Parasite Read online

  The man eventually gave up and leaned back in his chair and waited for Walter’s fit to finish. For a hired gun, a debt collector, he certainly had more patience than Walter had expected. Walter didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

  “You fucking moron,” Walter finally managed, still chuckling slightly. He blinked hard, clearing the tears from his vision. “You find my son, and then I’ll be able to give you the money.”

  A confused expression crossed the blond man’s face.

  “You find my boy, and I’ll find the money to pay you,” Walter repeated, still fighting back laughter.

  The confusion on the man’s face contorted and into a mask of anger.

  And there it was: the anger.

  Walter knew that the man wouldn’t be able to keep his cool for much longer. Patient or not, he was still a hired gun with a job to do, and he would only put up with so much shit before he acted out.

  End it, Walter willed sourly. End this shit.

  As if reading his thoughts, the man reached behind his back and withdrew a pillow from the chair. In one fluid motion, he placed the pillow on top of Walter’s thigh, then brought the gun around and placed the barrel roughly six inches above his knee.

  Walter gritted his teeth.

  Without so much as a word, the hitman with the military-style haircut smirked and then pulled the trigger.

  8.

  The shot was nearly deafening in the small apartment, even with the silencer on the end of the gun and with the pillow as an additional measure to keep the noise down.

  The pain, on the other hand, wasn’t all that bad.

  Walter felt a burning sensation, as if a lit cigar were being extinguished in his thigh, followed by a dull throb that seemed to flush through the entire muscle.

  He had been through a lot in his forty-some-odd years, including being stabbed in the ribs, the result of another drug-fueled spat that had nearly killed him, and he, in turn, had dealt his own damage, including whipping his son until the boy’s back was raw and peeling.

  But he had never shot anyone, nor he had ever been shot.

  Never too old for new experiences.

  He opened his eyes and stared at his assailant, his breaths coming in abbreviated puffs.

  “You—” Walter began through gritted teeth.

  You piece of shit, was what he had wanted to say, but something happened before he could finish the sentence.

  There was a tightness in his chest, and it was suddenly difficult to draw a breath. At first Walter thought that he was having a heart attack, that all of the years of abusing his rail-thin body were finally coming back to haunt him—that the devil had come to take his one hundred and forty-five pounds of flesh.

  But after only a few seconds, he realized that the pain wasn’t coming from his chest, at least not directly; the pain was originating from his shoulder.

  To Walter, it felt as if metal bands had been wrapped over and around his shoulder muscles, and with every breath, these bands were being tightened. This squeezing and constriction radiated in thick ribbons across his narrow chest.

  A heart attack… it is a heart attack.

  A scream bubbled to his lips as the pain intensified, and he dropped his chin to his chest. With his lower lip curling in horror, Walter took in his own body. Through the open flannel shirt, he could see his pectorals—no more than thin membranes of muscle—clenching so tightly that veins he didn’t even know existed had pushed their way to the surface and jutted out.

  He screamed again as the pain was ratcheted up another notch; it felt as if his arm were being torn completely from the socket. And as this pain radiated through him, he turned his head skyward, shut his eyes against the pain, and clenched his entire body, trying to fend off the agony that enveloped his torso.

  “Not so tough now, Walter?” the blond man spat through a sneer.

  Walter opened his eyes and looked at the man.

  The man’s words seemed appropriate, seemed right for a hitman such as this, but his eyes were just a little off, the inner corners lifting ever so slightly. Clearly, Walter’s visceral reaction to being shot, although desired, was overwrought.

  He squeezed his eyes closed again as another wave of agony overcame him. Spit dripped from his lower lip and fell to his reddening chest.

  What is happening to me? his mind screamed.

  The pain in his shoulder and chest was so intense that the gunshot wound to his upper thigh was but a mere afterthought. And even that was offering it more credit than it probably deserved; it may have occupied a part of his mind, but it was a very small part, an ant inside the whale of his shoulder pain.

  Something cold tapped just below his chin. If it weren’t for the fact that his teeth were so clenched that the cords on his neck jutted out, the tapping might have caused his teeth to click together. As it was, the only reason he noticed it was that it was cool—and he was burning up.

  He lowered his head, but kept his eyes firmly closed.

  What the fuck is happening to me?!

  It couldn’t be a heart attack—after all, a heart attack couldn’t hurt this badly, could it?

  The tightness was spreading, radiating from his right shoulder across his chest and back, eventually making it to his other arm. Both arms were nearly completely numb now.

  “Walter?”

  Another wave of pain bubbled and frothed inside him, and he squeezed his eyes so hard that he saw stars. He opened his mouth just wide enough to slide his tongue between his teeth. He had meant to just put his tongue there, for something to bite down on, to focus his pain, but he was overzealous, and a small piece of flesh dislodged from the tip. His mouth immediately filled with the coppery taste of blood.

  But this didn’t matter.

  What mattered was the pain.

  And when it came again, it was unbearable.

  A scream wouldn’t cut it this time; instead, Walter’s jaw went slack and a moan veritably fell out of his mouth, a horrible, undulating sound as his head rolled uncontrollably on his neck as if his muscles had suddenly turned to jelly.

  “Walter?” the man asked again, far away this time, his voice sounding as if whispered in a tunnel.

  Somewhere hidden in the deep recesses of his consciousness, Walter understood that the hitman had pulled the pillow from his leg and was now examining his thigh, prodding the torn flesh with the barrel of his gun.

  “Sherk! Get the fuck over here,” he hollered to his partner. “I think he’s having a heart attack or something… this shouldn’t kill him. We can’t let him die, Sherk! Sabra wants him alive!”

  A shadow passed over Walter’s face as the man stood and blocked the light from a bare bulb overhead, a sensation that barely registered with his eyes so tightly closed.

  “Come take a look at his leg!” the man sounded anxious now.

  Clearly, no matter how tough this hitman was, he was obviously terrified of what Sabra might do to him if Walter died.

  This shouldn’t kill him…

  Walter dead meant no product and no money. Walter dead meant Sabra had no more need for a blond, square-headed collector of all things human and illicit.

  And this said nothing of his sidekick with the dark hair and thick pink scar across his throat.

  Eventually Walter’s pain subsided, blending into the background like an oppressive, yet palatable darkness. Even though he was terrified at the prospect of its inevitable return, for some reason a moment of clarity washed over him.

  He knew what was causing the pain, and it most definitely wasn’t the gunshot wound in his thigh.

  “Look,” he heard the blond man say.

  Walter felt something prodding his thigh, a sensation that registered only as a non-specific pressure. It should have hurt—the man digging about in his bullet wound should have more than hurt; it should have been excruciating.

  But this wasn’t.

  “See? This shouldn’t kill him… right? It’s a fucking leg wound.”


  There was a pause, and even with his eyes closed, he knew that the other man was also inspecting his leg.

  “See? Fuck! Fuck! What do we do? Lie him down, try to stop the bleeding? Fuck! Wake the fuck up, Walter!”

  Walter’s breath was coming out in short bursts from between clenched teeth. The pain, like high tide, was building, on the verge of returning; he could feel his shoulder muscles tightening, their fatigued fibers twitching from their previous session.

  “No,” he managed at last, eyes still closed. “Not my leg.”

  He tried to take a few deeper breaths, but his body was so tense that his diaphragm seemed to have lost its ability to relax.

  “What?” the man with the blond hair asked.

  “My shoulder,” Walter whispered. “It’s my shoulder.”

  The air around Walter got hot and smelled of stale bread again as the man with the broken nose leaned in close. Any recollection of doing this but a few minutes ago, of getting his nose smashed by Walter’s forehead, had clearly been forgotten.

  “What?”

  “My shoulder,” Walter repeated.

  Then the pain exploded again and he screamed.

  Moments before he was once again forced into the dark recesses of his mind, Walter felt hands grab either side of his flannel shirt and tear it away.

  The sound of ripping fabric was followed by a sharp intake of breath.

  “Oh my god—oh my god!”

  9.

  Walter’s Shoulder Pulsated, And then the skin started to stretch. Although he couldn’t place exactly where this stretching sensation originated, it seemed to be somewhere on his left side, and not the right where the cracker was buried. It felt like there was something buried beneath his skin, something hell-bent on trying to force his insides out.

  “Oh my god.” He heard the words again, but this time he wasn’t sure if he was saying them, or if they had come from the blond goon that had slumped back into the chair, eyes wide in horror.

  Whimpering, Walter could no longer resist the urge to look down at his sweat-soaked chest, even though every fiber of his being was telling him to keep his eyes closed, to wait for this moment to pass, to wait for whatever was going to happen to occur in blissful ignorance.

  To die in relative peace.

  But he couldn’t resist; he just had to see.

  Nearly immediately, he wished he hadn’t looked.

  With his arms still bound by the telephone cable behind his back, the cracker on his right shoulder was even more prominent, the thing’s thick legs jutting up a few inches from the rest of his skin, the razor-like teeth in its mouth oscillating with increased fervor.

  But this wasn’t what made his breath catch. That honor was bestowed upon the half dozen or so thick red striations—stretch-marks, maybe, or blood vessels—splaying from the outline of the cracker shell and traveling across his chest, making it to his sternum before receding somewhere deep inside.

  These vessels—if indeed that was what they were—were thick, like horrible varicose veins, twisting and turning in tight loops as they meandered their way across and protruded from his pasty white chest.

  But despite these obvious marks, it was clear to him that they were not the source of his pain. No, it was now his other shoulder that was causing white-hot daggers to shoot throughout his entire left side.

  Walter slowly turned his neck to that side and glanced at his shoulder.

  There was another cracker embedded there, a smaller one, not quite half of the size of the one that had crawled up his hand on Main Street before latching on to his shoulder.

  Where did that come from? he wondered absently. His entire world had started to quake, and he was suddenly overcome by a bout of dizziness.

  He tried his best to keep his eyes on this new cracker as it became more prominent, and then started to push against his skin from the inside, puckering, stretching, probing like a chick trying to hatch.

  “Ungggh,” Walter moaned as he lost complete control of his body. His head rolled back, and his eyes followed suit.

  The cracker suddenly extended its six legs, tearing small fissures in Walter’s shoulder. When it pushed against his skin once more, it budded and then tore through Walter’s skin, sending his body into another tremor.

  “Oh god,” he whimpered, his body thrashing against the chair, its four legs tapping repeatedly against the ground with an almost rhythmic quality.

  This time when Walter shuddered, it wasn’t in pain; rather, it was sheer, unaltered relief, as the pressure from his stretching skin had finally released.

  Walter felt his consciousness begin to fade, but he forced the gray away and regained focus, knowing that it wouldn’t be long before he passed out.

  The man with the blond hair stared at Walter, his square features frozen in horror as the bloody cracker trailing tendrils of pink skin climbed clumsily down Walter’s arm.

  “What is this?” the man cried, leaning back in his chair. “You’re fucking infected! With—with—with parasites!”

  The man went to stand when the cracker made its way onto Walter’s lap, its movements becoming more coordinated, its limbs articulating in a more rhythmic sequence.

  Lip curling, the man tilted his head and craned his neck, trying to get a better look at the pale creature that perched on Walter’s lap.

  “What the fuck is that?” the man whispered. He raised his gun, intent on prodding the creature that hissed rhythmically, the tiny holes on its back fluttering.

  “Sherk? I think you should—”

  The cracker suddenly flung itself at the man, landing against his leather coat.

  “Fuck!” he yelled as he swatted it to the parquet floor with the back of his hand. He jumped to his feet, toppling the chair behind him in the process.

  The cracker landed on its back, but then quickly flipped over. As Walter watched, the cracker closed the distance between it and the hitman in seconds, moving so quickly that it was already up the man’s pant leg before he could react.

  “Fuck!” he yelled. “Sherk! Sherk! Get the fuck over here!”

  The man began shaking his leg furiously, trying to rid himself of the creature. When it quickly became clear that the cracker would not be swatted away like a pesky spider, he switched to trying to smash it through his pants, first with his thick fist, then with the butt of his gun.

  But despite his best efforts, the thing kept on moving upward—Walter could see the disc-like outline at the man’s calf, nearing his knee.

  The hitman abandoned attempts to crush the thing, and instead turned his attention to undoing his belt while he hopped up and down like a lunatic.

  “What the fuck is this? Walter, what the fuck is this?”

  A small smile spread across Walter’s thin lips. As the pain in his shoulder—both shoulders, now—strangely began to subside, he was reminded of the numbness in his leg, of the fact that the half undressed man with the square head and equally square body before him had shot him.

  Serves you fucking right.

  He had no idea what the cracker was going to do, if anything, but he hoped that in the very least it would clamp down on the man’s balls.

  Only now did Walter risk a glance at the arm from which the new cracker had budded.

  There were thick lines of blood on his elbow and the part of his forearm that he could see before it receded behind him, still bound with the telephone cable. And there was blood on his shoulder, too, but what there wasn’t was a tattered hole in his flesh from where the small, almost translucent cracker had burst forth.

  There was only a patch of pale white skin, a milky membrane that looked even more sickly than Walter’s normal pallor—as if the skin that the cracker had budded from had already healed over.

  What the hell?

  Before he could contemplate this any further, the man with the short blond hair screamed, drawing Walter’s attention back.

  The man’s pants had gotten stuck around mid-thigh. Walter
could see the cracker—which was translucent bordering on transparent, and much smaller than the crackers he had encountered on Highway 2 outside of the burning shithole that was Askergan—suddenly clamp down on the man’s quad.

  The man threw his head back and howled.

  Sherk finally came into view, running in front of Walter’s now teetering chair, a black leather bag clutched in one hand, a pistol in the other.

  No!

  During all of the commotion, the man must have found Walter’s drug case in his fridge—which is presumably why he didn’t come to his colleague’s aid right away.

  No! Put it back, you fucking cunt!

  The blond-haired man was grabbing at the cracker on his quad with both heads, trying desperately to pry it off. Cords stood out from his neck, and the man’s face was starting to turn a beet red.

  The second hitman, the man named Sherk, dropped to one knee in front of his partner. To Walter’s delight, he tossed the black case to one side and then he too tried to pull the cracker off.

  From behind, it looked like the shorter, dark-haired man was going to town on the bigger man, sucking his dick, and Walter imagined for a moment that the man’s agonizing cries were actually born of ecstasy.

  The bizarre scene almost drove him to laughter.

  Then, as if the man had climaxed, he toppled, another howl filling the small, decrepit apartment. For a brief moment, Walter wondered if someone might come running in to help or if someone would call the police.

  But he doubted it.

  Not in this place.

  Walter suddenly felt the tightening sensation again, only this time it was coming from slightly higher than where the other cracker had ruptured from, near the thin skin between his neck and shoulder.

  The pain came next, the excruciating sensation of something forcing itself out of his skin. As before, his eyes rolled back, but he bit the inside of his cheek as hard as he could, tasting more blood. It would do no good to pass out now.

  Besides, he wanted—he needed—to see this.

  Sherk had managed to remove the blond-haired man’s leather jacket and had pulled his pants all the way down now. But the cracker had already torn a hole in the man’s leg and had embedded itself beneath his skin; a small, apple-sized outline like a second kneecap. The man, flat on his back now, was shrieking in pain, his meaty hands grabbing at the shape, and all the while Sherk kept pushing his hands away. The man reached into the back of his pants and pulled out a thick black handle. As he moved the handle in front of him, he flicked a switch and a gleaming six-inch blade popped out.