Parasite║LGBT+║ONC SHORTLIST 2024

8: Ying

Rage ripples across Ying's face as she takes in my features. She points a shivering finger at me. "Arrest xem!"

Jaya shuffles forwards muttering, "Respected, xe's just a doctor sent to treat the man who hacked this 'porter."

"You left me in a coma! You just disappeared!"

My mind rushes to fabricate a plausible excuse for Ying's ire before the wardens pulse me. Hunger, Shiro's betrayal and abject terror have exhausted me enough that I can't begin to dream up another lie. I hold up my arms in surrender. "Ying, I'm so sorry. I'm glad that you're OK."

If the two wardens had been disgusted by my dalliance with Shiro, they look utterly sickened now. The scarred warden reaches to their belt with the alacrity of someone who has been waiting for the merest semblance of an excuse to pulse me. "Xe committed a crime when you were together."

"Yes! There's something wrong with xeir skin. I touched xem and then I..." Ying claws at her neck, as if phantom feeding tubes and sensors are infiltrating her airways, "...I got ill. Xeir touch hurts people."

The scarred warden's finger taps eagerly on their pulser's trigger. Jaya stands agog, their pulser now trained on me. How many times in one day can I stare death in the face without going utterly mad?

I find myself jabbing an indignant finger millimetres from Ying's nose. "That's not fair, Ying! You promised not to touch me! You said that you loved me, then you kissed me while I was asleep!"

Jaya blunders in, their pulser now hanging limp. "Respected, if you touched the doctor without xeir consent, that is a crime."

"Xe put me in a coma! Xeir skin hurts people!"

Jaya's kholed eyes jump between Ying's glareand mine. "Respected, this doctor was... in intimate contact... with the ore thief who hacked this 'porter. That wouldn't have been possible if xeir touch hurts people."

Ying's face corrugates with disgust. "You did what?"

My nerves close to scorching, I latch onto Jaya's deduction and run with it. "And that thief then stole my hov and an ammonia cannister, so he clearly wasn't in a fucking coma after touching me, Ying!"

Ying shakes her head vehemently. "You're twisting things!"

Jaya stows her weapon. "It's clear that the doctor couldn't have hurt anyone with xeir touch. Forgive me, Respected, but you must be mistaken."

Ying's stare begins to waver, and my heart aches. I hurt Ying in so many ways. I'm a monster.

She gestures at Jaya. "I swear that there's something strange about xeir skin. Touch xem."

"All right." Trying to hide the twitch of their lips, Jaya bids me put out my palm with an almost jolly, "May I touch you, Doctor?"

My breath halts in my lungs. I reach out to Jaya with a shaking palm. A naked, ungloved palm. I'll drain Jaya within seconds. Holy Mother, save me.

My mind charges towards a cliff edge. How can I get out of this? I find myself asking what Shiro would do. He's probably escaped from worse odds. A diabolical plan nucleates in my parasite mind, to drain Jaya, then move onto the scarred warden. I'd only take enough to send them into a brief faint. I wouldn't take much. Then I'd drain Ying, steal her hov and dash to the Spaceport. I'd be in the Pinhole to Pluto before anyone catches me.

Of course, they already have my ID number so they'll arrest me at the Spaceport, or IndoChina will immobilise Ying's hov while I'm racing it across the sandflats. It's all a silly reverie.

Jaya's finger is a handspan from mine when an IndoChina officer stumbles through the airlock and addresses Ying breathlessly. "Respected, there's a methane storm coming. We need to move now."