We All Begin as Parasites
Let Sleeping Gods Lie, Act 1: An unusual brain #2
This is a snapshot from “Let Sleeping Gods Lie, Act 1: An Unusual Brain” — a short fantasy novel about a boy with an unusual brain who didn’t so much save the world as create a brand new one — continued from The Journal of Abraham Windfist. Follow to see the story unfold.
5 September 2057. We all begin as parasites. And we all come out hungry; screaming at the world. A desperate, helpless mess of bones and sinew and instinct.
The year was 1985, the month September and it was a Tuesday. My Mother’s favourite book was Soldier, Ask Not, by Gordon R Dickinson. My sister Ella’s favourite TV show was, of course, Play School on ABC. And My Father’s favourite song was “Both Sides Now” by Joni Mitchel.
At the moment I was born, Dad was listening to his favourite song (and so were Mum and I, he had brought his record player down to the hospital and had set it up on a metal trolley that was absolutely not placed there for his record playing convenience), my sister was at Heather and Cliff’s place across the road from our house watching Play School. My Mum was not reading her favourite book. She was screaming and huffing and cursing her husband and all mankind for not having the guts to bear their own children.
I came out hungry and scared, screaming until my throat hurt. My mother’s soft voice slowly melted through my fear, pushing at the corners of my mind. She spoke to me nonsense words and gently rocked me back to sleep. I dreamed of dust and heat. And my mother: a tall, thin woman with a mess of pitch-black hair bouncing and blowing in the wind as she put her head out a car window, stretched out her arms and sucked in the rushing air. Breathing in the moment.
She was pregnant. She tilted her head back and smiled, lighting up the highway with high pitched laughter. She wore a long apricot dress, her skin black as night, almond eyes skirting the edge of tears and laughter. Her husband sat quietly in the driver’s seat staring at the road ahead, a cannabis joint stuck to his bottom lip, eyes wide in his pale face.
‘What have I done?’
‘What have I done?’
I opened my eyes and looked up at my mother, snoring softly. Her neck was at a painful…
