(from an amazingly talented Yune:)
You never saw what hit you, but the white blur that identifies itself as Dr. Herrins tells you when you wake up that it was a black sports car going over well over 100.
"Was the driver drunk?" you ask.
"No," he says, and in his voice you hear the clinical curiosity of a researcher. "But he'd recently taken a turn around the bend, if you know what I mean. His friends and family report that over the previous ten days, he'd been growing steadily more and more irrational. It culminated in the midnight ride that unfortunately caused your accident. He ended up dying shortly after the ambulance came. You're luckier."
You hurt too much to be angry at this madman who literally crashed into your life. Several major bones are broken, and there were internal injuries, although Dr. Herrins reassures you that now that your condition has stabilized, you're sure to recover. You'll be discharged in several months, and after that awaits a long regimen of physical therapy.
He sees how much the news depresses you. "Here's something that might cheer you up. Your parents and wife are here to see you, if you feel well enough for visitors."
You don't, not really, but you know that your loved ones must want the reassurance of talking to you while you're conscious, so you nod and they're sent in.
Your parents weep over you and have to be warned away from hugging you or holding your hand. It is a relief when they finally leave. Natasha sits quietly through the spectacle, then comes to the bedside once you two are alone. She is pale but brave, and helps you lift a hand to feel the baby kick.
"Do you remember any of it?" she asks after a long silence.
"No," you say, but you're lying; your body tenses as it recalls on its own the horror of that night. The memories are trickling back, like water through a crack in a dam. Flashes come to you later in the evening, after Natasha has kissed your cheek and departed, and you close your eyes to try to shut out the world.
Someone is dragging you out of the wreck. You turn your head, wanting to protest about how the asphalt is abrading you, only to stare into a ruined face, bloodied, flesh burnt, and still a rictus grin splitting its mouth. He is even more injured than you are. You have no idea where he has the strength to pull you out of the car.
Frost crawls along your bones. Even after you open your eyes, that terrible face seems to be grinning at you. You call for the nurse and demand something to help you sleep.
Instead, you dream. Sinuous, shadowy shapes twine around you. The next morning you feel more exhausted instead of rested.
More visitors over the next week and a half. Your boss assures you that your job will still be there for you when you get out of the hospital, and that the company misses your expertise. Your parents use more Kleenex. When you tell her that your sleep is troubled, Natasha sings you a lullaby, as though you were a child. It doesn't help. You dream of black worms burrowing through flesh, and at first you think it's a corpse, perhaps that of the other man, but with a shock that sends you hurling back into raw-throated consciousness, you realize that the body is your own.
And during the daytime, beyond the endless parade of well-wishers, your mind keeps re-constructing what happened during the accident.
"Get help, call 911," you gasp, wondering whether your cell phone survived the crash. But the man ignores you. "Eleven days, eleven days," he says, as though it's a chant. "They take eleven days, you see. And this would've been my eleventh night." He starts to laugh, and the sound grates against your ears as though nails were being dragged across your skull.
The lawyer of the man who crashed into you comes by as well. "I wasn't just Eric's lawyer," he says with an awkwardness unusual to his profession. "I was his friend, too. I just wanted to let you know that of course you'll be compensated in full for what happened. Eric's family agrees that it's what he would have wanted. He was a gentle man, truly. We were all shocked when we heard. But he had started changing in disturbing ways, just a couple of weeks before..."
"Changing how?" you ask, intrigued despite yourself.
"He was growing paranoid. Going to the doctors and insisting on full medical exams, which of course came up with nothing. He was at the prime of his life and in great physical shape. And he started refusing to sleep with his fiancée because, he said, he was having nightmares and didn't want to wake her. He started researching parasites. In the autopsy, they also found evidence that he had cut his own arms with a knife, and there were some other strange wounds." He lifts his hands in a helpless gesture.
A suspicion clouds the back of your mind. You try to deny its existence. Then the lawyer says:
"It's amazing how fast the mind can deteriorate. In only eleven days..."
"You said he was doing research," you say abruptly.
He blinks. "Yes."
"Can I see whatever books or articles he collected? They might be of interest to me."
His brows are furrowed in puzzlement, but he nods. "You know it's hard to deny you anything. Just don't tell me that these strange obsessions are contagious." He chuckles weakly.
That is exactly your fear. Your flesh crawls. Or is it something inside your flesh...?
You start asking to meet everyone who knew Eric. You ask them embarrassing, personal questions that they answer anyway. You hear your parents whispering in the hallway about how you must be questioning why this happened to you, that you're investigating the source of the accident. They're unhappy about this turn of mind, but Dr. Herrins says that this is your way of taking control when you're helpless.
The lawyer delivers the books. You read voraciously and refuse to see anyone except the nurse who brings you painkillers and adjusts the reading stand for you.
You start asking for drugs to keep you awake, because the dreams don't stop. Neither do the memories.
He finally stops laughing. "They must be starving right now," he says in elation. "Because they feed on fear, you know. And God knows I'm not afraid right now. I welcome death with open arms."
There are wasps that lay eggs in burrows, along with an insect paralyzed by their sting. When the eggs hatch, the resulting larvae eat the insect. Many parasites feast on humans instead, since our dietary habits lead us to ingest other animals that are infected.
But what if it were more than a taste for human flesh? What if something preferred human prey precisely for the one thing that separates us from other species-our minds? Our psychological depth? Our fear?
And thus the dreams.
Natasha goes into labor early. Dr. Herrins frowns-although he is always frowning these days as he listens to you and marks your chart-and says that the shock of your accident may have contributed. The premature baby, a daughter, is placed in incubation, and everyone prays and hopes. Except for you.
"Don't you care?" Natasha asks you over the phone, crying for the first time.
"I won't get to see her anyway, even if she lives," you say.
There is a shocked silence. You babble into it.
"He gave them to me. And they take eleven days, you see. Eleven days to incubate. And last night,
I woke up screaming for the tenth night in a row."