skonen_blades

The old man looks up at me and croaks his mouth open. He’s a scarecrow filled with crows. He’s pressed up against the glass of the prison cell. I’m standing there and watching his skin ripple. It’s getting harder and harder for him to remain human. Without a lot of human contact, he’s forgetting how to do it. I’m here now and I can see his body try to get it right by trying to copy me and fool me at the same time. It’s a little pathetic and I get a swell of sympathy that I have to stamp down on immediately.

I have to remember the deaths. I have to remember Allison.

“The creature responds to the name Joseph” said the prison director when I came in. “Technically speaking, he doesn’t know that he’s not human. His true mission is completely hidden from himself. The breakdown in his physiology is starting to take its toll on his psychology as well. The more obvious it’s becoming that he’s not human, the more scared he’s getting. So anyway. Good luck.” He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

I’ve never really seen the prison director get rattled so this thing must be starting to get to people. Either that or the director has just been here too long. I’ve seen the bonding happen before with the mimetic parasites that make it through the net to gain a foothold. It’s a lot easier to stab a giant spider in the eye that it is to stab your older brother. Or your wife. That’s what they bank on. As survival traits go, it works pretty good. And I should know.

I remember in the old wolfman movies, the werewolf would get shot and you’d see a double exposure cross-fade on the corpse as the monster reverted back to the peaceful face of the original person.

That happened with these parasite people copiers as well. When we take one out, they fall over and do a few things. Sometimes they turn into dust. Sometimes they just decompose rapidly until only a red skeleton is left drying in the street. Sometimes they fade out of this reality. Sometimes they split and a few thousand spiders or centipede looking things head for the sewers. Those are the worst. There’s a whole bug hunt division for those ones.

Sometimes, though, if the change had gone far enough, they’d just lie there and be dead. Physiology tests would eventually reveal that at the subatomic level they weren’t human but until that test came back, it was always a nail biter. There’d been a few kills that had turned out to be bad information where real humans had been taken out. Those were bad but thankfully few. PR had a nightmare with those. The officers who were at fault usually ended up begging for a desk job or dismissal.

And here I am. Supposedly to interrogate one of these things but knowing it’ll do no good. Standing in front of the safety glass and seeing the old man look up at me and attempt to look normal. His legs don’t work and end in black tentacles that look diseased poking out of his pantlegs. The fingernails of his left hand are very long. His eyes are different colours and one nostril is dripping what looks like grape juice onto the cell floor.

“He looks at meee.” He says. “You’re here too. Hello. I am with you. How was work?”

“Good.” I say back. I try to keep the steel in my voice. I can see Allison in his jawline. I can see Allison in the patches of long blond hair that poke through the short black haircut. I can see Allison in his left blue eye with the long eyelashes.

“I made you staaaake. Would you like a beer? Come to bed. I am here for you. Ask question?” he says to me.

“Yeah, I have a question” I say. “Are you scared of dying?” I ask this thing.

With a shock, I can see that it has two blue eyes now and the rest of its patchy and uneven hair is turning blonder by the moment.

“Not as long as I know you’re here with me.” It responds. Its voice is getting higher, closer to Allison’s. Its English is getting better. It’s gaining focus. Its shirt is getting tighter as Allison’s breasts push forward and fill the man’s shirt that it’s wearing.

It’s gaining strength by the second. Allison’s been gone for months. I thought I could to do this. I was kidding myself. My vision is starting to blur with tears and I can see that Allison is nearly complete before me behind the glass. Except for the man's uniform she's wearing and the name tag that says Joseph.

I watch my fingers reach towards the lock. I stop and look at my traitorous hand. I don’t have the code to open the cell anyway. I have no idea what I was about to try to do.

“Brian” it says. Allison says my name. “Let me out. Let’s go somewhere. Quit your job. We can live somewhere hot. Let’s forget this and get out of here.”

I breathe deeply. I realize that I’m standing and my forehead is pressed against the glass. With a start, I stand back and straighten my clothes. Control. Control. I turn and walk towards the main elevator up to the office. I leave this parasite behind.

“Brian, they’re going to kill me!” the Allison thing shouts to me as the door to the elevator closes.

It’s a few floors up and then a brief scan on checkout and I’m out. They saw the whole thing on CCTV so they don’t ask me any questions. They let me out into the fresh air and into my empty life.

The department doesn't know when Allison was taken. I may have been living with the parasite for days before they detected it. Maybe weeks. I might have made love to it. I confronted her with the report before the officers got there. She cried and ran out the door. I let it escape. They caught it weeks later working as a convenience store clerk named Joseph.

I get behind the wheel but the shaking and the tears start before I’ve started the car. I feel almost grateful that the thing in the there let me see her one more time.



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