13 We Are The Parasites

SAMANTHA'S GAMBIT PART ONE

Frequently mother would purchase a lot of pre-packaged pasta in bulk, in order to stock up for the war. My parents were swimming in debt as a result, for the price of food had gone up over the last months prior. They would bankrupt their credit cards, bought a new one to keep us fed, so we could have the clothes on our backs, and other things considered to be "bare basics".

At dinner time, mother would frequently make spaghetti and meatballs for dinner. We would get tired of it as a result.

"Don't play with your pasta Jkovo." My father fussed, while mother was to busy sticky her nose in a romance novel to pay attention to the noodles being tossed across the table into our fine china cabinet. However father would frequently want to bring up other issues, to mothers dismay. Jkovo did not seem to care one way or the other.

"There have been three casualties in the war so far. Have you heard about this one guy that got awards in-" Father began to say before he was cut off by mother.

"Shut up, Harold." Mother said.

"Can it, this is important news."

"Maybe so but," mother began to say then put her book down, and gave father a scowling face., and then she added "but we don't need to gross out the children, they need to eat as much as they can so the can concentrate on schoolwork. You want Jkovo to college right? And what about Samantha, you want her to remain a star student right?"

"I'm 17 mom, I think I'll be fine." Jkovo chimed in.

"If your 17, act like it by not slinging meatballs at me." Father said.

"That's enough Harold. apparently he can't help himself." Mother said.

"Well that's true!" Father said.

"Fuck you dad!"

"No Fuck you!"

"Lets just all eat silently." I proposed, although everyone else just laughed it off.

"So Sammy, are you still having a hard time with Ruby?" Father asked, though he probably new what the answer would be. Every since the beginning of the school year, me and her kind of had issues. Though it had gotten worse.

"May I talk about it after dinner?" I requested.

"Sure, just know that if she is hurting you, I can beat her up for you." father said. I asked if I could be excused, and then I went to bed to make last minute correction on my math and science.

The next morning, my older brother poured a bucket of water over me to wake me up for school just like I asked.

"Thanks Jkovo!" I said, and gave him a hug of which he chuckled.

Over the past two weeks, I had the tendency to sleep in late and miss the bus. I had to rush to school. At least the school was only about a mile away, unlike a lot of the students that went to Saunacreek Elementary.

When I walked from class to class when the bell rang to go to sixth period, I hurried up to go to the restroom so that I can avoid Ruby, and get to class on time, of which my efforts were in vain. It was no uncommon for Ruby to be slightly mean, but these past two weeks had been the worst. The week before she picked me up, and threw me head first into the bathroom wall. I carefully tried to avoid her, but it was no use. I was pushed to the floor again, and then I was picked up, and thrown head first into the bathroom wall once again. Honestly I'm surprised my grades have not suffered much more than they had, you would think I would have gotten brain damage.

And then the bell rang. "See ya baby." Ruby said, in contradiction to how she treated me. I waited until Ruby left the restroom, and finally got the chance to use the restroom. On those two days I got a tardy slip because I was to afraid to come to class. I did not want to cause any more trouble, and I certainly did not want any cute boys to see me red.

So I pulled myself up by my bootstraps once I got off the toilet, and then walked to class. Once I arrived, I was met with a pleasant surprise.

"Samantha, this is the second time you been late. I shall ask you the question I was going to ask Ruby. What is the capital of Wisconsin?"

"Madison" Ruby's girlfriend said before I had the chance to answer, of which Ruby gave her a high five.

"Although correct, Samantha needs to answer." The teacher said, and then Ruby stuck her tongue out at me. And then the bell rang, most the students left. But my teacher asked me to stay behind to answer a question, of which I was hesitant to answer.

"Why have you been late to class Sammy? You use to be punctual all the time." The teacher asked.

"If I said, how would I know I would not get in trouble for ringing about the exchange students?"

"You don't have to curse Sammy, you can feel safe to tell me anything. I know something is wrong. Both the day before, and today you came in looking beat up."

"And you still asked me the question, even though I looked like this?"

"I'm sorry."

I gave her a slight disgruntled look, and then told her "Before class, I was molested by Ruby and her girlfriend."

"Oh,...I see." The teacher said, she went ahead and sent me home, and was nice enough not to give me a detention. How would I have known that though?

Once I got home, and opened the door into the living room, I could see my dad watching the evening news, and could smell my mother cooking the usual meal for us to eat tonight.

"Oh hello honey, how was school." Father asked.

"It was OK, I guess." I said darting my eyes back and forth.

"Are you sure, did something happen at school again?"

"I said I'm fine!" I yelled at him, and then went to my room and slammed the door. My father knocked on my door gently to ask if I was OK.

"Could I have a moment to myself please?" I asked.

"Sure." Father said, and then went back to watching the evening news.

The next day at school when I arrived in class, I found a letter directed to me in my desk. I had no idea who sent the letter to me, maybe a hot guy that was a little shy to tell me to my face. I knew I had to hide it, to I quickly put it in my backpack until lunch.

As I sat at the lunch table and began to eat my lunch, I packed for myself, I took my letter I had out of my backpack. I carefully tore it open, and read the contents:

Dear Samantha,

By the time you get this letter,

you only have twenty four hours till

I'm going to kill you, say your prayers.

Sincerely,

Ruby

I looked at the letter, and then wondered who wrote it. I then proceeded to finish my lunch, keeping a close eye on my surroundings. Once I got back into class, I asked the teacher if I could talk to her privately outside the classroom, because I was scared that who ever wrote the letter would hear me.

"What's wrong Sammy, you look pale, and you're crying."

"I think Ruby sent me a death threat. See, it matches her hand writing."

"Wait what? I'll take this up with the vice principal right away."

I thought:

Hook, line, and sinker.

Its gone perfectly, Rudy is going

to be gone in no time.

When I got home, I was able to finally relax with a feeling of accomplishment. Although dinner was the same as always, because of the mood I was in, it felt fresh and new. There was nothing like the smell of Victory and Tomato Sauce.

The next morning, I found that my father watching the morning news, and Jkovo was oddly intense.

"What is going on dad, and Jkovo, why did you not drive to school yet?" I asked.

"We are going to have to move to a different neighborhood. The school you guys use to go to was blown up by the northern army. We received a relocation notice in the mail" My father said.

"I wonder if my teacher is OK."

"I hate to have to tell you this Sammy, but I think she died in the explosion. When I drove by the school around 3:00 A.M, your teachers car was oddly enough still there. If she was still there, I think she died in the explosion." Father told me. I wondered why she would still be there, she normally left right after. I frequently have a substitute because of her health problems. I reflected back to when I first had my conversations with her. There was the conversation were I first told her what was going on:

"You don't have to curse at me Sammy, you can feel safe to tell me anything. I'm your friend."

"Your only paid to be my friend." Was my final words to her, and then I ran out of the classroom.

In another conversation, I reflected back to when I told her about the letter I received from Ruby.

"What's wrong Sammy, you look pale, and you're crying."

"I think Ruby sent me a **** threat. See, it matches her hand writing."

"Wait what? I'll take this up with the vice principal right away."

I wanted to use the leader as get out of school of the heat of school bus pass, so that Ruby, and her girlfriend would no longer beat me up, throw me to the wall.

But now I wonder if I did the right thing. After all the teacher was truly asking out of concern, I realize that now.

It was the next month after I lost my teacher in the explosion. For whatever reason, it took me a while to process that she was gone from my life forever. Had I gotten away with setting up my bully Ruby to go to an alternative school? The night felt more chilly. My parents had gotten a new air conditioning unit. All the months of hot weather being no different inside and in have suddenly come to an end. Something to celebrate.

Jkovo finally figured out to stop throwing meatballs at me at dinner, and I was no longer the most mature person in the house. But I was still the only one, quiet as a mouse. Yet another comfort, perhaps. "So how was school." my mother asked. I wasn't sure what answer to give her, the war was still going on even in the north.

I played with my spaghetti with my fork. "It was fine, a little boring. I met a new friend today." I smiled a smile I had not had in along time.

"Your not dating boys are you?" mother asked, well of course she would assume that. But that was not it at all. She gave me a cross looking, telling me I should eat my food. Of which I merely stared.

"Oh nah. A new friend of me and Susie, name's Rachel." Father looked me and my brother's mother, and tilted his glasses forward. "She played a flute at lunch today." A sound of music, I had not heard in months.

I'd soon come to find out, in other circumstances that her flute was broken by her head maid at the orphanage. And that was the last sound, of tender and soft music. I said that I could buy her flute, Rachel took the pressure off. But when Susie offered, at that point she couldn't refuse.

Next week, she got a new one. "My old one was a gift from my mother." she said, as if her mother were one of the victims in the war." Then placed it between her lips, "But I can remember her with this."

Then played the flute all afternoon.

Months came and went.

It is a cold midnight hour. Always midnight, the window glass shatters into the wind. The road, mostly abandoned, sang a song of a distant time, when cares along the intersections were still busy from rush hour traffic. The ghosts of another time wander the planet. Where is mommy? Where is Daddy? Or Jkovo? I wonder where Susie and Rachel have ran off to. It's so cold Mommy, those parasite men want to feel around along my bones.

I need a new dress. Two holes that form into eyes, remind me that you forgot to sew my dress. I wonder if Susie and Rachel are in a bomb shelter together. After Susie's dad was arrested by the dream-scanners, the regular cops said she and her little brother didn't have to live with him anymore since her mother died. And Rachel, she must be playing her new flute somewhere. I have an old story book, read to me when I was small. The story of the young shadow, along seen on the wall. At times I felt like the shadow on the wall, and other times not as noticeable. I remember the last time we fought together, and it was over spaghetti. Jkovo still never grew any manors, and now in my twentieth year, I wonder where he is.

I no longer see anyone I know.

SUSIE'S GAMBIT

I never knew my father very well, although it was still a surprise to see his face on the news. I was to poor to afford anything besides wooden shoes. I took care of my youngest brother, who was dying from an illness the doctor could not identify. It was the last few months I spent with my brother alive, and he spent this knowing ... I thought at the time ... that his father will never come home. I suppose that explained why he always came home late at night.

At school I pretended like nothing was wrong, although my lunches were particularly quiet affairs. Samantha would ask me why I never smile, while she would give Rachel a brand new flute to remember her mother by. But for me, I had nothing to remember my parents by at all. Life was finite, and I was more so. And my little brother, who did nothing wrong but live was fading into dust. At night I read him bedtime stories in the English language, while I was still properly learning to speak the language myself. At night there would be blank triangles in the sky, spying on our neighborhood. I would wake up some nights with my underwear turned inside out, and I would see a strange man in silhouette eye me through the window. I wanted him to go away, and just like that I was out of the dream.

After school we would go eat pizza at the arcades, ran by a school friend's mother who saved most of her food supplies for the restaurant in order to enrich the family beyond the war rations we were getting as a community, standard packaged dried noodles for home spaghetti. We would have the best pizza of our lives, as it wasn't a standard liquid cheese on cracker bread affair. We got it cheaper by having more than four topics, so we chose bacon, mushrooms, olives, hamburger, and pickled jalapeño. All to the tune of retro music from the 1990s, her mother being a connoisseur of oldies before music was written by committee. Before independent labels made all the committee ideals irrelevant, and individuals could sing their songs again. Yet our lives was not a popular music song, it was the song of broken lives and restored friendships transcending the limits of the human race.

And at night we had normal bed times like other middle schoolers, yet we would get together at unspecified points in the night in order to connect our USBs, and communicate securely. Samantha was a programmer, and she taught the rest of us how to use this strange software. One of the three of us would be administrator, and specify a specific time that we would meet: the routes we would walk would almost seem at random at times. But she always seemed to know how to avoid the triangular craft in the sky, above the glow of city lights. And when bombs were a dropping, she would always know the best nook and cranny to hide under, from university tunnels to underground sewers. Among other things I shall not describe.

She once told me and Samantha of a friend who seemed to like to make everything she said into some kind of sex joke. At times it made Samantha want to give her a choke. Yet at the end of the day she never did. And that friend would always follow around her asking for sex. Eventually she stopped connecting with her, and now we don't know where she is. And that's the kind of life we lead, as broken people in the world of the broken life. Girls that strove not to be wives for any boy, at least as long as we could eat pizza at the arcades.

We would return at an unspecified hour.

We would then sleep soundly at night.

We would only have this get together periodically, and I spent most nights being bored with my little brother. At times I would worry what would happen if I left the ghost of my little brother behind, under the glow of night lights. He always slept peacefully, and never a terror stirred. The terror always haunted me, in the darkest of the forbidden midnight hour. And every hour after I would break up in a breathless panic, dreading something in the closet. Something reaching out for me. And in our ventilation in the apartment, I saw ... a hand reaching out ... and it was.

"Honey, can you get me the screw driver?" my dad said.

The government assigned me a stepfather until I became eighteen, and would guide me until the war was over with the Southern colonies. "We can't have you just wandering out at night Susie. It's not save our there. These buildings at bomb prove. But out there you're just meat."

At night I dreamed of my mother, falling in the war.

Her face stricken with terror from the bomb blasts, before she jumped and fall off a sky scraper onto the floor below. I remembered my dad, trying to reach out to talk her out of her fall.

Yet it was no use.

And now I didn't have him.

I had nobody.

JKVOVO'S GAMBIT

I don't care what you think, I'll eat spaghetti however I want. Even if that means throwing them at Sammy at dinner after school. I suppose I am getting older, but it still brings back good times. When I first started dating, I never had the incentive to spaghetti fight.

However now the bombs are tossed at us like meatballs at a dinner table. And we are the ground chuck. Why did I have to listen to my mom this time? I never listened to her opinion before. The city lights in the arcade district only glow at just the right hours, then its closing time. Me and Liana had only dated briefly, and my previous girlfriend more brief than that. Although the previous date was not really a date, but a chance to conjoin and masturbate. Joining end to end, like user encryption, are bodies were tied together like four square ciphers. Rows of random letters disjointed, the flow of counting up to. Stop, and life starts all over again.

"Don't forget to brush your teeth." she said.

"Shut up bitch, you're not mother." I said.

"I suppose you're right."

The biggest mistake of my life, those exact words. Though I didn't realize that at the time. Now I gently close my sweet hearts eyes, trying not to cry. I never liked the idea of crying in public, though the current situation has given me no choice. For me girl who at the speed of bang, lost her voice. Lost her life, lost everything but the memory of her. And now I run out of time. I am running to out run the triangular craft from the Southern district, their pace matching their desire for revenge. They burn building, the skin they singe. And like monkeys we fall to dust. I carefully hide in the public library, and read the last message Samantha sent to me.

"Jkovo, where are you? Come home. Everyone is missing you."

But I didn't want to come home to anybody. I didn't want to come home with blood on my face. I purged the message from my USB drive, so in case I am ever captured by dream-scanners, they will not find anything of value. I had previously given administrator rights to Lian, yet now I have nobody besides family to converse to securely. The electro-magnetic biological bombs already struck the lower Northern Colonies, and now it was simply a matter of time before they would strike us. I've never been so terrified in my life, and yet I must face my masters. Yet I respect no masters, not even my own mother. Not even to save my life. I wish I didn't listen to my mother, I should have stayed home to be by Sammy's side. Perhaps my girlfriend's life would have been saved, as she never wanted to leave my side.

And yet now as she is buried in rubble, and my beard all a stubble, I long to be in unacknowledged paradise again. A paradise of milk and money, beyond the meadow of gold. A paradise where the war was over, and we can wear normal shoes again, and eat normal food. Yet these desires fade daily, the war ever growing longer. I had briefly thought of enlisted in the Southern army, though this was before we had moved up North. Yet now as I'm being fired at by Adam's forces, I regret the idea, and denying even ever entertained it.

I remembered the last few nights I spent with Lian, telling her that poetry was suppose to rhyme. Ever after, she began to not pay as much attention to her grades. Even less than I did. At one point I offered to help with her homework, but she said it was Algebraic equations, and said it was probably over my head.

"Look, sorry about the"

"Don't worry about it, want to the arcade?"

"Sure, what kind of pizza."

"Whatever you want."

I offered to listen to more of a poetry, gave some suggestions for improvement. I even mentioned different rhyme schemes. Some of which she seemed to wonder why bother even calling them rhymes at all. I told her about interior rhymes. She told me about different eastern poetry forms that didn't rhyme at all. We exchanged verses, exchanged thematic curses. We exchanged till closing time, all to disjointed rhyme.

Yet between us, there was only us.

Yet now as I wait for death, as I wait for paradise, I want to be reunited with Lian, who taught me how to not rhyme in verse. Me and her meeting was not a curse, it was a match I didn't deserve. For once I could admit, I got served. And in this USB disk I send an ciphered message, I send it to mom. A message I wasn't sure whether I really felt, but something I always felt an obligation to say. And if I die tonight, by bombs tossed like spaghetti and meatballs, I can smile for my girlfriend's sake.

I sent her the message: XICMLISM.

XI-CM-LI-SM. I hear footsteps behind me.

They are marching closer.

DR. RICHARD MELVILLE'S GAMBIT

With all the world's death. With all the world's death new world begins. The death of stars burning bright tonight, the universe feels that much emptier. Yet for I wandering alone in the dark, I hunt the rats. I hunt the roaches, and comb out the lice from unkempt hair.

This is the countdown to another life. The tale of a tomb unfilled, the story of a corpse brought back from the dead. This isn't the story of teen romance, or the story of girls having their tap dance at pretentious weddings. The story of the invisible one, playing with cards like others do video games. At least until the Southern army invaded my homeland, hope becoming fainter, and life thinning out. I had been a sickly child, whose mother died of radiation poisoning. I barely knew my father, like others in my circles of trust. Yet now as I have no eyes to see, and no ears to hear, I feel only dust. The cave was dark and damp, this I knew quite well. I never liked caves growing up, yet now as I wander into the endless darkness it is almost like being home again.

See into the mind of my remote pathology.

The pathology of the dead.

With two antenna, I route the coordinates. Mental noise, colors of what I once knew as red, green, and blue. Perhaps these might be telling me the coordinates to avoid. I am told there is a community of others like myself. Yet this hope is something I choose not to acknowledge. In the cave of the spider, in the cave of artificial light. In the cave of creatures destroyed by man's might. The room of men brainwashed to cleanse them of their guilt for their seven sins. These sins, a product of maniacal religion. The product of men with power complexes. The men who lop off the heads of heretics in times of old, the same sin that taunts the young. And breaks the bones of the olden. As the world bows toward its King.

I sense another voice, a voice of someone familiar. Someone who seems to have kept her humanity intact. I wish I could see her, I wonder what the world looks like. The world feels wet, the sounds permanently silent. I feel around the cave floor in order to reach the outside world, a land of desert briefly Terra formed by the original colonists that seeded our ancestors, the original humans. The original humans who fled from Earth, at first in order to expand to the farthest reaches of the stars. I

live in a world where radioactive rain burns my skin, yet my ability to regenerate has increased manifold since the time that I have been alive.

The world of mutated wolves.

The world of malfunctioning air vaults. And artificial oceans gradually becoming more shallow every thousands of years, at least until the world was swept under us by the great virus.

The virus' effects were initially subtle, and nothing like what you might imagine in zombie-holocaust novels. Our intelligence remained, while our energy was drained little by little. Until eventually we developed a new kind of energy, for sake of comparison it is like comparing matter to anti-matter. Our energy a new kind of anti-energy, motivated by some unknown family bond that bound us together. And yet there I was in the darkness, with no eyes to see. I wasn't sure what I was wearing. I was unsure of whether I was still wearing my dress. Rather the sound of groaning in the darkness, there was the sound of buzzing, buzzing, and more buzzing. The sound could drive one mad, until one got used to the communication.

The Civil War has created US. A war that split apart the original familial bond between Adam and Eve, the original cyborgs first resurrected and their limbs automated for the false-flag alien invasion on Earth. The King and the Queen, the Popette and her mistress King Adam. Black triangles filled the air of the second Earth, and I remembered as Samantha, me, and Susie tried to save as many people as we could from the infection, yet it was no use.

It was a new kind of self-abuse.

One would gradually be eaten alive by the virus. But then eventually one began to control the virus, and turn into a new breed of underground humanity. The humans that could survive radioactive sickness, and travel in the darkness. No longer was it the time of Guillotine Guns and beheading women on the spot. Now it was the world of perpetual fermentation of the self.

I reached the world of the outside, having not been to the outside world in so long. Within this world of radioactive rain, I follow a sense of someone that I had once known before. She was the one that had purchased me a flute, back when I lived in the orphanage and my mistress snapped my inherited flute in half. I had played the flute too loudly on that particular night. While the mistress was not one for collective punishment, she jerked the flute out of my hand.

And now as I reach her, she wonders what has happened to me. She comes over and hugs me. We embrace. I sense a man beside her.

"Do you remember me?"

"Samantha, thank you for the flute."

"What happened to your face, you look like a bug."

And behold, I put my hands on my face. I had no eyes, my fingers had suction cups. I traveled by sonar.

I was a Parasite.

"Do you recognize this man? Samantha whispered into my antenna."

"I cannot see him, yet I can sense him. He has a sinister presence." I said.

"He is who you remember, and yet he cannot even remember his name. He doesn't remember anything at all."

It was then that it suddenly dawned on me. They were referring to I, who was the man who had become so tainted by greed, yet still had the softness�of sympathy for our Queen Eve, had been reduced to the mind of a child. The person with no memory of their past.

Who had undergone my own trial. The trial of the seven sins.

I was Silhouette Man.

Somewhere in the world of a more peaceful planet, there�are civilizations not like our own. They have managed to achieve a peaceful civilization. Yet between us, we have become a new kind of entity. Not quite dead, not quite alive. A different realm of experience altogether.

The parasites of Sauna-Creek. Let this be a warning to those who wish to venture off into the stars: that the world is not for humanity. For when you stare into the universe, sometimes the universe consumes you, and turns you into a shadow of your former self. The shadow of what was once humanity.

We are the parasites.

SAMANTHA'S GAMBIT PART TWO

The gas stations were mostly completely empty of goods. In this town, called Sauna Creek, at times I here noises in the night. The sound of men, women, and children under the Earth. In my Boston Clogs, I slip one off to feel the Earth. Yet the ground is much to hot for my foot to bare. I pick the rocks out of my foot, and then try to find someone here I can talk to. I was never one for dialogue, although that doesn't change the fact that dialogue would be nice about now. Yesterday I met a strange man, yet he has not yet come back for me. I could barely see who he was, all I knew was that he wore a black jump suit, and had the most red of eyes you would ever see. In my minds eyes, I see spaceships that fill the sky heading toward domes. During the war, there was a young woman named Eve the man in the black suit would always comment on, and how he was always concerned about her recovery.

Yet I have never seen this woman. She may not even exist, like Big Brother in classic dystopia novels written centuries previously. I am hungry, I am tired. And I want to cry, yet my eyes will not let me. I dream of grabbed pussies, and sexual harassment by my school bully ... and yet somehow I don't think she survived the electro-magnetic nuclear explosions. And severed heads that lined the street with gold. The life of the planet wide Civil War between north and south. The Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans populated the side of the sun. And the Europeans, including the French and the Dutch, populated the side of the American colonists. Yet nobody there is nobody left to talk to me. I am as invisible as I ever was.

I here somebody, a girl perhaps. She scratches and feels around the cave, which I have visited searching through abandoned laboratories, where super soldiers underwent the Trail Of The Seven Tears, a mind control experiment where the seven deadly sins are cleansed from their life. I here a banging in a cell room, a giant figure with a stitched mouth reaches his hand out for me. In my mind I dreams of unicorns and fairies in distant kingdoms.

A better life than here.

I am only dust. Silence has won.

I wake up in an abandoned house, not remembering how I got. There was the man again whom seem concerned about my well being. Does he not realize that I know who he is? He was the one that ordered the explosions of the electro-magnetic biological weapons. And yet now he seems so different. It's almost as if he no longer remembers my name. He wonders why I don't answer his question, "Have you seen this man. He is a security guard for MK 731."

MK 731 was a merger between Unit 731 and MK Ultra. As black as the black budget related to aliens from other star systems, was designed to mind control people along with infected people with retro-viruses that distributed LSD, their mind permanently altered from repeated forced ingestions. But it had other strange effects, yet I was immune from its destruction.

I am not a parasite.

I am human.

It's been a few months since he helped me learned to read. My fears about him have somewhat subsided, but there is still that burning feeling inside me, that somehow he is worse than the parasite men that surround me. I am on guard at all times around him, despite the love of him kissing my neck.

"Why don't you say anything?" he said.

I had no words for him, he killed many people. Any amount of sympathy I had for the man do to his amnesia, was mired by the all the deaths he was responsible during the war that caused me to have to move from my home town in the Southern Slipstream town along the tidally locked planet. Moving from one side of the desert world to the other side was bad enough dealing with moving away from old friends, some of which would never make it to move up North, but even in the new life I could not quite get used to the culture. Even with Susie and Rachel. And now as I wait nights until he comes home, it takes all the strength I have not murder him with an ax. And yet he seems different around those they play at innocence. I continue this game, partially to play with his heart. But also he's the only company I've got.

I communicate words from time to time in his secure Zero Liability Mail. I'm not exactly certain who he is worried about breaking in. It's not like anybody besides the parasite men will come in and watch us as he reads me story books, my favorite story group I had kept since the end of the war. While he was company for me, he was also a lethal general. With Eve the queen of the Colonists of the North, and Adam the King of the colonists to the South, the man ordered a purge of Southern Colonists that migrated to the new school district.

And now as I wait for sunlight, I sleep.

He caresses me and kisses me as I weep.

It was to hard to speak up for myself for my own good, and yet as he put in a magazine to load up his shotgun, as he fired the bullets the armor piercing rounds seemed to bounce off the parasite men. I was torn between him defending me, and me knowing the truth, that he was the alien, and now we.

I embrace the new colonist.

The man from the stars.

I went with him to visit the cave he was interested in, that I had visited earlier. And then I found out the truth, not only did Susie disappear into those ruins from years ago. She became just like those monster, the government Parasite Men.

Susie was home.