by Hannah England

Via’s eyes make figure eights. 

Up to the top of her eye socket, eyeballs straining like they’re bruised, up until the room goes blurry and her vision decays with black dots.

Over to one side, the edge of her nose mountainous in her peripheral vision, red veins stark against the whites when the green club light flickers on them. 

Down until her vision trembles, forehead aching with pressure, her eyes blank, demonic husks. 

To the side. 

Back to the top.

The flesh that holds her eyes in place, the red pulpy things she cannot name, ache. They threaten to tauten and snap as her gaze flickers in that perfect, unbroken figure eight, not in fact watching, as it appears, from the corner she’s tucked herself into, away from the coworkers who well-meaningly lured her out to work drinks that turned into work clubbing. She can see them, hazy in her unfocused gaze, bodies flushed with alcohol and sweat and things consumed behind half-hinged bathroom doors, but she’s not watching. She’s following. 

Up, 

side,

down, 

side, 

up.

The parasite swims in her vision, a grotesque, flashy mass that blocks the view of her (married) boss shoving her tongue into her (engaged) PA’s throat, his flesh seeming to bulge greedily, swallowing her down like he’s half-cobra half-opportunistic twentysomething. 

Python, corrects the parasite, pausing its intricate dance across Via’s vision, pythons swallow. Cobras strike. 

Via nods, the bob of her head not quite on beat with the pulse of the music; but with her hand clutched around something red with a cough-syrup consistency, she can pass as tipsy rather than– 

Insane? The parasite grins, freshly-gnawed brain matter dripping from its maw. 

“Haunted,” Via murmurs back, lips twitching upwards in detached amusement as she stares down into the cherry-red concoction clasped in her sweat-slick palms. The parasite sneers – an expression she feels rather than sees – as it rolls its slick body away from her eyes, winding its spindly, too-sharp form to rest in the pulpy mess of her bilateral hippocampus. The pressure behind Via’s eyes lifts enough that she can face the club lights without clasping her head, but the relief is short lived; the parasite has already sunk its teeth into her memories of this afternoon, gnawing greedily until she can hardly remember if she was asked out tonight, or if she rudely invited herself. The idea shouldn’t be as repellent as it is – and yet she notes a churning in her stomach at the thought, the swell of nausea making its eye-watering route into her rapidly-closing throat. To be something unwanted, a beast hulking in its own putrid stench at the corner of someone else’s fond memory – it’s more than Via can bear. She steps forward, wide eyes searching desperately for a face she even vaguely recognises in the void left between blinks of blinding light. 

“Tony. Tony.” 

Via, you sound desperate, the parasite grins, eagerly licking its chops with slick anticipation; either the rich reward of sticky-sweet endorphins if she succeeds, or the black-tar rush of adrenaline when she fails.

For the record, the parasite pipes up, I’m banking on you failing. 

Tony turns towards her, bespectacled eyes blank in the glare of the harsh club lights, his pupils hidden behind a smokescreen that makes any expression indiscernible. Via thinks she prefers it this way, to not be able to see the glaze of disinterest, nor the darkening of distrust as she speaks. With a sheen of ambiguity between them, Via reaches a hand out, drops it palm-down on his shoulder, already slick with sweat. 

Disgusting. 

“Oh, Via. Hi.”

Bad start. 

“Hey.” 

The room is far from silent – the shriek of music over the speakers, the thud of heavy, drunken footsteps, the incessant murmur of chatter laying like a blanket across the sweltering basement; and yet the silence that forms between Via and Tony is a dense, choking presence. She regrets her decision immediately, practically seeing the parasite gulping down the adrenaline molasses as her underarms grow damp with mortification. 

“So I was wondering,” Via calls, voice too sharp over the dull thud of music, “who put this all together? I mean, who organised tonight? Just so I can…” she falters, teeth suddenly feeling loose and too-large in her skull, “thank them.” 

Tony stares at her so intensely, Via wonders, for a moment, if he can see that swirling, tumbling presence behind her eyes. When he finally offers her a smile it’s tight, his lips pulled back across too-pale gums mottled with saliva. 

“I don’t know, I guess we all just sort of… came out.” 

He seems at a complete loss, yet without the slouching discomfort of Via’s own uncertainty. Tony knows he’s supposed to be here, doesn’t need to know who invited him because he belongs. Via doesn’t belong, can’t remember if anyone wanted her here, can feel her carcass dragging her down in a desperate clamber to sink into the floor of the club, eager to feel the sticky floor about her eardrums. 

“Right. Okay. Well um, I’ll see you at the uh, the Town Hall on Tuesday.” 

He’s relieved when she lets him go, his form ambling and desperate as he parts the bodies ahead of him in a straight beeline for anywhere other than with her. 

I should start making bets, the parasite chortles gleefully, and you still don’t know, by the way, if anyone wanted you here. If anyone even cares that you’re lingering here in this pathetic, lonely corner. 

Via wouldn’t describe herself as someone brazen enough to force her presence where it wasn’t wanted; in her mid-thirties and still often described as ‘mousy’, there was nothing she could do to prevent herself being compared to a Zooey Deschanel or a Kristen Dunst, her desk cluttered with Secret Santa mug offerings bearing slogans in some humorous variation of ‘fuck off, I’m an unsociable, stuck-up hag’. Admittedly, the virgin-hair bangs and round-rimmed glasses do nothing to dispel her image as a Salinger-worshipping tumblrina, but she likes to think she’s so much more than that. 

Less than that. That’s true. She’s never even read Salinger; her literary proclivities stopped somewhere around her final year of high school, along with the rest of her intellectual, social, and spiritual development. A quick, floundering stint through college deposited her none-too-gracefully into this email-marketing-copywriting-social-media-strategy desk job, a studio apartment shared with her girlfriend and a cat that hates her, and, by consequence, this nightclub that is somehow depressingly barren and yet so crowded that Via finds her senses flooded with sweaty bodies and cigarette ash-breath at every turn. 

But you digress, the parasite offers, tapping its barbed tail impatiently against Via’s prefrontal cortex, tugging her sharply out of the now all-too-familiar hazy reverie; a side-effect, she assumes, of the creature’s slick membrane smeared across her brain matter. 

Though. Speaking of Lexie, it muses, dragging the serrated curve of its tail along Via’s skull, filling her mind with a sharp, discordant squeal, you were a bitch to her earlier, and now she isn’t texting you. Don’t you think—Via feels the way the parasite taps its tail between her right occipital lobe and amygdala, proverbial fingers waggling in the air like it’s choosing from a box of chocolates—you should’ve stayed home with her? 

“Shut up,” Via hisses, eyes flickering across the pulsing bodies on the dance floor. A tension headache builds around the circumference of her head, a band squeezing her brain into sludge, blocking rational thought with nothing but ache and the knowledge that the parasite, as always, is right. Via wants to be home, bouquet of cat-safe flowers in hand, throwing herself at Lexie’s feet until she’s forgiven for the argument she’d started that morning, ended only when she’d stormed out of the apartment, flourishing her departure with a door-slam that sent the Hamsa hand nailed to the wall trembling, swaying as if waving her a sad farewell. 

Guilt had joined the parasite in gnawing at her almost immediately, chewing at her gut to match the open wounds in her brain; but any desire she’d had to run back was blocked out by the parasite’s greedy, ever-sharp teeth sinking into her cerebrum, tearing out the chunks that pulsed with compassion, jutting its sharpened tail into her raw nerves, a shot of rage slicing through her spine and forcing her down into a hunch, nearly folding her in half by the time she reached the elevator at the end of the hall. 

“Vera!”

Via knows, with gut-churning certainty, that she’s being spoken to. The parasite lifts its head from the meal it was making of her brain, dripping grey matter as it shudders with laughter.

They don’t even know your name. How horribly cliché. You can’t even be unmemorable in a memorable way. 

The knee-jerk wince makes Via squeeze one eye shut, the lights suddenly too bright, a sharp pain like she’s been slapped across the face, eye sockets suddenly too small, too tight to allow her to follow the parasite as it moves in its self-triumphant figure eight. 

“Vera, hey. I thought you’d left.” 

Rosie from Quality Control is pretty in the plain-faced, round-cheeked way that probably makes her most likely to be the ‘I guess so’ option people resign themselves to at the end of the night. You know, when the prettier girls already have someone to go home with. She has a septum ring, already making her 10 degrees more adventurous than Via, though she wonders if she actually has the personality to back it up. 

More importantly than all that, she’s always been nice to Via, rudely forgetting your name aside, and doesn’t deserve any of the venom that’s dripping from Via’s brainstem into her mouth. She swallows it down with a sip of sour red concoction, forcing the parasite’s cruel glee to curdle in her lungs instead of on the end of her tongue. 

“Nope, not gone, just here,” Via smiles uselessly, gesturing with the half-empty cup of sickly sweet crimson, “just people-watching.” 

Liar. 

“You’re real quiet, huh?” Rosie smiles, leaning against the wall beside her. 

Not especially, people just don’t listen to you. You’re boring. 

“Sometimes,” Via mumbles, offering a tight smile, “I just like to, uh, focus on work.” 

“What is it you do again?” 

Rosie’s drunk, words heavy with the tequila-infused beer she clasps in one, stiletto-nailed hand. She has acrylics on both hands, so she’s not fucking anyone. She wouldn’t be able to fuck you, you’d have to top. Lexie wouldn’t make you top, Lexie would— 

The parasite’s tongue flicks obscenely into Via’s nucleus accumbens, shooting an unwanted pressure between her legs, her thighs shifting beneath her polyester skirt. 

Via doesn’t think she responds, but Rosie’s nodding, her hand finding Via’s shoulder and rubbing it with her thumb. 

Ah, the parasite notes with mirth, she wants to experiment with you. 

It giggles girlishly, body flopping like a puppy behind Via’s vision, the sudden pressure sending her hand fluttering to her temple as if to hold her eyes in place lest the worm force them out into her hand; or worse, right into Rosie’s cleavage, pressed obscenely high, no doubt, by some cheap push-up bra. 

“You like girls, right?” Rosie asks suddenly (or at least, it seems sudden to Via, battling the frayed threads of the conversation from the parasite’s chomping jaws). The question makes Via freeze, eyes tilting to the ceiling, bloodshot and strained from the low light and the creature pressing on her optic nerve. 

“I’m a lesbian,” Via murmurs, unsure if the bitter correction comes from herself or the parasite this time. 

“Ooh. I’ve always been a little intimidated by lesbians,” Rosie admits shyly, dipping her thumb beneath the edge of Via’s neckline. 

You should be. 

“We don’t bite,” Via replies humourlessly, taking a sip of her drink to sweeten her tongue, forcing the parasite to recoil for a moment, “unless you’re into that.” 

Via doesn’t realise she’s spoken aloud until Rosie blinks, hand pausing in its meandering trail into her dress. The parasite chuckles, giving Via’s frontal lobe a pointed, playful spank, the barbs of its tail sinking into flesh like fangs, bleeding out her resolve like a drain. 

“I am,” Rosie says after a moment, cheeks deliciously pink as she rests her hand on Via’s upper arm. 

Of course you are. God, Via, she’s going to make you top her. You hate topping. I guess you don’t do that with Lexie, so it’s not really cheating. It’s ticking a different box, so if you just—

She does it to shut the parasite up. She does it because she’s in agony, because the barbs are buried in her brain and her eyes are filling up with blood, there’s venom in the back of her mouth, and her chest is a hollow nest the parasite has taken for itself. Something has to give. So she kisses her. 

Sickly cherry meets bitter amber and Rosie’s lip gloss leaves a trail of slime on Via’s bottom lip that her tongue recoils from like it’s been burnt. The parasite laughs with Machiavellian glee, swishing its tail in slicing arcs through Via’s skull, snowflakes of bone raining down in shards that shoot bolts of pain through her arms, her teeth on edge as they clasp teasingly around Rosie’s lip. 

Thank you, thank you, thank you. 

The parasite drags its bloated, fleshy form to the back of Via’s skull, forcing itself into her cranial nerves. Her head jolts back sharply, disguising the motion by leaning in to the tug of Rosie’s sharp nails scrabbling drunkenly at her hair. The parasite implants itself in her sinuses, slides into her throat, the bulge of it making her breath catch, mouth filling with jet black venom that spills from her lips in a gasp, coating her chin, tipping into Rosie’s throat like a shot. 

The Quality Control girl pulls back, mouth bleeding bile, eyes wide with arousal and hesitance in equal measure. She notes something flickering within Via’s eyes, the sudden fullness of her throat; in the dim light, she looks bloated, like something awash from a river, a snippet from some true crime video standing before her with the taste of cherry and almond on her tongue. 

“Vera, are you—”

“Don’t.” The parasite’s voice is raspy, uncertain, holding language in Via’s mouth like marbles, “please, just let me—.” She grips Rosie’s hair, chipped black nail polish lost in faded red-dyed tresses, binding the girl to her body as the parasite swells, fat and full and yet still so hungry. The creature’s body is sharp, slicing, unforgiving as it propels itself through Via’s throat, blood filling her lungs, pouring from her nose, weeping from the squeezed lines of her closed eyes. It doesn’t hesitate when it reaches her teeth, its body unrelenting, bending her molars until they break into sharp porcelain shards, her jaw spreading, cracking, hinge breaking like she’s a python that’s both consuming and being consumed. Via’s heart slams in her chest, panic rising and boiling the blood that’s pooling in her throat. Her fingers scrabble uselessly at Rosie’s skin like a trapped rodent searching for an exit, tearing the buttons off the front of her blouse, scattering them along with her teeth on the sticky dance floor. She grips at Rosie’s breasts, her stomach, Via’s sweat-slick palms leaving a trail along her flesh that glimmers as the club light hits it. 

“Please,” Via chokes, voice mangled around the form crushing its way into her mouth, “please get it out, take it out-.” 

Even over the thrum of the music, Via can tell that’s not what comes out of her mouth. In a mockery of her voice, she hears the parasite’s words garbled by venom and gore: 

Touch me, touch me, please, touch me— 

The parasite’s tail slides back up along Via’s spine, forcing its way into her skull, penetrating the curves of her brain that make her heart race, her thighs trembling with a want that she can almost pretend is her own. 

And then Rosie acquiesces, her fingers probing at her hesitantly, and Via almost cries out with relief. Tears slide down her cheeks, the burst of pleasure shooting through her veins like morphine dulling the agony of the thing growing, throbbing inside her throat, cracking the bones in her chest to fit its fat, greedy form. 

She can fade away like this. Via’s vision swims, sound becoming dull to her ears as they drip with something sticky and crimson; blood, maybe, or the drink she’d dropped somewhere during the parasite’s famished frenzy. 

With a sigh, Via relinquishes the last of her fleeting control, and the parasite lets out a greedy chortle. It pushes itself from her throat into her mouth, splintering her teeth and squishing her tongue flat as it forces its way into Rosie’s mouth. 

Via can hear the scream, the shatter, can feel the blood soak her face and hands in a spray of gore that falls in sour droplets on her still-slick bottom lip. She sighs dazedly, falling against the wall, closing her eyes for a moment as she leans into the feeling of floating, of nothingness. 

There’s a tell-tale crunch, a slurp, a scream silenced in bubbling blood spurting from a throat. Via opens her exhausted eyes, purplish bags digging in craters above her hollowed, pallid cheeks. Ignoring the insistent buzz of her phone in her handbag, she watches the parasite move lithely over Rosie’s still-twitching body, strangers stepping over the conjoined pair with a disapproving “tsk”, scandalised that they would be doing something so profoundly obscene in such a public place. 

The parasite moans echo between Via’s ears as it feasts, growing fatter with every bite, splaying its carcass possessively across Rosie’s corpse. 

From inside her hollow shell, Via’s eyes follow it in perfect figure eights.