Peripheral - A Prototype (2009) Fanfic
Putting this here for now because apparently you need an invitation to join A03.
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Something wasn’t right with uncle. You could tell as soon as he hung up his hat and lab coat: his dark hair was drenched in sweat, and he had a glassy look in his eye. Even Dad noticed. Pulling apart from a bear hug, he asked uncle if he wanted some herbal tea.
“Oh, don’t worry about me. Just a cold,” uncle said, wiping his nose on his sleeve. “Trouble with commuting is you catch all kinds of things.”
It wasn’t just that he was sick. It was that he didn’t cancel and that he came without a mask. I’d expect that from dad who thought masks were from the devil. But Uncle Harold was scientific man—I didn’t know what kind of science at the time, but I knew he knew well enough to not go around spreading diseases. Disappointment panged in my chest. He was someone I looked up to, an alternative future to seething over conspiracy theories and worshipping God as angrily as I could.
Dad patted uncle on the back and led him into the lounge where I was watching from. “Glad you made it anyhow. Food should be ready any time now. Deb, Harold’s here! When’s food ready?”
My mother called back, “Thirty minutes, honey.”
“Make yourself at home,” my Dad said, plopping himself down onto the beat up-single seater; his eternal throne, as he liked to call it whenever Mom begged him to get a new one.
“Hi, uncle.” I stayed put, hoping my dad wouldn’t notice my lack of enthusiasm.
But dad was a very alert man. “What’s with you?” he said, frowning. “Greet your uncle properly.”
Normally, I would not mind hugging uncle. I preferred him to my parents. He didn’t get mad when I couldn’t do tasks the ‘right way.’ If I disagreed with him, he’d listen to my points, and often I did come around to his way of seeing this because he expressed himself well. He’d also sneak me textbooks when he came over, and if it weren't for that I really wouldn't know much. But something was wrong and I knew enough to stay away. There was no fighting it though; dad would cause a scene if I didn’t do what he expected. So, I got up out of my seat, gave uncle a squeeze.
What happened next was just sensations.
Blinding hot pain in my neck, something warm seeping through my T-shirt. I must have fallen since I was looking at the ceiling. A weight on top of me. My dad yelling, shoving the weight off me. I try to move away but I’m so weak. My dad drags me back. “Get the shotgun, Deb!”
“What? What’s happening? Oh god, Jacky, Jacky.”
Uncle looked worse. He lunged at my dad, snarling like a dog. Despite dad being almost three times his size, uncle still knocked him over. I couldn’t turn my head, couldn’t scream. All I could do was lie there and think about the pain in my neck.
The last thing I heard was a deafening boom.
I did not hate my parents. Not really. I resented them, for sure: if they hadn’t sprung home-education on me when I was twelve, I might have made some friends. Or I might have been bullied to the brink too. Who knows? I’d have liked to have a choice in the matter, is my point. But they did care, even if they had a funny way of showing it. They gave me attention; we'd play board games on Fridays, and hike through the forest on weekends. Even learning to shoot was kind of fun despite the fact my dad was a terrible teacher. I think he was just happy I had at least one manly interest.
So, when I saw my dad’s head open and their grey-mattered enmeshed in my lounge carpet, I cried. I cried long and hard. And when I noticed that there wasn’t nearly as much brain in his skull as I expected, when I felt something soft and buttery between my teeth, I cried so hard that I retched.
But I didn’t throw up. Something wouldn’t let me.
I left the room, headed upstairs, threw off my blood-stained clothes, and went to the bathroom. I relished the hot water for a long time until I finally had a coherent thought: what happened? Uncle came over, he went crazy, bit me. Mum shot him. How did I get to the bedroom? Must have been carried after I passed out. Then what? I went crazy too and killed them both.
But that couldn’t be right. I wasn’t crazy. Scared shitless, and confused, but not crazy. Also, they could overpower me, even if I was animal mad. No way I could take them both down—
—Jack has sweated through his sheets, wracked with fever. It’s morning. My poor baby, I think. We need to call a doctor. There’s a bandage around the neck wound, but the edges are radiating black. It looks infected, but not like any infection I’ve seen before. Then it’s night and Jack is stirring. I can’t help but smile so wide, but just for a moment before I notice how wrong his eyes are. Just like Harold’s were before he—
—so I went for her first. I didn’t know how her memory got into me, but it’s clear what it is. She could have fought back, but she didn’t because I was her poor baby and she could never bring herself to hurt me. She also felt guilty about not calling the doctor, thought her demise was something she deserved. But she’d never voice that aloud, not even to herself.
I turned the water back on for a good few minutes.
When I tried to stand up again, another wave of images assaulted me, this one far less coherent than my mother’s memories: her dead body, something over it. It takes me a long time to realise what I’m seeing. Too long, because the thing crawls up the wall and leaps at my face. It’s scrawny—why is such a runt? Isn’t it my blood flowing through him—but tenacious. I beat it away, aim the shotgun, the top of its body comes off. I’m staring at the nothing in her head; it’s like the maggots already got to her, sucked everything off the bone, leaving only a darkness so thick you could get tangled in it. I think: if a demon ate her soul, will it still make its way to heaven? I’m praying that it does. My knees hurt kneeling like this, but I don’t know what to do, so I just keep praying and praying. Then I’m downstairs, beer in hand, four cans on the ground. My face is wet but at least there’s no-one around to see it. Harold’s blood has dried onto the carpet. “Deb!” I say but she’s dead. Yet there’s a movement in the corner of my eye, and she isn’t dead; she’s on the stairs, smiling sweetly. “What is it, honey?” I tell her I’m scared. I don’t know what’s happening. She comes to me, wraps me in her big warm arms, and—
More confused, I rushed to my bedroom and found Mom’s body there exactly as Dad remembered it. She had not gone downstairs. Was he just going mad from grief?
Harold. He was dead but … well if I came back from a shotgun, maybe he did too. A memory flashes. Dad buried the body out behind the shed. The shovel should still be there. I hurry out the house. The tickle of grass and dirt on my feet made my skin crawl, but it was the least of my worries.
I dug up the body; somehow, it was easier than I expected. He wasn’t buried too deep but I’d hardly broken a sweat even after dragging his body out.
Unfortunately, most of his head was gone, and he’d started to decompose. Was I really going to eat his brain on the chance it would tell me what happened? Jesus, maybe I really was crazy. I stopped for a second. I imagined eating his flesh and I retched again—but only for a moment before I started salivating. It was as if the revulsion was being secreted out of me.
Truthfully, I was still hungry and seeing Harold’s exposed grey matter ignited my appetite. I remembered the medical textbook he gave me under the guise of a science-fiction novel. Memories were stored in the hippocampus, and the hippocampus was at the bottom of the brain. It looked mostly intact.
I scooped out what I could from the appropriate region and swallowed it whole, trying to avoid tasting it. Something moved and writhed in my throat; for a second I thought Harold’s brain had come to life. But no, it was me; my own cells were absorbing the morsel I had fed them. It never needed to reach my stomach at all.
Then nothing. Of course there was nothing. Harold’s cells were long dead, how could they retain any memories? I was stupid to even try this. God damn, I should probably put myself down—
—people in coats greet me, I say hi. Their coats symbol that’s far too familiar to me: three hexagons in a tight Y shape. Gentek. I sequence genomes, debug the analysis software, and then get coffee. In the break room, Diana smiles at me in a way that means she’s forgiven me for last night’s transgressions. We’re at the restaurant; we flirt and tease each other about some incidents in the past. Someone named Michael, someone named Candace. We don’t talk about work. We never talk about work. I notice an itch in my throat, but it’s got to just be a cold. I’m glad I clocked off early, but Mercer is going to want me to work overtime to make up for it—
Harold worked for Gentek. He got infected with … the Blacklight virus. That’s the name that comes to mind. But he doesn’t know much about it. He tried not to know much about it because he knew what happened to people who asked the wrong sorts of questions.
For the second time, I’m disappointed in my uncle. But I now know where the answers are hiding.
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