a woman. Jelly bugs are vermin. They’re like rats and they’re very, very dangerous. If you ever see one you should exterminate it right away.”

  “But…” I begin, wanting to tell them all about my encounter last night and how I slept with one of them, thinking she was a normal woman.

  Mick cuts me off, “So are there more of them out there? Are we safe?”

  Bolgot nods. “They only go after pets, livestock, and wild animals. They’ve never attacked a Kynarian before.”

  “What about a human?” Mick asks.

  Bolgot shakes his head. “I doubt they’d have any interest in humans either. They prefer dumb, small mammals that won’t fight back.”

  Before I’m able to tell them about my experience, they change the subject and saunter away. I’m too embarrassed to explain what happened now. But after what they said, my mind is racing. What exactly are jelly bugs? Where did they come from? How come they look human, like intelligent beings? Why are they dangerous? Is it just because they are diseased or because of other reasons? Am I lucky to have survived last night?

  I look over at Elder How. He raises a long bladed tool that resembles a scythe. Then he lowers it into the squirming animal by his feet, chopping off its head. When Bolgot sees me staring at the old farmer, it’s like he can tell that I want to ask why the hogcock had to be killed.

  Bolgot answers the question before I have to ask. “Once the jelly bug gets to it, it can’t be saved. The meat is spoiled now.”

  I nod at him and calmly walk away, trying not to expose the whirlwind of panic that spins through my head.

  For the rest of the shoot, I can’t focus. The eyebots fly around on their own without me putting much attention into the shots they capture. Doing a good job doesn’t concern me at the moment. I keep thinking about the creature I slept with last night. I thought I was with a beautiful woman, but it was really like I fucked a rat or a cockroach. And because I didn’t wear a condom, who knows what weird diseases I caught from it.

  I do feel nauseous. It’s more likely that I feel this way due to being hungover than because of some alien disease I might have caught last night, but it does make me feel at least a little bit paranoid. A part of me feels that the nausea comes not from the alcohol I drank, but from the jelly bug’s intoxicating fragrance. It’s like my body is going through withdrawal.

  But I really should go to a doctor and get checked out. I could have something serious. It might even be curable if caught in time. The only problem is where I go. Do I try to find a Kynarian doctor or go back to Earth? Kynarian doctors won’t know much or anything about human physiology, yet Earth doctors won’t know much or anything about the diseases jelly bugs carry. Either way, I need to make my decision soon.

  Chapter Five

  It’s nightfall and my nausea has become unbearable. What started as a slight queasiness reminiscent of a mild hangover has turned into what I imagine heroin withdrawal must feel like—worse than any flu or any food poisoning, and all I want to do is get some more of the drug that made me this way.

  All day, we went from shoot to shoot, location to location, and I did my best to do my job while suffering through dizzying pain and throwing up every ten minutes. I was hardly able to keep myself standing for most of it.

  Now I’m sitting with Bolgot and Mick at a restaurant downtown, wondering how I’m going to keep down any food. The place is supposed to be special, one of the main restaurants Mick wants to use on the show. I’m sweating and shaking in my seat. I’ve been breathing in so many spores throughout the day that my sinuses are clogged. Watery snot runs down my nostrils but I’m in too much discomfort to wipe it away. The two people at the table don’t seem to notice anything is wrong with me.

  A toadstool waitress comes to us and brings us menus. She is a curvy woman with smooth yellow skin and a brown-speckled bell-shaped head. Unlike other Kynarians, she looks more human proportionately. She wears a tight pink outfit that exposes her bulging fungal breasts. Mick checks her out as she hovers over the table, unable to conceal his slobbering expressions.

  “Man…” he says, admiring her cleavage.

  Mick Meyers is one of the most shameless, most sleazy douchebags I’ve ever met. I kind of hate him. But despite my criticisms of the guy, it’s me who has an erection while sitting in her presence.

  “Hey,” I say as I pick up a menu. “I thought Kynarian restaurants don’t let you order your own food?”

  Milk runs out of my nose.

  “Ahh, not usually,” Mick says. “But this restaurant is special.”

  The waitress pulls out a thin needle-shaped knife and stabs me in the arm with it.

  “Ow!” I cry.

  I look at the others, rubbing my bicep. The waitress sticks another knife inside of Mick.

  “What the hell was that for?” I ask.

  Mick just laughs at me, but won’t explain.

  He just says, “You’ll see.”

  We let Bolgot order our food for us. The menu has no pictures and I have no idea how to read Kynarian. The language doesn’t even have letters or characters of any kind. It’s just one long squiggly line going up and down the page.

  When the food comes, it looks a lot like a sandwich but with some kind of mushroom instead of bread. The meat is sizzling. It looks more like Earth food than the dinner I had yesterday.

  “I ordered you something I thought you might be comfortable with,” Bolgot says to me. “I lived on Earth for three years, so I know what Earthers like.”

  I nod my head and look down at the plate. I have no idea how I’m going to eat it. I’m so sick to my stomach that just the appearance of it makes me want to throw up.

  “Take a bite,” Mick says, smiling with anticipation.

  His excitement worries me.

  “Why?” I say. “What is it?”

  He giggles. “Just do it!”

  Even though I’m nauseous, there’s no way I’m going to get away with not eating it. I at least have to take a bite.

  I sink my teeth into the mushroom-meat sandwich and chew. It tastes kind of gamey but it’s not that bad. It doesn’t taste anything like beef. More like greasy wild boar. If I wasn’t sick I might even like it.

  “How do you like it?” Mick asks, still smirking.

  “It’s fine,” I say.

  “Do you know what it is?” he asks.

  I shrug.

  “It’s you!” he cries.

  He slams his hand on the table and laughs his head off. I have no idea what he’s talking about.

  “It’s me?” I ask.

  “It’s your own meat,” he says. “You’re eating yourself.”

  I’m still confused. Bolgot has to step in to explain it.

  “This restaurant clones your flesh and turns it into fine cuisine,” Bolgot says. “When the waitress poked you in the arm, it was to get a sample of your DNA. They rapid-grow the meat in the back and cook it up for you.”

  I look down at the sandwich, examining the gray meat. I can’t believe it’s me. This is what it would taste like if somebody murdered me and turned my flesh into dinner
. Not only that, but it’s human flesh. This is what human flesh tastes like. The greasy, porky flavor lingers on my tongue and I have to do everything possible to keep from throwing up right on the floor.

  Mick takes three massive bites of his sandwich and chews with his mouth open, moaning in pleasure at the taste.

  “Oh man…” he says, talking with his mouth full. “This is good Mick Burger.”

  When I put my sandwich down and push the plate away, Mick laughs and keeps on eating.

  Bolgot doesn’t have a plate of food. He just sits at the table, watching us eat. Because Mick is busy slobbering over his self-food, I engage the Kynarian in conversation.

  “You didn’t want to get anything?” I ask.

  Bolgot shakes his head. “No, it’s very expensive. Kynarians usually only eat at cloning restaurants for special occasions.”

  “Like anniversaries?” I ask.

  “Quite the opposite, actually,” he says. “First dates.”

  “First dates?”

  He nods. “When two Kynarians have a physical attraction to each other, it is customary for them to go on a first date at a cloning restaurant. Only you don’t eat a meal made from your own flesh. You eat the cloned flesh of your date.”

  My jaw goes slack. The idea of eating my own meat disturbs the hell out of me, but thinking about how awkward it would be to eat the meat of a person sitting across from me is even worse. Not to mention watching them eat your flesh in front of you.

  “The purpose is to see if you’re compatible with each other,” Bolgot says. “Many Kynarians believe that if your date’s flesh tastes good to you and you taste good to them, then you are well-matched and should continue dating. If you don’t like each other’s taste then the relationship is ended there.”

  I look around the restaurant and notice that most of the people eating here are couples on first dates. Most of them seem to be having a good time together. I don’t see anyone disgusted by their food, though I don’t see anyone absolutely delighted in their meals either.