Summertime...

A few days ago I hailed in the start of summertime with the clanking of Popsicles. Sticky orange against yellow, for what would later represent the last sun setting upon spring and rising into the long awaited summer. Oh, summer, the love of my life. If I was who I am now but rich, I would chase summer across the globe, experiencing rain as only a novelty and sun in over-abundance. If I were a freer spirit I would follow summer without money, but I am not ready for that kind of commitment. I never get tired of summer, although by the end of it I urn to go back to school, but the sun could stay. It's weird for me to hear people who get sick of warmth; especially in Washington since it never gets unbearable, unless you're older than fifty, than you have your own troubles. I love waking up at noon after who-knows-or-cares how many days straight of partying. By the second month of summer I don't even consider anything partying, just living maybe. I call them Ra shots (inside joke). The only thing I don't like too much about summer is the unprodcutiveness, but what is productivity but the curse of the lesser seasons? I don't get writers' block per se but the summer gives me a good case of the writers food poisoning, I guess. Diarrhea flows of brilliant poetry followed by sweating followed by incoherent word vomit. Or yess, yesssssss, yessssss, noooo syndrome as they call it The New Yorker. Did I say New yorker, I meant bad sex. Well, see you guys later, don't expect much good writing out of me the next month or whatever. This is my time off. Time to bake my brain in the sun and clear my mind of all the stuff I learned last year. I'll see you next year with a fading tan and a clean slate.

The notetaker prt2

The following is the second part to "The Notetaker." Lets call it an experiment in romance/ sci-fi. I must note, the romance part is hidden from view, as no one kisses and no one falls in love and no one even touches.
And it is blatantly a sci-fi short story. Well, only because there are aliens sprinkled though out the story. But it is done so casually,so frequant and haphazardlessly (its a word now, deal with it) it could all be true and you wouldn't know it until you were the last freethinking being on the planet...if you are now.
I only sort of enjoyed writing this. Hope you enjoy it.

…ONE
Denial is just a river in Egypt.

People barely noticed as the aliens had taken over the world. The economic collapse that came six months after infection almost gave it away. People hadn’t grasped how much our economy depended on ruthless thoughtless buying. The newly practical consumer market was immune to advertising, impulse buys, and unhealthy life styles. The economy was devastated by this. In the following months, cigarette and alcohol companies collapsed, along with Hollywood, fast food, pornography, and most forms of bought entertainment.
I used to hate Bill Buckley. Maybe not hate, but violently disapproved of at best. He was the typical moderate leaning right talk-show host on primetime that people loved because he appealed to their simple ignorant ethnocentric minds. He did so proudly and more so, loudly. He was prone to having opponent’s mics shut off and “accidently” spilling hot coffee in their laps. I always thought it was obvious when someone did something on purpose when they habitually made the same mistakes time and time again. Now he was the only human on television, and for that, I would follow him to hell and back. There were only three channels and he had an hour segment a day on one of them. The parasites have no interest in shallow and pointless television shows—I assume Bill Buckley’s program survived because of their hanging curiosity about the species they had come to infest.
He was the front-runner of a pro-human group. Well, it wasn’t as much a group as a loose association of people with one thing in common. Humanity. He led a group of protesters once a week. They were a goofy bunch, with their oversized helmets or earmuffs and chastity belts. The belts were more of a statement than an actual safety measure. The goofy bunch would parade around town with signs like:
“Freedom not peace”
“Love is the question”
“No more tapeworms in the Whitehouse!”
“Save the economy, kill an alien.”
“We were here first.”
And the less catchy
“Earth first! We’ll follow the parasite scum to their next planet and kill what’s left of them later.”
As time went on his numbers shrunk. This is when I invited him to the group I had started. It’s called the Burning Embers, because it’s made up of the last burning embers of humankind. Semi corny, I know, but I did start it when I was just 13. I started the club with some kids around my neighborhood after suspected my parents of being infected (they turned out to be the first).
It was smooth sailing for a short while. That was before the parasite learned to pass woman to man and before they began maturing and crawling out of people. They would leave their eggs in a host and crawl out and nonchalantly infect people as they slept. For the first few months people were hearing things about the alien parasites. For a while, the situation never really set in. Talk-shows did interviews with the infected and it always came out a joke by the end of the day. Saturday Night Live made skits about it. Will Farrel had a skit that involved him being a parasite that didn’t fit in with parasites or people. He was always making social faux pas and the like. For some reason, being an outcast was the punch line of the joke. It was later discovered that he had been infected the whole time and was just spreading propaganda to his mind-numbed audience. After news of peace in the Congo broke out, people began to ask questions. Soon after that, armies around the world were simply refusing to fire their weapons. That’s when the news started taking it seriously. Soon after that, tape was released that showed one of the parasites crawling into someone’s head. Warnings went out telling people to weather proof their house and seal all openings at night. Anything to prevent night invasion. But it was only a month before the story got over-killed. And it wasn’t long until the news stations and their anchors themselves became infected. The hollow shells of news men and women would confirm:
The threat is over.
An elaborate hoax.
An Orson Wells-esk test of 21 century human gullibility.
The humans still following the news laughed. The infected laughed and said “gotcha”. Gorilla Theater nothing more. Aliens don’t exist. Impossible. The news excused it as a fad and later mass hysteria. How they excused it as a fad eludes me still.
The end of the human race was very anti-climatic. There were no explosions. There wasn’t a show down. If it had been a movie, it would have broken even in theatres at best. Humanity, as you know it, slowly crept out of existence, just as it had crept in.
I, Timothy Harker, am one of about forty thousand identified uninfected persons left on this planet. That’s what I hear anyways. We have no exact estimate of course, as there is no known way to test for infection without love samples or cutting open someone’s brain. Both methods happen to be too invasive for the likes of any rational person. There is no way to safely advertise our presence either, since these parasites can mimic behavior better than most people can. I have faith though, that humans shall overcome. We’ve overcome everything else we’ve been faced with. I will brush peace and equality aside, in the name of freedom.

About a decade later…
Two.
“Anger is the most raw and pure emotion and with that the simplest and most destructive.”

“Hi. My name is Jack, you all know that. I will be today’s facilitator for the 243th meeting of the Burning Embers,” Jack pounds the wooden gavel on his helmet twice, “…Sooooo. On today’s agenda: We are fucked. Why are we fighting still? Who cares? And the parasites have won. Does anyone have any pressing issues to add to today’s agenda?”
There were some inappropriate snickers.
“ Yeah, I do,” Bill speaks up, “can you please add: I am sick of healthy food and I need to get laid…Um, and what happened to cataloging seasons of nineties TV shows? One more episode of MASH and I’m going Colonial Klinger on all of you.”
“Well Bill. If you would leave me collateral, I can let you borrow some of my DVDs, but, as they are all I have left from the world, I am hesitant to lend them out. And women, well, you will have to take it up with Daisy or Sarah, but it doesn’t seem like they even take their chastity belts off to shit so GOOD LUCK WITH THAT.”
“Hey fuck you Jack! I got a fine piece of ass under this belt,” Sarah yells.
“Well, I have no way of knowing what’s under that foot of fucking metal! Jesus
Christ,”Jack buries his head in his hands, “I haven’t got my tip wet in nine fuckin’ years. I don’t even remember what pussy smells like.”
“Will you guys please stop thinking of yourselves?” I finally say. “We’re in the middle of
a war in case you all forgot. We’re all that’s left and here you guys are fighting about having sex and eating greasy food? We should be strategizing.”
“And how do you believe we should go about that Timmy boy?” asks Jack, “our great
blind visionary?”
“I agree with you Tim. I do.” Says Bill, “but they took the whole armed forces in two
months. They took most of the human race in just a few years. We’re all that’s left.”
“It looks pretty impossible Timothy,” Sarah chimes in. The opinion-less crab bag.
“I know you. I’ve known you for six years now. You are a rebel, Tim. You rebel against the majority, whether they are in the right or not, almost for the sake of being miserable all the time. If everyone was like you, you would turn into your exact opposite, because you, for some sick, twisted broken reason, love to loath life.” Daisy says.
“That’s horse shit. You know that’s horse shit. I have always fought for freedom at all costs. I just never knew it would be taken like this. I am pissed off all the time because I seem to be the only person paying attention to the situation at hand,” I yell.
“I will always stand with you, but to fight next to you would be suicide.” Daisy’s eyes are welting up.
“I would rather die on my feet than live on my knees.” I hope people think I made this quote up.
“YES BROTHER! Well said.” Bill shouts.
“That expression doesn’t even apply here! WE are free. No one has taken our freedom away. It’s everyone else who is long gone. All we can do now is live out our lives, keep our helmets on and our chastity belts tight and we will never be infected.” Daisy says.
“Yeah dude, for serious. It took them a few years to take over, and they spread easy. We have no way to kill the parasite without killing the person too; we have no way to spread. We’re really at this point of no return here.” Jack says, more politely this time.
“Okay. Okay. Okay roll with me for a second,” I pause, fill my lungs with oxygen, “Thinking is the road to change. Speaking is the vehicle. Just sitting around this table, speaking of revolution, infects the group consciousness of the whole. We are planting the seeds.”
“Not to encourage this retarded metaphor, but our car ain’t got any gas.” Jack mouths, “We all hear about the successful revolutions against oppression, but that isn’t most of ‘em. That isn’t even half of ‘em. Most revolutions end up with death and torture and alienation, when all along they could have just made the best with what they were given. Sometimes, you can only play with the cards you’ve been dealt.”
“We have all the hope and ambition we need to win this,” I say.
“We have enough ambition to coast-- to fuckin’ coast! We’re coasting on neutral and the second we hit a hill, our vehicle will back over us and all our hopes and ambitions will just be a greasy bloody stain on the contently infected asphalt.”
I take all my anger. All my hatred and annoyance. And bury it in the deepest furthest corner of my mind. I breath in deeply though my mouth, out through my nostrils.

The next day…
I’m on the subway heading towards Daisy’s place. It’s filled with parasite scum. Their logo-less clothing and bare-minimum haircuts rob the shells they ride of what made each of them unique. They all stare blankly at me because they know. They know I don’t belong. A human would know because of my helmet and my bulging pants and my emotions. They just know. I hate them with every untainted pint of blood in my body. I would like nothing more than to punt their heads off their necks like golf balls. Gold balls filled with blood and brains and parasites. My stop is soon, it seems to take forever. I wouldn’t mind burning them alive and throwing their charred remains under an approaching train. The train part would be mostly for show, as the flame would surely kill them. A pale little boy with a bowl-cut (the typical style of the age group) stares up at me. A smile stretches across his face. A mocking copied emotion. I hold back anger-inspired tears.
“Forget your bicycle back at the station, sir?” The boy asks.
I just glare. The subway screeches to a halt at my stop. I take a step forward and butt my helmet into his face with all my force. He belts forward onto his knees, clutching his face. A geyser of dark red syrup and teeth erupt from his mouth through his open hands. He sways as he recovers from the disorientation. The intercom says: “Stuart Mill Station, please exit to your right.” The door slides open and make to the door quickly. I look back and the kid is standing already, blood runs down his mouth and is drenches his t-shirt.
“Jokes on you sir, these are just my baby teeth,” the boy gums, as a toothless grin stretches across his face.
I give him the finger.
He does it back.
Everyone in the cart follows suit. Then the doors slam shut.
Motherless mother fuckers.
It’s quite dark by the time I reach Daisy’s apartment. Her place is warm and inviting, tucked away near the end of a discreet dead end street. Her lights are dim and she’s answers the door in silky white pajamas. Her straight brown hair blooms from under her helmet and falls loosely over the left side of her face. The brighter light from the hall is caught in a mad twinkling dance in her eyes. In movie’s I have seen, this environment would inevitably lead to sex. In reality, if I’m lucky it leads to her falling asleep on my lap during a movie. Often it involves brainstorming take-over techniques or running through drills covering what to do if the parasites ever make the first move.
I sit on her couch and kick off my shoes.
“How was your day Timmy?” she asks.
“Um. It was—I dunno really. It—I dunno—how was yours?” the kid’s cryptic bloody smile is still burnt in my brain.
“It was nice. I got a lot of R and R. I slept in. Took a very relaxing bath. It was pleasant.” She sits on the couch next to me, stretching out like a cat.
“That’s good. I’m glad to hear that. Mine was kind of stressful, as usual. I’m thinkin’ we could maybe run through some scenarios on how to fend off the infected in a closed in space. They’ve been eyeing me lately. I want to be prepared in case they ever decide to make a move.”
She rolls her eyes, “Yeah. That might be fun.”
“What? Do you have something else in mind?”
“Well. I don’t know. We could try talking. We could just hang out. I can get to know the guy under that helmet,” she taps my helmet playfully, “we can do anything but talk about parasites and just get to know each other.”
“Yeah. That could be fun. I just didn’t know what you wanted to do, and you know, you can never be too prepared.”
“I just don’t want life to pass us by. We keep fighting to stay human but we aren’t really living the human experience to the fullest,” she unbuckles her helmet, and pulls it off her head. She lets it roll to the floor.
“Woah, what are you doing?”
“Relax Tim. We’ll put them back on before we go to bed. It’ll fine.” She leans in close to me; her breath smells like red wine, “come on,” she leans in closer. She unbuckles my helmet.
I back away, placing both my hands firmly on my helmet, “I’m not sure this is a good idea.”
“Don’t you trust me?” she tugs down her pajama bottoms to reveal thin lacey red panties, “please tell me you trust me enough to take yours off at least,” she nods.
“God. Um. I dunno Daisy. I really—I really—God I really like you… I always have,” I swallow hard, “I’m not sure.”
“Come on Timothy. Please. Do this for me. My apartment is secure. Nothing can come in. At least take the chastity belt off. You know I’m safe.”
“Yeah, I know you are.” Is she? Is she? Is she safe? How can I know?
She leans her face in close to mine, her hair tickles my nose.
I pull the key from my pocket and fumble with the keychain. I shove the key in the lock.
Her eye balls move down then up again to my eyes. She nods again.
“I’m not sure.”
“Come on Timmy.” She puts her hand on the key. Turns it right and my belt clicks.
I take a deep breath, and out through my nose, “ummmm,” I nod, “I dunno.”
Daisy leans forward; she presses me back against the couch. She plants her lips on mine. The belt feels tighter around my waist. She unbuttons my pants. She pulls the belt off, revealing the green crossing red plaid on my boxers. The belt clanks on the floor. She sticks her tongue back in my mouth. I don’t really know what to do back so I just hold my mouth open and dab my tongue against hers.
“Shit wait.” I hold her off me with my hand, “I’m still not sure.”
“I don’t wanna die a virgin. Come on. I’ve seen the way you look at me. Stop depriving yourself from me. True love could never be faked this well.” She leans back into me pressing her breasts against me chest. I feel the tips of her nipples press against me through our shirts. She leans her mouth to my ear, she whispers, “come on. Please Tim. Accept me. Accept us. Let this happen. You won’t regret a moment of it,” her breath is warm on the cartilage of my ear.
The phone interrupts us. God exists. “Shit,” she sighs under her breath, “I’ll grab that.”
She walks across the room and picks up the phone.
“Hello.”----“Oh hi.”----------“Yeah. I mean—no I’m fine. What’s up?”-------------------------------------“Wow.”------“Wow”---------------------------------“Cool.”—“Yeah, we can come by tomorrow.”------“Cool.”--------------------“It’ll probably just be me and Tim.”--------“He missed the last meeting.”---“Yeah it was weird. He was supposed to facilitate.”----------------“I’ll try to get him on board too.”--------“I’ll pass on the news. That’s really great to hear.”--------“yup.”—yup, we’ll see you tomorrow. Bye.”-----She shoves the phone down.
“Sorry. Where were we?” her hair is all over the place.
“Who was that?”
Daisy looks annoyed, “it was Dr. Lorenzo. He says he’s got good news.”
“Really? What? Has he found something?”
“He didn’t say. He wants us to come to his office tomorrow morning to tell us in person.”
Dr. Bobo Lorenzo is one of the greatest scientists of our time. By greatest of our time, I mean greatest human one living now. He’s a huge supporter of the Burning Embers but only occasional participant. The eccentric doctor would call occasionally to ask how it was going or to say he was making leeway in finding the parasites’ weakness. So far he hadn’t showed much evidence of this leeway, but desperate times call for desperate…I’m going to go with beggars can’t be choosers, actually…or you need more than one of each animal on the ark to repopulate the earth. Never mind, forget it all. These days funding is hard to come by for a conscientiously objecting formally respected human. He used to teach biochemistry and miscellaneous science classes at the University of Washington. He still works, teaching chemistry 101 to parasites at a community college. He no longer gets funding from the government, as any study in disease prevention and treatment as been made void. This means short cuts of course, and limits. Now he does research out of pocket, since he always did science out of love, not money.
Daisy and I didn’t make it off the benches that night. The risks outweighed the benefits.

Three
“It's just as unpleasant to get more than you bargain for as to get less”
–George Bernard Shaw

We visit Dr. Bobo Lorenzo in his office atop the second largest building in town. It
towers over all the smaller buildings in the bland corporate office district of town.
It was one of those giant empty buildings that were more and more common by the day. We walk through the lobby, passing For Lease signs and a giant billboard that says “This could be your billboard! Just call the number below.”
We make it to the elevator. Daisy and I tap our toes in nervous human apprehension, our burnt out blurry faces reflecting back at us, as if to say, “what this time?”
I smile at her. She smiles back. I think she may be frustrated with me.
“What crazy plan do you think Dr. Bobo’s cooked up this time?”
“Dunno. Any plan would be awesome,” the elevator opens, “I will take anything right now…just some direction would be great,” we step in.
“He knows a lot about germs and parasites and stuff. I have faith in the guy. I think” Daisy says.
We make it to his office and knock on his door. We hear a muffled response and go in. Dr. Lorenzo is arched over a half eaten pizza on his desk, an extra-large container of ranch in hand. He tips it over one of the slices, dotted white sauce drowns the target meat lovers. He slams the ranch down on the table, picks up the slice by the crust and shoves it in his mouth before it can collapse from the weight of its condiments. He can do this horrendous task because he has a huge mouth. The man stands six foot six and is as wide as a linebacker. His grey hair recedes far on his large round forehead into grey scraggily hair tied back into a pony tail. His hips are wider than his shoulders, and when he stands, he resembles an old smelly Treadle Dee with a PhD.
“I’m so glad you kids could make it out here!” he stands and leans down to give Daisy a hug with one arm, her helmet presses awkwardly into his moist chess. He shakes my hand firmly, “how’s resistance treating you? You look like shit.”
“It isn’t easy.” I sigh.
“Naw, I couldn’t imagine it would be. Sit. Relax. Place is kind of messy I know. Make yourself comfortable, sit on anything that doesn’t look breakable. Do any of you kids want a slice of pizza? Meat-supreme.”
“No thanks, sort of trying to watch my weight.” Says Daisy.
“Nonsense. You guys should enjoy this crap while you can. I should have enjoyed it while I still could. Besides, eating poorly is we a freedom still have to enjoy, not because it makes sense but because it’s the right thing to do,” Lorenzo rants.
“So…”I start, as I make a giant stack of textbooks my chair, “what’s this news you were so excited that you could only tell us in person?”
“I could just tell you. But that would be too easy.”
“Oh my God please. Please just spit it out. The suspense is fuckin’ killing me.”
“Alright…What’s tiny and invisible and affects everyone and everything?”
“Baby evil spirits?” I joke.
“Close, but no cigar. ”
“What is bacteria, for…what’s the value of life going for these days?” Daisy chimes in.
“That’s right Daisy!” his excitement almost made it worth the wait, “I’d give you a gold star, but I am…out actually. If I wrote ‘good job’ on a piece of painters’ tape, would that suffice?”
I can never tell when he’s taking jokes too far or being dead serious.
“I thought the parasite pretty much fended off any bacteria or virus that entered their host.”
“True. Most of the time.”
“I’ve discovered a bacteria that, after infecting its host, rapidly destroys it. It infects, spreads, kills, than dies off with its host.”
“Won’t that kill the person to?”
“Eventually, yes. But, see. The bacteria spreads throughout the body, systematically killing everything. It kills off the parasite before it kills of the person. We’d have several weeks to give the antidote to people, curing them of the disease we gave them, and as they get better they come out parasite free.”
“Wow. Like this actually sounds crazy enough to work. Um—and there’s no chance this plan might backfire?”
“Not backfire…ricochet maybe. The difference between this bacteria and the parasite is it doesn’t maintain life it destroys. It doesn’t really coexist as much as it spreads and destroys. After we release the bacteria, it would be impossible to control it’s evolutionary path from there. There’s really no sure-fire way to know it won’t mutate and become immune to my antidote. And in this situation, we could kill a lot of innocent people.”
“Sometimes you have to break some eggs to make an omelet.”
“I appreciate your enthusiasm Tim, but if we wipe out mankind we break the chicken.”
“Well why did you tell us all this then? I don’t need more people adding blood to my eventual aneurism.”
“I am not saying we shouldn’t do this. I’m simply noting that we must weigh out all the potential positive and negative outcomes before we dive into this balls first. “
“Well, doctor, how would we go about releasing this bacterium?”

Four.
“In despair there are the most intense enjoyments, especially when one is very acutely conscious of the hopelessness of one’s position.” –Fydor Dostoyevsy

We arrive at Jack’s place and butterflies are smacking the roof of my stomach. The
powder from their wings is mixing with my stomach contents. We walk up the stairs to his front door. His keys hang from the key hole. A green T-Rex with a sombrero and a shirt that says Mexico clutches for dear life to Jack’s abandoned key ring. The door is slightly ajar. It’s dark. There are voices coming from inside. I don’t like this.
“Should we go in?” I ask Daisy.
“Of course.” She says, as she unlatches her gun from her chest holster.
Her bulky black helmet and cargo pants make her .22 snub-nose look as threatening as a puppy in a piranha tank.
I nudge the door open.
The voices are those of R.E.M singing “It’s the end of the world as we know it.”
There was a strong odor hanging in the air. It was strong enough to put a bad taste in my mouth.
“God,” Daisy whispers, “What in god’s name is that?”
One of my butterflies escapes and I swallow him before he can give away our presence.
Team by team reporters baffled, trumped, tethered crippled.
The room was cast in an eerie light from the moonlight that shown though the sky light. The dirty dishes, the trash, the clothes, the miscellaneous, they all glowed.
Uh oh overflow. Population. Common food. But it’ll do.
“Where do you think Jack is?”
Save yourself. Serve yourself.
I peer around, nostrils flaring. I step lightly towards the kitchen. “This isn’t right though.”
I look at the stove. It’s turned to bake and 400 degrees. Deep smoke seeps out the sides of the closed door. I turn it off, fanning the smoke with my hands.
“That solves mystery one.”
Daisy flicks on the light with her gun. A dark black smoke screen blocks the sky light in here. The sink is full of crusted over dishes, soaking in greasy water with islands of unidentifiable food scraps.
An empty half-gallon of Ron Rio floats half submerged in the wreckage.
The revered and the right, right. You vitriolic,
Patriotic, slam, fight, bright light, feeling pretty
Psyched
I open the fridge. There are three Coronas lying on the top shelf next to half a molding lime. I grab two and shut the fridge.
It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine
I pop the cap off with my chastity belt and pass it to Daisy.
“How romantic.” She smiles, tucking her gun back in its holster.
“Cheers,” I tap my bottle against hers. We leave the odor of the kitchen for the lesser odors of the living room.
Offer me alternatives and I decline.
“I wonder where Jack’s run off to.” I think out loud as I swig the Corona.
Jack’s couch is piled up with blankets and clothes, but I sit on it anyways. All of a sudden the pile groans and kicks.
I jump off. “Shit.”
Skinny legs kick off blankets and clothes. The pile’s arms shield its eyes from the light. “Oh what the fuckkk,” it groans, “just let yourselves in dick-bags?”
“Jack!”
“It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine…it's time I had some
time alone,” Jack trails off with the last few lines. He sits up, rubbing his eyes.
“Damn it Jack, you scared the hell out of us! Your keys were in the door.—shit, why aren’t you wearing your helmet?” I say.
His stringy black hair sticks out both sides a black beanie. He pulls it off revealing headphones. “I got these, relax.”
“Put a helmet on. Please tell me you’re protected down there.”
He kicks off the last blanket. All he has is shorts on. The crotch of his shorts are soaking wet. “No. I pissed myself tryin’ to get ‘em off in time.—FUCK!”
“It’s okay. It happens to the best of us,” Daisy reassures.
“No. I’m sick of this. I’m done.”
“Done with what? What are you talking about?”
“I’m done with running. I don’t care anymore.”
“No. Don’t say that. The doctor has good news! We’ve got a way to kill the parasite!”
“It’s bullshhhitt. No. Like all of it. This ember—” he points both of his thumbs at his chest, “this ember is burning out. I’m done fighting.”
“No Jack. You’re drunk. You don’t know what you are saying. We really need your help.”
“Alcohol inspires truth. Pure ugly truth.”
“What would I have to do? I’m not expressing interest I’m just prodding.” Jack says, leaning back, “you know those are the last two Coronas ever produced? Did you stop to think about that before you took ‘em?”
“I’m sorry, man. There’s one left. I’ll hit you back, I swear. The doctor’s been making moonshine… Ah, anyways, Dr. Lorenzo’s discovered a bacteria that can wipe the parasites from the face of the Earth.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Seriously?”
“YES! All we would have to do is release it into the water supply and it will spread from there. I’m not sure how we’ll get it to other parts of the world yet…but I’m sure we can have our people elsewhere contaminate their water sources too.”
“And this—this bacteria only kills the parasites?”
“Well…yes, yes of course it does.”
“You’re a shitty liar Tim,” Daisy scoots closer to Jack, “No Jack. There are risks involved. We aren’t going to whitewash the truth.”
“And those are?” Jack asks.
“There is a small—a very small—practically microscopic chance the bacteria could wipe out the human race too.”
Jack stares off for a moment. Either in deep reflection or deep recession.
“So there isn’t anything bad that could come of this?” he slurs forth.
“Well, no, that’s not really what I was implying. We could very well be killed.”
“So…either we die or everyone dies? All or nothing, right?”
“No. Either we all die or the parasites die.”
“I am so down! Count me in.”
“Really? This isn’t just the alcohol talking right?”
“Are you tryin’ to change my mind? I told you, alcohol doesn’t lie. I am down. I am here for you!” he pauses, “you may just have to remind me in the morning.”

Five
“Fate leads the willing and drags along the reluctant” -Seneca

“Everything we do now is a cause of a cause of a cause. Nothing is done that doesn’t comply with the “will” of “god” as you may feel or not feel his presence. Nothing is done out of free will. Free will is an illusion. The only act of free will is thinking you have free will. The parasite is just a material representation of something that always was.” My father says.
“But I may choose to do otherwise. I may choose to stay human. I may fight for my humanity.”
“But that choice is still caused. It is caused by your refusal to be like everyone around you.”
“All these words I say come from me out of my own will to speak them.”
“But they are a reaction to what I am saying and what I am saying comes from your own mind which came from the me you think you are talking about.”
Shit. I must have taken a pretty good blow to my head. I wake up. It was just a dream.
As I come into the room, bright light pierces thought my eyelids and all I see is red. I try to open my eyelids. They are crusted close. I reach my hands towards my face to pry my crusted lids open and my left eye feels fabric brush it. I try to move the fingers on my left hand, nothing. Just crushing pain but no movement. They must be paralyzed. I rub the crust from my eyes with my right hand. Little dry crunchies fall down my hospital gown. So I’m in a hospital. Why?
My eyes open. The light burns. I squint. My whole face burns from the bright lights. There’s an ivy stuck in my vein.
FUCKFUCKFUCK FUCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCCCKkkkk.
I look down at my hands. My left hand is missing. Mostly. All that is left is a fingernail-less thumb and the knuckle of my pointer finger. My left hand is a thick layer of gauze held in place by strands of medical tape. Screams escape my mouth. The butterflies lay helplessly in the pit of my stomach. Their wings too burnt to fly. I scream at the top of my lungs. For god. For Daisy. For a parasite. I don’t care. I accept my fate. I don’t care. I don’t care.
Where is my belt? Where is my helmet? I am exposed. I’m just in a gown. Am I infected? I’m in their hospital. Have they gotten to me yet? I scream for help. Help from whom? Fuck. I have to get out of here. I crawl towards the floor. Something is holding me back. The ivy in my vein. The fuckin’ ivy with the alien juice. I collapse off the bed yanking the ivy from my arm. I contact the floor solidly. I brace with my left nub and it sends pain shooting up to my shoulder. My blood gushes purple-red on my hospital gown. It spurts out with the beat of my heart. The red zig-zags the gauze. I try to crawl but I only flail around helplessly.
I hear the door swoosh open. The burnt up butterflies make it to the top of my mouth and their guts pollute the bloody mess. My eyes. Get hea
“Timothy? Wake up! Timothy?” I hear Daisy’s sweet voice.
I moan still half asleep.
“Tim. You’re having a bad dream. Wake up.”
My eyes are still half closed but I say: “Thank god. Thank god that was all a nightmare.”
“Woa, buddy. Glad what was a nightmare?”
When I open my eyes tears start pouring down my face.
“Are you going to calm down? I had the nurse give you some morphine so you don’t start gushing blood all over the place again. Such a baby.”
“A baby? My left hand is gone!”
I look at Daisy. She isn’t protected by her helmet.
“Daisy?”
“Yes Tim.”
“Why aren’t you wearing protection?”
“Protection? Protection from what? I think your still a little delirious from your coma.”
“I was in a coma?”
“You don’t remember anything about the accident do you?”
“What accident? What are you talking about? I obviously don’t. I thought…I thought parasites were taking over the world.”
“What are you talking about? I’m sorry. Maybe all the sci-fi movies I’ve been playing while I was waiting by your side have messed with your dreams?”
“Oh my god. My hands blown off. But fuck it. At least aliens haven’t taken over the world. Oh my god. I can’t believe this is happening.”
“Sorry Tim. I was just, what would you call it, fucking with you. Everyone else was telling me it would be easy to pull one on the last man on earth. I’m sorry. Not really. But that’s customary right? To say you’re sorry for jokes that go too far.”
“WHAT?”
“That was kind of in poor taste I know. It’s just—you just woke up, your woozy, there’s a lapse in your memory, it seemed easy to play a joke on you. We’ve all been infected. The Burning Embers are all infected. Most of us have been for some time. Your group got infiltrated in the first year. We finally just got stubborn old Bill Buckley and Jack kind of did himself in.”
“What? What? What the fuck? No. No.—”
“Saying things in threes is going to help you. Relax. We haven’t infected you.”
“So you guys have been just mocking me this whole time?”
“No. I mean, some of the others have been. But I come from a semi compassionate line of parasites. I’ve just been taking notes. We don’t want to just wipe every human off the planet now. It kind of just happened. We still want to observe. I want see what makes your species tick.”
“So this whole time, you’ve just been faking?”
“That depends on how you define ‘faking.’ Humans put on masks around each other all the time.”
“But. But. But I spied on you. I spied on all of you while you were all by yourself. And you still played music. You talked to yourself. Things people do when they are alone, not things parasites do by themselves.”
“While your little plan to spy on us while we were acting natural was a good idea, I guess, every time you suspected someone you tried to get everyone but the person you were spying on to go with you…which doesn’t work when we’re all in on it.”
“Wait? What about Doctor Lorenzo? Is he not really a scientist? What? I am so confused.”
“Of course he’s a scientist. He’s just infected too. We wanted to put you through this final test, to see what you would do. I was a little surprised you chose the option that had a good chance of wiping out all human kind.”
“A chance…just a chance.”
“Saying there is just a chance is just your method of coping with your poor decision. You would risk genocide of the whole human race just for the half-chance you might kill their operators? You humans have squandered this planet and here you are, one against the world, taking any opportunity to fight for the human right to do so? Even if it kills all the humans? Jesus. I can’t believe one of you used to run this country. I can’t believe you guys used to run this planet for that matter. Wow, you are lucky we landed when we did.” Daisy peers out the window, “this place is wonderful.”
“WE WERE HERE FIRST!” I yell though my teeth.
“Here first? Here first…what does that mean? There were single celled organisms, bacteria, algae, dinosaurs, mammals—all of which came before you. Strange—even with your elementary knowledge of evolutionary history, you should be able to notice humans came last.”
“We were here before you.”
“You keep saying ‘we’ which is weird because I only see one of you. I don’t know what you’re trying to prove with this primal ‘we were here first’ argument. Your species wiped out species that were here much longer than you, for much more selfish temporary pursuits. What, you humans wanted sports cars, lipstick, and rotating wardrobes, polished rocks..all at the cost of the crawling things that had lived sustainably for years before their homes were paved over or they were soaked in arsenic so people could adorn themselves in gold. I just—can’t even begin how many ways you fucked up.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t do those things. We can clean up our act, just give us a chance.”
“You know what the number one area of job growth in this new economic era is?”
“What?” I sniff. I’m crying uncontrollably now. The pain of acceptance sets in hard.
“Restoration.”
“What?”
“Repair. We have a lot of good parasites out busting their asses trying to fix all the stuff you guys messed up. Cockroaches are better suited for this planet than you are. You guys just have those goddamn opposable thumbs and brains—always making things and breaking things.” She pauses to wriggle her thumbs in my face, “they are fun though.”
“Um,” I stop and grimace at the sight of my nub, “what’s going to happen to me?”
“Well. That’s kind of a broad question. I’m not “God’” she does air quotes, “or ‘Buddha.’ But I guess Timothy; I’ll do my best to answer that. I guess you will continue to eat. And sleep. And empty your bowels and bladder. Then you’ll grow old and die, probably a good amount of time before me…Well, I should probably get out of your hair. You probably have one handed things to do with your friends and stuff. Don’t want to get in the way of all that fun stuff. We should talk again, though. I know I come off a little hostile, but I do enjoy talking to you. You have interesting ideas about the world. Alright. I’m going to get out of here, but I’ll see you around,” She starts walking towards the door.
“Wait.” She stops.
She looks at me, “Yes?”
“I—I love you Daisy.”
She leans down and pinches my cheek. “You’re just so cute. You little jokester you.”
She leaves the room.
FIN