Influencer #2
What if there is a soul, but none of the fancy trappings we’ve dolled it up with? What if death just means our sentience disconnects from our body but stays aware, floating through the void until insanity slowly creeps its way in and destroys our mind from the inside out?
Fortunately, the tether to my corporeal form starts gradually revealing itself as oppressive, agonizing pain, a sensation that slowly washes over me and creates the vague semblance of a body.
Never before have I been so outrageously happy to feel so bad.
The sphere of ache that once only surrounded my head has grown to consume my whole frame, a topographical map of bruises, scrapes, and likely a few shattered bones.
A terrible, gurgling retch erupts beside me, encouraging me to find my eyes in the endless vacuum of space and then slowly force them open.
I turn my head to discover Eddie lying some five feet away, black suds pouring from his mouth like an overflowing washing machine.
His throat sack is sluggishly pumping, and one of his tenacles flops awkwardly in the snow, but his body is otherwise still.
Slowly, the tentacle creeps over to me, barely able to drag itself along.
My first instinct is to pull away, not out of fear but sheer annoyance.
Fuck this murderous psychopath.
I don’t move, though. Maybe I don’t have the energy, or maybe deep down there’s something about this moment that I appreciate.
The pad of Eddie’s tentacle finally comes to rest on my arm, and his insectoid head slowly turns to look at me.
I hold his gaze, noting the way the strange creature’s quickly dissolving innards have started to bloom across the snow in a massive black stain.
Eddie gurgles something, the words unable to coalesce as acrid bubbles spill from his depths.
He pauses, briefly closing his eyes to rest, then tries again.
“Bravo, sport,” he finally manages. Eddie’s strange rattle is now heaped with a distinct, sloppy wetness.
I don’t want to care. After everything he’s done, I’m sickened by the thought of these words meaning a goddamn thing to me.
But they do.
I feel my heart break ever so slightly, a violent little crack in the armor I’ve piled around myself.
This monster is a part of me whether I like it or not, and I’m a part of him.
We might not be bound by literal genetics—I share blood with centuries of hosts, not the parasite within them—but I can’t deny our bizarre cosmic connection.
Something falls into place, a mind file that’s been lost in the shuffle, finally revealing itself after decades tucked behind some imaginary desk.
I always wondered why my parents adopted me and then acted like I was a huge burden on their life.
As their only child, I figured there was something wrong with me, that if I made more friends, gathered more skills, stayed perfect and strong and, most of all, beautiful, my folks might actually start to want me around.
I was specifically chosen, after all. The only thing that could explain their actions was buyer’s remorse, a secret feeling they could never actually speak aloud but I knew was the sick, sad truth.
Deep in the pit of my soul, I assumed my parents hated me because they thought they’d brought home a dud.
They saw me as a defective product, and I fought my whole life to prove them wrong—whatever it fucking took.
Now, gazing at Eddie’s dying expression and watching the putrid black slop pour out of him, I realize something.
My parents weren’t disappointed in me; they just never wanted me.
And yeah, that might sound just as terrible to some, but after the life I’ve had, this revelation offers me unimaginable freedom.
Along with the question of why they adopted me in the first place, I never understood traveling all the way to Florida for a child if they lived in Palm Springs. The answer is so obvious now that I’m embarrassed I didn’t see it earlier.
It’s because Eddie made them.
The constant subliminal disdain from my parents was never about me, it was about Eddie.
Eddie needed his future hosts cared for, and close to his assorted luxury properties across the world. It’s also no coincidence they’re all located in sunny places with a high frequency of skin cancer.
My parents were nothing more than a random couple Eddie threatened into looking after his child. They didn’t love me, but that wasn’t my fault.
I was always enough.
Bravo, sport.
The words repeat in my head over and over again.
His shell has cracked and separated, liquefied guts spilling out from the spaces in between, and his last flopping tentacle has finally stopped moving.
The creature’s eyes are blank, but in their depths I think I can see one final shimmer, a single flicker of light before returning to the endless nothing.
“Thank you,” I finally reply, accepting the praise. I don’t do it for him, but for myself.
Eddie doesn’t react. Even his tentacles have started breaking down, more sludge than muscle.
I turn my head to gaze up at the sky above. Most of the view is clouded by the tree that broke my fall, but through the haphazard crisscross of snapped branches I can just barely make out a few glorious, blinking stars.
I bet it looks even better from the peak.
Hopefully, Marlo is up there waiting for me, and if there’s one thing that’s gonna keep me from lying back and bleeding out in the snow next to my cold, dead dad, it’s her.
I take a deep breath, noticing an odd stutter in my lungs.
They seem to catch slightly, but that’s a problem I can worry about later.
Sitting up causes a sharp, stinging pain to blast across my spine.
It’s a feeling I’d usually have the instinct to pull back from, but tonight I don’t have that luxury.
Instead, I push past the blistering sear until I’m sitting upright.
It’s here that I finally look down at my own body, checking in with the damage I’m working with. A huge gash runs the length of my left arm, likely torn open by a sharp branch, and I think multiple bones in this hand are broken. When I turn to look at my other arm, I find nothing but empty space.
It’s simply not there, replaced instead by a ragged stump just below my elbow. Eddie must’ve chomped it off during the fall.
I can’t let this slow me down.
One of my legs seems fine, but as I climb to my feet, the agonizing burn tells me there’s likely a broken bone tucked away in the other.
I’m standing on a small cliffside landing, one of the many stony perches that line this massive canyon.
There’s a cluster of trees up here, which I’ve been lucky enough to land within, but everything else is jagged crags and boulders.
To my left is a sheer drop onto the rocks below, but to my right is an upward slope and a winding, snowy path.
Hopefully, it will guide me to the next landing, then the next, and the next.
I track the massive hanging gondola cables with my gaze, charting them up the incline and eventually ending at a small dot of golden light at the peak. To the east, the horizon is just barely starting to glow with the faintest hint of deep navy blue.
I’m worried I might faint from the pain, but the adrenaline still pumping through my veins seems to counteract any wooziness. I take the deepest breath I can manage, ignoring the rattle in my chest, and begin to climb.
From the start, every step is a debate, a negotiation between my body and my brain.
My personal determination is steadfast, but that doesn’t necessarily mean this broken amalgamation of shattered bones and hyperextended muscles gives a shit.
I stagger onward, limping with the same peculiar gait I witnessed from Eddie just a few hours earlier.
If he can push through the pain, then so can I.
Eddie’s persuasive abilities were unlike anything I’ve ever seen—unlike anything humanity has ever seen—and I still managed to conquer them with the power of sheer will.
Is that what it was?
There’s also the chance I developed some immunity over the evening.
Maybe having just one exposed nostril made Eddie’s pheromones less effective, or maybe my whole olfactory system was numb from constant abuse.
There are dozens of explanations more grounded and logical than the power of love, and before tonight, those grounded explanations were exactly where I’d place my bet.
Now, I’m not so sure.
I focus on Marlo and keep trudging up the mountain, one foot in front of the other.
* * *
The upper lodge is locked, so I break a window to get inside. This likely triggers a silent alarm, but I don’t care. I also don’t care about the shards of glass slicing into me as I climb through, the possibility of more cuts and bruises seeming downright quaint to worry about at this point.
I’ve found myself in the bottom level of a large, two-story structure. This upper building is slightly nicer than the Valley Station, feeling less like a parks building and more like a cozy ski lodge.
“Marlo?” I groan, a sharp pain shooting through my chest as I struggle to put some heft behind the word. I usually have no problem creating volume, but right now the most I can manage is a strained wheeze.
The first place I check is the unloading area, which is empty.
It appears the mob down below has finally figured out how to stop the gondolas, because they are no longer running, but this plan came to fruition a little too late.
To my relief, the tram we rode up on is parked here at the top of the loop, doors wide open and shattered glass covering the floor.