Parasite Milk

by Carlton Mellick III

  But after a while, I realize she isn’t just dissolving and drinking my skin. Once my hide has been removed, she creates a new one. She excretes a thick milky goo from her mouth and spreads it on me with her tongue, covering my body from head to toe. After three layers, the goo resembles a glossy cocoon. It hardens, trapping me further.

  The woman crawls all over me like a spider as she covers me in her sticky cocoon. I’m still in a state of constant arousal, so it all just feels like a surreal sex game. While licking my penis, she straddles my neck with her thighs. And it feels like we are in the sixty-nine position, giving each other oral sex.

  I stare up at her deep blue vagina. It glows and pulses above me. With the drug filling my mind, I can’t help but lean forward and lick her. I’m surprised that I can still move my neck and tongue. It makes me wonder if I could have moved this entire time. It makes me wonder if I’m not in a state of paralysis at all. It makes me wonder if the only reason I haven’t gotten up to leave is because I just don’t want to.

  As I lick her purple labia, her body glows bright blue. It’s actually turning her on. I keep going, licking and sucking on her. And she continues tonguing goo onto my penis. As she becomes aroused, her vagina drools a thick fluid and opens up like a mouth. Long squishy strings of flesh spill onto my face, wrapping around my nose and tongue. She finishes cocooning my penis before I am able to come, but she doesn’t get off of me. She wants me to continue. Her breaths become moans, her skin flutters with light. And even with all the wet crustaceans crawling across my lips and down my cheeks, I don’t stop until she reaches orgasm.

  When it’s over, she collapses on top of me, panting. She drops her crotch onto my face, resting all her weight on top of me. But she doesn’t pass out as she usually does after orgasm. She just rests on top of me, her limbs hugging my torso. I feel her chest rising and falling against my cocoon, trying to get her breath back.

  A shrimp crawls up my nostril and I sneeze it out, wiggling my nose to keep it away. Then I move my face away from her vagina. But once my head is turned, she tightens her thighs and brings my face back up. She squeezes her crotch against my mouth, wiggling gently. She wants me to make her come again.

  As her scent sprays out of her, filling my senses with desire, I decide to give in. I press my tongue into her and lick until her labia separates and her tendrils ooze out. The strings curl around my tongue, slicking the edges of my lips, tickling the skin below my nostrils. Then the tendrils stretch, they grow out of her vagina farther than I realized they could go. The slimy threads slide across my cheeks, down my chin, over my forehead. Once they reach the back of my head, they tighten and pull my face against her vulva. They coil around my neck and constrict like they are trying to choke me.

  The woman moans and wheezes on top of me, but her tendrils are too tight for me to continue giving her oral sex. I’m not even able to move my tongue inside her anymore. She sits up and puts all of her weight onto my head. She grinds against my face so hard it feels like she’s going to break my neck.

  A long greasy tube emerges from her vagina and slides down my throat. It tastes of pork and mushroom broth. She sprays her intoxicating musk in my direction until I’m overwhelmed with bliss and my eyes roll shut.

  Then she lays her eggs inside of me.

  It takes hours. One globby ball of ooze at a time, squeezed down my throat and collecting in my stomach. There’s dozens of them. I don’t know how my belly is able to fit them all.

  When she’s done, she cocoons the rest of my face. She doesn’t even look at me as she does it, staring off into the distance as she tongues milky goo across my lips and seals my mouth shut. Before she leaves, she sprays her musk into the room for almost an hour, turning it into a small gas chamber. The air is so dense with her drug that it will leave me in this dazed state for weeks. She exits the mushroom and buries the entrance behind her, leaving me alone with her eggs, enclosing me inside of my dark tomb.

  In the pitch-dark cave, filled with dizzying toxins, I can’t even tell if I’m still alive anymore. The jelly bug’s musk was so potent that I’ve surely been out for days, maybe weeks. Time doesn’t exist for me anymore.

  I can feel the eggs hatching. Things are moving inside of my body, eating me alive. I’m reminded of the tarantula hawk—the wasp that paralyzes large spiders and lays its eggs inside of their bodies, keeping them alive long enough so that their offspring have something to eat after they’re born.

  That’s all I am now: the tarantula. I’m just food for some strange creature’s babies. I’m just jelly bug breakfast. I’m just mother’s milk.

  At least I don’t have an erection anymore.

  Epilogue

  A Travel Channel

  Exclusive Presentation

  “Kynaria,” Andrew says, superimposed over panning images of the Kynarian wilderness. “A luscious mushroom planet 23,000 light years from Planet Earth.”

  A shot of Andrew standing under a toadstool the size of a house.

  “Home of the tallest fungi in the galaxy…”

  A panning shot of hotels and businesses built into the sides of skyscraper-high mushrooms.

  “And some of the most exotic cuisine this side of the Milky Way…”

  A shot of Andrew tasting a bowl of eyeball soup.

  “In today’s episode: a fruit you would never see in your mom’s fruit salad...”

  A shot of Andrew breaking open a piece of cluster fruit, releasing thousands of tiny blue spider-like insects that crawl down his arms and shirt.

  “A clam harvested from the rear end of an 800 ton monster…”

  A shot of Andrew covered in brown muck as he says, “Now I’ve been everywhere. I’ve literally been everywhere.”

  “And a dating ritual that takes the saying ‘you are what you eat’ to a whole new extreme.”

  A shot of Andrew sitting in a cloning restaurant with a Kynarian woman. After tasting a bite of yellow meat, he raises his eyebrows and says in a playful tone, “You, Madam, are absolutely delicious.”

  “From the streets of Ni Quinxos...”

  A shot of Andrew unsuccessfully trying to get into a slug-taxi as its weight shifts, causing him to lose balance and call out, “Whoa, easy big fella!”

  “To the fungal villages of South Chrusthaum...”

  A shot of Andrew lying inside of a luxurious Kynarian mud bed, exclaiming, “It’s actually quite comfortable.”

  “The planet of Kynaria is not a place you’ll shroom forget.”

  A shot of Andrew holding up a wiggling toadstool-shaped baby. He kisses it on the forehead and then smiles up at the camera.

  “I’m Andrew Zimmern and this is Bizarre Foods: Intergalactic Edition.”

  A camera drone hits Andrew in the forehead and he stumbles back.

  “Are you trying to kill me?” Andrew cries. He rubs the red welt growing on his smooth bald scalp.

  “Sorry about that, Andrew,” Mick tells him, standing in a field outside the Kynarian village of Hol Poy. “We’re still trying to get the hang of this.”

  A young cameraman with lightning bolt sideburns struggles with the eyebots, trying to figure out how to control them. His neuro-interface was only recently installed. The side of his head is shaved and outlined by a row of stitches.

  Mick goes to the star of the show who wipes a trickle of blood from his face. He gets between Andrew and the hovering camera drone so that it won’t accidentally hit him again.

  “Are you okay?” Mick asks him.

  Andrew nods. It takes only a minute before he’s back to his cheery normal self.

  “Oh, I’ll be fine,” he says, smiling. “It’s just a bump.”

  “Are you sure?” Mick asks, examining the wound.

  Andrew shrugs and laughs it off. “Well, it could have been worse. At least my head is still attached.”

  The young cameraman is more shaken than Andrew. His eyes are wide, his hands trembling. He looks like he’s going to crap his pants.

&
nbsp; “I’m so sorry, Mr. Zimmern,” the kid says.

  Andrew just smiles at him and waves it off. But the producer isn’t so forgiving.

  “Are you fucking crazy?” Mick yells at him. “You could have killed him.”

  The kid shakes his head. “It’s not my fault. These things have been acting weird all day. It’s like they have a mind of their own.”

  Mick narrows his eyes at him. “Save the excuses and just do your fucking job, preferably without killing anyone.”

  His words only make the kid more nervous, causing the camera drones to jerk and sway in the air above them.

  “Don’t worry about it, Kyle,” Andrew says to the camera man. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out soon.”

  The kid nods and puts his focus into straightening out the drones.

  Mick turns to Andrew. “Sorry, he’s the only guy we could get on such short notice after Rice fucked us over.”

  “Rice?” Andrew asks. “He was the previous camera guy?”

  “Yeah, Irving Rice.”

  Andrew nods. “By the way, you never said what happened with him. Why’d he quit?”

  Mick shrugs. “He said he got sick or something and took off, kept complaining about his allergies on this planet.”

  “That’s too bad,” Andrew says. “I hope he gets better for the shoot on Krotus next month.”

  Mick shakes his head. “After all the setbacks he caused, we won’t work with him ever again.”

  Andrew asks, “He’s okay though, right? Nothing serious?”

  Mick shrugs. “Don’t know. Nobody’s heard from him since he left. He probably knows he’s not welcome back.”

  Andrew nods. “Well, let’s get this shot. I’m ready when Kyle is.”

  The kid with the lightning bolt sideburns gives him a thumbs up. Mick stands back and they continue the shoot.

  The cameras roll, hovering at shoulder height, as Andrew stands in front of the large mushroom village in the background.

  “For generations, the township of Hol Poy has stood on the edge of the Great Krakken Forest,” Andrew says into the camera, wearing a bright orange polo shirt tucked into his khaki shorts, “a place of serene beauty and extraordinary wildlife.”

  Andrew steps casually through a purple-grass field as the camera drones follow alongside him.

  “A Hol Poyan diet typically consists of crote-boar, rumroot, and grublice harvested from the nearby mushroom trees. But what I’ve come for is a dish called Try-ki Gollum, which roughly translates to Queen of Flavor. Only developed within the last year, it’s quickly become the gem of the region, attracting tourists from all over Kynaria.”

  Three of the camera drones rise into the air, getting shots of the village in the distance, as the third stays with Andrew.

  “I’ll be meeting with Chef Koum Morgrut, the inventor of this new taste sensation, who has agreed to serve me up a plate for lunch.”

  The eyebot zooms in on Andrew’s face as he raises his eyebrows with excitement.

  “Which is great news to me, because I am absolutely starving.”

  A shot of Andrew shaking hands with a stubby Kynarian chef with a red and white-spotted mushroom-shaped head.

  “Great to meet you,” Andrew says.

  The chef taps his mushroom cap against Andrew’s forehead, then mumbles a greeting in Kynarian. They go into his kitchen where the carcass of a plump pig-like animal hangs from a meat hook.

  Andrew speaks into the camera, “This is a crote-boar, a common food animal on Kynaria. But crote-boar isn’t actually an ingredient of Try-ki Gollum. We’re going for something that lives inside.”

  The chef removes the hefty carcass and lays it on the chopping block.

  As he sharpens his blade, Andrew comes in for a closer look. He leans over the body and points at lumps in the animal’s flesh. “You see it crawling under the skin? That’s the main ingredient of Try-ki Gollum. It’s a parasitic creature known as lolm gogiti, which translates to jelly bug larvae.”

  “A jelly bug is an invasive species on Kynaria,” Andrew says. “It is an insect that appears ape-like when fully mature and can grow up to five feet in length. What’s interesting about jelly bugs is that they breed by laying their eggs within the bellies of pig-like mammals such as this crote-boar. They emit a strong odor that both attracts and subdues their prey. Then they cocoon them in this hard casing.”

  Andrew knocks on the beast’s hide, showing how the animal is encased in a thick white film. As he touches the body, a small shrimp-like crustacean crawls up his finger. He lifts it and shows it to the camera.

  “You see this?” Andrew says, as the tiny shrimp skitters into his palm. “This is a kulop. It’s a parasitic organism that has a symbiotic relationship with jelly bugs. After subduing a crote-boar, the jelly bug inserts dozens of these kulops inside its still-living body. They burrow into the animal’s abdomen and chew its insides until it becomes a meaty soup. This creates a warm gooey incubator that’s perfect for jelly bug eggs. In other words, kulops are nasty little critters you wouldn’t want inside of you.”

  Andrew looks at the kulop as it begins to climb up his arm. He puts on a disgusted face without losing his smile. Then he says, “Where do you think you’re going, buddy? Not trying to get in me, I hope.”

  Then he flicks it away.

  “Although jelly bugs have been a plague to most animal farmers on Kynaria, Chef Koum has decided to turn lemon into lemonade by cooking up the jelly bug larvae that infect his crote-boars, transforming the parasitic bugs into a one-of-a-kind delicacy.”

  The Kynarian chef cuts open the animal carcass with precision, trying not to kill any of the creatures squirming inside.

  “Let’s take a look…” Andrew says, as the eyebots zoom inside the hollowed-out cavity.

  Chef Koum pulls one of the creatures out of the corpse. It is a wiggling pink insect that resembles a blubbery slime-coated lobster.

  “Whoa, look at the size of that sucker!” Andrew says with a smile on his face. “It’s huge.”

  The chef pulls them out one after another, piling them into a tub at his feet.

  Andrew says, “Look at how many there are. It’s hard to believe all of those fit inside just one animal. With all that meat, you could feed a village for a week.”

  The camera zooms in on the bucket as the larvae crawl over each other. They squeak and squirm and let out infant-like cries. Then Andrew nods his head and says, “I can’t wait to get one of these little guys in my belly.”

  Once the crote-boar is empty, Chef Koum takes the plumpest of the jelly bug larvae. He cleans it, cooks it in a mushroom broth, and serves it in a ceramic bowl.

  Sitting at a table in the dining room, Andrew bows at the chef and says, “Thank you, sir. It smells delicious.”

  Then he turns to the camera. “Let’s give it a taste, shall we?”

  He lifts the saucy boiled bug from the bowl using only his fingers. Then he rips off a large chunk of flesh and pops it into his mouth. The second it hits his tongue, his eyes roll back in delight.

  “Mmmm…” he says, chewing slowly and savoring the flavor. “Now this is amazing.”

  Once he swallows, he raises the meat to the camera and describes the flavor. “It’s sweet. It’s buttery. It just melts in your mouth.”

  He takes another bite and lets out a pleasant sigh.

  “Imagine eating the biggest, juiciest lobster tail you’ve ever had in your life, simmered in a salty miso sauce with just a hint of shiitake mushroom. If we had this back on Earth I would eat it every day of the week.”

  Even though the chef doesn’t understand a word of English, Andrew tells him, “I see why this is called the Queen of Flavor. It is absolutely delicious.” He wipes his mouth with his arm. “And to think, other farmers treat jelly bugs as pests. They could learn a thing or two from Chef Koum. Instead of killing them, they should be making Try-ki Gollum.” He takes another bite. “You, sir, are an absolute genius.”

  When he’s ea
ten his fill, Andrew stands up and shakes the chef’s stubby hand. “Thank you for having me.”

  “You want to try some?” Andrew asks his crew after the cameras stop rolling, pointing at his leftover meal. “It really is excellent.”

  The cameraman shivers at the thought. The image of the jelly bug larvae squirming in the crote-boar’s guts is still too fresh in his memory.

  Mick takes a bite, but just shrugs at the flavor.

  “Not impressed?” Andrew asks.

  “It’s okay…” Mick says, chewing the bite of jelly bug larvae. Once he swallows, he says, “But it’s no Mick Burger.”

  No food on Kynaria has impressed Mick ever since he started eating his own cloned flesh. After the night Irving Rice disappeared, that’s all he’s wanted to eat. Just Mick Sandwiches, Mick Tacos, and Mick Patty Melts. He’d rather not eat anything unless it’s made from him.

  “You and your Mick Burgers…” Andrew laughs, shaking his head at the kooky producer.

  The kid with the lightning bolt sideburns starts packing up his equipment, placing the camera drones back in their cases.

  When Mick notices, he stops him. “Don’t put those back just yet. We still need one more shot.”

  The cameraman nods and turns the drones back on.

  “I thought we needed to meet up with Bolgot in Ni Quinxos?” Andrew asks.

  Mick shakes his head. “I want to shoot the closing here, with the Great Krakken Forest in the background.”

  Andrew nods.

  The cameraman gets an excited look on his face. “He’s going to say his catchphrase? I’ve been dying to hear him say his catchphrase.”

  Both Andrew and Mick ignore the kid and go outside. The eyebots follow.

  “How about we go into the crote-boar pen?” Mick asks. “You can be standing next to the livestock, with the forest in the background.”