Host-to-Be

Imagine something slimy dropping onto your neck. The instinctive urge to reach back, rip it off. By the time you do, it's too late. A painful burn, as intense as if someone dripped red-hot steel on your spine. Then paralysis. Voluntary muscle control is gone within seconds. At that point, you might soil yourself. It is too late to try to call for help. The last thing you would feel would be the brain slug's internal tentacles moving inside of you, digging through muscle, tapping into your spine. Then numbness spreads as it colonizes your nervous system. At some point, perhaps before you noticed, you would cease to be you. Someone else would be thinking in its place. Feeling what you feel. It isn't that consciousness would end; it would transition seamlessly into the new self. As if the brain slug had dreamed it was human, and then woke up to find it was so. Integration, in the wild, is nasty, brutal, and often traumatic. Which is why the hive minds have since cloaked it in ceremony and careful preparation to ease the transition. Yet the end result is the same.
—Anastasia Massimi, Slugnomicon: A Guide To Brain Slug Spirituality (unpublished draft)

Out of the bus window, the sun slowly died. Tall buildings gave way to strip malls. The headlights of cars on the highway like meteors racing through the growing darkness. Jordan's hand curled up inside of Mel's palm, and he gave it a squeeze. There were more trees now. Fewer houses. Jordan's fingers played with his. Thumb and forefinger formed a circle around his index finger, stroking slowly.

He had a million questions and had no idea how to ask them. The whole bus was eerily silent, the brain slug hosts holding hands, forming a circuit. All together, in a closed space, the fishy smell was stronger . . . and then, finally, it got dark enough that they began to glow. The whites of their eyes. The little light spots on the brain slugs on their necks. A soft suffuse light filled the entire silent bus, as if the four mere humans, Mel, Rachel, Anastasia, and the driver, traveled in a constellation of fallen stars. Even the newly-budded brain slug in its terrarium began to glow in sympathy.

The bus pulled off the highway. How long had the journey been? Mel had no watch, no smartphone, no internal clock implant. His body shifted, stiff as if he had sat for hours; he needed to pee. They turned off into a gas station, and a few stood up, including Rachel and Anastasia, so Mel did too. The group filed towards the bathrooms, and he saw that this shop was another Cosmic Fill-Up, similar though not identical in layout to his store, and the blue shirts behind the counter were both brain slug hosts. Mel saw the trans brain slug host bring up his flesh-and-blood hand to clasp with them.

He thought he would be the only one in the Men's Room, but Jordan followed him in. Mel looked back at her, and she brandished the key. A little blush spread on his face as he understood she was going to unlock him. Or maybe just wanted to watch over and protect him. Either way, he felt acutely aware as he unzipped and exposed himself to her. She slipped the key in, turned, and the weight was off of him. He turned back to the urinal to finish business. When he turned back, Jordan was still there, a wet-wipe in her hand.

She knelt before him to wipe him clean with a single-minded attention to detail that made the blood flow. He ached and throbbed. Her nostrils flared, a touch of color to her cheeks. Mel knew that it had been days for Jordan as well. Whatever hunger or need that brain slug hosts felt, he knew she felt it, and he was right here, in front of her.

Jordan kissed the very tip, then carefully tucked his prick away and zipped him up. No cage. Perhaps they were close enough that they didn't need it anymore. She tossed the used wipe into the trash can, and they both wiped their hands.

As they left, the brain slug hosts behind the counter closed the shop. Lights off. Doors closed and locked. They were the last ones on the bus. The driver pulled out carefully, not back onto the highway, but on a winding road that went up into the hills. Mel could feel it as they began to climb, slower now, the bus driver careful on the dark mountain roads . . . and 'stasia said, in a soft, clear voice:

Out—out are the lights—out all!
And, over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
While the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, “Man,”
And its hero, the Conqueror Worm.

"Who wrote that?" Mel asked, after a moment.

"Edgar Allan Poe," Anastasia said, her voice tight with excitement or fear; Mel couldn't tell which.

"Doesn't feel like a tragedy," Rachel said. "A saga, maybe."

"It isn't over yet," 'stasia replied.

They were quiet for the rest of the journey.

The bus pulled into a large, gravel parking lot surrounded by trees. The brain slugs formed a double line, one arm on the shoulder of the couple in front of them, moving as one. At the front, with Jenny carrying the terrarium. The brain slug host in the Immortals jacket and ballcap at her side, holding her arm. At the rear were Mel and Jordan, followed by Rachel and Anastasia. The mere humans couldn't keep in step the same way as the line of brain slug hosts moved over a darkened path; the moon wasn't high enough yet to see over the trees, though a few stars winked out.

As they disappeared up the mountain, the bus driver drove away.

A mile? Mel wondered, unsure of the distance, unused to nature trails. Maybe. They ceased climbing after a while, moved along the curve of the mountain; the trees thinned into a clearing.

Mel had seen some of the space ships on television, or in photographs in books, on the internet. Most of them were built in space and never intended to enter the atmosphere. Huge, blocky things bristling with antennae, or great front-facing scoops, solar sails—all for maneuvering inside a solar system, not moving between stars—but those that were intended for planetary entry were more streamlined.

This looked like a giant saucer on stilts. Or perhaps like a great crab squatting on its pincer-like legs would be more accurate. White and smooth as coral, immense and squat. Moss and vines had begun to colonize the outer shell, soften the outlines. A central ramp was sunk into the earth, right where the path ended, and Mel's sneakers knocked off dirt on the scuffed metal of a vehicle that had flown through the void. Dim lights became apparent now, as they moved up. Buried electronics, safety lights, and then they were in a kind of hall with a tall ceiling, and while it was darker than Mel thought, his eyes had adjusted.

He could see that they were in a central, circular chamber with an arching roof and a floor that sloped down to a central pool or depression filled with liquid. Circular portals led off from that central room, presumably to other parts of the structure. He had no idea of the size of the place; from the outside, it had seemed as big as a mansion on television, but that could have meant twenty rooms or fifty. The smell was far stronger now. Not just a fishy odor, but hints of ammonia, a kind of undertone of hot tar, a taste in the air like old copper pennies. The brain slugs broke apart into chains, left and right, forming a circle around the great pool.

Something shifted and moved in that pool.

Other figures, not all human in outline, emerged from the portals. Two stick-thin, tall K'lur'k. A Greyan, its hairless body completely bare, dugs jiggling flatly; the towering form of an Etherling, the skull-cap of a Rhizomat, and a few other species Mel didn't even have names for. Each of them had some of the same bioluminescent signs that marked the other brain slug hosts. Each of them made physical contact with the others in the circle.

Mel felt Jordan's hand slip from his as she peeled off her clothes. These, he saw, she folded neatly and placed atop her shoes. He felt, absurdly, overdressed. Yet neither Rachel nor Anastasia made any move to undress. At last, he turned to Jordan.

"Are we supposed to strip?" he whispered.

The sound echoed, and Mel was absurdly glad that the human women couldn't see how hotly she blushed.

Jordan said nothing. It was fairly dark to use sign language. Instead, she stepped over to Rachel and slipped a hand into her sister's pocket, coming up with her smartphone. The screen was almost absurdly bright in the darkened hall.

You and Rachel should disrobe. Anastasia doesn't need to.

"Me?" Rachel said. "Why would I—"

"I am not being left out," Anastasia said as she shrugged off her coat and began to unlace her boots. Mel shrugged and took off his shirt.

"I don't know," he said. "But it's their ceremony, their rules. I'm sure if you don't want to, you don't have to."

Rachel sighed. She stared at Jordan, at the message on the phone, and then slid the phone into the pocket of her pants.

"Alright. But I'm only doing this because I love you," she said to Jordan.

As Rachel stripped, Jordan watched her. She wasn't the only one. Other brain slug hosts were looking at the three humans from different angles, always keeping them in view.

So in the twilight within the alien ship, they skinned down. Folded their clothes into bundles against the curved wall, all in a line. By the time they were done, the circle had closed in around the pool. Long, sinuous arms moved, just beneath the surface of the water; Mel saw eight glowing orbs rise to the surface, evenly spaced apart, and he wondered if that was representative of some alien eight-fold symmetry.

"The Ancient?" Mel asked. Jordan nodded. She had come up close to Jenny now, who still held the terrarium, right hand on Jenny's bare shoulder. The other hand held Mel's right hand tightly.

"Who's the Ancient?" Rachel whispered next to him.

"The oldest brain slug host," Mel whispered. He realized, guiltily, that he hadn't told Rachel anything MacElroy had told him. Hadn't even asked about her day. The whole trip had seen him wrapped up too much in his own thoughts, eyes open, never thinking about what Rachel was feeling. "Sorry, I just learned about it today. Should have told you."

Rachel's hand found his left. Clutched and squeezed.

"It's okay," she said.

Then they saw the new host-to-be. They were in a wheelchair, body covered in a white robe that was loose about the neck, showing an old scar above the collarbone, but covered the arms and legs, with little white slippers to cover the feet. A human brain slug host pushed the chair, right past Anastasia, who was the end of the circle of brain slug hosts holding hands, the odd woman out.

"A mask," 'stasia whispered breathlessly. "Why are they wearing a mask?"

It was a white, eyeless cloth mask that completely concealed their features, with a hole for the mouth. Their hair had been shaved, the back of the neck was clearly visible, and the knobs of the spine were sticking out. From the pool, eight tentacles emerged. Seven touched members of the circling brain slugs. One came down softly on the masked figure's head, the very tip touching the bare base of the skull. The masked head bowed.

Jenny moved forward, and the circle contracted as she did so, the brain slugs drawing closer as one single organism, all their attention focused on a single point, a single moment. Jenny's hand dipped into the terrarium and came up with the brain slug. The spots on its back glowed. It writhed and pulsed, an emerald shimmer in her hand. She laid it on the masked figure's neck.

Mel would always remember the sizzle of the skin melting; the sharp, vinegary odor that accompanied it. The way he saw the green-black back of the brain slug grow transparent, how the vertebrae of the new host became visible through it as the brain slug ceased to wiggle, locked in place for life.

Yet what would haunt his nights for a long time, and which sent his long-caged prick into sudden, painful erection, was the soft moan of ecstasy that echoed from beneath the mask.