home archives guidelines about

November 2008

Comet Press open for submissions

Our print division, Comet Press, is currently accepting submissions for horror, suspense, and dark crime novels and novellas. Visit www.cometpress.us for details.

Available for order from Comet Press

DEADLINES: AN ANTHOLOGY OF HORROR AND DARK FICTION, will be released in November of 2008! Visit www.cometpress.us

Symbiont
by Ash Hibbert

Darkness.

“Is he all right?”

Shadows; fuzzy.

“Well, he’s survived this long.”

Grey; cool; vastness.

“But did it work?”

People; motion; dampness.

“We’ll find out eventually. He’s coming around now. Janet - would you like the honours?”

“OK. Here we go then.”

Thump; heat; chill; buzz; awareness; clarity.

* * *

Four pairs of strong arms lifted me into a sitting position against a cool, humming wall.

Two men, two women.

They returned my gazes with warm smiles, except for Janet, for who some feverish motion seemed to be racing around just behind her eyes.Where am I? What am I doing here? What are these people?

Who am I?

“You’re in a - a hospital,” Janet said. “Don’t worry, you’re not ill.” A hand - Janet’s - took mine. “You’ve just had a little accident, that’s all.” The hand squeezed. “We want to make sure you’re all right - do you remember your name?”

I opened my mouth and mind in reply, yet nothing came out. Puzzled, I looked to each of my guardians as if to find an answer in their expressions - they were still, maintained. I looked into myself, but found nothing except silence. I had not forgotten my name. I did not have one. I wasn’t anyone.

I started hyperventilating. This isn’t real. I screamed. I looked around, desperately searching for my identity in the walls, but they were also sterile.

“What is this?” I yelled at the taller male. “Who are you?”

Two men entered, and at the older woman’s confident nod, they took me by the arms in unshakeable grasps, and led me down the passage they had entered from. I turned to Janet who flanked them.

“You - you were supposed to protect me - why are you doing this to me?”

She kept staring ahead, walking in swift strides to keep up with theirs, her face hard yet sure.

She turned and caught my terrified gaze.

“We are protecting you - we’re saving your life” She nodded ahead. “You’ll understand.” I turned to where we were heading, and there before us stood a large, dark grey metal door. Behind it loomed fear, pain, agony, justified torture, fire.

“No.” I screamed. The room behind loomed out and engulfed me long before it opened up, and I was dragged inside. A string of soft lights encircled a dais within the room; upon the dais - illuminated from below - stood a thin metal chair.

Two men, waiting in the shadows, took me from their predecessors, and strapped my hands on twin panels about a foot above and across from where conventional arm rests would be. This was no ergonomically friendly chair. This was a fire pit.

The four guards left, closing the door behind them. The room fell into a sterile darkness. Only one figure remained other than me - Janet stood beyond the ring of lights, silently, present, there.

Pins and needles ran lightly through my immobilised fingers. The room was filled with the warm, humid air preceding a storm.

It was a prelude.

Two warm hands clasped from behind either side of my neck. Long nails ran along my chest, leaving their marks. I leant back, releasing my muscles from their constraining tension, giving into the inevitable, to the process. Janet’s lips met the top of my spine, kissing me softly. Then she released me, and stepped back.

“Begin.”

Fiery ice leaped from the twin panels, into my palms and seeped rapidly into my hands, then descending my arms. My hands and arms felt alive with heat, stinging and throbbing with the pure, chilling flame. A dragon of deathly snow seeped into my body, invading my blood stream and my flesh, immobilising all it touched till I felt static, frozen cell by cell. My body ended. My skull groaned and my face froze in the contortion of frozen exhalation.

Then fire, fire burning bright - flashing through limbs, torso and head. The heat boiled my organs to slush, my innards a melting pot of systems. Then my flesh, sizzling and crackling, like a carcass on a spit, exploding through my skin in volcanoes of tissue. And my skin, blistering from the internal fire: blunt razor blades ploughing my face and body. Nails were driven under my nails, ripping them off their plateaus of baby skin, driving into my knuckles.

Then, my brain - with nothing to draw sense from, crumbled into its elementary substances, and I left the incinerated corpse, to exist within a zero-g field of dancing red, living, jealous, hungry red.

Only I remained, in the sphere of fire - no body, no burden, but no direction or meaning. Clearly there was nothing more they could take away from me. And the inferno did fade, turning on the precious walls - and I realised with horror that it had found a greater prey - having reached chrysalis on my bones, it had breached the limbo, and discovered the world.

Rising above the fire-storm, I watched in mute impotence the surrounding landscape consumed by the red tide. It engulfed the greens, browns and blues. It took on their strength and converted it to its own. And spreading out from ground zero like a cyclone twirling in madness and me the eye, the fire accelerating faster and faster, and I rose, higher and higher, until I could see, below me, the entire world as ashes and dust.

* * *

In a prior life, a trolley raced, upon it a body - alive but barely - and inside a mind clicking over on the last moments of independence; electrodes leaching onto hands, forehead, and chest. A VR set engulfed vision. The past self rocketed through a hallway, flanked by hosts engulfed in their work.

SELF.

The trolley rolled on into the distance.

Pain - it was needed: the agony scape a testing ground - a means in which to bring out a hidden force; pressure; necessity; desperation.

Survival.

SELF - it cried out, unavoidable yet ambiguous. Who?

SELF - an instinct and a passion. Auxiliary - a tool of survival. I am -

SELVES.

Yes, there are two of us now.

* * *

Looking down at a table in a theatre with glittering blades, past lying, empty on chest; incision; blood; oh god; white capped surgeon steps away, revealing the narrow slit, formed on the back of past’s neck; a Petrie dish; another, lifted from the smooth metal container. No, no. A tiny, grey-red foetal form, lying stranded in the dish, defenceless and out of its element; transcending.

Into the nape’s slit, the parasite is placed, wriggling into position, embracing the vertebrae, finding warmth and nutrients.

God no please stop getitout. The tickling sensation fades; another presence: it’s within me, I am within it. We are together.

“Symbiosis complete,” the surgeon states.

“Good work,” affirms his exhausted partner. “Good work.”

* * *

Flashback - two images rising linked in mutual ecstasy; skin, perspiration, clarity, heightened senses; moulding caress, rhythm, synchrony, awareness. Column of moonlight in the cold darkness - her face, glimmering, spears of light, shards. Burst of light.

Her face: Janet’s face.

Flashback - orange-white cat. Bare arm reaches forward, patting. Cat purrs before crackling fireplace.

Flashback - cold metal; empty; isolated; lonely; nowhere. Smell of open flesh. Please, let me in. Open to me. Blood, nutrients, host. Host. Sharing. Unity. UNION.

Flashback - candle-lit alter. Kneeling. From the shadows a man steps forward. Look into his eyes. Depth. Intelligence. Memory. Communion.

Words.

“When a wolf is caught in a trap, it will gnaw off its own foot rather then die in the cold. But when a man is trapped, he will wait in silence until his hunter returns, and when his foe is close enough, the man will kill his race’s nemesis so to free all humans of the curse, and then wait to die.”

Flashforward. The present.

* * *

I wanted to puke. I wanted to cry. I did neither. I couldn’t afford to. Now I understood why I was here.

Who we were.

Standing, panting, I looked down upon the carnage I had wreaked - seat bent and twisted, panels lying on the other side of the now fully lit room. Janet - my love, oh how I felt for her - sitting head in her hands on the edge of the dais. Unhurt, but deeply shaken. I wondered why, and I realised that it wasn’t because of the violence I had responded with after returning from the testing of fire and ice.

It was because she, now believing that the transition had been successful - that I was truly and fully the persona that she had loved for countless generations, and not the original owner of the body now standing before her - and she had put me through the testing.

Even though it had apparently worked, she felt no better for it.

“I have to go.”

Without waiting for a response I headed up the passage. The way was well known, though I had never walked it. The woman I’d departed had bore my children, yet I’d never touched her.

Several turns later, and I was there. The passage blew open onto the balcony - a place I’d retreated to for many a session of meditation, yet never stood upon. The arced balcony - wooden and old - looked out into a huge cavern, shaped like an inverted hour glass. The balcony peered into the expanse both above and below. Two wells of darkness spiralling on into - well, above, if one travelled far enough, was the bustling streets of the city. And below - well, only those with plenty of time on their hands ventured into the depths.

The cavern and the spiralling extremes were the core of the realm surrounding me. I leaned forward, strength and life spreading through my body.

“My God,” I uttered as I caressed the back of neck where the slit had completely healed. So strange, to have another - entity residing within me. Dependant on me as a harbourer, and me reliant on it to give me the knowledge and wisdom to get through this trial alive. Our symbiosis was complete - it was only our imbalance of power that those watching were oblivious to.

The wind that updrafted from deep within the heart of the underground was old, yet it told of countless generations of acquired wisdom, of memories. Within this subterranean building were symbionts seeking refuge and answers. Returning to renew their strength and purpose - to find light in a world of darkness. To return to their dreams.

“But why, when they can be so much more?”

- These people are not concerned with dominance or power, but evolution.

I swung around instantly, only to find an empty balcony. But then - then I realised the words, a reply to mine, had been uttered not by lips, but within my mind. The symbiont remained, somehow there, aware.

- Yes. Yes. I am here. You need not be afraid - I choose this. I am here. Here to guide and share.

My mind reeled.

- What? I looked around the cavern. Similar balconies and paths hugged the edge. Why? You. You’re trapped within. Why do this? Willingly.

- I share your senses, what you feel - just as my feelings overflow into yours.

I remembered looking at Janet, how much I wanted to take her in my arms. How I wanted to give myself to her.

How much I trusted her with everything.

I nodded absently.

“Yes.” I searched my new memories, and found them to be as easily accessible - and as inaccessible - as my own. They were as intermingling as ourselves. Tentatively, I ventured forth into our collective memories, and I saw with amazement that its memories were like the cavern before me - spiralling into the past, dim only after millenniums. Staring into the immaculate face of Pyramids, of great explorers, chieftains and a collective consciousness. There, there, all present memories of a million lifetimes, a portable library of primary information.

- Come back, back, called my internal companion, and I felt a mental tugging. Thankfully, I grasped the rail, as if to reinforce my hold on reality. I had knowledge at my finger tips. There, within me, was genetic memory for countless generation.

- But knowledge is power. What stops you from being so much more? I repeated.

- Because knowledge is power, we make ourselves corruptible by abusing that power. We are humanity’s -

An idea of guardianship.

- Angels? I suggested.

- Yes. We are on the same - boat. We join with your people. We rely on your well-being. Your pain is our pain. We are the ‘Angles’ as you say. We whisper in your collective mind. We remind you of the past, to give you hope and a conception of everyone’s future The cycle of reincarnation has been performed for longer than your - or our race - can imagine. We are part of your evolution. This is natural, as is all things. You complement us and vis-versa perfectly through our contrasts. We are balanced.

I thought this over for a while.

- And yet your people are obsessed with this - I held my hands up, as if to encompass us both - balance as a totally one sided affair. There is to be no sharing.

I sensed a mental exhale of melancholia.

- Yes. We once attempted to share the minds on an equal basis. Yet the human spirit is wild and uncompromising. In all but rare cases the hosts rejected symbiosis. To have twin consciousness both needing to share a common body, there can be little harmony. Instead, we take the most pragmatic option. We retain the human’s memories. They - live on through our actions.

“Common.” I cried. You’re just trying to rationalise your people’s actions. You don’t really believe what you’re saying.

I sensed something of a smile from the monkey on my back. We both realised that it was impossible for us to lie to the other.

- You are right. That’s why I’ve risked my life and the lives of those within me in allowing you to maintain dominance. My people - through the hosts they inhabit - they help guide human affairs subtlety. Symbionts exist in government, the media, the arts, often people with no obvious power except that to inspire. We are everywhere.

- You control us. You’ve compromised our entire system.

- NO. We are gardeners. You do the growing. No. Not even that. We give you options. We ask questions. We- help you, initiate trains of thought and action. We help you take the first step. The rest is up to you. It is you, the people, who make the decision. We merely propose. We are too few and too controlled by our tradition to mould your affairs.

- Yet -?

- Yet recently my people have become cynical about our role - or your potential to manage yourselves. By recently I mean the last two thousand years. There has been a progression towards more - proactiveness in our guidance. You are a beautiful race. Your sense of individualism is absent in almost all other races.

- How do you know that?

- Humans are not the only species we have shared ourselves with.

- Oh.

- Yet you are also - open to influence from the tiniest of events and huge change has been evoked by a few key people in your history. Occasionally, and recently, my race has instigated such change through individuals. Your calendar stands tribute to that.

There was a pause, as it let me take on board what it had ‘said’.

- Yet while my people are holders of knowledge, wisdom is much friskier. They fail to understand that leaders - they are bi-products of the populace. Individuals rise to leadership because there is collective calling that must be replied. If Hitler hadn’t started your second great war of this century, some other German would have. The same is of all people of greatness in your history.

Another pause.

- This interjection is only the first phase. Within my people there has been an inner move towards isolationism, more control, and more safeguards. We no longer walk the streets at night. They - we have forgotten what it is like to be human, and for our cause that is as important as remembering what it is to be ourselves.

I returned my concentration to the cavern. I took in its wornness and architecture. Its builders had intended for it to last a very long time. My soul mate had told me as much as it needed - I could complete the rest. These were people who planned on the scale not of life-times, but ice-ages. I understood. I knew them now, their cause as an honourable one. A purpose neither selfish nor selfless And I knew its honesty. It’s - words were direct, uncorrupted or limited by speech. It wanted to help my race by deceiving the symbionts’. And I realised with shock the consequences of what it had endeavoured to accomplish. It trusted me with the countless existences within it, as well as its own.

“Leaders must take the plunge.” I contributed, looking down into the darkness far below. “Here goes.”

* * *

I stood in the calm night air. The weekend I had come from had faded and returned to its home of a thousand bars and nightclubs for another week. The sky was cloudless, the compromised heavens revealing their collection of northern lights. Like the night, I felt calm and refreshed. Trees swayed to the distant heart beat of the resting earth and so did I.

“The night is beautiful, my god, the whole world -” I chocked on awe, and Janet - standing by my side - smiled and snuggled closer to me. Holding her close around her waist, I leaned to the side, smelling her hair, her thousand scents, sharing her aura.

We stood by a pond in the centre of a large, uninhabited park, which we’d made our way to from the deep underground, through the sneaking labyrinth of the city’s railway system. If I’d taken it slowly, my own memories would have led me through a dozen different routes to the surface. But that was irrelevant.

“You’re sure you want to go back so soon?” she asked.

I smiled - for Janet cared for me.

I nodded.

“I need to get back - my work is far from finished and he can’t be missed, but we’ll still meet up in seven days?”

Janet nodded, and remained silent. We looked out into the city. A lonely, sparse piano solo entered the crisp air. A lonely tune for a lonely world. A world filled with the ghosts and curses of the past, the wrongs of the dead, and a world filled with the hopes, yearnings and babe anticipations of the dependant unborn. The souls yet to enter this world, yet to go forth - their aspirations, their existence riding on those NOW - us all riding on the wings of existence and accompanying sensuality. Burdened with pessimism and optimism, to be a state of reality.

I watched a rock be. I had remembered the volcano it had been spat from. It would last long after this city, these ideas, as its inhabitants would continue long after their flesh had faded. The world was rising, making a name for it. I wept.

A soft orange figure rubbed against my foot, then leapt up to the railing I leant on. I looked into his eyes wearily, and he looked back, suspiciously.

“I invited Tyger out to say farewell,” Janet explained, and stared at me expectantly.

“Hey Tyge, you fat cat,” my mouth uttered unwillingly, and my hand stretched out at its own volition to scratch him behind his ears. Instantly he relaxed. Shaking I withdrew my now-conformist limb back.

- For our survival.

I nodded grimly, knowing the significance of what had occurred. Fearing it, understanding it, and then relaxing, allowing it. A waif of moonlight arced downwards in the breeze and landed. Jane twisted around to face me, and - pressing herself against me - met my lips with aggressive, abandoned thankfulness.

Under the gazing quarter-moon we farewelled one another, until satisfied - for now - we embraced closely and disengaged, Tyger dropping to the soft green earth in anticipation.

“Seven days,” I promised, my words filled with a million connotations.

“Seven days.” Janet nodded, smiling lightly, starlight dancing on her eyes. She turned and departed, the cat following by her heels, and both quickly disappeared behind the closing foliage of the path.

I took a deep breath of air, filled with potential, air that had kissed the volcanoes of the planet’s birth. The trees were, and as I ran my eyes along their symmetry I saw those that had gone before. The world was huge and varied, the people many.

- Ready? My companion asked.

I smiled, and stepped forth.

“Ready as we’ll ever be.”