The tapping on the door intensified. The squeaky doorknob twisted. I crept out of the bathroom–
“Careful.” The black worm inside my head warned. “If she sees your shadow, she’ll just shoot you through the door.”
“How do you know?” I hissed.
“That was how she killed the host before you.”
Cursing under my breath, I made my way to the fire escape. The rattle of rusty metal when I lowered myself into the alley made me wince. The air reeked of piss and spilled trash, but it tasted fresher than it had in years. I rubbed at the hole where the black worm had tunneled into me, suddenly aware of how fragile this life I’d taken for granted really was.
“We really should find a place to change your hair and clothes.” The voice inside my head commanded, and I jumped. “They have many more agents than just the woman you robbed on the train. Doubtless they already know what you look like…” Suddenly everyone from the beady-eyed bald man unloading a beer keg to the goth barmaid smoking a cigarette on her break seemed suspicious.
Although I never could have imagined the insane situation in which I’d found myself, as a pickpocket I had a few tricks up my sleeve. One of them was a locker in a cheap gym that held hair-dye, non-prescription glasses, a change of clothes, and a wad of cash.
An hour later, a clean-shaven, blonder, hipper me strolled out of the gym.
“What should I call you?” I asked, feeling foolish.
“In the Hive we don’t have names, but if it makes it easier for you, you can call me K-1114.”
“O-K, K.” I chuckled. The silence in my head was deafening. I cleared my throat. “I hope you’ve got a plan to keep me in one piece.”
That was how I found myself on a library computer, sifting through old newspaper articles. K had told me to look for clusters of disappearances over long periods of time, and compare them to the opening dates of bars and cafés nearby.
“There!” K ordered. “Stop scrolling!”
“Could you stop yelling inside my head?” I grunted. “It kind of hurts.” Several nearby library patrons gave me an odd look and backed away from me.
“I’m just rather excited that I’ve found someone who can get us out of this mess.”
‘Café Louisiana, Established 1954’ was listed at the address on the screen. According to my notes, people had gone missing nearby at a steady rate since the year after the place opened.
Sitting in the Café Louisiana forty minutes later, I began to suspect that all those missing persons had offed themselves after seeing the prices or hearing the music in the place. The decor looked like it hadn’t been updated since 1970, and the candles-stuck-in-wine-bottles lighting made it hard to see the cockroaches that I was certain must be scurrying around in the dark. I sipped my overpriced beer, looked at my reflection in the wall-length mirror, and wondered what the hell I was doing here.
“What are we looking for exactly?” I said to myself, or more specifically, to K. I’d swear I felt him squirm around my brain in irritation.
“Someone who doesn’t get distracted.” K reminded me. “Who focuses only on what they’re doing as though they had no worries and all the time in the world.” There were a couple people who fit the bill. A stubbly drunk staring intently at the bottom of his whiskey glass. A slim girl with an afro leafing through a notebook while she sipped red wine and took in the scene. A pale woman with long black hair working on her laptop. Eventually, the stubbly drunk started telling bad jokes to the bartender and the black-haired woman checked her phone–leaving only the slim girl in the corner. “Go talk to her,” K instructed.
“What do I say?” I whispered into my glass.
“Why don’t you ask her if she can help with your worm problem?”
I couldn’t tell if K was serious or not. As it turned out, I didn’t have to worry about an opening line.
“I think I know what you want.” The slim girl with the afro confronted me the moment I approached her table.
“How–” I began.
“Coming in here like you were looking for me. Talking to yourself.” She closed her notebook neatly. “You’ve got yourself an unwelcome guest.”
“Ask her if she can get us documentation, money, transport. Tell her that we will make it worth her while.”
“I can get you everything you need.” The slim girl replied before I could speak. “It will just take time.”
“Agree! Agree!” K’s shouts were like a headache. I was too curious.
“Who are you?”
“Call me Thys. Not that it matters to you, right?” A bowtied waiter set an enormous glass of red wine in front of me. “Drink up.”
“Do NOT drink that!”
“Are you going to listen to that worm in your brain?” Thys took a deep draught of her own glass and smirked. “Or are you going to listen to me?”
It was like I was falling into Thys’ greenish-golden eyes. I would have jumped off a building if she’d asked me to, but all she wanted me to do was drink. Over the next hour, I polished off four or five glasses of wine. I was vaguely aware that I was in a badly-lit hipster bar on the posh side of town, that something bad had happened to me recently, and that there was a shrieking voice in the back of my head that was getting quieter and more sluggish by the minute–
But I can’t remember doing anything during that entire hour except drinking wine and looking at Thys. Her skin was smooth and sweet as honey. Her wine-stained lips were like black cherries. If I hadn’t failed High School English and if I wasn’t so drunk, I thought, I would write a poem about her. It seemed like a brilliant idea. I staggered to my feet to flag down a waiter and ask him for a pen.
“All ready to talk?” Thys sneered. “No more voices in your head now, are there?”
“Huh?” I slurred.
“Yep. You’re ready.” Thys finished her own glass of wine–the same one she’d been sipping the entire evening. “Your uninvited guest is enmeshed in your brain, remember? That means its even drunker than you are now. I wanted to talk to only you. There are a few things you should know.” The room spun. I leaned back in my chair. “That little black worm isn’t just going to just ask for favors forever. I’ve seen those things before; there’s an outbreak of them every few centuries. Since the moment it got inside of you, that black worm has been expanding, learning everything it can from your senses and your memories. Soon, it’ll start taking you over, little by little. Maybe you’ll notice your hand moving on its own, or your reflexes suddenly getting faster. But by then, it’s too late. When all this is over, you’ll be the uninvited guest…and it will be in control.”
“But that’s horrible!” I moaned. I clutched the table like a life raft, imagining dark tendrils spreading out behind my eyes. I wanted to puke. “Isn’t there any way to stop it?”
“Get it back to where it came from before it has a reason to stay, I suppose.” Thys shrugged. The Café Louisiana was empty now except for me, Thys, and the long-suffering waiter. She pushed in her chair and I staggered over to pay the bill.
“Why are you telling me all this?” I asked Thys woozily.
“Boredom.” Thys grinned. “It’s the worst thing about eternity.”
I glanced at the wall-to-wall mirror. According to its reflection, the waiter and I were alone in the bar. My eyes drifted back to Thys.
“Don’t worry.” She smiled. “I won’t drain you. Not while that worm is corrupting your blood.” To my surprise, she took my hand and led me out into the rainy night. Only a few moments ago, her skin had mesmerized me–but now I realized it felt as chilled and lifeless as a hunk of supermarked meat. Thys looked wistfully over her shoulder at the Café Louisiana. “It’s a shame you found me here. I really liked this place. The perfect spot to pick up a snack or flip through my diaries.”
“Diaries?” I hadn’t noticed Thys eating any snacks…
“It’s the only way I can remember anything anymore. And besides, sometimes it’s nice to reminisce about what one was doing in–’” Thys checked the date on her notebook “–June of 1674.” Maybe it was just the booze or my imagination, but it felt like the two men holding umbrellas at either end of the alley were watching us. Thys noticed it too. “Come here.”
Suddenly she was pressing herself against me, running her unnaturally cold fingers through my hair. I felt her fangs graze my neck. My heartbeat accelerated to eleven. I shut my eyes. The men’s footsteps on the sidewalk as they departed, assuming we were just another drunken late-night couple–not at all the brown haired, bearded, solitary pickpocket they were looking for. My eyes snapped open. The streetlights reflected on Thys’ fangs.
“You’re lucky that over the years I’ve learned some…self control.” She hissed into my ear. “We’d better get you back to my place. Your uninvited guest will be waking up soon, and when it does, it’ll make you pay for putting you to sleep.”
I was terrified of Thys, but I could see the dark silhouettes of the two umbrella-men in the distance. I had to trust her; I didn’t have a choice. Or did I?