Prose                                       
The Parasites
By Charlie Beck

    In terms of spreading we turned out extremely lucky when it came to Bradford. Only one other person was infected, one of the women who froze and was locked into the office with him before the emergency squad got there. She was pretty hysterical by that time and it’s possible she was only infected then. They cleaned her out without any problems. Even Bradford’s wife and kids were clean.
    The doctors said it was amazing that he hadn’t already burst before they got to the scene. One told me he had over twenty thousand of them living in his skull and almost twice as many unhatched eggs. I guess you could even see them under the skin running across his vertebrate and behind his ears. Scary stuff.
    I was called a hero, of course. Two weeks later the company gave me a special plaque and a little ceremony. I thought it was kind of hokey, but Jane took the afternoon off so she could come. Poor Jane. They called her at work while I was still at the hospital being tested for the little creatures. I finally came out, fit as a fiddle, feeling a little shaken up but otherwise okay and Jane found me and grabbed me and just squeezed. She smelled like tears and her makeup was a mess. I put one hand on the small of her back and the other in her hair and in spite of myself, I broke down. I didn’t even see it coming; I just sobbed. I could barely breathe. None of it seemed real. Jane held me upright and gave me little kisses on the neck. We stayed like that a long time.
    Bradford’s wife, Pauline, showed up at our house in the middle of the night a couple days later. She hadn’t slept in days and looked it. She told me about the extermination and how long it took. They let her stand by in case he regained consciousness afterwards as they sometimes do, but Bradford was too far gone. There was nothing left. He died before the exterminators even finished.
    Pauline asked me if I had noticed anything beforehand. The doctors figured he had been infected for nearly six months. I had to tell her that I hadn’t noticed much. I noticed his mood was different. He wasn’t interested in going out for drinks anymore and hadn’t been for awhile. He just seemed busy… and tired… and a little bit sick. And then one day I looked at him and I realized I did not know the person staring back at me. Nothing but the bare outline remained of the man I knew. The man who was my good friend. I told her I couldn’t stop blaming myself for not being more aware but I regretted saying so immediately. Pauline was a mess. Anything I blamed myself for, she blamed herself double. His own wife…
    A moral to the story? I don’t know. Lots of people have gone through worse than me. My burdens to bear are regret and what might have been. From a purely selfish motive, the whole thing was damn scary. I upped my health insurance right afterward and had the whole family get regular check-ups every three months.
    However, the worst I carry is that image of Bradford at the very end. The hollow cheeks, the concave eyes… the incredulous and irritated expression. He was little more than a perverse mannequin by that time but… it still had Brad’s face and hair and crooked left eyebrow and dimpled chin. There was a man in there somewhere. A man who was my friend.
    I miss him, and due to the circumstances of our parting, I will naturally never forget him. I only hope in time to remember him as he was. I hope to separate the man I knew from the mere food he became.