Content warnings

Transphobia. Misgendering. Violence. Body horror. Smoking.

Kevin didn’t want to share a room with their mother. In the tiny house after the divorce, she said they didn’t have a choice. Telling this to Bastien while lighting a cigarette to appear casual, because their hands and mouth need something to do in the huge chasm between speaking and waiting to be judged, need anything other than Bastien’s hurt silence, Bastien’s head turning away; Kevin insists it’s nothing personal. “It’s not you, it’s me. I can’t be with anyone. Not like this.”

Alone again, because it’s what they asked for—now isn’t it? Kevin crushes what’s left of their cigarette, dumps the contents of the ashtray in the outdoor bin, and washes their hands longer than they really need to. Puts the ashtray in the nightstand drawer with the remnants of a pack of camels, a bad brand and a bad habit from college that Kevin gave up years ago.

Well, mostly gave up. Kevin’s not a saint.

They’re not responsible for what it does though, either, because it’s not their choice, it never has been, and if Bastien or anyone else could understand—but they can’t. The blood, the tears, the murders—and now that Kevin’s older, the heat, the rage, the unpredictable eruptions that never came like clockwork and come now hard with increasing frequency and capricious vengeance against the host. The parasite people call a blessing.

It’s not like Kevin hasn’t tried to have it taken out.

Planned Parenthood in nineteen eighty-seven, University Women’s Center in nineteen ninety-two, Ladies First Fem-Care in ninety-nine, Planned Parenthood again in zero-one, Sweet Valley Whole Woman’s Health in twenty-ten, and on and on for nearly fifty years, a litany of providers saying dear and hon and Miss Kevin, reciting a litany of excuses with clucking tongues. It doesn’t matter if Kevin’s a big, hairy guy waving money in their faces and begging them to get the monster out. The minute Kevin hits an exam table, the clucking starts.

Left to take matters into their own hands, Kevin closes the tobacco drawer in the nightstand. Modelled on an apothecary cabinet with eight stacked compartments, it hides a hatch holding errata shipped across the country after their father died. Masculine objects recall life before the onset: coins, pocket knives, a rusted harmonica, marbles, an old watch. Kevin decides on a military folding knife with a three and a half inch blade. Opens the knife and places it next to their phone charger in easy reach.

In the tiny house, after the divorce, sharing a room with mom because the girls were older, the girls deserved privacy, Kevin’s arguments dismissed as selfish. Kevin can’t sleep. Not with their mother fighting off blankets like an invisible assailant. The house asleep, the world asleep, their mother unconscious, Kevin cornered in the extra bed between the thrashing woman and the bedroom door. Her sleeping body kicks and flails. Face flops over in Kevin’s direction, pouring sweat. A smile crawls onto her slack lips. Mouth emits a pleasured moan. There’s a smell of rotten musk; something meaty and slippery releases itself from tangled legs and sheets. Wet noises slop out, and a limping shadow skulks away, wandering the walls and ceiling in the darkness. Kevin freezes, stares, tracks its progress. Lumbering like a giant slug, thick and moist, it blends into the rustling curtains and merges with tossed blankets. It unfurls in recessed corners where the moonlight can’t reach. Dangles for an hour above Kevin’s toy chest; sways like an extra appendage from the ceiling lamp. Swims through pools of shadow poured between furniture and floor. Finally prowling to the foot of their mother’s bed, turning in circles like an angry cat, it wiggles beneath the disordered covers and squeezes back into its hiding place with a loud pop.

In the morning, Kevin’s mother tries to hide the stain. Don’t be scared. I’m going through the change. Someday you’ll understand.

Sometimes in the suppurating nighttime shadows, it gets lost. Meandering senile, perched atop a tall dresser next to their mother’s handbag, working its two thick, prehensile loops around to imitate the shape. Thudding on the floor and lying immobile for hours as if drunk. Kevin can’t hide in the bathroom or stay awake all night watching the wandering lump of shiny musculature with its trailing webs of fat. Sooner or later, Kevin has to sleep.

One night they wake up in the dark. Their mother snores. Stuffed animals guard the L-shaped perimeter of Kevin’s cramped bed. Kevin reaches for the safety of a favorite plush elephant, its floppy ears deformed by moonlight. The soft, furry body presses against Kevin’s chest, but the trunk is slick, wet, and smelly. Kevin doesn’t remember dropping the toy in the toilet or having an accident.

When they understand what their senses are saying, it’s too late to throw the thing against the wall and escape its embrace.

If Kevin tried to explain the invasion to Bastien, imagine the derision. You’re not telling me you really believe that, are you? All kids have bad dreams. Yes, Kevin would have to confirm. That is exactly what I believe. And then Kevin would have to talk about the murders.

Because it’s never been enough for the parasite to co-opt a habitat inside Kevin’s body, first snip, snip, snipping away at the natural epithelial barrier, then ballooning inward with murderous suction, and last looping its flexible appended egg sacs through painful ligatures, stringing bubble-soft proliferations within the cradle of Kevin’s bones. Kevin’s mother exhausted as a host, the parasite throbbing with new life. Kevin clotted with abdominal gristle as it spits irregular blood. Wandering still, it comes back sated with strange blood; black, brown, elastic, and stringy; smelling of foreign anatomies; pitted with liverish clumps. What it kills, Kevin never questions. It moves like a thief. Kevin catches it with the knife.

Marks on the nightstand, the mattress, the hardwood floor: failed impalements. Kevin feels it fighting dormancy as they age, yet still it weighs heavy, holding on inside them between erratic manic travels and explosive gore. Gone for days, maybe a whole week now, and god knows Bastien can’t be allowed to stay over, can’t be the next witness or victim; Kevin waits alone, armed as the sun goes down, pretending to sleep. A shadow in the dark, a lump in the sheets. All the reasons Kevin never lets a lover spend the night.

It rears. Kevin strikes.

Try explaining the knife to Bastien, the cries of the thing strong and unruly after a bloody jaunt. Insistent on its territorial claim to Kevin, it wrestles with smooth muscle and fallopian fists though stabbed and blubbering. If it squealed madly, Kevin might have the guts to kill it. Instead, pinned on the nightstand, slickly twisting, globs of empathic fat flinging, it weeps. Coagulates of mourning, choruses of outrage for the loud injustices against those who bear it, the parasite pleads for the oneness of mercy.

Did she know?

Kevin wonders, and doubt destroys resolve. Litanies of maybe, of anti-abraxas, of Hecate burning. Earthly trinities work their binding legacy upon Kevin’s unquiet rebellion, begging acceptance. The subtle ache and absence. The horror cloying, wet, and warm. The spongy egg sacs sticking to Kevin’s wrist, parasite climbing their arm, ripping open as it pulls free of the severing blade. Escapes the knife with its fundus spliced.

It sticks, and Kevin can’t resist. Piercing like a mole, it spreads where Kevin is tender, working them apart. It lingers with maternal affinity. That in which Kevin gestated now gestates angrily inside them.

Kevin coughs up a clot of blonde hair in the kitchen sink. They know better than to risk the bathroom where the mirror reflects a true crime line up of lost lives. A dead-naming phlebotomist. A cop minimizing a threat. Store clerks saying ma’am. Strangers telling them to smile. Vengeance perpetrated against ignorant offenders, inconsistent visions shared by the parasite in its homing state, dreaming as Kevin vomits guilt like a reluctant, unborn twin.

Worst are the unknown trolls, the faces Kevin can’t recognize, for unlike the foreign thing that hunts and comes back to nest in their body, Kevin can’t read thoughts. They’ve cancelled all their social accounts. They plug their ears when gossip starts. Kevin can’t carry the burden of the parasite’s reprisals. They curse the media for broadcasting the personal opinions of the rich and famous, for encouraging discourse as if embedded bias was up for debate. Every keyword blocked, news seeps through.

Kevin agrees with the parasite that hatred is not negotiable. The sight of the beloved icon’s face bloated in strangulation, hair swathed around the neck and laced over the eyes like a perverse wedding veil, her swollen tongue popping through the long, blonde gauze, its red tip turning grey; the outcry of fans in grief and shock; it’s too much for Kevin to bear.

Nine-one-one to report a crime. Alone in the dark, the shadow lump listening inside, oh god, it knows, please hurry; Kevin waits for a call back. A sarcastic operator, another transferred call. After midnight, with instructions to stay home, they wait for the detective to follow up. Hours later, a ringtone Kevin hardly recognizes. A deep, weary monotone.

So your uterus wanders—

Not mine. Hers. My mother.

Okay, so your mother’s uterus wanders around killing people.

Yes.

But it lives inside you.

Yes.

And it’s happened before. The killing.

Well, yes.

And you didn’t do anything to stop it?

You don’t understand. I—

We have a witness that places you in your home on the night in question at ten. How did you cross the Atlantic so fast?

I told you, it’s not me—

Oh right, right. So your little friend did it.

If you insist on calling it that.

Sorry, your mother’s little friend. Did it sprout little wings?

I—I just want it to stop.

Let me give you a bit of advice. My wife is about your age and she—

Kevin fumbles and hangs up.

The creature stirs. Morning’s half-light quiets its rumblings, but there’s no doubt the tenor of Kevin’s restless night has renewed the prospective hit list. Half the local police force, Kevin frets, trying their best not to wish ill on the patronizing bastards, trying not to fuel the fire with vengeful thoughts. Perhaps the parasite wants nothing more than respect, like an old person sent out to pasture. It’s old, at least twice as old as Kevin, and who knows how old it was before it made its way into their mother’s mind, body, life.

Did she know?

Kevin hunts for clues in her curse: Someday you’ll understand.

In response, the restless, kindred organ stretches its misplaced muscles, releasing a fast, unexpected river of blood that shoots down Kevin’s leg. Pooled in their shoe, streaked on pants and bedding, splattered on the floor all the way to the bathroom in lavish drops. A bristling sensation of needles feeds on their skin. If Kevin questions how much their mother loved them, they dismiss the obvious answer in a heated decision during clean-up.

Quick, on the phone, before they lose their nerve: “I’ve been thinking it over. What you said about moving forward.”

Bastien, wary as hell: “What happened last night? The fucking police called.”

“The thing is this. I think you’re right. It’s time I quit running away from commitment.”

“You do? Why now?”

Kevin, biting their lip. If there were any other way—but Kevin’s done their time serving the unwanted inheritance. Bastien is young enough to handle the legacy, young enough to fight off public calumny, a generation younger than Kevin and reared on social justice. Bastien doesn’t have murderous thoughts like Kevin, and if they find out no one can kill it—

Kevin says, “Do you want to come over and spend the night?”

Joe Koch

Joe Koch writes literary horror and surrealist trash. Their books include The Wingspan of Severed Hands, Convulsive, Invaginies, and The Couvade, which received a 2019 Shirley Jackson Award nomination. His short works appear in Nightmare Magazine, Southwest Review, The Mad Butterfly’s Ball, and many others. Find Joe (he/they) at horrorsong.blog.

This story was originally published in the anthology Bodies Full Of Burning: An Anthology of Menopause-Themed Horror from Sliced Up Press in 2021.