Parasite p-1 Read online

  Instead, I dreamt about the dark—the hot warm dark, which was always those three distinct things. It was hot the way a summer night was hot, when the air trapped moisture like a sponge, even in San Francisco, all humidity and untaken breaths. It was warm the way Nathan’s arms were warm, comfortable and close and safe, and the two states weren’t antithetical at all. They were two parts of the same whole. When I dreamt, it was absolutely natural that hotness and warmth would be different things, capable of existing simultaneously. It was only when I was awake that it seemed like a contradiction. And the dark…

  The dark wasn’t like the dark in the apartment when the lights were off, or the dark in the street when the sun went down. It wasn’t even like the dark inside my eyelids, although that came closer than anything else did. The dark was. It was entire and eternal, without question, and it didn’t need to be anything else, because there was nothing else that the dark could possibly be. It was just the dark, the hot warm dark, and it was perfect. I didn’t need anything but the hot warm dark, and the feeling of the world’s arms closed around me.

  That night was one of the good dreaming nights, where it was just me and the hot warm dark, and part of me was still dimly aware of the apartment where my body lay sleeping in its own cocoon of hot warm dark, the space created where my skin pressed against Nathan’s. We encompassed a world between us. Anything outside that world wasn’t worth worrying about.

  Somewhere across the Bay, a boat horn blew a long, mournful note. Everything else was still, and I slipped deeper down into dreams and the safety of the hot warm darkness inside me.

  -

  The early success of the SymboGen Intestinal Bodyguard™ line of products can be partially ascribed to canny advertising. Their marketing department hired an actress best known for her work in a series of horror movies featuring a monster modeled off a species of parasitic wasp. Her first infomercial began with her in her original costume smiling her A-list smile and saying, “I know a bad parasite when I see one. Now it’s time for you to learn about a good parasite—one that wants to help you, not hurt you.”

  While SymboGen would quickly move away from use of the word “parasite” in advertising material, the early groundwork had been laid, and people were beginning to trust the concept behind the Intestinal Bodyguard™. After that, all that remained was to sell the idea to the world.

  —FROM SELLING THE UNSELLABLE: AMERICAN ADVERTISING THROUGH THE YEARS, BY MORGAN DEMPSEY, PUBLISHED 2026.

  Little boy with faith so thin,

  Little girl so strong within,

  I said I’d never leave you, and I’m sorry, but I lied.

  If you’re set to pay the price,

  Learn the ways of sacrifice,

  Leave this world to grieve you, take a breath, and step outside.

  The broken doors are waiting, down the path you’ve always known.

  My darling ones, be careful now, and don’t go out alone.

  —FROM DON’T GO OUT ALONE, BY SIMONE KIMBERLEY, PUBLISHED 2006 BY LIGHTHOUSE PRESS. CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT.

  Chapter 3

  AUGUST 2027

  I glared at the sheet of paper in front of me. The words that were printed there swam in and out of focus, seeming to actively evade my attempts to understand them. Joyce placed a steadying hand on my shoulder. “Deep breaths, Sal,” she said. “Let them come to you.”

  “Yeah, because that’s going to happen,” I muttered, and kept glaring at the paper.

  Learning to read again had been more difficult than learning to talk, and I still wasn’t comfortable with it. Apparently, I hadn’t been dyslexic before the accident. The old Sally Mitchell was a voracious reader. I preferred audiobooks, which didn’t change themselves around when I was tense or tired.

  After several minutes of continued glaring, the recalcitrant letters began to obey me, assembling themselves into tidy sentences, which read:

  THE PRESENCE OF PATIENT SALLY R. MITCHELL IS HEREBY REQUESTED AT SYMBOGEN INC. ON THE MORNING OF FRIDAY, AUGUST 20TH, TO DISCUSS ONGOING TREATMENT. PLEASE BRING ALL RECEIPTS RELATING TO HEALTHCARE EXPENSES INCURRED SINCE FEBRUARY 2027, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO HOSPITAL STAYS, TRANSPORTATION TO AND FROM APPOINTMENTS, APPROVED SPECIALISTS (SEE APPENDED LIST)…

  The words started scrambling themselves again. I stopped trying to read them. There was only so much SymboGen doublespeak I could take at any one time, and “requests” from the corporation were never really requests. They were commandments wearing their best Sunday clothes, and that didn’t make me like them any better. “I think I have everything they’ve asked for,” I said, and thrust the paper at her. “Can you please check the list? I can’t read this anymore.”

  “You tried, and that’s what matters,” said Joyce, taking the paper and glancing down it. “It looks like we have everything. Now come on, Sal, it’s going to be fine. This is just your six-month review. They’re not trying to pull a fast one. They’re making sure they have all their paperwork in order and that you haven’t started hiding symptoms from them. This is totally normal, and that means it’s fine.”

  “You know, I don’t mind so much when our parents talk to me like I’m six, but you need to cut it out,” I said. “You’re not the one who has to go to SymboGen and get poked at by their scientists for an entire day.”

  “I’m also not the one who decided to play chicken with a bus,” said Joyce. “See, this is how a single bad decision can shape your whole life. I’m the good daughter, and you’re a cautionary tale.”

  Despite myself, I laughed. Unrepentant to the end, Joyce grinned.

  Joyce and I looked alike enough for our relationship to be obvious: we had the same pale Irish skin, the same round faces, and the same lanky frames. We even both had brown hair and eyes. But my hair was a middling chestnut, while hers was a dark red-brown that looked like it belonged in a shampoo commercial. Her eyes were light enough to be almost hazel, while mine basically matched my hair. We both burned in any kind of strong light, but my skin freckled, while hers eventually tanned. It didn’t take me long to realize that of the two of us, she was “the pretty one”—something I’m sure I resented when I was Sally and had to deal with growing up shadowed by a prettier, smarter, genuinely nicer younger sister. Now that I didn’t have any of that baggage, I could appreciate Joyce for what she was. That was nice. If I was going to have a sister, I wanted her to be someone I could like.

  She was also a biologist, working with our father in his lab. I’d been going to college for a general Liberal Arts degree—something everyone I met assured me was useless—when I had my accident. Now I seemed destined for a long, productive life as a lab rat. So I guess we were in the same general profession, at opposite ends of the food chain.

  “Now come on.” Joyce dropped the paper on the kitchen table and grabbed my hand. “You promised me an afternoon of mindless shopping at the mall, followed by a brainless summer blockbuster and all the popcorn I could consume. This is our sisterly bonding time, and I won’t let you out of it again.”

  “But Joyce—”

  “Nope, no buts. I was promised commerce and togetherness, and commerce and togetherness I shall have.” She gave my hand a tug. “Come on, Sal. Live a little. Buy uncomfortable shoes and makeup that you’ll never wear in a million years.”

  I sighed. “You really want me to go shopping with you.”

  “You’d think that would have been obvious, from the way I’ve been saying ‘hey, let’s go shopping like you promised’ since you got out of bed, but yes, I want to go shopping. It’ll help you relax before your review.” Joyce dropped my hand. “Come on. We’ll go to the big mall in San Bruno. They have an Orange Julius!”

  “Why didn’t you say so before?” I stood, stretching slowly just so I could watch the impatience blossoming in her expression. Joyce glowered at me. I smiled. “What? Am I not fast enough for you?”

  “Stop messing around with me, or I’m making you drive.”

  My smile died. “Not fun
ny, Joyce.”

  “Oh, shit, Sal, I’m sorry,” said Joyce, immediately seeing that she had gone too far. She leaned over to touch my shoulder, adding, “I just keep thinking it’s been long enough. I’m sorry.”

  “I’ll tell you when it’s been long enough, okay? Just… for right now, please, no more jokes about making me drive.”

  Joyce nodded, biting her lip.

  I somehow forced myself to smile. “It’s not that bad. Don’t American social norms mean that younger siblings are normally fighting to be the ones behind the wheel?” Not that I was that comfortable having Joyce drive me anywhere. According to her driving history, she’d been in six minor accidents and received eleven speeding tickets since she got her license. It wasn’t the sort of thing that inspired confidence. But if I was going to be a good sister, I was going to let her drive me to the mall.

  “Every time I think you’re halfway back to normal, you go and say something like that.” Joyce rolled her eyes, distress forgotten in favor of making sure I realized how weird I was. That had been the idea. “You get your coat. I’ll get the keys.”

  “I’m on it,” I said, turning toward my room. Dwelling on my upcoming appointment wasn’t doing me any good, and maybe Joyce was right. Maybe commerce would do the trick.

  After an hour at the mall, I was absolutely certain of one thing: Joyce was wrong. My feet hurt, my shoulders ached from carrying Joyce’s bags—something I hadn’t volunteered to do, but seemed to be doing all the same—and I was starting to think longingly of the isolation room back at the shelter. It was hot and snug and always smelled like cats, and it would have been paradise compared to the food court at the San Bruno Mall.

  Worst of all, the outing wasn’t doing anything to take my mind off my upcoming visit to SymboGen. If anything, it was making me dwell on it more, since the mall wasn’t giving me anything better to think about. Except for maybe going home.

  I’d been sitting by myself for almost fifteen minutes, ostensibly guarding Joyce’s many purchases, when she came flouncing back through the crowd and placed an Orange Julius cup in front of me with a grand flourish. “Ta-da!”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “What?” She frowned. “You’re supposed to be overcome with gratitude. I hunted and killed that smoothie for you.”

  “My hero,” I deadpanned.

  “I think you mean ‘heroine.’ Heroes are male.”

  “Whatever.” I shook my head. “I’m sorry, Joyce. I’m not trying to be a spoilsport.”

  “Yet somehow, you’re still managing to do an excellent job.” Joyce flopped into a plastic chair, propping her chin on her knuckles. “You wanna tell me why this SymboGen trip has you all fucked in the head, as opposed to all the other ones?”

  I sighed, taking the lid off my smoothie and swirling my straw through the thick orange goo. “I had another fight with Mom.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Joyce wince. “The moving out thing?”

  “The moving out thing,” I confirmed. “Until SymboGen says I’m both healthy and mentally stable, she’s not going to let me move out.” For most adults, “let” wouldn’t matter. For me… there had been a period following my accident when I wasn’t expected ever to recover the ability to make my own decisions. My parents had been granted conservatorship over me until such time as my doctors judged me fully recovered. Until SymboGen signed the papers to certify that I was both healthy and sane, “let” was the only word that mattered. I couldn’t do anything my parents didn’t want to let me do.

  “It could be worse,” Joyce said.

  “Sure. They could decide not to let me go to work anymore. Or maybe they’ll decide not to let me see Nathan.” I shoved my smoothie aside. “I wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for them. I know that. And I know that I have to let SymboGen keep studying me, because we need to understand why I didn’t die. But sometimes I’m just tired of feeling like this is my life, you know? Like this is all I get, and it’s all because of our parents, and SymboGen.”

  I stopped, startled by the venom in my own voice. Even Joyce was staring at me, briefly shocked out of her normal too-cool-for-this attitude.

  “I…” She stopped, reaching for the words, and tried again: “I didn’t know you felt that way.”

  “Yeah, well.” I shrugged halfheartedly. “It feels like there’s no way out sometimes.”

  “You’ve been so much better these last few years. It’s like you’re… it’s like you’re happy for the first time in your life. I thought that meant… I mean, you seemed happy, so I thought you had to be happy.”

  “I am happy,” I said. “I’m happy that we’re friends. I know from what you’ve said, and from what everyone who knew me before the accident won’t say, that you and I didn’t always get along. I like my job. I like working with animals.”

  “And Nathan?” asked Joyce, a trace of her normal insouciance creeping back.

  “And Nathan,” I allowed. “I like him, too. I love him, even. So it’s not that I’m not happy. It’s just that I don’t like feeling trapped.”

  “I get that,” said Joyce. “Sometimes—” She cut herself off, blinking at something behind me. “What the hell is going on over there?”

  There was a new air of confusion to the general chatter in the mall. I’d been too busy focusing on Joyce to notice it before. I twisted in my seat, following her gaze to a little girl outside the boundaries of the food court. She was too young to be on her own—no more than six or seven—and she was half-walking, half-staggering toward the exit. From the way she was moving, she’d hurt her foot recently. If she’d been older, I would have suspected her of having had a stroke. And yet her gait managed not to be the strangest thing about her, possibly because the sight of a little girl towing a fully grown woman bodily along was weird enough to make everything else seem incidental.

  “Helen, sweetie, come on, stop playing this bad game,” said the woman—her mother, judging by the resemblance between them. There were tears running down her cheeks. Her obvious dismay just called the utter slackness of the little girl’s expression into sharper relief. “Let’s go back to Daddy, okay? Okay, sweetie? Please?”

  The little girl—Helen, her name was Helen, and that seemed suddenly very important, although I couldn’t have said exactly why—gave no indication that she’d heard a word her mother said. She just kept plodding forward, moving surprisingly fast considering that she was barely lifting her right foot off the floor. Her mother was dragged along in her wake, unable to stop the girl’s forward motion.

  I heard Joyce gasp. “There’s another one,” she whispered loudly. Her hand stabbed past my face, pointing into the crowd. I turned to look where she was pointing, and saw a man shamble through the gathered bodies, moving with the same unsteady speed as the little girl. Like the little girl, his expression was slack, eyes focusing on nothing in this world… and like her, he was heading straight for the exit.

  “What the hell…?” I stood, taking a step back, so that I was standing next to Joyce. She scrambled to her feet, latching onto my arm with surprising strength. “What’s wrong with them?”

  “I don’t know. Food poisoning maybe?” Joyce gave me a pleading look. “It’s not something contagious, is it? There’s not something in the air vents?”

  “You’re the one who works in a lab,” I said, keeping most of my attention on the man and the little girl. “Shouldn’t you know what causes this sort of symptomology?” Helen’s mother wasn’t stopping her, but she was slowing her down, and the man was starting to catch up. I wanted to see what would happen if they saw each other. I wanted to see what they would do.

  “Helen!” wailed the mother.

  Helen plodded ceaselessly on. The man’s longer legs were rapidly shortening the distance between them. He was walking better than she was, although his balance didn’t seem to be as good; several times, I was sure he was going to topple over. But he didn’t.

  And then they were next to each other, and
with no more ceremony than a step, they stopped. The little girl turned to face the man, tilting her chin up as she stared into his eyes. Their expressions remained slack, neither showing any emotion as they considered each other. The entire mall seemed to have gone quiet; the only sounds were the music playing softly through the speakers overhead and the pleas of Helen’s mother.

  Unsteadily, Helen extended her free hand toward the man. Just as unsteadily, he reached out and took it, mashing his fingers around hers with so much force that it had to hurt her. She didn’t react. Now hand-in-hand, the pair turned and resumed their trek toward the door, dragging Helen’s wailing mother in their wake.

  They had almost reached the doors when the mall EMTs descended, summoned by someone who reacted better in a crisis than the rest of us. They had no trouble separating the man from the little girl—when they pulled on their joined hands, the pair just let go. They had more trouble getting Helen’s mother to let her go. I think they may have finally threatened to sedate her, because she dropped Helen’s hand and stepped away, pleas fading into sobs.

  Joyce and I watched as both man and little girl were strapped to gurneys and wheeled away, vanishing through an EMPLOYEES ONLY door into the back corridors of the mall. A stunned silence hung over everyone who had witnessed the scene. Several people had their phones out and were snapping pictures of the crowd, like the disoriented faces of the witnesses would somehow provide the answers that none of us had on our own.

  “I think we should go home now,” said Joyce, in a very small voice.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I think you’re right.”

  Joyce switched the radio from station to station as she drove, taking her eyes off the road so many times that I was afraid I was going to start hyperventilating. “Traffic, weather, stupid comedy show, traffic, traffic—God!” She slammed her fists against the wheel. “Doesn’t anybody talk about anything important around here?”