Parasite Nerves

Cosmic horror meets human resilience in this short fiction piece

Today’s story comes to us from A. J. Van Belle. A. J. is a writer and scientist whose short fiction has appeared in journals and anthologies from 2004 to the present, and their novels are represented by Lauren Bieker of FinePrint Literary Management. As a biologist, they draw on their science background to inform the world-building details in their fiction. They can be found on Twitter @ajvanbelle and at www.ajvanbelle.com.

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The space station auditorium stinks of the sweat of a hundred twelve-year-old Cosmic Academy recruits.

The headmaster gestures for me to take my place at the podium. My neck aches.

I must not let these children see how the weight crushes me. The toxicologists designed the protective headdress to be as lightweight as possible, but it’s a bulk that shouldn't be there.

The snakes writhe, making my heart tighten with their endless gripping of my skull.

The young cadets in the audience gape at the head wrap keeping them safe from the creatures.

“I’m going to be your speaker for today,” I say into the microphone. The adolescents squirm.

I tell them what happened: on the planet Scythe, known for its venomous denizens, my father went into the caverns without the usual safety equipment. For a stroll, he said. To take photographs of flowers that bloomed in utter darkness. When he needed help, I had no time for protective gear myself. I pulled him out; he kept his life. And for his trouble he got a daughter with a permanent parasite-brain interface.

Am I here as a hero or a cautionary tale?

Before I finish the story, the kids are talking. Some say the danger must be exaggerated. The wave of sound resolves into three shouted words.

“Take it off! Take it off!” The chant swells. The painting on the wall seems to pulse in time to the rhythmic words: an acrylic image of a soldier in her dark-camouflage uniform.

“The snakes eat rats and mice and lizards,” I say to the crowd. “Have you ever seen a baby mouse?”

They go quiet. I touch the holo controls at the podium, and the image of a baby mouse springs to life in midair. It sits on a fingertip, and its whole body is no bigger than the fingernail.

“Adorable, isn't it? To the snakes, it's lunch.” I try to keep the snakes’ diets varied, and so far it's working. If they die, I die. The linkage of their nerves with mine sees to that.

“Take. It. Off! Take. It. Off!” The chant rises again, louder this time. They all join in.

My hand twitches. I could remove the headdress. I could show them. It would be the last thing they ever see.

I force my hand back to the podium. I'm here to talk to them about saving my father. Not about living with deadly parasites. Besides, I don’t have the magnetic key to undo the latches. If the headdress were removable, I couldn’t be here.

But maybe I am here to talk about living with the consequences of heroism. Later in my speech, I’ll tell them I don't know whether I made the right choice. With my headdress on, I may be a hero, but without it, I’d be a monster.

The chant continues. The snakes coil against each other so hard they move my head from side to side.

The children want to see.

• • •

 I blink and the snakes show me a vision a few seconds into the future. In this fever dream, a child in the second row gestures at me. The kid next to him gives him a shove, and he climbs over the front row, stepping on another child. The climber lunges for me. I flinch away, but his fingers close on the stiff fabric of my shameful crown. He makes a fist around the headdress and the snake bodies beneath. He yanks.

Stars wink to life at the backs of my eyes, a million pinpricks, each a supernova of agony. Parasite nerves fray and split from my dendrites. A tug all the way to my optic nerve.

Impossibly, he holds the headdress aloft, triumphant. The audience cheers. The headmaster and his minions rush to quiet their charges, but it’s too late.

The cheers twist into howls. The audience wavers before me. I sway, dizzy, my consciousness leaking through my torn scalp. Bits of my essence float free and swirl in the air like bubbles in water.

The snakes’ poison does its work. Children writhe in their seats, assailed by the invisible razor-like darts of neurotoxin. They must have thought themselves safe because the auditorium is large. But every corner of the room is within range of the poison.

The instructors standing in the back look at me to see what’s going on. One drops to her knees. Another slumps against the back wall.

The children in the front rows fall limp.

The joke’s on you, I think to my snakes. They’ll never get their meal. In removing the covering, the boy also uprooted half my parasites, ripping their foundations and tearing my brain. Slating me for death, too. Now, there’s a whole feast spread before my snakes, but I have no strength to carry them to their prey.

The boy who unleashed the creatures lies dead, sprawled in the lap of another cadet, both of them with eyes wide open, unseeing, the whites pink; their faces are purple as a bruise.

• • •

I blink again. Back to the moment, a room of living people, my headdress still in place.

The boy in the second row rises to climb over the seat. I tilt my heavy head toward him. “The parasites that have taken root in my skull will kill everyone in the room given half a chance. That’s not just some story. If you look at them, you die.”

The boy casts one more mocking glance at his neighbor before settling down in his seat.

I finish my talk and, without a trace of sarcasm, thank them for being a good audience. My head’s strange weight sways on my neck as I walk away from the podium. I touch the base of the headdress. A latch hangs loose. I was sure I secured them all before leaving home…but it seems the snakes had other ideas.

The snakes may be part of me now… but I am stronger than they are.