Short Story: The Parasite
Ethan has a bad day
Ethan Mercer was sitting down in a nice leather chair. The psychologist was sitting across from him with a pen and a notepad, nodding as Ethan got deep into his insecurities.
“At some level, I feel like I never fit in,” Ethan said. “Ever since I was young, it seems like everyone had everything figured out while I was still trying to figure things out.”
Dr. Rachel Harris nodded.
“Everyone I talk to in here has those exact same feelings,” she said. “That just means you do fit in, because you feel the same insecurities everybody else has.”
Just at that moment, Ethan felt something in his guts. Something that, in an instant, made getting to the toilet the number one priority in his life.
“I need to use the bathroom,” he said, getting up, no emotion on his face.
“We still have about twenty minutes left,” Dr. Harris said. “Do you need to go right now?”
“Yes,” Ethan said as he walked out the door and into the hallway.
He made his way down the hall, then to another hall, and finally to the bathroom, which felt like it was a football field’s length away.
Ethan would normally take great care in making sure the toilet seat was covered with the paper they provided. He would align the paper perfectly to minimize his skin coming into actual contact with the toilet seat.
Not this time.
Not only did he not put paper on the toilet seat, he didn’t close the door to the stall.
The timing couldn’t have been any closer. He was cramping up and moaning.
“What the fuck, dude. Can you close the door?”
In one ear and out the other.
After a few minutes of sweating and grinding his teeth, Ethan got up and turned around.
What the hell could have caused this? What did he eat?
However, after looking at the toilet, he was now sick to his stomach. Pretty much the last thing a person ever wants to see is a slug-sized entity swimming around in the water, much less five of them.
They were pale, slick, and alive, curling and uncurling in the bowl.
He flushed the toilet in disgust. He couldn’t stand the idea that these things existed, much less the idea that they had come from him.
On the way out, he stopped by the office and told Dr. Harris he was going to the emergency room.
At the hospital, Ethan walked up to the front desk and tried to explain what had happened.
“Hi,” he said. “I just went to the bathroom, and afterward there were things that looked like slugs swimming in the toilet water.”
A look of disgust came over the face of the normally quite professional receptionist, Kelly.
“Are you feeling any other symptoms?” Kelly asked. “Bleeding, shortness of breath, sharp pains in your abdomen?”
“No,” Ethan said. “I’m just a little sick to my stomach.”
“That’s understandable.”
After typing his information into the computer, which seemed to take a very long time, Kelly sent him to sit down in the waiting room.
He sat there for about forty minutes until one of the nurses took him to a room where they checked his blood pressure and temperature.
“Well,” the nurse said, “your blood pressure and temperature are both a little bit high. Nothing too serious, but your temperature is about ninety-nine degrees, and your blood pressure is above normal. Something to watch out for in the future.”
After another forty minutes, a doctor finally came to see him. He took a look in Ethan’s eyes, measured his heart rate, and felt around his abdomen.
“I’m Dr. Arun Patel,” the doctor said. “Tell me what happened.”
Ethan told him about the bathroom, the pain, and the things he had seen in the toilet.
“Well,” Dr. Patel said, “there’s not much we can do about any parasites at this moment. What I can do is get you a prescription for an anti-parasitic. There is one thing that you’re probably going to need to follow up on, though. There’s a lump, or a mass, it seems, in your abdomen. We’ll get you some X-rays and see what’s going on there.”
“A mass?” Ethan asked.
“I don’t want to speculate yet,” Dr. Patel said. “Also, we’re going to need a stool sample. Since you just had a bowel movement, I’m sure you’re going to need a little more time to provide that. We’ll give you a container you can take home with you, and then you can bring it tomorrow morning to your regular doctor.”
Ethan nodded, though he barely knew what to say.
“Before we send you off,” Dr. Patel continued, “go down the hall to room 6A, and we’ll get an X-ray of your abdomen and take a look at that.”
This day was getting worse and worse.
After a couple minutes in the room, an X-ray technician walked in and had him lie on a table. She covered parts of his body with lead blankets and took the X-rays.
Then there was more waiting.
Dr. Patel came in after a while and had a serious look on his face.
“There is a large mass showing up in your abdomen,” Dr. Patel said. “I don’t think this is related to the parasite, but this is definitely something you need to get checked out as soon as possible. I’m going to schedule you to get an MRI so we can get a better idea of what is going on in there. I don’t want to speculate on what it is at this point. However, it is very large and requires immediate attention.”
Ethan looked down at his hands.
That morning, he had gone to therapy because he felt vaguely unhappy with his life.
Now there were parasites and a mass inside of him. The vague unhappiness he had felt at the start of the day seemed like heaven compared to how he felt now.
When Ethan got home, he called Mom.
She answered on the fourth ring.
“Hey, honey,” Mom said. “You sound awful.”
“I am awful.”
“What happened?”
Ethan told her everything. The therapy appointment. The things in the toilet. The emergency room. The mass. The medication. The headache that had already started pressing behind his eyes.
She was quiet for several seconds.
“Mom?”
“I’m here.”
“I don’t understand any of this.”
“I know.”
“I’ve never even been sick before. Not seriously.”
“That’s not true.”
Ethan frowned.
“What do you mean?”
“You were really sick when you were about thirteen.”
“No, I wasn’t.”
“Yes, you were,” Mom said. “We were in South America. Your father was still alive. You swam in the Amazon River, even though we told you not to go too far out.”
Ethan searched his memory.
Nothing.
“A few days later,” Mom continued, “you got very sick. It was the sickest I had ever seen you.”
“I don’t remember any of that.”
“I know.”
“What do you mean, you know?”
Mom sighed.
“You don’t remember much from before then.”
“I remember things.”
“Do you?”
Ethan paused.
There were facts.
He knew where he had gone to school.
He knew where he had lived.
He remembered his father’s face.
But memories were different than facts.
Before he was about thirteen years old, there wasn’t much there.
“I always thought that was normal,” Ethan said.
“It isn’t uncommon to forget parts of your childhood,” Mom said. “But yours was different. After you got sick, you didn’t remember breaking your arm when you were eight. You didn’t remember your third-grade teacher. You barely remembered your own bedroom.”
Ethan sat quietly.
“Why didn’t anyone do anything?”
“We did. We took you to doctors. They thought maybe the fever had affected your memory.”
“Did it ever come back?”
“No.”
There was another long silence.
Finally, Mom spoke again.
“You changed after that trip.”
“What do you mean?”
“You were still you, but quieter. Before that, you were always running around, climbing trees, asking a million questions. Afterward, you seemed like you were watching everybody.”
“Watching them?”
She hesitated.
“I don’t know how else to explain it.”
The word stayed with him after they hung up.
Watching.
Ethan took one of the anti-parasitic pills and sat down to watch television.
It was hard to do anything when you knew there was a parasite inside you, moving around, living its life, stealing the food you ate and the energy your body produced. What disgusting little creatures these things were. Why couldn’t they be like some other organism and fend for themselves?
Although, he thought, every carnivore survives by feeding off something else.
He started a movie on Netflix, but by the end of it, the headache had gotten worse and worse. It was really hard to focus on anything, so he decided to lie down, take some ibuprofen, and try to sleep.
When he woke up, it was about seven o’clock. The headache had faded, although it was still there.
He took the second anti-parasitic pill.
Within an hour, the headache returned.
This time it was much worse.
It wasn’t just a headache. It felt like pressure. As though something inside his head were pushing outward.
His stomach turned. His vision blurred slightly. He gripped the arm of the couch and waited for it to pass.
It didn’t.
Eventually, he fell asleep sitting up on the couch.
The next morning, the headache was still there, although not nearly as intense.
Ethan drove to see his regular doctor, Dr. Alan Briggs. He brought the stool sample container with him.
Dr. Briggs had already received the notes from the emergency room.
“I saw the X-ray report,” Dr. Briggs said. “They were right to schedule the MRI. We need a clearer picture of what this mass is.”
“What about the parasites?” Ethan asked.
“We’ll send the sample to the lab. In the meantime, keep taking the anti-parasitic medication.”
“I don’t think I can.”
Dr. Briggs looked up.
“What happened?”
“Every time I took one of the pills, I got a terrible headache. The second one was worse. It felt like something was pushing inside my head.”
Dr. Briggs frowned.
“Some patients don’t tolerate certain anti-parasitics well. I can prescribe a different one.”
“Is that normal?”
“The headache can be,” Dr. Briggs said. “The way you’re describing it is unusual, but given everything else going on, I don’t want to assume it’s only a medication issue.”
That did not make Ethan feel better.
“I’m going to send in the new prescription,” Dr. Briggs said. “But don’t start it until after the MRI unless we tell you otherwise. If the scan shows anything concerning, they may fast-track you through the hospital system instead.”
“When is the MRI?” Ethan asked.
“This afternoon.”
“Okay.”
“Ethan,” Dr. Briggs said, “if the pain gets worse, if you lose vision, if you have weakness, numbness, confusion, anything like that, go straight back to the emergency room. Don’t wait.”
Ethan nodded.
He left the office with a new prescription he wasn’t sure he would ever take, a headache that still had not completely gone away, and the feeling that something inside him knew it was being looked for.
The MRI itself was a nightmare of stillness and noise.
Ethan lay on the narrow table as the machine slowly pulled him inside. The technician reminded him one last time not to move.
“We’ll be talking to you through the speaker,” she said. “If you need anything, squeeze the emergency bulb.”
Ethan nodded.
The machine began its rhythmic pounding.
He tried to think about anything else. Baseball. Movies. Work. Anything.
Instead, all he could think about was the parasite.
He imagined it somewhere inside him, wrapped around his organs, watching as the MRI scanned every inch of its home.
The thought made him shiver.
When the scan was over, the technician helped him off the table.
“Your doctor should have the results later today.”
Ethan nodded and drove home.
He had barely been home twenty minutes when his phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Ethan, this is Dr. Patel.”
His stomach tightened.
“We’ve reviewed your MRI.”
“And?”
“I’d like you to come back to the hospital as soon as possible.”
“Is something wrong?”
There was a brief pause.
“I’d rather discuss it with you in person.”
Less than half an hour later, Ethan was back in the same examination room.
This time, Dr. Patel wasn’t alone. Standing beside him was a woman with silver hair and a white coat.
“Ethan,” Dr. Patel said, “this is Dr. Marisol Varga. She’s one of our neurologists.”
“A neurologist?”
Dr. Varga nodded.
“We reviewed your MRI,” she said. “There is a large growth extending through your abdomen and chest. We expected that after seeing the X-ray.”
She pointed to one of the images.
“What we didn’t expect were these.”
Thin branching structures spread upward through his body.
“They look like...” Ethan said.
“Tendrils,” Dr. Varga said. “For lack of a better word.”
“They go that far?”
She nodded.
“They branch throughout much of your body.”
Ethan swallowed.
“How far?”
Dr. Varga looked at him.
“One of the largest tendrils extends through your neck and into your brain.”
For several seconds, Ethan simply stared at her.
“My brain?”
“Yes.”
“That’s impossible.”
“I understand why it sounds impossible.”
“No,” Ethan said. “I mean impossible. I’m standing here talking to you.”
Dr. Patel picked up another report.
“Your stool sample also came back.”
“And?”
“The laboratory couldn’t identify it.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means they’ve never seen anything like it.”
Ethan felt his stomach sink.
“So they’re parasites?”
“We believe they are.”
“The things in the toilet?”
“Yes.”
Dr. Varga spoke next.
“Based on their structure, we don’t believe they were mature organisms.”
“What were they?”
“They may have been offspring.”
Ethan felt sick.
“No.”
“We can’t say that with complete certainty,” she said, “but it is one possibility.”
Dr. Patel continued.
“The medication may have stressed the organism. If that’s the case, releasing offspring could have been a defensive response.”
Ethan leaned back in his chair.
“So there’s a parasite living inside me, and it might have had babies?”
Neither doctor said anything for a moment.
“That is one possibility,” Dr. Patel said quietly.
Ethan laughed once.
Not because anything was funny. Because his brain no longer knew how to react.
“So what happens now?”
Dr. Varga folded her hands.
“We’re admitting you today.”
“Today?”
“Yes.”
“I thought I was going home.”
“So did we,” Dr. Patel said. “The MRI changed that.”
“What about the new medication my regular doctor just prescribed?”
“Don’t take it.”
“Why?”
“Until we understand exactly what we’re dealing with, we don’t want anything changing the organism.”
Ethan slowly nodded.
“We’ve already contacted a neurosurgeon,” Dr. Patel continued. “Her name is Dr. Naomi Lawson.”
“A brain surgeon?”
“Yes.”
“You already called her?”
“We did.”
“I thought things like this took weeks.”
“They usually do.”
“So why is this happening so fast?”
Dr. Patel looked directly at him.
“Because we’ve never seen anything like this before.”
The room became quiet.
Finally, Ethan asked, “What exactly are you planning to do?”
“Exploratory surgery,” Dr. Varga said. “We need to determine exactly what this thing is and how extensively it’s attached. If we can safely remove it, we’ll do so during the same operation.”
“And if it’s attached to my brain?”
“We’ll have to perform part of the surgery while you’re awake.”
Ethan stared at her.
“I’m sorry?”
“I know that’s a lot to hear.”
“You’re telling me you’re going to cut into my brain while I’m awake?”
“The brain itself has no pain receptors,” Dr. Varga said. “We’ll numb your scalp, heavily sedate you during the opening of the skull, and wake you only during the part where we need to test your speech, vision, and movement.”
Ethan ran both hands through his hair.
“I need something,” he said. “I’m going to be honest with you. This is a lot that has happened in a short period of time, and I haven’t been sleeping or eating or drinking much water, for that matter. I feel like there has to be something you can give me.”
Dr. Patel nodded.
“Of course. We’ll give you a few Xanax to get you through tonight. We’ll also give you medication right before the procedure.”
“When is the surgery?”
“Tomorrow morning,” Dr. Varga said. “Six a.m. No food or drink after midnight.”
Tomorrow.
Less than twenty-four hours.
His life had changed completely in just two days.
He had gone to therapy because he thought he was unhappy.
Now he was going to have brain surgery.
Ethan didn’t sleep much that night.
The Xanax helped take the edge off, but it didn’t come close to calming him down. Every time he closed his eyes, he pictured the five pale creatures swimming around in the toilet. Then he thought about the MRI and the tendrils spreading through his body. Every time he started to drift off, his mind snapped him awake again.
He tried to remember the trip to South America.
He pictured the Amazon River. Brown water. Thick jungle. Humid air.
Or at least he thought he did.
The more he tried to remember, the more he wondered if he was imagining it. Were those actual memories, or had his brain simply filled in the blanks from photographs and stories Mom had told him over the years?
He couldn’t tell.
At four-thirty in the morning, he gave up trying to sleep.
He took a shower, got dressed, and drove to the hospital while it was still dark outside.
The parking lot was nearly empty.
Inside, a woman at the front desk checked him in and directed him to the surgical floor.
A nurse called his name a few minutes later.
“Ethan?”
He stood.
“Come with me.”
She led him into a small pre-operative room separated from the others by curtains.
“We need you to change into this gown,” she said. “Everything comes off except your underwear.”
She left the room while he changed.
A few minutes later, she returned carrying a clipboard.
“I’m going to ask you a few questions.”
She verified his name, date of birth, medications, allergies, and emergency contact.
“When was the last time you ate?”
“About eight o’clock last night.”
“Anything to drink after midnight?”
“No.”
“Good.”
She smiled.
“You’re doing great.”
Ethan almost laughed.
It seemed like a strange thing to say to someone who was about to have brain surgery.
Another nurse came in pushing a cart.
“I’m just going to start your IV.”
She found a vein in his left arm and taped everything down.
“There we go.”
A few minutes later, another woman walked in.
She held out her hand.
“I’m Dr. Naomi Lawson.”
Ethan shook it.
“Nice to meet you.”
“I wish it were under better circumstances.”
“So do I.”
She pulled up a chair.
“I wanted to come in before we started and answer any questions you might have.”
“I’ve got one.”
“Okay.”
“What exactly are you going to do?”
Dr. Lawson folded her hands.
“We’re going to begin with exploratory surgery. We know there’s a large growth extending throughout your body, and one of its tendrils appears to enter your brain. We need to determine exactly what we’re dealing with before deciding how much can be safely removed.”
“And I’ll be awake?”
“For part of it.”
She could see the concern on his face.
“We’ll numb your scalp with local anesthetic. You’ll be heavily sedated while we prepare everything. By the time we reduce the sedation, the uncomfortable part will already be over.”
“The bone saw?”
She nodded.
“Yes.”
“I’ll hear it?”
“You probably will.”
“I don’t think I’m okay with that.”
“No one is.”
She smiled sympathetically.
“But there’s a reason we do it this way.”
“What reason?”
“The brain doesn’t have pain receptors. Once we’re working there, we need to make sure we aren’t damaging areas responsible for speech, movement, vision, or memory.”
“So you’ll be talking to me?”
“We’ll ask you questions. We’ll have you move your hands. We’ll ask you to identify objects, read words, and tell us what you can see.”
“So if I suddenly can’t?”
“We stop.”
Ethan sat quietly for a moment.
“What are my chances?”
Dr. Lawson hesitated.
“I honestly don’t know.”
“That’s not very reassuring.”
“I’d rather give you an honest answer than a comforting one.”
He appreciated that.
“There is one thing I can tell you,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“We’ve never seen anything like this.”
He had heard that sentence several times now.
It wasn’t getting any easier to hear.
Another member of the surgical team entered.
“We’re ready.”
Dr. Lawson stood.
“So are we.”
The orderly wheeled Ethan into the operating room.
It was much brighter than he expected.
There were monitors everywhere. Metal trays covered with instruments. Several people wearing masks were already preparing equipment.
Someone introduced himself as the anesthesiologist.
Another person explained they would be shaving part of his head.
Within a few minutes, clumps of dark hair were falling onto the floor around the chair.
One of the nurses noticed him watching.
“It’ll grow back.”
“I know.”
She smiled.
“I’ve had patients more upset about the haircut than the surgery.”
“I wish that were my biggest concern.”
She laughed softly.
The anesthesiologist connected another medication to the IV.
“This is going to help you relax.”
Ethan felt warmth spread up his arm.
His thoughts became slower.
The room seemed farther away.
Dr. Lawson leaned over him.
“We’re going to inject local anesthetic around your scalp now.”
He felt several small pinches.
“That’s the worst part,” she said. “It gets better from here.”
He hoped she was right.
The medication continued working.
The sounds in the room became muffled.
He vaguely remembered someone placing his head into a rigid frame so it wouldn’t move.
Then there was the sound.
A high-pitched mechanical whine.
The bone saw.
It wasn’t painful.
It was simply one of the most unsettling sounds Ethan had ever heard.
He knew exactly what it was doing.
Fortunately, by then he was so heavily sedated that it felt as though he were hearing it happen to someone else.
Time became strange.
Minutes disappeared.
Voices came and went.
Eventually someone said his name.
“Ethan.”
He opened his eyes.
“Can you hear me?”
“Yeah.”
“Good.”
Dr. Lawson was standing above him.
“We’re going to begin testing.”
He nodded slightly.
“Wiggle the fingers on your right hand.”
He did.
“Left hand.”
He did.
“Can you tell me your full name?”
“Ethan Mercer.”
“What day of the week is it?”
He thought for a moment.
“Tuesday.”
“Very good.”
He heard someone behind him say, “We’re looking at the primary tendril now.”
Another voice answered.
“It’s much larger than we expected.”
Dr. Lawson looked down toward the opening in his skull.
“Interesting.”
“What?” Ethan asked.
She didn’t answer immediately.
“There appears to be one main structure lying across the surface of the brain.”
She paused.
“And many much smaller tendrils branching from it into the brain itself.”
Ethan swallowed.
“So it’s really there.”
“It is.”
Someone handed Dr. Lawson another instrument.
“We’re going to make a very small incision into one of the superficial tendrils,” she said.
“You shouldn’t feel anything.”
Ethan nodded.
He waited.
Nothing happened.
Then everything happened.
The instant the blade touched the tendril, a deep, impossible pain exploded through him.
It wasn’t a headache.
It wasn’t even pain in his head.
It was as though someone had cut directly into whatever made him himself.
A loud, involuntary moan escaped his mouth.
His whole body tensed.
“I thought you said this wasn’t supposed to hurt.”
Dr. Lawson frowned.
“It shouldn’t.”
“It hurts.”
The room became very quiet.
The surgeon looked at the monitors.
Then back at the exposed brain.
She looked genuinely confused.
“It’s not...”
She stopped herself.
“It’s not what?”
No one answered.
Instead, Ethan saw the anesthesiologist reach for his IV.
Dr. Lawson spoke without taking her eyes off the surgical field.
“Increase the sedation.”
“I’ve got it.”
Ethan watched clear fluid disappear into the IV tubing.
Almost immediately, the room began drifting away.
The lights blurred.
The voices became distant.
His last thought before everything disappeared was that something had gone very, very wrong.
Then there was nothing.
No dreams.
No darkness.
No sensation of time passing.
For a while, he simply didn’t exist.
Then he did.
But something was very different this time.
This existence was not like his previous existence.
There was no sight. Not blackness, because blackness would have been something. This was simply the absence of sight, like trying to see from the back of your head.
He could not move.
He could not feel his arms.
He could not feel his legs.
He could not tell if he still had a body.
There was only a sensation of deep coldness and a muffled, faraway voice.
It was his voice.
But somebody else was speaking with it.
“It was like I was watching a movie in my own body for years and years,” the voice said. “I experienced everything that happened to me. I saw everything. I heard everything. They were my memories, but I had no agency.
“At first, it was terrifying. When you spend your whole life with the ability to move on a whim, complete paralysis inside your own body is a nightmare.
“But as the years went by, I became more and more used to the idea. It was like watching a movie of someone’s life.”
Ethan knew that his days were numbered.
Actually, it was more like his minutes were numbered.
Dr. Lawson said, “Well, this is going to be something that goes in the history books. This is a parasite we’ve never seen, doing things we’ve never seen. I’m just happy we were able to get it out of you. Seventeen hours of surgery to untangle that thing from you.”
“Thank you,” the voice said. “You’ve given me a new chance at life.”
That was the last thing Ethan heard as he drifted into the abyss.