Parasite Eve (27 page)

    It had turned off the lights.

    There was a switch near the
other door. Asakura gasped again upon realizing what this meant.

    This thing knew that if a
switch was flipped, the lights would turn off.

    It knew that if it turned the
knob, the door would open.

    ...It had intelligence.

    She refused to believe it.

    At that moment, a pale yellow
light appeared from near the door.

    Since the experimentation
table was still in her way, she could not make out what was happening. A light
tapping. Something being moved.

    It had opened the
refrigerator.

    She heard agent vials being
taken out. It was searching for something.

    A sign saying “RUN!” was
flashing inside Asakura’s head. She got on all fours and moved her hands and
feet in desperation. Her heart was shooting ahead but her body wasn’t
following. She managed somehow to crawl on all fours to a position where she
could see the entire refrigerator. The door was half-open. The thing was on the
other side, rummaging through the shelves, making sick, sticky noises now and
then. It seemed not to notice her. Asakura could not see the thing, nor did she
particularly want to.

    She turned an angle and
crawled gradually to the door. Just a little more, and she would reach it. And
when she did, all she had to do was get up, open it, and rim at full speed. If
she could just reach it with her hand, she would be saved. Her heart pounded
furiously.

    Suddenly, there was a
scraping sound, and an intense pain shot through her knee.

    Asakura screamed and held her
kneecap. Something had stuck into it. She tried pulling it out, but cut her
fingertips trying to do so. Her palm become wet with blood. Tears flowed from
her eyes and she cursed herself upon realizing her own carelessness. The cup.
She had crawled onto a fragment of it.

    Whatever this thing was, it
moved with agility. It fell to the floor. It was on to her escape.

    Asakura’s heart froze. As it
moved towards her, she could make out a few details. Almost all of it was
completely opaque, but what she did see looked like a heap of flesh.

    “No,” she said with tears in
her eyes. But it continued its approach. There was a sound like that of
tentacles wriggling along the floor and bubbles popping like crushed tomatoes.
The whole circus was coming her way.

    “Please, stop...”

    Asakura appealed desperately.
She tried to crawl away and escape, but when she moved, the violent pain in her
knee forced her to the floor with a thud.

    Lying on her belly, she
screamed as she stretched out her arms and dragged herself forward. It was
almost upon her. Tears flowing down her cheeks, mucus dripping from her nose,
she tried to push up with her elbows, but her body would not budge at all. She
cried out in despair. Her knee throbbed in pain. Hands were sticky with sweat
and blood.

    Something warm and slippery
touched one of her ankles.

    It then grasped firmly and
pulled.

    Asakura reached out a hand.
Her fingertips met the edge of a sink. She curled four fingers around it with
all her might. The creature pulled her leg without mercy. The joints in her
fingers reached the threshold of pain. Asakura screamed. She reached out her
other hand, but it touched nothing. The thing pulled harder. Her index finger
let go. She screamed out repeatedly for it to stop, but it pulled even harder.
Its grip moved up to her shin. Her leg bones creaked from the pressure. Her
middle finger popped out of its socket. Only her ring finger and her little
finger were still barely holding on, but felt like they’d be ripped from her
hand at any moment. The creature took hold of Asakura’s other ankle, then
pulled her with a sudden jerk.

    The two fingers cracked and
she let go of the sink.

    As she was pulled away, the
cup shard imbedded in her knee screeched across the floor.

    The creature came down on her
back with all its weight. A sticky solution clung to her. The peculiar odor of
culture medium, sweet, powdery, invaded her nostrils. She tried to shove the
thing away, but she could not get a grip on it. Her arms simply slipped into
the thing and got stuck there.

    The thing turned her around
so that she was lying face up. She kicked her feet, but it was useless. She was
completely restrained.

    She cried out desperately for
help, but a moment later her voice was stifled when something came into her
mouth. She clenched her teeth in resistance, but her jaws were soon wrenched
open. The sticky thing coated her tongue and teeth. Her face still turned
upward, Asakura vomited. What was in her stomach shot up with great force and
came showering down on her own face, Bathing in the half-digested food, what
was in her mouth started to swell and to fill her throat.

17

    December 24th had come at
last.

    Before making dinner
preparations, Kiyomi arranged some holly and paper flowers around the living
room. And while the space near the television was small, she managed to set up
a tree in it. She adorned its branches with cotton in imitation of snow, hung
miniature toys, and draped it with ornamental bulbs. She even renewed the
dining table by replacing the tablecloth with lace, finishing it off with a
polished candlestick in its center. Kiyomi looked around the room, which she
had given a holiday air in not even an hour’s time, pleased with her work.

    She had lived with Toshiaki
in this one-bedroom apartment since they were married. Still, she never passed
up on the Christmas decorations. Toshiaki made a big deal out of it at first.
Considering they did not even have any children, he was not into the whole
decorating thing. But Kiyomi would not be swayed. She had always celebrated the
holiday this way, because for her it was not only about Christmas, but her
birthday as well.

    On a whim, she turned to the
window. She ran to it in anticipation and drew the curtain, opening the misted
pane slightly. White crystals danced in the evening air.

    Kiyomi sighed joyfully,
leaned forward, and gazed around the neighborhood.

    Everything outside was
already faintly dusted. The powdery snow descended gently, yet steadily from
the sky. She could not see too far into the darkness, but where the light from
her window shone, she clearly made out each individual snowflake.

    A white Christmas!

    She was elated and hummed
“Silent Night,” one of the first songs she ever learned on the piano, to
herself.

    It was getting late when
Toshiaki called. The cake was done and dinner was all ready. Kiyomi pressed the
receiver to her ear and sighed in disappointment as she cast a sideways glance
to the pot of stew she had made especially for the occasion. Toshiaki said that
one of his senior students had failed an experiment and needed to be brought
back up to speed. Toshiaki would be staying to keep an eye on him while he
redid the procedure.

    “Does it have to be today?” she
implored.

    “We’ve already started using
the sample. If we don’t do it now, it’ll go bad.”

    “I see...”

    He apologized profusely.
Kiyomi restrained herself and said, in a cheerful voice, not to worry. But she
felt lonely. Toshiaki had done the same thing last year. She wanted him to
dismiss his work for just one day and come home. It was her birthday, after
all. Maybe that was a selfish wish, but it was the truth. Trying to estimate
how much longer he would be tied up, Toshiaki began to describe the procedures
that had to be conducted.

    “Anyway, I need to extract a
rat liver and homogenize it for a mitochondrial blot...”

    The moment Kiyomi heard those
words, her chest leapt.

    Kiyomi gasped. Her ears rang
loudly, vision turned red. Her entire body reacted as if scalding water were
being poured all over it.

    “What’s wrong?”

    A moment later, she came to
her senses. A bit shaken, she put the receiver back to her ear and smoothed
over the interruption. She told him it was nothing, saying she had only noticed
the snowfall and gone to see it.

    She stood motionless for a
long while, sweat building up in her armpits. Now a sudden coldness was making
her shiver.

    These reactions were getting
stronger. It had accelerated ever since she married Toshiaki, but lately it was
particularly severe.

    Just hearing the word
“mitochondria” set her heart racing. Up until the beginning of their marriage,
she often wanted to know all about Toshiaki, and even asked him about his
experiments. In these past few months, however, she had stopped speaking of his
research altogether. The fits were becoming violent and unbearable. Something
unknown to her was responding to all of that. A voice from within.

    The voice’s master was
ecstatic upon hearing of Toshiaki’s work, tearing around elatedly inside of
her. She felt it with this phone call as well. She thought to tell Toshiaki to
hurry home, but the voice in her head seemed to want him to continue with the
experiment.

    Kiyomi had no control over
herself anymore.

    Toshiaki ended up coming home
around eleven. He apologized for being so late, then looked around the room and
smiled with wonder at the decorations.

    Kiyomi lit the candle and the
tree and then laid out the dinner. Toshiaki expressed his delight. She was
still unhappy that he’d come home so late, but his efforts now to liven up the
occasion by being talkative pleased her very much.

    After dinner, Kiyomi brought
out a cake. She came up with a special frosting design every year. This time,
she had made snow-covered trees and a small wafer house at the center. She
thought she’d done a pretty good job.

    As the candle burned low and
the room darkened, they ate cake and drank champagne. Toshiaki took out a
package from his bag, her birthday present, and handed it to her. She opened it
to find a cute watch.

    It was past 2 am when they
went into their bedroom.

    As they turned out the
lights, Toshiaki leaned over and kissed her softly. The moment his lips touched
hers, a pleasant sensation ran along her spine.

    Kiyomi sighed in spite of
herself. She lost all feeling in her legs and surrendered. It was such an
amazing excitement, she thought she would melt.

    She soon realized that her
tongue was venturing out aggressively. Though the rest of her body was limp,
her tongue seemed to have a mind of its own. No. She could not believe it. It
couldn’t be. There was no strength in her hands and feet. She was just standing
there, held in Toshiaki’s arms. Even so, her tongue continued in rapture,
curling around his own in hunger, and gliding along the back of his teeth. This
wasn’t happening.

    Suddenly, she was overcome
with intense drowsiness, ready to fall into darkness at any moment. She’d have
fallen into the abyss if Toshiaki hadn’t been holding her. She let her head
fall back. Yet the tip of her tongue still writhed around in search of
sustenance. What was this? Toshiaki placed a kiss upon her neck. A violent
flash behind her eyelids. Sleep assailed her without mercy. She shook her head
helplessly to drive it away. What was going on?

    Just before all her senses
seemed to twist ominously, a voice echoed across her brain.

    She opened her eyes
instantly. The drowsiness withdrew a little, but only for a moment. Returning
with full force, it drew a thick curtain over her consciousness. No. Kiyomi
shook her head again, struggling to keep her eyes open. It was the same voice
as before.
Make it stop!
She called to Toshiaki for help, but her voice
only turned into a deafening roar in her head.

   
Who are you?
Her heart
began beating like a drum. She gasped for breath. She had never felt anything
so excruciating. Her body spasmed. She was crumbling. Sleep kept crashing in
like a tidal wave, and she just barely withstood the onslaught again and again.
Every time her mind receded, the voice’s master pushed up from inside her. It
was full of joy, calling out Toshiaki’s name. Kiyomi was anxious. It was as if
the voice’s master was making love to her husband; if she fell asleep, it would
rise to the surface of her body and mingle lustfully with him. It was going to
steal him from her. She desperately fought to keep herself awake. She managed
to come afloat a few times, but soon sank into the bottom of the dark.

    Someone was speaking. A loud
voice that seemed to echo throughout the room. Was it hers or the other’s? She
sensed in it a profound delight. She could not tell what she was doing now...
only that her body was in chaos, jostled about in the shadows of roaring waves.