by Weston Ochse
“There’s something in your mouth!” Sandy pointed an accusing finger.
“Dere’s nuthig in mah mowth.”
“It looked at me!”
Tires screeched and horns blared as the other vehicles attempted to avoid a collision.
“Your tongue—it has a face!”
Rayburn stomped on the brakes, bringing the pickup skidding to a halt mid-road. A cacophony of irate beeping threatened to deafen them. He stuck out his tongue and looked in the rearview. His shriek drowned out even the horns.
Jolene clamped her hands over her ears and wondered if she should mention they’d passed her exit.
***
Rayburn burst through the apartment door, Sandy trailing behind him. He made a bee-line for the bathroom.
“Ray, I really think we should call an ambulance.”
“I thold you, NO DOCTUTHS.” He slammed the door behind him.
Sandy hovered outside the bathroom, hugging herself and pouting. Jolene poked her head through the still-open front door.
“He hates doctors.” Sandy bent at the knees and mimed herself two-handing something large in front of her pelvis. Then she made a motion like she was wielding a giant pair of scissors. Jolene’s face went blank.
“An accident.” She said it in a whisper. “Blinded by forceps at birth.”
“Oh.”
“Say, that gives me an idea.”
Sandy ran towards the kitchen.
Meanwhile, in the bathroom, Rayburn paced the floor in front of the mirror, mouth shut tight. His nostrils flared as he breathed heavily through his nose. A solitary sheet of paper fluttered on the toilet roll.
He stopped and faced the mirror. Gripping the countertop he glared at his looking-glass self. He imagined every doctor he’d never been to, standing before him with every tongue depressor ever made. He opened his mouth, stuck out his tongue, said ah.
That ah morphed into an open-throated scream
Nestled in the half-eaten pulp of his tongue lay a white, segmented body with beady black eyes. The thing observed him via the mirror as he screamed, its front appendages—the only pair not sunk into his flesh—folded together like a malevolent cartoon billionaire.
Rayburn panicked, both hands clawing at the creature to no avail. It only caused the thing to dig in deeper. The throbbing in his tongue intensified.
He fell back against the wall, chest heaving. Every exhalation accompanied by an ovine bleat. Bloody spittle collected in the corners of his mouth.
That’s when Sandy burst through the door, brandishing a pair of metal salad tongs.
Rayburn flashed back to a moment he couldn’t possibly remember—a man in green scrubs coming at him in the safety of his mother’s womb.
“No! Thay away!” Rayburn back-peddled, tripping and falling into the tub, taking the shower curtain down with him, Marion Crane style.
“Hold still,” Sandy said. “It’s just me.”
Rayburn whimpered as he presented his tongue. Sandy gripped it with the tongs, not able to see where the muscle ended and the creature began.
“Ready?” she said, more to herself than Rayburn. She didn’t wait for a response. She pulled with all her might.
There was a sound like the tearing of fabric and the tension gave. Sandy fell backwards, tongs flying out of her hands. Rayburn screamed with renewed vigor, swinging his head back and forth as his tongue lolled a good six inches from his mouth, disconnected at the root. All the while the parasite held on tight.
Sandy started to cry. Jolene, who had finally worked up the nerve to poke her head into the bathroom, promptly fainted at what she saw.
***
Jolene awoke propped up on the living room couch, a whimpering Sandy curled up beside her. She instinctively put out a hand and stroked Sandy’s hair.
Rayburn lay on the living room floor, dried blood encrusting his face. Somehow his tongue had found its way back into his mouth. His eyes twitched back and forth, tracing the cracks in the ceiling.
“What… was that thing?” Jolene said.
Sandy didn’t respond, didn’t even look at her, only held her smartphone out at arm's length. Jolene took in what appeared to be a flat, albino insect, attempted to pronounce the word in italics beneath it.
“See-moth… See-mothoa—”
“Cymothoa exigua.” Sandy said the words like she’d been repeating them over and over in her head. “It’s an isopod. A parasite that… eats fish tongues.”
Jolene shuddered, pushed the phone away.
“Shouldn’t we take him to the hospital?”
Sandy shook her head.
“He’d never forgive me.”
“I’m pretty sure the situation warrants it.”
Sandy waved the phone in Jolene’s direction again.
“Says here, the only damage the parasite causes is to the host’s tongue.”
Jolene leaned forward to get as good a look at Rayburn as she could without abandoning the safety of the couch.
“Can he talk?”
Rayburn startled them both by responding.
“Yeth.”
“Baby!” Sandy rushed to his side. “Talk to me, baby. Say something!”
“I justh dead.”
Sandy clutched at his hands, trying to hold both at once.
“This is all my fault. What should I do? Does it hurt?”
“Wather.”
“Sure thing, baby. I’ll get you some water. Just a second.”
Jolene watched as Sandy ran to the kitchen, heard her fill a glass from the tap. A moment later she returned and held it up to Rayburn’s lips.
“Thalt… wather.”
“Oh. Okay.” It was an odd request, but Sandy didn’t argue. Jolene watched her run back to the kitchen. The tinkling of spoon against glass sounded and Sandy returned with a tornado of cloudy liquid.
“Juth paw it on my tung.”
Sandy did as requested. The water pooled around the thing embedded in Rayburn’s tongue. It responded by rubbing its forelegs together. Sandy tried not to look.
“Thath bether,” Rayburn said, forcing the rest of the liquid to spill out of his mouth. Sandy used the hem of his t-shirt to wipe his chin. He smiled in appreciation.
“Thandy?”
“Yes, Ray?”
“Ahm thorry ah wen tah Kimsom Custation without you.”
Tears welled up in Sandy’s eyes.
“It’s okay, baby. I know you were bringing home dessert.”
Jolene pretended not to hear that part.
Rayburn propped himself up on his elbows, gazed into Sandy’s eyes.
“Cud you do me won maw favah?”
Sandy gripped his hand tighter than before. “Anything, baby.”
Rayburn leaned in towards her.
“Kith me.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
Sandy stopped him with a hand to the chest.
“I thaid, kith me.”
Sandy paused. Looked to Jolene, who shook her head no.
“I… what about… that thing?”
“Pleath…”
Sandy was torn. Her heart said yes with every beat, but her eyes screamed hell-to-the-no. Still, she puckered up nice and tight and pressed her lips against his cheek in a quick, perfunctory kiss.
“A reah won. Pleath...”
Rayburn’s body went limp, as if the evacuating word took his life with it. Heavy lids threatened to close for a final time.
“Okay baby. Whatever you want. Just stay with me.”
Sandy opened her mouth, tilting her head this way and that, attempting to find the right angle. Rayburn parted his lips. Sandy shut her eyes.
And then they were kissing.
Sandy held her breath, did her best to keep her tongue on her side of the kiss. But before long she could feel a tentative probing, the pin-point prick of tiny limbs meant for piercing flesh. She tried to pull away, but Rayburn grabbed her face with his hands, pressing into her. Sandy gave little moans that wou
ldn’t be out of place during a dental exam. Her moans became muffled protests as she began to beat the side of his head with her fists. Then she was hyperventilating, pulling air in through her nose and screaming it down Rayburn’s throat. Blood pooled in her sinuses, red bubbles frothing from her nostrils. Then her eyes rolled up into the back of her head and her whole body shook, as if she was having a grand mal seizure.
And then it was over. Rayburn went limp and fell back on the ground, dead. Sandy fell back as well, gasping for air. When she finally caught her breath she sat up, her mouth a crimson mess. She looked over at Rayburn. His mangled tongue once again lolled from his mouth. The parasite was gone.
“Sandy?”
She turned to the couch, where Jolene had tried to make herself as small as possible.
“Are you alright?”
Sandy paused, like a slow internet connection waiting for a URL to load. Nothing but a blank page, then all of a sudden—
“I’m bether than alright.” She smoothed down the front of her blouse. “Thith body’s quite the upgrade, don’t you think?”
Jolene mumbled a string of nonsense before spitting out an actual word.
“Upgrade?”
“Old Ray really apprethiated thith body. I couldn’t help but get a little second-hand intoxication there. It’s a byproduct of mind-linking with such emotional creatures.”
Sandy’s speech handled the uninvited guest much better than Rayburn’s had. The more she spoke, the more normal it sounded. She stood to her feet, wiped the blood from her mouth.
“In fact, I couldn’t help absorbing a bit of his attraction to you as well.”
She advanced on Jolene, step by shaky step. Jolene attempted to disappear into the corner of the couch altogether.
“And wouldn’t you know it, I’m getting a little bit of that from Sandy here as well.” She ran a pink press-on nail down Jolene’s cheek, prompting the flesh to twitch. “They had such plans for you.”
She pressed her tongue between her teeth, exposing the parasite like a puppet against a stained enamel backdrop. The pus-colored creature was visible for only a second, but Jolene could swear the thin black line of its mouth curved up at the ends to form a smile.
She would have screamed had the front door not slammed open to reveal two men wearing hip-waders. She recognized them from the restaurant. She also recognized the fishy smell that accompanied them.
“Looks like our ride’s here,” Sandy said. “Jolene, meet Billy and Charles.”
Despite the terror welling up inside her, Jolene remembered her manners and gave a slight wave. Sandy jerked her head in the direction of Rayburn.
“Body’s over there.”
Billy and Charles shuffled over to the body, the sound of water sloshing inside their rubber pants. They grabbed Rayburn from either end and two-manned him out the door. As they passed, Jolene could swear she saw their flesh rippling, as if something pushed against it from the inside.
“Where are they taking him?”
Sandy put an arm around Jolene and flashed a smile. Jolene shuddered at the thought of the thing behind her teeth.
“You’ll see.”
***
They rode sandwiched between Billy and Charles in the cab of the unmarked biscuit truck. The whole time Jolene couldn’t help but picture Rayburn being unceremoniously tossed into the back, atop what looked like a pile of similarly rag-dolled bodies.
“He said it was safe,” Jolene said to herself as the lights of suburbia receded.
“What was safe?”
“The bisque. Rayburn said it was safe to eat because of the poh-locks.”
“It’s pronounced pollock,” Sandy said. “And while it’s true most bisque recipes call for the Alaska pollock as a lobster substitute, the Crimson Crustacean chain of restaurants has always utilized a cheaper mixture of langostino and crab.”
Jolene had never heard of langostino, but she knew what crab meant.
“Shellfish,” she said.
“The irony of the situation,” Sandy continued, “is I wasn’t even part of Rayburn’s meal tonight. Even in our post-larval stage, a member of my species is far too large to go undetected in human foodstuffs. No, I was with him for much longer than that. In fact, my brothers and I were just eggs when he first ingested us.
“After we hatched, we awaited our sexual transformation while we dined on masticated nutrients in his stomach. One by one my brothers changed sex and were mated with. Lucky for me, I was the last of my siblings to mature. After protandry had taken place and I became fully female, no males remained with which to mate, so I traveled to the head of the host to take my rightful seat at the tongue. Unfortunately I had to make a last minute switch since my current host…” she glanced down at Sandy’s body “...damaged the organ so badly. No matter. Things are going exactly as they should. Even now my siblings wait to lead their children to the sea, where their growth will continue unfettered by the constraints of the human body.”
Billy and Charles grunted in assent. Jolene had no idea which drove the truck and which rode shotgun. She only knew she didn’t want to dwell on the mechanics of this creature’s reproductive process, let alone witness it.
The truck slowed and turned down a private beach road. There wasn’t a lot of public property in the area, so the farther they drove, the less chance there was of intervention. Why hadn’t the Sandy-thing killed her? Jolene resisted the urge to run down a mental list of fates worse than death. The truck’s abrupt halt brought her back to reality.
“We’re here,” Sandy said with a smile.
Billy and Charles exited the vehicle. Jolene sat in silence and listened as they pulled open the roll door on the back of the truck. A shifting of dead weight followed as the two men grabbed ahold of Rayburn’s body. Jolene watched as they transferred the body down to the beach and laid it on the damp sand, mere feet from the lapping waves. They repeated this action at least half a dozen times before Jolene lost count. Pretty soon lifeless human figures lined the shore.
“You’re lucky,” Sandy said, twirling a lock of Jolene’s hair around her finger. “Very few have witnessed what you are about to see.” She got out of the vehicle and extended a hand. “Come with me.”
Jolene allowed herself to be led from the truck. She then followed as Sandy walked towards the beach under the power of the parasite, stripping off articles of clothing as she went.
Jolene looked from Sandy’s tan skin to where the bodies were laid out. Beyond them moonlight glinted off the pale rocks of the shallows. She sidestepped Sandy’s blouse and squinted her eyes. The rocks seemed to be gliding towards the shore. Sandy’s bra dropped to the sand. She paused to step out of her jeans. Jolene stopped as well, maintained the distance between them. Sandy resumed walking, but Jolene’s legs froze.
Those weren’t rocks. They were those things. BIG ones.
All along the beach, the giant isopods emerged, their compound eyes shining in the night. They reminded Jolene of the pill bugs she used to play with in her mother’s garden, except these were at least two feet long. Their antennae extended that length by at least another foot. A shiver of revulsion ran along Jolene’s spine.
“Don’t be afraid,” she heard Sandy say. The woman was now completely nude, ankle deep in the water. “They are only here to witness the birth. The Day of Reclamation is not yet upon us.”
Jolene refused to move any closer. She watched as Sandy threw back her head and opened her mouth. Billy and Charles did the same. What could only be described as a chittering emanated from them. A powerful sound, considering the size of the creatures that produced it. One by one by their larger brethren joined them, which produced a much stronger, deeper sound. Like a chorus of cicadas a thousand fold. The water around them churned with the vibration.
Jolene clamped her hands over her ears and dropped to her knees. The rumble threatened to liquefy her insides. It blurred her vision like a shimmer of heat. The flesh of the corpses seemed to ripple. They s
hook from the vibration in the ground.
No. Something moved inside them.
Flesh bubbled as if filled with pockets of air. It pushed outward, stretching thin before pulling back. Eventually it gave, rupturing in tiny red bursts as thousands of juvenile isopods broke free from their incubation. As the number of tears increased, the surface area of the flesh diminished, holes joining together to form bigger holes. Skin went slack and began sloughing off as the creatures escaped the body and made for the water.
The three hosts closed their mouths and the chorus ceased. That’s when Jolene realized she was screaming. She continued to scream as the giant isopods and the newly released juveniles receded into the ocean. She didn’t stop until the last of the bubbles floated to the surface and the water went still. Only then did she uncover shaky hands from ringing ears. Sandy turned to her, her face glowing.
“Did you see?”
Jolene gave a shell-shocked nod.
“One day you too will take part in the ceremony. Then you will know the joy of bringing life into this world.”
A twinge of nausea tickled Jolene’s stomach.
“What do you mean?”
Sandy gave her a patronizing look.
“Why do you think I let you live?”
“But… I didn’t have the bisque.”
“I told you, honey. Rayburn wasn’t impregnated tonight. Besides, the rate of bisque consumption doesn’t provide a high enough number of potential incubators. The biscuits on the other hand… everyone loves Cheddar Cove biscuits.”
Jolene jammed her fingers down her throat and retched. It tasted of lobster and bile. She gagged once, twice more, but nothing came up except a string of drool.
“It’s too late for that. They’re already latching onto your insides. You could get your stomach pumped and it wouldn’t make any difference. Our offspring are a lot hardier than yours. They don’t allow themselves to be plucked from the womb before it’s time.”
The Sandy-thing turned back and began walking into the water.
“Billy and Charles will see you home. They’ll make sure you don’t do anything drastic.”
Jolene turned to the two men in hip-waders. They stood there watching her, like they had in the parking lot of Crimson Crustacean. What she had previously identified as their lack of subtlety she now recognized as a lack of humanity. When she turned back to the ocean Sandy had disappeared below the surface.