Parasite Read Online Free Page A

muscles in his chest and shoulder screamed at him.
    Nothing; his fingernails only came back with grit buried beneath.
    Walter, eyes closed tightly, head to one side, crawled forward another foot and then a second before collapsing onto the road again. This time when he reached out blindly, his hand closed on the familiar shape and texture of his black faux-leather case.
    A sigh escaped his lips, vibrating the blood and saliva that clung to his bottom lip.
    His relief was short-lived, however. A second later, he felt something graze the back of his hand. It only brushed against him at first, but then, as if gaining courage, he felt six distinct pressure points in his skin. Then he felt those points lazily make their way onto his wrist, then up his forearm in an awkward, drunken gait. Walter was so tired and sore that he couldn’t even be bothered to turn his head to look at what was crawling on him.
    But one thing was certain: it was much different from the itching that happened under his skin when he went more than a day without a hit.
    Hit; drugs. I have my drugs.
    As if to affirm this thought, he squeezed the leather case with his hand, and a smile again crossed his thin, pale lips.
    He closed his eyes when the crawling reached his shoulder. For a moment, he thought he had fallen asleep; that the only reason the thing had stopped moving was because he had passed out again. But then the cracker nestled the soft underside of its shell against his skin. It felt oddly comforting— drugs; I have my drugs —but this sensation only lasted a short moment.
    The cracker’s conveyor-like teeth suddenly clamped down on Walter’s shoulder and then began cutting their way into his flesh, slowly, carefully, meticulously dissecting his skin, before the entire cracker forced itself beneath .
    High or not, in possession of his drugs or not, Walter couldn’t help the scream that bubbled from deep within him.
    Despite the power of the cry that rocked his frail body, when the sound finally escaped his thin and chapped lips, it was more a whimper than a wail.
    Then Walter’s mind started spinning, and he tumbled into a pit of unconsciousness.

3.
     
    The sun shone brightly down on Askergan County that morning, illuminating the dark embers from the multiple fires that floated in the air like disinterested pixies.
    Thousands of the crackers had either died or had been destroyed in those early morning hours, their corpses with their upturned legs drying in the sun like forgotten fruit. There would be much cleaning and restitution after this day was done, but Walter Wandry had no interest in participating in this effort.
    In fact, he had no interest in Askergan at all, save for once again seeing it recede in his rearview.
    It was difficult for him to open his eyes, especially given the fact that in addition to a cruel pounding behind them, the lids were gummed shut. At first he’d tried to reach up with his left arm to wipe the substance away, but that arm felt heavy and ungainly and he’d quickly abandoned the effort. His right arm felt strange too, but this was a familiar strangeness, one that he knew was the result of recently having injected into the crook of his elbow.
    As his slender fingers finally managed to wipe away thin trails of mucus from his eyes and the lids slowly separated, he quickly closed them again.
    It was bright outside—too bright. The sun felt like shards of ice jammed into his retinas.
    His eyelids fluttered, and he tried to concentrate on keeping them open, to fight the tears that first formed a film and then cascaded down his cheeks.
    My heroin!
    This singular thought kept his eyes open, but his vision was blurry and he had to blink rapidly several times before the world before him slowly came into focus.
    Rainbows; there were rainbows everywhere, despite the fact that the air was hot and dry. The harsh sunlight separated as it passed through the hundreds of translucent cracker corpses, causing a slight prism