PARASITIC (Among Us)

Two: Well, This is a Bit Awkward, Isn't It?

        "Gather 'round my younglings," Crow beckons the kids onto their bunk bed as we all take off our suits for the night and hang them on the Replenish Rack. We all wear a regular muscle shirt and black shorts- both of which fit relatively snugly- to protect from direct contact with the temperature regulator that runs along our backs and to keep from our skin snagging on anything within the suit.

I lift Triple-A and Scout to sit with Crow on their bed inside of the small pod on the wall. All of our beds are like this and have a curtain for privacy reasons, of course. Twelve of us adults in total means two rows and six columns of beds. Each pod has a window that looks out into the great beyond, looking out at our planet and sun hurling through space. There's not much space down here as it's just a narrow hallway with the pods all along one wall and the Replenish Rack and personal lockers on the other. Walking further down the hall introduces the bathrooms and some quantum computers we don't have the clearance to mess around with.

"Many-a-time has rumors of an alien race been tossed around the walls of each research facility, but not one has been as significant as the SKELD. That paper that you found, Jimothy, might be evidence that these aliens are real," Crow begins, a spooky and mystical aura about their voice.

"What do these aliens do?" Nakii sets Sam into her locker and shuts it.

"No one knows for sure. My supervisor had access to one of the previous SKELD crewmates, and he said that they actually talked to him before never speaking another word again. All he could utter was 'parasites' before he went back into a vegetable-like state. He died a few weeks later after that interaction."

I cross my arms. "I think I remember that... The Echo-Nineteen mission, right?"

"Yup," Crow nods and continues. "Medical did the autopsy. When they cracked open his body-" Crow leans in toward the kids, "all they could see were eggs. Hundreds of thousands of them. Millions upon millions of these tiny capsules that filled up every crevice inside of him. They infested his insides like dead maggots, countless clumps of them found all over his body but none of them had a trace of life found within. These little beads contained three or four smaller creatures inside that were supposed to incubate and feed off of the host as they grew, sucking out all of the life from him in a slow and painful death. And they were everywhere. Under his skin, attached to his skeleton, embedded in the outermost layer of his organ tissue... Everywhere.

"It all made the grossest sound when they were fishing around within his body to salvage anything, too; it was a mix between constant cracking from having to break the calcification and crust but an oozing moist noise when they got to the soft bits. They say that his skull rattled when they moved his body in the slightest. When they worked up to checking his brain, there was a monster inside that had eaten over half of his brain to fit inside along with it. A mutilated carcass of what was described as the rancid remains of what nightmares and pure unbridled terror is made out of."

"Cool," Jimothy says in wonder and amazement.

"No, that's gross and scary," Scout argues.

I shudder, the entire room feeling uneasy and sick. Crow persists. "The scariest thing? He got it while doing a ventilation task. That's why we're told to not go in there. It was still moving, feasting on what little remains it could to keep up its strength. The astronaut was completely coherent the entire time he spent on the ship as he was the liaison for the Committee and the crew."

"That... That can't be real," Battery gasps.

"Of course, it's only a rumor," Crow discloses. "A mere tale he made up to get a rise out of us. But I'll never forget the look on my supervisor's face as he supposedly reminisced about what he saw inside that corpse. How he could feel the inside of his stomach shift as he laid witness to the buildup of worms and grubs shifting around within the skin. Like this!" Crow grabs Jimothy and starts to tickle him, and he starts to cry, screaming that he doesn't want to have aliens inside of him. "I thought you said they were cool."