Parasite

Orbit

CHAPTER 1

JULY 2027

Dark.

Always the dark, warm, hot warm, the hot warm dark, and the distant sound ofdrumming. Always the hot warm dark and the drums, the comforting drums, thedrums that define the world. It is comfortable here. I am comfortable here. I donot want to leave again.

Dr. Morrison looked up from my journal and smiled. He always showed too manyteeth when he was trying to be reassuring, stretching his lips so wide that helooked like he was getting ready to lean over and take a bite of my throat.

"I wish you wouldn't smile at me like that," I said. My skin was knotting itselfinto lumps of gooseflesh. I forced myself to sit still, refusing to give him thepleasure of seeing just how uncomfortable he made me.

For a professional therapist, Dr. Morrison seemed to take an unhealthy amount ofjoy in making me twitch. "Like what, Sally?"

"With the teeth," I said, and shuddered. I don't like teeth. I liked Dr.Morrison's teeth less than most. If he smiled too much, I was going to wind uphaving another one of those nightmares, the ones where his smile spread all theway around his head and met at the back of his neck. Once that happened, hisskull would spread open like a flower, and the mouth hidden behind hissmile—his real mouth—would finally be revealed.

Crazy dreams, right? It was only appropriate, I guess. I was seeing him becauseI was a crazy, crazy girl. At least, that's what the people who would know kepttelling me, and it wasn't like I could tell them any different. They were theones who went to college and got degrees in are-you-crazy. I was just a girl whohad to be reminded of her own name.

"We've discussed your odontophobia before, Sally. There's no clinical reason foryou to be afraid of teeth."

"I'm not afraid of teeth," I snapped. "I just don't want to look at them."

Dr. Morrison stopped smiling and shook his head, leaning over to jot somethingon his ever-present notepad. He didn't bother hiding it from me anymore. He knewI couldn't read it without taking a lot more time than I had. "You understandwhat this dream is telling us, don't you?" His tone was as poisonously warm ashis too-wide smile had been.

"I don't know, Dr. Morrison," I answered. "Why don't you tell me, and we'll seeif we can come to a mutual conclusion?"

"Now, Sally, you know that dream interpretation doesn't work that way," he said,voice turning lightly chiding. I was being a smart-ass. Again. Dr. Morrisondidn't like that, which was fine by me, since I didn't like Dr. Morrison. "Whydon't you tell me what the dream means to you?"

"It means I shouldn't eat leftover spaghetti after midnight," I said. "It meansI feel guilty about forgetting to save yesterday's bread for the ducks. It meansI still don't understand what irony is, even though I keep asking people toexplain it. It means—"

He cut me off. "You're dreaming about the coma," he said. "Your mind is tryingto cope with the blank places that remain part of your inner landscape. To somedegree, you may even be longing to go back to that blankness, to a time whenSally Mitchell could be anything."

The implication that the person Sally Mitchell became—namely,me—wasn't good enough for my subconscious mind stung, but I wasn't goingto let him see that. "Wow. You really think that's what the dream's about?"

"Don't you?"

I didn't answer.

This was my last visit before my six-month check-in with the staff at SymboGen.Dr. Morrison would be turning in his recommendations before that, and the lastthing I wanted to do was give him an excuse to recommend we go back to meetingtwice a week, or even three times a week, like we had when I first startedseeing him. I didn't want to be adjusted to fit some model of the "psychiatricnorm" drawn up by doctors who'd never met me and didn't know my situation. I wastired of putting up with Dr. Morrison's clumsy attempts to force me into thatmold. We both knew he was only doing it because he hoped to write a book onceSymboGen's media blackout on my life was finally lifted. The Curing of SallyMitchell. He'd make a mint.

Even more, I was tired of the way he always looked at me out of the corner ofhis eye, like I was going to flip out and start stabbing people. Then again,maybe he was right about that, on some level. There was no time when I felt morelike stabbing people than immediately after one of our sessions.

"The imagery is crude, even childish. Clearly, you're regressing in your sleep,returning to a time before you had so many things to worry about. I know it'sbeen hard on you, relearning everything about yourself. So much has changed inthe last six years." Dr. Morrison flipped to the next page in my journal,smiling again. It looked more artificial, and more dangerous, than ever. "Howare your headaches, Sally? Are they getting any better?"

I bared my own teeth at him as I lied smoothly, saying, "I haven't had aheadache in weeks." It helped if I reminded myself that I wasn't totally lying.I wasn't having the real banger migraines anymore, the ones that made me feellike it would have been a blessing if I'd died in the accident. All I gotanymore were the little gnawing aches at my temples, the ones where it felt likemy skull was shrinking. Those went away if I spent a few hours lying down in adark room. They were nothing the doctor needed to be concerned about.

"You know, Sally, I can't help you if you won't let me."

He kept using my name because it was supposed to help us build rapport. It washaving the opposite effect. "It's Sal now, Doctor," I said, keeping my voice asneutral as I could. "I've been going by Sal for more than three years."

"Ah, yes. Your continued efforts to distance yourself from your pre-comaidentity." He flipped to another page in my journal, quickly enough that I couldtell he'd been waiting for the opportunity to drop this little bomb into theconversation. I braced myself, and he read:

Had another fight with parents last night. Want to move out, have own space,maybe find out if ready to move in with Nathan. They said wasn't ready. Why not?Because Sally wasn't ready? I am not her. I am me.

I will never be her again.

He lowered the book, looking at me expectantly. I looked back, and for almost aminute the two of us were locked in a battle of wills that had no possiblewinner, only a different order of losing. He wanted me to ask for his help. Hewanted to heal me and turn me back into a woman I had no memory of being. Iwanted him to let me be who I was, no matter how different I had become. Neitherof us was getting what we wanted.

Finally, he broke. "This shows a worrisome trend toward disassociation, Sally.I'm concerned that—"

"Sal," I said.

Dr. Morrison stopped, frowning at me. "What did you say?"

"I said, Sal, as in, 'my name is.' I'm not Sally anymore. It's notdisassociation if I say I'm not her, because I don't remember her at all. Idon't even know who she is. No one will tell me the whole story. Everyone triesso hard not to say anything bad about her to me, even though I know better. It'slike they're all afraid I'm pretending, like this is some big trick to catchthem out."

"Is it?" Dr. Morrison leaned forward. His smile was suddenly gone, replaced byan expression of predatory interest. "We've discussed your amnesia before,Sally. No one can deny that you sustained extensive trauma in theaccident, but amnesia as extensive and prolonged as yours is extremely rare. I'mconcerned there may be a mental block preventing your accessing your ownmemories. When this block inevitably degrades—if you've been feigningamnesia this whole time, it would be a great relief in some ways. It wouldindicate much better chances for your future mental stability."

"Wouldn't faking total memory loss for six years count as a sort of pathologicallying, and prove I needed to stay in your care until I stopped doing it?" Iasked.

Dr. Morrison frowned, leaning back again. "So you continue to insist that youhave no memory prior to the accident."

I shrugged. "We've been over this before. I have no memory of the accidentitself. The first thing I remember is waking up in the hospital, surrounded bystrangers."

One of them had screamed and fainted when I sat up. I didn't learn until laterthat she was my mother, or that she had been there—along with my father,my younger sister, and my boyfriend—to talk to my doctors about unpluggingthe life support systems keeping my body alive. My sister, Joyce, had juststared at me and started to cry. I didn't understand what she was doing. Icouldn't remember ever having seen someone cry before. I couldn't remember everhaving seen a person before. I was a blank slate.

Then Joyce was throwing herself across me, and the feeling of pressure had beensurprising enough that I hadn't pushed her away. My father helped my mother offthe floor, and they both joined my sister on the bed, all of them crying andtalking at once.

It would be months before I understood English well enough to know what theywere saying, much less to answer them. By the time I managed my firstsentence—"Who I?"—the boyfriend was long gone, having chosen to runrather than spend the rest of his life with a potentially brain-damagedgirlfriend. The fact that I still hadn't recovered my memory six years laterimplied that he'd made the right decision. Even if he'd decided to stick around,there was no guarantee we'd have liked each other, much less loved each other.Leaving me was the best thing he could have done, for either one of us.

After all, I was a whole new person now.

"We were discussing your family. How are things going?"

"We've been working through some things," I said. Things like theiroverprotectiveness, and the way they refused to treat me like a normal humanbeing. "I think we're doing pretty good. But thanks for asking."

My mother thought I was a gift from God, since she hadn't expected me to wakeup. She also thought I would turn back into Sally any day, and was perpetually,politely confused when I didn't. My father didn't invoke God nearly as much, buthe did like to say, frequently, that everything happens for a reason.Apparently, he and Sally hadn't had a very good relationship. He and I weredoing substantially better. It helped that we were both trying as hard as wecould, because we both knew that things were tenuous.

Joyce was the only one who'd been willing to speak to me candidly, although sheonly did it when she was drunk. She didn't drink often; I didn't drink at all."You were a real bitch, Sal," she'd said. "I like you a lot better now. If youstart turning into a bitch again, I'll cut your brake lines."

It was totally honest. It was totally sincere. The night she said that to me wasthe night I realized that I might not remember my sister, but I definitely lovedher. On the balance of things, maybe I'd gotten off lightly. Maybe losing mymemory was a blessing.

Dr. Morrison's disappointment visibly deepened. Clearing his throat, he flippedto another point in my journal, and read:

Last night I dreamt I was swimming through the hot warm dark, just me andthe sound of drums, and there was nothing in the world that could frighten me orhurt me or change the way things were.

Then there was a tearing, ripping sound, and the drums went quiet, andeverything was pain, pain, PAIN. I never felt pain like that before, and I triedto scream, but I couldn't scream—something stopped me from screaming. Ifled from the pain, and the pain followed me, and the hot warm dark was turningcold and crushing, until it wasn't comfort, it was death. I was going to die. Ihad to run as fast as I could, had to find a new way to run, and the sound ofdrums was fading out, fading into silence.

If I didn't get to safety before the drums stopped, I was never going to get tosafety at all. I had to save the drums. The drums were everything.

He looked up. "That's an odd amount of importance to place on a sound, don't youthink? What do the drums represent to you, Sally?"

"I don't know. It was just a dream I had." It was a dream I had almost everynight. I only wrote it down because Nathan said that maybe Dr. Morrison wouldstop pushing quite so hard if he felt like he had something to interpret. Well,he had something to interpret, and it wasn't making him back off. If anything,it was doing the opposite. I made a mental note to smack my boyfriend next timeI saw him.

"Dreams mean things. They're our subconscious trying to communicate with us."

The smug look on his face was too much. "You're about to tell me I'm dreamingabout being in the womb, aren't you? That's what you always say when you want tosound impressive."

His smug expression didn't waver.

"Look, I can't be dreaming about being in the womb, since that would requireremembering anything before the accident, and I don't." I struggled tokeep my tone level. "I'm having nightmares based on the things people have toldme about my accident, that's all. Everything is great, and then suddenlyeverything goes to hell? It doesn't take a genius to guess that the drums are myheart beating. I know they lost me twice in the ambulance, and that the headtrauma was so bad they thought I was actually brain-dead. If I hadn't woken upwhen I did, they would have pulled the plug. I mean, maybe I don't like the girlthey say I was, but at least she didn't have to go through physical therapy, orrelearn the English language, or relearn everything about living anormal life. Do I feel isolated from her? You bet I do. Lucky bitch died thatday, at least as long as her memories stay gone. I'm just the one who has todeal with all the paperwork."

Dr. Morrison raised an eyebrow, looking nonplussed. Then he reached for hisnotepad. "Interesting," he said.

Somehow I managed not to groan.

The rest of the session was as smooth as any of them ever were. Dr. Morrisonasked questions geared to make me blow up again; I dodged them as best as Icould, and bit the inside of my lip every time I felt like I might lose my cool.At the end of the hour, we were both disappointed. He was disappointed because Ihadn't done more yelling, and I was disappointed because I'd yelled in the firstplace. I hate losing my temper. Even more, I hate losing it in front of peoplelike Dr. Morrison. Being Sally Mitchell sucks sometimes. There's always anotherdoctor who wants a question answered and thinks the best way to do it is to pokea stick through the bars of my metaphorical cage. I didn't volunteer to be thefirst person whose life was saved by a tapeworm. It just happened.

I have to remind myself of that whenever things get too ridiculous: I am alivebecause of a genetically engineered tapeworm. Not a miracle; God was notinvolved in my survival. They can call it an "implant" or an "IntestinalBodyguard," with or without that damn trademark, but the fact remains that we'retalking about a tapeworm. A big, ugly, blind, parasitic invertebrate that livesin my small intestine, where it naturally secretes a variety of usefulchemicals, including—as it turns out—some that both stimulate brainactivity and clean toxic byproducts out of blood.

The doctors were as surprised by that as I was. They're still investigatingwhether the tapeworm's miracle drugs are connected to my memory loss. Frankly, Ineither care nor particularly want to know. I'm happy with who I've become sincethe accident.

Dr. Morrison's receptionist smiled blandly as I signed out. SymboGen requiredphysically-witnessed time stamps for my sessions. I smiled just as blandly back.It was the safest thing to do. I'd tried being friendly during my first sixmonths of sessions, until I learned that I was basically under review from thetime I stepped through the door. Anything I did while inside the office could beentered into my file. Since those first six months included more than a fewcrying jags in the lobby, they were enough to buy me even more therapy.

"Have a nice day, Miss Mitchell," said the receptionist, taking back herclipboard. "See you next week."

I smiled at her again, sincerely this time. "Only if my doctors agree withwhatever assessment Dr. Morrison comes up with, instead of agreeing with me. Ifthere is any justice in this world, you'll never be seeing me again."
(Continues...)Excerpted from Parasite by Mira Grant. Copyright © 2013 Mira Grant. Excerpted by permission of Orbit.
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