Infected

68.

Perry sat on the couch, transfixed by Fatty Patty’s ordeal.

They are hatching!

Hatching! Hatching!

The Triangles twitched under her skin, slowly picking up speed, jittering faster and faster. Her convulsions stopped suddenly; she rolled onto her back, fingers sticking into the air, locked like skeletal claws. Her face wrinkled in a wide-eyed blast of panic and a teeth-baring, breathless scream. It was a look of such utter, unbearable agony that Perry couldn’t suppress a shudder.

And he was next.

He felt sick, as if a gnarled hand squeezed and twisted his intestines. It was a physical reaction to a mind pulled in opposite directions. On one side he felt hopelessness, far worse than anything he’d known since this ordeal began. He watched this fat woman writhe with terror, watched her face contort and scrunch as she tried to scream but couldn’t find the air to do so. Her body shuddered in agony, making her flesh jiggle endlessly.

Despite this horror show, which held the promise of a painful death for him as well, he felt an impossible level of euphoria, a feeling that this was the beginning of something great and something wonderful. Joy and ecstasy ripped through his mind, better than any drug, vastly superior to sex-this was clearly an overflow emotion, but it was so strong, so clear, so vivid and so pure he was no longer able to separate it from his own. At that moment, the Triangle feelings saturated his very being.

He thought of killing her, slicing her throat with the butcher knife, ending her misery. But he couldn’t bring himself to stand up, to reach for the blade, because he had to know what would happen. Besides-she was dying anyway, and wasn’t a birth always a happy occasion?

A wave of fresh pain washed across her body, making her jerk like an electric-chair victim. She rolled a little from side to side, but mostly stayed on her back, that wide-eyed death stare fixed on some interesting detail of the stucco ceiling. Perry watched, surprised and disgusted, as she suddenly pissed all over the floor.

The Triangles picked up speed; they seemed to pulse as they sought to break free. Their large heads pushed out against her pliant, stretching skin, then sank back for another try. With each thrust, Perry saw the Triangles’ outlines, saw that their bodies had grown to a shallow pyramid shape.

It reminded Perry of the good old days of Jiffy Pop on the kitchen stove, the swelling volume of popcorn slowly expanding the tinfoil covering. The Triangles weren’t going to stop-they were clearly intent on popping out of her skin like a champagne cork, celebrating their new life in the new world.

Blisters burst one by one, coating her skin with thick, yellowish pus. Blood trickled from the edges of the Triangles, shooting out in thin jets each time they thrust outward.

They are hatching.

Is it beautiful? Let us see!

They are hatching. Hatching!

Perry ignored his own Triangles, his attention locked on those of Fatty Patty. Her Triangles thrust out farther, her skin started to tear. They pushed their way out like little turkey timers at Thanksgiving, the red pop-up button telling everyone when the big bird was done and it was time to eat. The three on her stomach were the worst to watch-they had started by only pushing up a quarter of an inch or so, a minor throbbing, a pulsating blister in her gut. Each throbbed up at a slightly different rate, now picking up steam, pushing out almost six inches in a quick jump, stretching the skin on her stomach like little triangular penises becoming erect and flaccid, erect and flaccid, erect and flaccid, spurting blood-threads in every direction.

He couldn’t see the ones trapped underneath her wide ass, but he imagined they struggled, pinned by the weight of her body.

There were noises. Not just the pathetic little whines escaping the weak-willed woman, but faint clicking noises as well. They grew a bit louder every few seconds and seemed to coincide with the Triangles’ outward thrusts. With each click he felt his happiness and euphoria spike upward like a heartbeat pulse on an EKG machine.

The one on her hip, the one that had stared so malevolently, so insolently, was the first to break free. It ripped out of her, not with a tearing sound but rather with a loud splurt followed by a splat as it hit the far wall, right where Perry’s Sports Illustrated cover would have hung had they been in his apartment. The hateful creature stuck, wriggling and weak, temporarily trapped in its own slime.

It bore little resemblance to the Triangles that remained locked inside his own body. It still had the unmistakable Triangle head and the black eyes, but there any similarity ended. It looked no more like the larva lurking under his own skin than a butterfly looks like a caterpillar.

The black things he’d seen snaking under her skin were tentacles of some sort, more than a foot long, and thick. They looked very strong and solid. The Triangle shape had grown into a shallow three-inch-high pyramid, each side of which held one black eye. The eyes no longer stared up-now they looked out, so that if the thing walked on those tentacles, it would be able to see in all directions.

The creature’s wriggling freed it from the wall. It fell to the carpet, where it struggled to right itself.

Perry’s emotions flickered back and forth from fear and disgust to elation and indescribable joy, like a strobe light on a dance floor, leaving each alternating emotion a freeze-frame picture in his mind’s eye. This shit could drive a guy crazy. Somewhere an emotion of his own called to him to get up and kill this thing, but he remained fixed on the couch, too overwhelmed to move.

The newly hatched Triangle attempted to stand on floppy tentacle legs. It looked very wrong and odd, because the legs had no rigidity. They weren’t at all like an insect’s skinny, multijointed legs or an animal’s muscular limbs, but something new and different. With a shake and a continuing wobble, the creature rose up on the tentacles; once up, the pyramid point stood about a foot off the ground.

They will grow, they will grow.

The tail that had anchored itself in Fatty Patty’s body dangled limply from the center of the Triangle, a weak limp-dick appearance, dripping blood and pale slime. It hung down to the floor, where the last inch or two lay unmoving on the carpet. The newly hatched creature stood there on unsure legs, its clicking noises loud and distinctive.

Fatty Patty let out a small scream as the three Triangles on her stomach broke loose almost simultaneously. They sprang out like vicious jack-in-the-boxes, streaming trails of blood and pus as they came down in different parts of the room.

One flew through the air and landed on the couch to Perry’s left, as if it had just stopped by to watch the Lions game on a frosty fall Sunday afternoon. He got a much better look at this one. Its pus-and blood-covered skin was no longer blue but a pockmarked, translucent black. He could see strange, alien organs inside, something fluttering spastically that must have served as a heart, and some other colored bits of flesh, the purpose of which he wouldn’t dare venture a guess. The end of the tail had landed on his leg-it moved a little, leaving a slime trail on Perry’s jeans. The tail’s end was ragged and torn, slowly leaking purple blood. That must be why they thrust so hard to escape her; they had to separate from the tail, most of which was left behind in Fatty Patty, an umbilical cord and safety cable they no longer needed now that they were free of her incubatory body.

The Triangle struggled to lift itself up, but one tentacle-leg slipped between the couch cushions. Perry gazed down at it with the strobe light of emotions still flashing at MTV-video speed. He felt a primitive urge to smash it, while simultaneously he felt compelled to gently lift the newborn from the couch, hold it adoringly, and set it on the floor to walk for the first time, beaming down at it with the proud smile of a new parent.

Turn her over, turn her over.

The command yanked Perry from his maddening emotional conflict. “What did you say?”

Turn her over.

They are hatching.

They wanted him to roll her over so the Triangles on each ass cheek could hatch properly. He looked at Patty’s shuddering body, now covered with blood, pus, vomit and purple slime.

She had ceased all movement. Her eyes were glazed and fixed open, her eyebrows raised, and her face frozen in a sneer of terror. She looked almost dead. Caterpillar dead. All hosts probably died-it made much more sense than having the ex-host in a position to kill weak hatchlings. What had finally done her in? Some toxin? Screaming mental overload?

That thought crystallized Perry’s emotions into two camps, polarized his hatred of the Triangles and the overflow euphoria at the hatching. He pushed back the happiness, the joy-those emotions weren’t his, and he didn’t want them in his head anymore.

Turn her OVER.

Turn her OVER NOW.

The mindscream slammed his attention back to the dead Fatty Patty, and suddenly he knew how they had killed her. He recognized the look on her face and the whimpering noises she made, realized why she’d just lain there as the things ripped free from her body, why she didn’t put up a fight. It was because an all-out mindscream had paralyzed her.

They’d screamed so loud, it killed her.

Perry jumped off the couch and knelt next to her body, His knees slipped a little in the thin film of puke/blood/pus/purple that coated the carpet. He moved quickly; he didn’t want another mindscream, one that night be bad enough to make his brains drip out his ears like a McDonald’s Gray-Matter Shake.

Turn her over, they are hatching.

They are hatching!

Perry put his hands on her shoulder and pushed, only to find that instead of rolling over she just slid across the muck. She was dead weight, pardon the pun.

Repetitive clicking noises filled the room. Some came fast, some slow; all had different pitches and volumes. He could feel his Triangles growing impatient; another mindscream was rapidly approaching, the crack of the master’s whip on the slave who can’t perform. The power had changed hands once again.

He put his bad knee on her left shoulder and reached across her dead body. He grabbed high up on her right arm. He pulled back on the arm, slowly turning her. She flumped onto her stomach, her tits squishing out like half-inflated inner tubes.

Free from the weight, the Triangles on her ass wasted no time. They thrust only a few times before ripping free in a great gout of blood, an orgasmic finish to their necrophilic sex/birth. One flew out at an angle, hitting the kitchen table before falling to the floor. The other sailed upward in a steep arc, flying toward the lampshade. Like a LeBron James jumper swishing through the hoop, the Triangle slid through the lampshade’s open top. It hit the illuminated bulb, first with a sudden sizzle, then a loud crack as the tiny body exploded. Black goo splattered against the inside of the lampshade, a wet silhouette as it slowly dripped toward the floor.

Thanks for saving me the trouble, Perry thought.

A wave of anger and depression crashed over him, overflow emotions again, fighting for mental space with his own feelings of villainous satisfaction at the newborn Triangle’s untimely death.

What happened?

Where did he go?

Why doesn’t he answer?

His Triangles still couldn’t see, he remembered, because he remained fully dressed. They only sensed that the newborn was gone. He felt their random anger coursing through his body-he had to choose his words carefully.

He slid up his sweatshirt sleeve and held it up to the lamp.

“He hatched right onto a lightbulb. It was an accident.” In his voice he heard that servile tone, the tone of Fatty Patty trying to placate him, the tone of his mother trying to avoid a beating. “It fried him on the spot.”

His answer appeared to satisfy the Triangles. They said no more. The steady clicking slowed considerably. The baby Triangles were crouched down on their tentacles, resting their pyramid bodies against the carpet. Their eyes closed, they stopped moving-they appeared to be asleep. Only an occasional click escaped their still bodies.

The strange aroma of burned Triangle flesh filled the room, slightly overpowering the odors of Perry’s own rotting shoulder, the vomit and the smells of birthing that floated in the still apartment air. He felt his own Triangles fall asleep-their constant mental buzzing slowly fading away into near nothingness, like a barely audible car radio tuned to AM static.

He was alone, left to gaze upon the facedown, dead Fatty Patty. He knew he didn’t have much time. In addition to the three Triangles in his own body, he had five hatchlings to deal with, creatures that he knew nothing about. How long would they sleep? What would they do when they awoke?

Apart from the questions that raged through his mind, he knew one thing for certain-he wasn’t going to end up like the weakling lying on the living-room floor, giant fist-size holes left in her corpse. If he had to die, it wouldn’t be like a victim, waiting nicely for the Three Stooges to rip out of his rotting body.

If he was going out, it would be on his feet, fighting every step of the way-like a Dawsey. His shoulder throbbed, his back itched and his mind spun feverishly, thinking of a way to kill them all.