Free Parasite by Patrick Logan Page A

lovers. Walter shifted his weight onto his good leg, and then pivoted toward the knife. This time when he felt the chair teetering, he went with the fall, twisting onto his back as he did.
    The chair toppled, and Walter went down with it.
    The fall didn’t hurt as much as it should have, especially considering the loud rap the back of his head made when it went bouncing off the parquet. He saw stars for a brief moment, but his body had been so racked with pain—first with the gunshot wound, then with the stretching and tearing of his skin when it birthed the crackers—that bonking his skull barely registered.
    His head still swimming, he turned so that he was partially on his side, and then tried to stretch his hands and fingers as far as the telephone cable would allow.
    They came up short.
    “Fuck,” he swore, reaching again, his outstretched fingers desperately trying to grab the knife that was just a few inches from his grasp.
    Again his hand grabbed air.
    He grunted and closed his eyes, slowly turning his strained neck back to a neutral position. Three ragged breaths later, with spit and blood now beading on his long gray beard, he turned it in the opposite direction. Then he opened his eyes and found himself staring directly into a miniature harbinger of death.
    A small, transparent cracker lay on its back only a few inches from his face. It looked hard, like a dried clam shell, the six small legs pointing toward the ceiling as if in prayer. Staring at the center of its mass, Walter could make out the small opening and the hard white teeth inside, but he didn’t see much else. The shell was almost completely transparent, and although he could see right through it, it didn’t appear to have any organs, much less a brain. It had a network of vessels—some blue, most red—seeming to branch from the thing’s mouth, but that was pretty much it.
    Walter instinctively glanced at his shoulder with the hard shell of the cracker still buried beneath, and instantly recognized the similarities between the dark purple lines that radiated from the embedded cracker and now traveled completely across his narrow chest, and the ones inside the upturned crab inches from his face.
    His head started to throb, so he shut his eyes again. Keeping them tightly closed, he stretched out once more with his fingers, and this time he felt something wet on his palms as the telephone cable cut deep into his wrists. When his fingertips brushed against something hard, his eyes snapped open.
    Ignoring the blood now dripping down his forearms, he stretched even further, grunting with the effort. This time, his right hand wrapped completely around the handle of the blade.
    He grinned, exposing his crooked, bloodstained teeth.
    The next part was easy, for as awkward as it was to turn the knife inward toward his wrists, the blade was so sharp that it easily sliced through the cable.
    Walter sighed as the pressure in his wrists and forearms instantly relented. Still, the first thing he did after his hands were freed wasn’t to rub his wrists, but instead he brought his right hand up to the strange white skin on his shoulder. His fingers palpated the spot, curious at first, as if he were touching some foreign substance instead of piece of himself.
    The newly formed skin was oddly soft and cool to the touch. And smooth—it was impossibly smooth. And while he could feel the texture on his fingertips, the skin itself didn’t seem to register his touch.
    A shudder ran through him, and he pulled his hand away.
    Intent on ignoring the patches of white skin on both his shoulders, let alone the cracker embedded in his skin and the thick network of veins that spider-webbed across his chest, Walter slowly eased himself into a standing position, keeping the leg that had been shot out in front of him protectively. Although slightly numb, he found that he could bend his knee with only mild stiffness.
    How is this possible? This can’t be what it feels like to