Infested

All this talk of individuality and I look around at the mess we’re in and all I see is the same person in different skin.

Though not anymore, not with this. It pulls at strings I didn’t know were there and it moves me to where it wants me, I think of puppets, where the people make them dance just by moving their hands about. I wonder at what this thing looks like, does it have a body at all? Or is its body me? It walks me to the street, down stairs, under an overpass, through an alleyway, by a little nook with a well-kept garden and seating, a man in a suit speaking too loudly on the phone about a meeting he’s having next Tuesday. The thing continues, I continue. It’s got something in mind; some place in mind.

I recognise a street I think, then another, and finally we’re right in the middle of Bourke Street Mall. It stops. I can’t even hear it anymore, until the gnawing at my skull becomes too much and I need to do something to get rid of it. I start with the hair, pulling and wrenching it free of my scalp. The relief comes in unsatisfactory waves, I keep pulling. People are stopping now, looking at me with … something, some disdain. They think I’m on drugs I bet. I don’t care though; the gnawing is only getting worse. I move to the skin at the base of the back of my skull, my fingernails aren’t long, but they get the job done. The blood makes it slippery and harder to peel it away, but soon enough I can feel the bone, smooth and slimy.

There are sirens and people have stopped walking and all the cars are stopped and I’m just trying to get through the bone, through to the gnawing; let it out. Louder and louder, sirens and screaming, children and women running away, people with cameras and recorders lugged onto their shoulders. Somebody trying to pull my arm away, but I feel … so much stronger now, like they’re a child and I hardly feel them pulling at me. The bone creaks finally and gives way, satisfaction in throes; I convulse and begin the only way I know how to rid myself of this.

I slam my face repeatedly into the asphalt. Blood and ooze and tar and shards of white litter my vision, then red, only red. Finally, something different is happening. Soft and pleasant, as if I’ve been thrown into a pit of goose-down pillows and marshmallows; because it is sticky, sticky sticky sticky. It’s not too bad, down here. Away from the convulsion I feel above. A moment passes before I find the courage to open my eyes; afraid all I’ll see is my blood and teeth and bone on the road. Instead, it’s the thing, it’s the I don’t know what to call it, the hand on the strings. The puppeteer.

Tendrils, the colour of tar, oozing right out of me, through the hole I’ve so thoughtfully constructed in the back of my head. It squirms about as if just born, soaked in the membrane of my brain. Like its mother, I lift the tendrils up, carefully and aim them away from me, it feels about on the road, slides down and onto the tram tracks, follows the line a moment. I’m smiling, watching it move through the mostly dispersed crowd. Some people side-eye it, glancing but not motivating themselves to do anything about it. Others notice it and pretend it isn’t there. Easier to excuse than confront.

A police car empties its bowels, two police officers in head-to-toe blue with green vests pull their guns up. They see the tendril, the woman quirks a smile at it, like it’s a baby duck, and she nudges the man. He looks too, and his smile is less inviting. They lower but don’t holster their guns, and the man steps down onto the tram track, he reaches down while looking at me, I give him a nod of approval, and he touches the tendril.

So quick, for something so young; it pounces out and wraps itself up his arm, then into his arm. He looks ecstatic, as if saying, ‘finally, something to give me reason,’ and once it’s hit his brain—which I feel attaching to my own—his eyes go dark and he sits down there, on the track. The woman follows suit. Some others come out of the crowd, there’s a wall of people just off Swanston Street, hiked up the stairs to H&M, standing around, watching the crazy person tear his own skull apart. Now, their clemency has moved others.

More and more, people file out from the crowds, and the tendrils find new mounts. I find new brains to squeeze free of their originality; all mine, all its. The tendrils don’t stop there though, they pass through the crowds, who all notice it—oh yes they see it—but do nothing, they watch it writhe through them and latch onto their neighbour, a loved one, a friend, a stranger. When someone finally does something, a woman in platforms, another woman stops her, holds her arms back, says, ‘it’s not hurting you, just leave it alone.’ A man comes through and pushes the platforms woman to the ground, ‘how do you like it?’ he says, as the tendril grabs his friend and sucks away what dejected life he’s now left behind.

There are enough now, it says to me, gnawing back inside my mind. I reject it a moment, but the people all around, watching and waiting for something else to happen, well, they deserve it don’t they? Something else to happen.

The police let loose their lead; firing sporadically into the crowd, blood and cries fill the sky, and others join in on the laughter. All I can do is watch, all I want to do is watch, I make myself comfortable, laying on my stomach with my hands under my face so the tendrils can keep growing.

I sleep for a long moment. A very long moment.

When I awaken next, there’s the dust of fires in the air, the echoes of gunshots, and the cawing of crows. I don’t hear cars, I don’t hear people, I don’t hear much of any proof of our existence. I try to get up but the tendrils number too many, I can’t even heave myself onto my side. I crane my neck and see the dismembered before me; not of a single body, but of a city. The buildings are in ruins, the ground is all but blood-soaked red, the decay of limbs hangs heavy in the air, and there are swarms of birds; crows, murders of them.

Footsteps and screaming, gunshots and laughing, silence. The wail of a woman who’s lost someone dear, and it hits me more then than ever before, how easy it is to feel something, and how difficult to repel it. When we’re done here, finished with the maggots, we’ll be all the better for it. Another gunshot and the wail stops; my smile broadens.

It seems they’ve noticed something, because more and more people come to me and more and more I need others to defend my body. If I die, so do they. It comes to a point where I need to give them more, but sparse is my power so it comes not in droves, but in fragments. One-by-one I give those with the most something more. They devour and source their will to daunt the maggots, consuming life to extinguish flame.

Some are more complicit than others, but the Fragments take what they can, and they grow in power and I let them feed off me and make no more. These Fragments are enough to eradicate any rebellion. So, they stick by my side, floating, cross-legged, with their hoard of souls they leech from around me. Streams of blue and green juxtaposed against the red of the sky, like streamers reaching from their host, all the way up to find their purpose in the hands of Fragments.

It quiets down after some time, a year or so, but every now and then there are new hands at play, and every now and then, they destroy a Fragment of me, and I have to excruciatingly make another. This time, it’s worse, but not all bad. They make a beeline for me. Sacrifices along the way mean that finally one of them gets to me. He has nothing, no weapon to kill me with, not even a match. He kneels at my side, hand on hair; it moves it from my face—and I almost say thanks, it’s been bugging me for months but seems so trivial in the ruins.

He says to me, so soft and sweet, as if to a crying child, ‘don’t you have a family? Won’t you think of others’ families? What happened to you? Why are you doing this? What’s wrong with you?’ Nothing anymore. I notice he’s bleeding, a hand missing and a makeshift eyepatch, torn from his shirt. He looks stupid, and I let out a breath of a laugh.

‘This is the way it was always going to end,’ I mumble, he leans in closer to hear, ‘A hail of bullets, a raging fire, and your tolerance.’