Free Nocturnal Emissions by Jeffrey Thomas

them, and swept her gaze across the delighted (and relieved) faces of the audience. For the closing songs—Bette Midler’s “Wind Beneath My Wings” and Whitney Houston’s “Greatest Love of All”—the whole group of kids sang together, the stage filled with their little bodies and the air above their heads golden with their music. So many host-kids, and yet this was only one room in one town in this whole big country. For a moment, seeing the mass of their bodies clustered like one huge organism, Clare had a shuddering moment when she reflected that this was essentially a generation, and was thus the possible future of humanity. But she quickly brightened. With the help of devoted parents like herself, at least this generation would possess some kind of structure and order.
    The applause was thunderous. Clare had tears in her eyes. Proud of Dylan.
    Proud of herself. She felt a sense of vindication.
    Even her ex-husband Gary, his new wife with her cutely rounded belly beside him as if they rode together in cramped airplane seats, looked over at Clare and smiled, nodded. She felt even more vindicated, and smiled back, trying not to feel smug. (So unbecoming.)
    Thank God she had found the Hive Moms! They were definitely the best group she had tried yet. There was even one mom, Leslie, who had introduced Clare to a cosmetic surgeon who promised to minimize some of the scarring on Dylan’s head. Leslie had used the surgeon to reduce the Down’s Syndrome look of her own son. A son with Down’s Syndrome and a daughter with the parasite! Leslie was an inspiration; all the Hive Moms were. Their motto had become a chant, their chant the droning buzz of their own determined hive mind. And that motto was: if you can not conquer, endure.
    After the concert, Gary and his pet wife met Clare and Dylan in the parking lot to congratulate them. Gary hugged his son, and absent-mindedly brushed at the smear of mucus on his jacket afterwards. “Great job, champ, great job!”
    “We thank you,” Dylan said to him. He then reached out to touch his stepmom’s belly but she jerked back a little.
    Bitch, Clare thought, indulging herself tonight with one sugary spoonful of undignified nastiness.
    The cars began pulling away, dispersing toward their respective homes.
    Clare was one of the last to go, after having stayed to say goodnight to most of the other parents, basking in her satisfaction at having helped set up tonight’s show. Dylan was fairly patient throughout this but at last she had to buckle his squirming body into the seat beside her and drive off in her own SUV.“I was so, so proud of you tonight, honey. Thank you so much.”
    “It is for you.”
    “Huh?” She looked over at him as she drove. “No, honey, it’s for you. This is all to help you, not me.”
    In the vehicle’s murky interior, his narrow black eyes glittered a bit dis-concertingly. For that moment he appeared not only to be of a different race, but of a different species; something from another world or branch of evolution. His bristly black hair stirred, and she realized one of the parasites had extended far enough from the corner of his eye to twine up behind his ear and into his hair as if to camouflage itself there. It poked up a bit more, like a periscope.
    “We love you love you worm-queen.”
    “Oh, that’s so sweet. I love you, too, Dylan.” The eerie moment had passed and she reached over briefly to stroke his mucus-smudged cheek.
    “No,” Dylan replied, “no—you love us . Queen loves all us all us.”
    “Okay, okay,” she sighed, facing forward as she navigated through the center of town. “I love all of you.” Encourage him—them—with whatever worked. As Paula had told the reporter, “that means not only directing our children’s minds constructively, but directing the worms’minds constructively along with them.”
    Dylan leaned as far over as his seatbelt would allow, so as to rest his head against her arm. She was very