A quiet, long night is a funny experience. No one is awake. Everything is quiet and still. When you look around you, you see nothing more than darkness. Perhaps, on a rare occasion, you see a light coming from the nearby window or you hear the dog outside howling to the moon. But every time, when the visions and sounds vanish, in the end everything is again quiet and still.
What you experience in the darkness can be of interest as well. Usually, when you long to fall asleep, you can feel your senses grow heavy and dull with the darkness' blanket, then again, your beating heart may not let you fall into the abyss of dreams until the first ray of the motherly dawn comforts it.
And then you're dreaming.
And you're dreaming of something beautiful.
Or you dream of something scary and terrifying. And scary and terrifying dream can make you wake up in the darkness once more.
And that was bad.
But why it was bad, he didn't know.
Human could never explain him more than that.
The creature didn't need sleep like other organisms in this world did. He didn't require it, as one of them was collecting energy for them both. And that was enough for their body to complete its everyday task properly and without a problem.
So he didn't sleep.
Late at night, when he heard a soft and steady rhythm of their heart and when he felt the slow rise and fall of their chest, he decided to move. The creature he was, he firstly opened one eye on the chin of their shared body. The eye, obeying his will, formed beneath their skin and then a slight cut was formed in it. The cut grew wider and wider with a second. Simultaneously, the edge of the cut curved on the inside and rounded itself, making every wrong edge smooth and safe for the organ inside.
The first blink occurred. As on cue, the newly formed eyelids grew long, black and thick eyelashes.
An ocean-blue eye of the parasite turned in its hole and looked around the bedroom. The small room with an only one medium-sized window, a simple bed and a small pair of slippers beside it, a closet with human's clothes, a wooden bedside table, a lamp and a digital clock that read 3:14 AM. This small space formerly belonged only to the human, now it was belonging to them both and it made everything only smaller in size.
The eye found the room, as always, empty and dark. His superior senses couldn't detect any movement beside the human. With that information in mind, the alien creature stretched his chin-like body. The eye stirred and rose, the skin around it was stretching and lifting it higher and higher in a straight-line shape, higher and higher, until it suddenly stopped.
The eye bend, taking another look around the room, now from a higher point of view.
The room was still empty and dark.
He couldn't hear a thing but a slow breath – in and out. In and out. In and out...
Why being awake late at night was a bad thing he still didn't understand.
Night was the only time he didn't need to hide. He could do whatever he wished without any concern about being found. At night, when all the curtains were slid shut, it was finally his time. After stretching the chin and upper torso, his part of their body, he gathered more of the flesh on the sides of the eye and grew long limbs to help him support himself. Not only that, at night he was able to grab and lift objects, to control them without human forbidding him.
The human was always so nervous, and he didn't understand why. Couldn't it comprehend that he could protect them? Fear was an obstacle that human needed to pass soon, or its actions will be a sole reason for their troubles.
Thinking about the human and its unnecessary problems, parasite stretched one of his limbs to the other side of the room, opening the bedroom door.
The sight on the narrow hallway outside was an even thicker darkness. While the bedroom had a soft glow of the night light from behind the curtains, the hallway had none. But unlike human, who was always afraid to open the bedroom door when awake at night, parasite felt no fear. His senses told him that there was no danger around. He had no reason not to go outside.
Turning left, parasite entered the hallway. His long form silently floated through the darkness, never once crashing into a wall or a nearby picture hanging from it, instead traveling in its perfect middle. Limbs that followed the movement gently brushed against the ground, just to feel, automatically giving him the coordinates to orient himself from.
He could feel another door under his limb on the right side, but he didn't turn it. It was the bathroom door. He knew the purpose of the room and found no use of it right now.
Further on, on his right side as well, his eye sensed a soft light, just like in the bedroom. He went closer, turned the eye completely towards the source of it and looked.
It was the kitchen.
A small counter in the corner held a stove and a wooden desk for cutting and a tray of plates in need of cleaning. Below the counter were drawers with various thing – smaller drawers for the forks, spoons and knives, a little bigger one for pans and pots and the biggest one just under the sink. It held cleaning objects, but one could also get a look the hose under the sink and fix it if necessary. Parasite never saw the fixing in person, but he saw it on the television. It didn't seem hard at all.
Beside the counter was a fridge. It didn't held much, a few glasses of juice and water, one pot of a day old soup and a pair of carrots. Parasite will have to remind the human about this. Their shared body required a lot of energy to satisfy them both. Perhaps, this way he will finally see the outside and the world that lay beyond the doors and windows of the house.
A few feet from the counter human had a small table and four chairs surrounding it. It was a shame it only used one.
Parasite turned his single eye away from the room and continued his way across the dark hallway. A little further on his left there was another ray of light before the hallway ended with the front door. They were locked. Parasite could unlock them and go outside, but he chose against it. This night he would explore the house. And, after all, human had to go shopping. He will have his chance.
Or he will take it.
With that in mind, he turned left and entered the living room.
The living room was one of parasite's favourites. It had a sofa he could lay on when human was asleep, it was large and spacious, it had closets and cupboards, in one corner human kept its working desk, and it had television.
Television was of great importance to him. He learned almost everything he knew from watching it. The device was his sole mirror to the life in the outside world. In just two days of secretly watching it at night, not only did he learn how to be skilled in killing and self-defence, he learnt how to be a rookie surgeon and an expert in anatomy.
The latter was extremely boosted by him, being hosted in a human's body thus learning from it first-hand. He learned his human's language that way as well.
Since human had no language books in the house, television was his only option. He mastered the language in under a day.
When the simple language soon became too boring for him, parasite decided to twist it a little, turning it to the style of the criminal shows he often watched. His spoken language sounded a bit rustier that way, as well as giving him a small gangster-ring to it, which he liked and used from then on. Human visibly didn't like it most of the time but never said anything about it. Parasite felt fine saying his words as he liked, keeping the self-learnt change.
In his mind, this world wasn't nearly as hard as he suspected.
He overestimated its potential and its beings.
If he desired, he could wipe them out in one day, no-one wouldn't even know.
But then he remembered – he wasn't the only one here.
The thought troubled him at times and questions above questions rose.
Where were the creatures of his kind? Do they know anything more than he does? What is their – his purpose? He didn't believe that they might try and learn to co-live on this planet. Why would they if his kind was so much more superior than humans? Why were they hiding instead of concurring?
Sometimes, but only sometimes, rarely, he felt something familiar in the distance. But the feeling was quickly gone. It felt as if one of his own kind felt him too but run and hide before he could search the feeling deeper.
Why was his kind hiding from one of their own? Shouldn't they be cooperating?
He didn't understand.
Deciding to think about the mystery later, the creature rested himself on the sofa, his limbs supporting the eye, and reached for the remote.
The television flickered for a moment before coming to life and filling the room with bright colours and silent sounds. Parasite quickly felt if there were any changes to the human in the bedroom.
He felt the human stir on the side, breath lengthening into an awkward half-yawn-half-exhale from the pressure on the lungs. The blood-pump didn't change the pulse and for a moment, everything was still with the heavy weight that was sleep.
Keeping a feeling on the human, parasite turned most of his attention on the television. The late-time news reporter was seen. His black, downward-angled eyes showed urgency and parasite felt a slight tingling that he knew was excitement.
The feeling, although odd and new, suited him and he let it circle his body.
The news reporter was dressed in a long black coat, shielding him from the cold, while he talked in a quick language about the situation behind him. Parasite let the words flew by him, some of them he kept and silently repeated them, while letting others go. The reporter stopped talking after a few minutes and the camera enhanced its video on a single twisted scene in the distance – a body.
Beaten and bruised flesh, blue mixing with purple and read, body was dismantled and hardly recognisable as one.
The gruesome, slightly satisfying scene was then returned on the reporter and he continued his report on the scene.
"The fifth body, as you have seen a moment earlier, was found today -"
By now, as parasite remembered, three days passed since he met the human.
And since then, this was the fifth corpse the humans found, second since he first saw the late-night news. And the thought excited him. His kind were slowly getting stronger. He could feel it.
Should he join them?
He knew that he needed a human's body in his complete control to be one hundred percent successful. But were there ways to press on the human, to make him do the necessary?
He didn't believe it.
His human was too scared, to nervous, to sensitive. Not to mention its poor body condition, the being was useless to him.
If he wanted to make this work, he needed a better plan.
News now becoming boring to him, parasite lifted his eye from the television, glancing across the empty room around him. The human in the bedroom was still asleep, his heart and breathing barely changed.
On his left parasite's eye rested on a small cupboard with a single drawer. On the cupboard there was one vase with a single, long since withered rose. The plant was bending slightly, all its petals on the surface of the obstacle.
Human never touched the cupboard nor the plant, letting the plant die and the cupboard grow heavily dusted.
Curiosity grew over the creature and he slowly got closer. When he was in the reach of the cupboard, his limbs extended, wrapping itself around the knob of the drawer inside it. Just before he would pull, he paused, thinking about what the drawer might contain. Could it be his answer about the human?
He pulled.
What he saw in the drawer surprised him.
It was a picture, a single bright picture in a bronze frame.
In the picture parasite saw a human figure, a woman, smiling at him. Her face was rounded, and her lips were curved into a simile with her teeth slightly showing. She seemed happy, her dark eyes as if glowing behind the glass that kept the picture. Her dark hair was long and thick, ending on her shoulders. She had an orange woollen hat on her head and a red scarf around her neck. Around her parasite saw white, white land, white trees, in the distance a white lake. It was winter when this picture was taken.
Why would a human keep a picture and then forget it?
The drawer didn't seem to answer his question, rather giving him another one to solve.
When he decided to close the drawer, he suddenly felt a stir. It was coming from the human.
Parasite felt the human's heart beating at a quicker rate than before, it was fast, and he didn't know how he missed it before. The breathing he felt from the human turned shallow and shaken, he could feel something wet crossing the part where he permanently fused with the human.
Crying.
Why would a human cry in the middle of the night, not even awake to recognise it? If it were a nightmare, parasite would know it – human often woke up screaming during the last couple of days. Even day-crying had more sense. But crying in its sleep?
A single thought suddenly flashed through his mind and his eye turned back to the picture.
This picture was the answer to all his questions while answering one more.
'Was it an escape from the pain?'
Parasite thought he understood the night's sleep better now.
A/N: For now, Uda, or any other human, is still an it to the parasite. Parasite thinks of them as lower creatures and by giving them no gender he subconsciously degrades them.
I hope you enjoyed the story!