The Hematophages

by Stephen Kozeniewski

  “You think this is some kind of joke?”

  The urge to surge forward and throttle her is overwhelming. This comes from me, not them, I know. Stifling the urge is their doing. I remain downcast.

  The purpose of this question is to get you back on track, prove that you still respect the questioner. Prove that you know not to push too far. A simple “no” will suffice.

  “Gash, I have seen things in the last twenty-four hours that would make your stomach curdle. I’ve seen monstrosities coming in and out of orifices. Rivers of blood, choking people I know. Do I know what you want me to say? Yes. I always know what everyone wants me to say. All the time.

  “Most people are so stupid that keeping them happy with a few lies is about as complicated as a game of fucking checkers. Do I respect you? No. Do I respect your process and your oh-so-vaunted procedures? No. I don’t give a shit. I don’t give a shit about you. I don’t care if you dock all my pay. I don’t care if you toss me in lock-up. And the answer you were looking for is,” here I affect a perfect little schoolgirl voice, “No, officer, I don’t think this is a joke.”

  I have no idea where that came from. Any of it. I scream. I yell. No noise comes. I snap my fingers. Nothing happens. My nerves are ignoring me.

  The shadow-hunter turns and looks over her shoulder. The entire bulkhead behind her turns phosphorescent, then translucent. An entire control bay is behind us, row after row of panels, all manned, all blinking lights reflecting off the faces of the women manning them. A security goon, probably my spy-hunter’s superior, judging by the fanciness of her epaulettes, half-rises from her seat and depresses a button.

  “Fuck it,” she says over the intercom.

  The shadow-hunter sighs and pulls the glasses off her face, rubbing the sore spots behind her ears as she folds them up and tosses them onto the table.

  “You’re free to go.”

  “Go…?”

  “Don’t leave Yloft.”

  I rise. I couldn’t have left Yloft anyway. They still have my transit chip. I step out of the interrogation chamber and into a prophylactic airlock. When I step out, the Borgwardt, still thrumming, gas-filled, and red lit, is through a bulkhead to my left. Yloft way-station, clean, bustling, and like something out of a campfire tale, is to my right. Ahead of me is a bulkhead leading out into open space, hinting by its markings that there are times a fourth ship or station needs to be brought into the orgiastic mix.

  But I know the truth. I’ve studied these prophylaxes in my research. There are tales – lots of them, really – about lone survivors like myself. Something about sole survivors stirs the imagination of every ink surfer. They all have a weird desire to be one, to witness something so profound that nobody else could walk away from it. I guess I should say “we.” I guess I’m an ink surfer now, a station bunny no longer. And yet, now, being a sole survivor as well, I desire almost anything else.

  The stories are all identical, down to the last detail. A lost ship, tumbling through the ink. The older ones always seem to have the lone wolf in deep freeze. The newer ones don’t feature that detail so much anymore. The hulk is recovered, dragged somewhere, preferably an independent entity like Yloft. A security goon, always in glasses, looking for the truth, not really caring what she finds.

  Then the airlock opens into the prophy. Then as the survivor waits to find out whether she’s been freed from quarantine or not, the fourth hatch, the empty hatch, opens, and she tumbles out into the ink, never to be seen or heard from again. Silenced by forces beyond her control, for reasons out of her imagining, and always portrayed as an accident. Maybe Sally Slap-Giggle, the station bunny who pressed the wrong airlock button gets a slap on the wrist. More likely, she gets a secret bonus, funneled through gray channels. Most likely she gets both.

  I stop and stare. It’s a classic story. One I’ve heard a thousand times before. We all tell it. Now I’m living it. I stare and stare and wait for the open airlock to open and suck me into oblivion. I’ve never wanted anything so much in my life.

  Instead, the bulkhead on my right hisses and rises. Yloft.

  Damn you. Damn you!

  I scrabble to reach for the emergency override. My hands twitch, but beyond that, my nerve impulses don’t even respond.

  Please, please, space me! Please!

  But it’s no use. I step out, like a child born into the world through my mother’s womb for the first time. I have no choice.

  I don’t even have to pass through customs. Deandre, a geek from the comptroller’s office, replete in a severe bun, gray suit, and briefcase, hands me a badge.

  “Hey, Paige,” she whispers, blushing, “good to see you again.”

  “Hi, D,” I mutter.

  It’ll be good for the transient quarters on Yloft. I never was a fan, but then I lived here and knew all the good places and bad. Without another word, Deandre nods and turns and disappears into the crush of people.

  My feet take me where I’m supposed to go. I pass right into the Mercado, where the scents of sizzling meats from a hundred worlds mingle with the crisp aroma of dried spices and (semi-) fresh veggies. My stomach is doing more than growling, it’s roaring, churning, but they won’t let me stop off for a bite to eat.

  Acquaintances all nod at me, but it’s not the same anymore. I’m not one of them anymore. It’s hard for a station bunny to trust an ink surfer, even if she used to be one of them. I’d be heartbroken if I wasn’t so focused on other things. Then a loud clank of metal on metal, followed by a tinkle of follow-on clatters cuts through the din. I’ve practically walked into Peavey, who is holding a wooden bowl of clammer’s stew, but her heavy metal spoon has just clattered to the deck. She’s staring at me and I half think she’s going to spill the rest of her clams and hydroponic beans onto the ground.

  They want me to barrel past her, but she’s literally blocking my way.

  “A… A… Ambroziak,” she stutters.

  “Peavey,” I growl, eyeing her soup.

  “I didn’t… I heard… I thought you were lost.”

  I smile at her darkly.

  “And you thought that was going to put this thing between us to rest, did you?”

  She turns white as a sheet. Funny to think that this girl who had the guts to try to off me has been terrified of me ever since. I think of her as a hyena striking once in the darkness. I’m a lion with a whole pride behind me. She can’t get close to me. Even now, my friends are all around me. But are they, really? Do they even know me? Do they know what’s inside of me? What I’m carrying? Am I too far gone for them? Am I just a spacer to them now, like any other fucking tourist who stops by the station?

  A wave of nausea and pain sweeps over me, a clear message to deal with this undesirable distraction as quickly and efficiently as possible.

  “You come to see me, Peavey. You come to see me straight away. I’m going to be in transient.”

  “What number?”

  I nearly double over. I don’t even know. It’s on my key, but I can’t be bothered to look.

  “I don’t know. Look me up.”

  I reach out, my hand trembling, wondering if I can take her soup from her. It’s killing me. The walls of my stomach are dissolving in bile and acid. I could just reach out and triumphantly steal my enemy’s meal, but they won’t even let me do that. I push past her like she’s a turnstile. It’s straight to the six bulkheads that make up my cell in transient.

  There’s room for a bed. It’s seated nearly as high as I am tall. Beneath the crusty, soiled mattress is what passes for my closet and drawer space. I don’t bother checking it. I don’t have anything. Everything I own is still aboard the Borgwardt, in quarantine. The company goons can deliver it to me or not, whenever they’re satisfied.

  In the corner is a commode, cattycorner to a sink and a greasy mirror. Jackpot. My hands are still tingling, trying to refuse the orders they’re sending me. But it’s like trying to hold your breath in space. I tear off my shirt, buttons flying. I ja
m it into the commode, blocking the piping, and flush and flush until I’m certain it’s completely stopped up.

  I rise, shaking, and turn to look in the mirror. They are no longer hiding. I feel the sickening press of slimy, slug-like flesh against both of my eye sockets. Out of my left eye slithers the thin, tubular hematophage female.

  On the right is the thicker trunk of the male’s body. I feel his tiny prick as it catches at my eyelid before sliding out with the rest of him.

  I can see them and I can’t. My real eyes are dangling from their nerves, useless. But the hematophages are sending me signals sufficient enough to do their bidding. I can see what they show me, as though through a glass and darkly. Their dim, serpentine forms undulate perversely in the air before me.

  They do not speak directly to me, any more than I would speak directly to my razor or the toaster about my intentions for it. Still, I can’t miss the fact that they seem to be laughing at me, as their bodies intertwine and they kiss right before me. The male’s prick slides easily into the female’s hole, a dance I have felt them perform within my skull a thousand times.

  They can survive in open air, though they prefer the warm and hot environs inside my head. It is a peccadillo for them, a kink. They make me watch. That might be a kink, too, but I don’t think so, any more than I would care if the toaster or the razor was on the nightstand as I touched myself.

  I am frozen, rooted to the spot as they mate yet again. There is nothing I hate more than watching them engage in their slimy, grotesque alien congress, but I must. The end of their bodies are attached to a squishy, jagged hunk of meat. It is the minimal part of my brain that they did not devour, the bare minimum I need to walk, talk, and cogitate such as I am doing.

  I know I am no longer whole, no longer there. They have devoured so much of my personality, my past, my feelings, my longings. I am not myself. I am no more than a meat puppet. I cannot even weep for my lowered station in life. I’m not capable of such emotions. I’m not even sure how much of what I’m thinking right now is even really me and not them.

  They are intelligent. Deeply, darkly, perversely, malignly intelligent. And I don’t know where I start and they begin. Mechanically, there is a separation between the base of the male’s body and the nerves he has jammed down into my hunk of brainstem, but the thoughts and emotions flow freely between the two physical forms like a sieve. No doubt they are vaguely aware of my vestigial desires and fears, as one might recognize the real desires of a saddled horse even while spurring it to behave differently.

  All these thoughts, all this that I think of as “me” may not even be mine. They may be his. And hers. She is the quiet partner, yet by far the dominant one. I feel her wants and needs pour into me so heavily, so constantly, it is like they are no longer even hers, they are mine, were always mine. I want – no, I need – to protect the babies.

  I can see them there. Eggs, translucent and glistening like soap bubbles, accumulating in my brain pain, filling up my skull cavity. Soon my head will be so full that the hematophages and their kin will begin to press against my skull. I wonder what will happen then. Will the eggs ooze out of my ears? Will my head explode? What then? Will they continue to make me walk around, still a vehicle, just now missing a face?

  My query is, strangely, answered, almost instantly. They have finished copulating. I feel a warm surge of pleasure pass through me. My own vagina is dripping. They would never give me a thought, never consider me enough to even let me touch myself as I bask in the vicarious pleasure of their sex.

  All I want to do is lower my hand to my warm, quivering pussy and stroke. Instead I reach out and slash my own wrist against a ragged edge of the mirror. They’ve done with me, then?

  No. As the blood begins to drip I drop to my knees. I let it fill the commode. I am weak, woozy. They, too, are affected by the loss of blood. Finally, I clutch my severed artery with my other hand, pinching it closed. I dip my head into the toilet, now filled with my own blood, and feel the eggs as they drift out of my skull cavity and into their new nest. When I finally pull my head out again, the pressure within what was once my nasal passages has considerably lessened. The babies have a new home.

  My face is soaked in my own blood. I feel their circular, suckling mouth running up and down my face and my hair, licking away the red like a post-coital sandwich. But then it’s no longer post-coital. They’re fucking again.

  They forget about my wrist and I take my other hand away from clutching it. I feel a brief surge of hope. Perhaps they are so ignorant of human anatomy I can die. If I can only die, they will be stranded. Stranded without a vehicle. The babies will perish without someone to refill their nest with blood and, ultimately, chunkier effluvia. The others will find me and realize how close they came to a full-scale hematophage infestation which would’ve overrun Yloft, and shortly afterwards, as a bustling port of call, would’ve spread to every corner of human civilization.

  But I’m a fool. Even my own emotions betray me. They feel my surge of joy and realize something is wrong. They slow their humping long enough to force me to wrap some spare bedding around my wrist. They are angry with me for interrupting their recreation and punish me with pain. But it doesn’t matter. There is no physical pain they can cause me greater than knowing that I have become the vector for monstrous space lampreys to wipe out my species.

  I used to want many things. Money, love, respect, a place in history, awards, the praise of my fellow academics. Now I want only one: the feel of a sharp piece of metal destroying the barely animal remaining chunk of my brain. But I know I’ll never get it. I’m far too instrumental to them, especially right now.

  A ding signals someone outside my hatch.

  “Who the fuck is it?” I roar. This is me. The real me. What’s left of me. That tiny little chunk of brain, raging. They let me rage.

  Peavey responds with her name, her voice tiny and distant, even though it’s just on the other side of the hatch.

  I grin. That’s me grinning and them grinning, too. At least we can agree on one thing. “Come on in,” I reply sweetly.

  The End

  Thank you for reading THE HEMATOPHAGES. Whether you liked it or not I hope you’ll take a moment to leave a review on Amazon or your favorite book review site. Reviews are vitally important to me as an author both to help me market my book and to improve my writing in the future. Thank you!

  - Stephen Kozeniewski

  About the Author

  Stephen Kozeniewski (pronounced "causin' ooze key") lives in Pennsylvania, the birthplace of the modern zombie. During his time as a Field Artillery officer, he served for three years in Oklahoma and one in Iraq, where due to what he assumes was a clerical error, he was awarded the Bronze Star. He is also a classically trained linguist, which sounds more impressive than saying his bachelor's degree is in German.

  Coming Soon

  Stone Wall by Dominic Stabile

  Episodes of Violence by David Bernstein

  Brain Dead Blues by Matt Hayward

  Find these and other books at www.sinistergrinpress.com

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgements

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One


  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Author's Thanks

  About the Author

  Coming Soon