The flying things came, and they came, until it seemed the cavity was filled with them and the stagnant air vibrated with their high-pitched droning noise. They landed on the creature's pale face, on its thin arms and huge eyes. Some unravelled tiny tubes from their heads and regurgitated a substance that penetrated its thin skin. The creature watched, paralysed and powerless, hardly breathing, hardly alive, as the flying things trampled through the sticky liquid with their hairy legs and sucked the mixture back up their tubes.
They were feeding on its body.
The creature struggled to turn its head, and saw a thick cluster of flying things settle upon the quadruped corpse. Some entered the mouth and scuttled over the limp tongue, some crawled around the wound in its neck, some hovered around the rear orifice before settling to secrete and ingest and excrete.
Like the things smothering the quadruped, the things on the emaciated creature searched for points of entry. They found the wound the quadruped had opened in its limb and gathered there in a seething mass, attracted to the acrid smell of its body juices; the same kind of smell that emanated from the rotting corpse. They bombarded the edges of its huge eyes, sucking at the smooth black surface with their feeding tubes.
The creature opened its mouth and tried to make a sound, to cry out its pain, but the things flew inside and lodged in its throat. Sucking at the fetid atmosphere became almost impossible. The creature attempted to move away from their assault, to escape, but it couldn't move, could do nothing but tremble and flinch beneath a surface of agony and gasp passed the writhing things in its neck.
Not all the flying things were feeding now. The ones crawling across its eyes and which swarmed around its wound didn't unravel tubes from their heads. They lowered their abdomens. They prodded the openings to its body and inserted a different kind of tube beneath the transparent skin. From these tubes poured tiny oval objects. Huge clusters of them were lodged under the thin layer of flesh around the creature's wound, in the lining of its mouth and around the edges of its lidless eyes.
The creature sat, huddled in pain and terror, as the flying things infested its body with their eggs.
Time seemed irrelevant as it sat there, alone and afraid. The pain was excruciating as the things ceaselessly attacked it. The creature slumped motionless with its long thin legs splayed out crookedly on the ground, long thin arms lying limp in its sexless lap and its huge cranium tilted onto one bony shoulder. It sat for a long time with the stench of decomposure growing stronger, and watched as the quadruped gradually began to move.
The red fur undulated from beneath. The torso twisted from within. Gradually, the quadruped's skin collapsed and draped across the skeleton structure. Small organisms began to squirm out of the dark caverns where the eyes had been, out of the frozen mouth, the anus, and the gaping wound in its neck.
The creature sat and watched as the quadruped once again became still and the organisms began to migrate out of the scant remains of the body. Watched as the clusters of oblong objects inserted beneath its own skin began to form into the same organisms that now wriggled across the dirt floor towards it. They piled up against its legs and punctured its skin, pushing their pointed heads inside. Squirming and writhing, they created a labyrinth of tiny passages beneath the transparent epidermis.
The wrigglers grew bigger, bigger than the ones that had migrated from the quadruped, changing colour as they devoured the pigment in the creature's flesh, turning yellow as they ingested its precious body fluids. They secreted juices which burned, and lacerated its tissues with their mouth hooks, feeding until they were swollen, splitting their skin and growing larger, becoming more voracious with each shedding.
The creature's honeycombed flesh sagged against its bones. Its lipless mouth stretched into a silent howl of agony.
The wrigglers burrowed deeper.
They began to invade its internal organs.
But, by then, it felt no pain.
* * *
'No, John! Not here!'
'Why not? We won't be disturbed. You want it, don't you?' He thrust a hand inside her blouse and rotated a palm against her breast.
'What if somebody comes?'
'It's late. Nobody comes this far into the forest at this time of night. Unless,' he added, grinning, 'They intend to get laid.'
A hand darted up her skirt and tugged at her knickers. 'But it's not dark yet,' she whined. 'Can't we do it inside the van?'
'With all those tools lying around?' He pushed a finger underneath her elastic crotch and ran it down the fleshy line between her pubic hairs. She was wet. She wanted it.
'Come on,' he breathed, pushing the finger up into her vagina and making her part her legs with a groan. 'Let's fuck out here on the grass, where there's plenty of room to thrash around.'
He inserted another finger and rubbed on her clitoris with his thumb, rotating it round and round until she was gasping and pushing her pelvis against his arm. He tore his fingers out and smiled at the obvious disappointment on her face.
Grabbing the blanket out of the works van, he hastily threw it on the ground and fell to his knees, pulling her down beside him and throwing his weight on top of her.
'No, John. We shouldn't ... '
He smothered her protests with hard, feverish kisses whilst unbuttoning her blouse and scooping out her soft breasts. He tore his lips from hers, lowered his head, and latched onto a nipple.
'Stop it, John. Wait a minute.'
'What the bloody hell's the matter with you?' he snapped irritably.
'I ... I'm not comfortable.'
He tutted as she wriggled beneath him, pushing a hand behind her back and bringing out a small jagged rock. 'Look,' she said, holding it up in front of his face, 'I was lying on this!'
'Can we get on with it now?'
'Well if you're going to take that attitude!'
She tried to push him off, but he grabbed her wrists and pinned them to the ground above her head. Alarm flashed in her eyes. He knew he wouldn't get anything off her that way, so he quickly tactics and lowered his head to kiss her, softly at first until she began to respond. When he heard her breathing quicken and felt her body relax beneath him, he forced his tongue into her mouth, kissing her harder.
With his knees, he opened up her legs and pushed his erection inside. Kelly whimpered as he entered, and he rammed into her harder and deeper, watching her pained expression and feeling the heat building up in his groin. He pulled out and rammed it inside again, out and in, faster and harder.
'Does it hurt?' he breathed, impaling her with a ferocity that made her breasts shudder.
'I ... I ... Wait!' she gasped. 'I think I heard something.'
'No you didn't.'
He pounded her body across the blanket with short sharp thrusts. She started to scramble out from beneath him and tried to sit up, peering at the trees all around them and saying, 'I don't like it here, John. It's spooky.'
'Spooky?' he cried, struggling to keep his cock inside.
'Isn't this the place where that plane crashed a couple of days ago?'
The warmth of her moist cavern was slipping away from him, and his frustration returned with a vengeance. 'Fuck the local history, Kelly,' he snarled. 'Just get your fucking cunt back down here.'
'Did anyone ... die?'
'How should I know!' He gripped her hips and pulled her back onto the blanket, throwing himself on top of her semi-naked body to hold her down.
'John, I'm serious. I don't like it here.'
'Well here will have to do, because we aren't moving until I get what I came here for.'
'I want to go home,' she said.
John's face hardened. Fury blazed in his eyes. Gripping her wrists, he once more pressed them into the ground on either side of her head, this time ignoring the panic on her face. Pushing himself between her legs until they were splayed wide, he rammed into her hard and furious, glancing down to look at his engorged penis pistoning in and out between her pubic hairs.
'John, please - !'
'You said you'd do it, Kelly. That's what we came here for.'
'But not like this,' she cried. 'I didn't mean like this.'
She'd stopped struggling. Tears formed in her eyes and slipped over her temples to disappear in her hair. He felt the heat in his groin slowly ebbing away. He liked it rough, but he didn't like it when they cried.
'I'm sorry, John,' she sobbed.
'Yeah, sure!' He released his grip on her wrists and rolled off, tugging his jeans up. Kelly sat up beside him., too upset to notice an unusually large and strange-coloured fly buzzing around her genitals, and too sore to feel it when it crawled up into her vagina.
'I mean it, John. I'm really sorry.'
'Three weeks you've been leading me on,' he rasped, as the fly secreted enzymes and rasped at the inner walls before sucking the mixture back up its proboscis. 'Wriggling your tight fanny and jiggling your tits around in front of my face. Comes to the crunch and you back off like a bloody baby.'
'Please don't be mad at me.' She leaned forward to touch his clenched fist, trapping the fly inside her. It buzzed a little, but she was only vaguely aware of the tiny vibrations. 'Please, John.'
He looked at her. She sat there with her eyes pleading and her huge breasts hanging like pendulous water balloons asking for it, begging for it. Heated passion flared up in him again.
'Are you going to let me do it, or what?' he asked,
She quickly brushed away the tears and nodded, forcing a smile onto her face. Inside, the fly lowered its abdomen against her cervix.
'You sure?' he said.
The fly deposited ovum at the opening to her womb.
'I'm sure,' she said.
Kelly lay down on the blanket, pulled up her skirt, removed her knickers, and opened her legs wide in front of him. John smiled and unzipped himself. He mounted her quickly, before she had a chance to change her mind.
'Don't worry,' he said. 'It won't hurt ... much.'
He gripped her hips, holding her firmly in position as he entered. Kelly turned her head sideways and rammed a fist into her mouth to stifle her cries. It hurt. Hurt a lot.
The fly was crushed inside her vagina. More ovum spilled from its mangled body.
The air became filled with the sounds of hoarse gasping, of slapping flesh and muted sobs. Kelly squeezed her eyes shut as her body rocked backwards and forwards with increasing speed, increasing depth, increasing pain.
The ovum was pushed through her cervix.
John dug the toes of his trainers into the dirt, scrabbling forwards as Kelly was pounded away from him despite the hold he had on her. One foot scored the loose earth and came to rest by a narrow fissure in the soil, where two large flies of a dark but slightly yellowish colour were crawling from beneath the surface.
He was nearly there, nearly ready to explode. He clawed roughly at her breasts, dug his fingers deep into her soft flesh and increased the speed of his penetration. His foot piled dirt up against the fissure, burying the two flies at the entrance and trapping a massive swarm beneath the ground.
His ejaculation washed the eggs into Kelly's womb.
They began to hatch almost immediately.
* * *
'Ouch!'
'What's the matter?'
They were in the works van, carefully navigating their way through the trees towards a dirt track that would lead them out of the forest.
'I felt something,' Kelly said.
'Where?'
'Where do you think?' She frowned and gently rubbed a hand between her legs. 'It hurts.'
'The size of my dick, I'm not surprised.'
'Don't be so big-headed.'
'You should know, Kelly. You should know.'
She thumped him on the arm as he laughed out loud. Then she winced again.
'What now, for Christ's sake?'
'It hurts, John. It feels like a needle sticking into me.'
'Maybe you've got a thorn in your knickers?'
'It's not in my knickers, it hurts inside. Oh God, John! It's getting worse.'
The van bounced along the pitted track. The pain sharpened with every bump.
'You don't think,' she said between gritted teeth, 'You don't think you've damaged me, do you?'
'Damaged?'
'You know, caused me some internal injury.'
'Don't talk stupid. It's big, Kel, but it's not that big.' He turned his head to glance at her, wincing in the passenger seat. 'Is this your first time?'
'No, of course not.'
Even in the darkness, he could see the colour rise in her face. She turned her head away from him, staring out of the window into nothingness.
'Well, if you've been putting it around a bit, Kel, are you sure you're not pregnant?' He laughed hoarsely. 'I mean, a hard fuck would hurt if you've got something else up there, too.'
'I am not pregnant,' she snapped.
'Okay, okay, keep your hair on.'
'You were a bit rough, John.'
'You liked it though, didn't you.' There was a sudden hard edge to his voice. When Kelly didn't answer, irritation squirmed in the pit of his stomach. Glancing again at her contorted face, he thought she didn't seem so attractive now that he'd had her, and her whining voice was starting to get on his nerves.
'I haven't done you any harm,' he said. 'Don't you get blaming me for anything, Kelly.'
'How can you be so sure?'
'Because that's what a fanny's for, isn't it? No good having one if it doesn't like what's put into it.'
'But - '
'Just shut up and let me drive. And for Gods sake, open a window if you're going to dump gasses that bad inside my van.'
They'd reached the outskirts of tree's. The track widened out before spending itself onto a narrow lane that ran around the edge of the forest. There were still bits of yellow tape tied around a few trunks, but the rest had long been torn down by hikers or couples wanting a private place to probe private parts.
John was about to turn right, towards town, when Kelly's scream made him slam on the brakes. He bared his teeth and snapped his head towards the passenger seat, but his anger vanished when he saw her curled up on it in a tight fetal ball clutching at her abdomen.
'It's bad,' she whimpered. 'It hurts real bad.'
Tears poured from her eyes. Fear gripped him when he saw her hands, twisting between her legs, were smeared with patches of darkness. The smell of blood filled the van, mingled with the vague aroma of rotting eggs.
'Period pains,' he said. 'It must be period pains. I hear they get pretty - '
'I'm not due on. It's not that.'
He licked his dry lips. 'This is your first time, isn't it, Kel. It's supposed to hurt a bit the first - '
'I did it with Tommy Ross.'
'That slime-ball!'
'It never hurt like this after he did it.'
'What did he use to get it up, a magnifying glass and a pair of tweezers?' Anger now. Easier to cope with than fear. 'You stupid bitch! You are pregnant. You should have told - '
Kelly howled a great sob, and began breathing faster. 'I'm not,' she spluttered. 'I'm not pregnant. Oh John! Its like a knife in my guts. John, help me, please!'
Driven by panic, John pounded his foot on the clutch and threw the van into first gear, shooting off the forest track and into the lane. Dirt spewed from the back tyres as he hauled on the steering wheel, screeching and sliding into a right turn. The passenger side crashed against the steep bank, and Kelly was thrown against the door. She screamed out loud, but it wasn't a scream of shock, it was a scream of unmitigated agony. John leaned forward over the wheel, concentrating on the dark lane ahead as he pressed hard on the accelerator and fought to keep control of the skidding tyres.
Beads of perspiration pricked his forehead as he careered round bends with her cries searing through his head. Frantically he wondered if he had caused her some damage. He thought about her father, of the things he'd threatened to do to Tommy Ross if he found out Tommy Ross ever laid a hand on his little girl, of the things her father would do to him if he found out he'd fucked her and hurt her. He shouldn't have been so rough. He shouldn't have persuaded her to come out here with him in the first place.
He should have left well alone.
He shot her a glance as he sped blindly over a cross-roads. She was still curled up and writhing on the passenger seat. Her lips parted, and a strangled cry erupted from her gaping mouth. The sound of her pain terrified him.
'Stop it!' he yelled, reaching over and roughly shaking her shoulder, 'Shut up!'
Her mouth remained wide, but her cries died away to a desperate gasping.
'It can't be that bad?' he said 'Surely it can't be that bad?'
'It ... is.' Her voice was little more than a whisper. 'I need ... I need a hospital, John.'
'A hospital! Christ, are you sure? Maybe it will go away, maybe it will stop - ?'
She was rolling her head now, squirming this way and that like a trapped animal trying to escape the torment from within. Tears coursed from her wide eyes, and her blouse became damp with sweat. Her breasts pressed against the thin material, and he could see her nipples. He immediately felt ashamed and tore his eyes away, not daring to look down at the dark patch spreading on the seat beneath her.
A hospital? he thought. Where was the nearest hospital? They were in the middle of nowhere and the closest one must be fifteen miles away.
'Don't let her die,' he whispered, as the speedometer nudged the seventy mark. 'Please God, just don't let her die.'
He drove faster, faster, shooting out of a side road onto a dual carriageway and almost crashing into the centre barrier. The van zigzagged across both lanes before he managed to straighten it out.
'John.' Her voice was weak now, feeble. She had stopped moving. 'John.'
When he turned to look at her, her head slumped onto her chest, and she said no more.
* * *
The van belted into town with its engine roaring and smoke pouring from beneath the bonnet. It skidded to a halt outside the hospital, and the driver jumped out and ran around the passenger side.
He gathered the limp body of a young girl in his arms, and carried her into the casualty department screaming out for help.
Details of the final chapters will be sent to you within 48 hours. Genuine literary agents or publishers can obtain a hard or email copy of PARASITES upon request via email.
