by Sandy Parsons
Waneda, who wasn’t smart enough to figure out the plot of CSI, was the first one to comment on the change in Jo-May. She’d stumbled upon Jo-May shoveling communal brownies into her mouth by the fistful and asked if she was on a new diet. Smug bitch. Let the alien inside Jo-May twist on that one for a while. But that night, after the alien urged her to wake Stan for sex, she wondered what she would turn into.
She could have told Waneda that the alien adored the silky complex of cocoa, sugar. Even now, covered in post-coital sweat, the alien was tugging at the apron strings of her mind, like a hungry kid. Beef stroganoff, chicken a la king, moon pies. “Alright,” she said aloud, slapping the bed and making Stan curl away in his sleep, “I’ll feed you. But this isn’t the way our deal was supposed to go.”
To be fair, the finer details of the deal hadn’t been exactly clear. The alien had shown her, through a series of amorphous charades, the promise of glorious experiences and eternal youth in exchange for sharing her body. Now, rooting through the cabinets, she wondered what had made her trust the alien. That misty face seemed sincere, like a hairless puppy.
The process had been painless, thank Elvis. No probing of orifices. The alien mimed undressing and then coated her body with its essence. Jo-May’s damp skin became dry as it seeped into her pores, like reverse sweating. At first she felt nothing. Then the cravings started. Thirst, hunger, lust. This wasn’t exactly surprising to Jo-May. Aliens would be interested in basic human desire.
She wrestled the sticky top off a bottle of cherry cough syrup. She took a swig. Cloying and thick. Her stomach expelled the contents. Nope. She sighed, scrubbed the treacly red splatter pattern, and went to get her keys.
The staff at Kroger was accustomed to her nighttime forays. They probably assumed she had an eating disorder. The teen at the register rang up and bagged her purchases without comment. Her senses, sharper these days, noticed an air of desperation about him. He was pale and pimply, Plato’s ideal of a post-pubescent male.
Jo-May’s skin flushed and her pupils dilated, and she had a brief fear the alien wanted… him. When he handed her the receipt her hand grasped his, startling them both into eye contact. Jo-May tried to make her mouth form an excuse or an apology, but all her energy was focused on putting wads of cash into the boy's hand. Words plopped out of her mouth like they’d been plucked from a dictionary. “Be kind.”
“To who?” the cashier asked, his voice cracking.
Jo-May wanted to say, ‘it’s whom’ but her mouth said, “To yourself.”
In her car, turning the ignition, she said, “Stunts like that will get us banned. Now let’s get home before that pistachio ice cream melts.”
She realized her mistake and put the car in park. Ice cream, it turned out, was fine to eat with your fingers in the dark.
#
Getting dressed for work became a negotiation. Jo-May’s usual attire was cotton prints over sports bras and khakis over granny panties. But the alien wanted sensations and textures. It wanted to feel things, including discomfort. If she let it have its way she’d show up for work in a thong, that itchy pushup torture device Stan had bought her once, satin pants from a seventies Halloween costume and a crocheted taffeta vest from a bridesmaid’s gown.
There was a party after work, and she wished she wouldn’t have agreed to wear one wool ski sock and one of Stan’s polyester dress socks. The difference in thickness became increasingly uncomfortable as the day passed, so that by the time she made it to the restaurant she had a noticeable limp. “You twist your ankle?” asked Gordo when she slid into the booth next to him. Gordo was her cube-mate, and her best friend. He smelled of Irish Spring and Altoids, a more enticing combination than it should be.
She smiled with one side of her mouth. “Something like that. These chips fresh?” Her hand was already tucking four into her mouth.
Waneda, whose crush on Gordo was a thorn in Jo-May’s side, pushed the basket and its little companion pot of salsa closer to Jo-May, then wiped imaginary calories from the space between them. “Does it make a difference if you don’t taste them going down?”
Jo-May shrugged. The alien wasn’t going to let her win an argument over crispy tortillas and spicy salsa. But Gordo frowned at Waneda’s dig, which gave Jo-May a scintilla of schadenfreude. The alien stopped savoring. She felt it perk up at this emotion. Before she could stop it her mouth asked Waneda if she was going to the races on Saturday. Both Waneda and Gordo were avid Nascar fans, but since Jo-May was not, she had never mentioned it.
“What race?” asked Gordo, not frowning now.
“Oh it’s nothing,” said Waneda, flushing.
“It’s a special dugout ticket or whatnot,” said the alien in Jo-May, simultaneously pointing at the family combo for the waiter.
“Pit stop,” corrected Waneda, batting her lashes at Gordo. “I only got to go in once. I usually camp, though.”
“Me too.”
Jo-May tried to roll her eyes, but her face smiled instead. Her boss saved her from a migraine by handing around aquarium-sized margaritas. Jo-May took a polite sip. The alien detested tequila. But it wasn’t long before Gordo was nudging her to let him out. “Where are you going, food’s not even here yet?”
“Dance floor,” said Gordo, his breath medicinal.
“They have a dance floor? In a Mexican restaurant?”
“They do now,” said Waneda, giggling. She had finished her margarita and the rest of Jo-May’s. Good. Waneda’s own stupidity would shut this down before it even started. Gordo only needed one work wife.
The music playing piped in from a corner speaker, and the ‘dance floor’ was the lobby where patrons were corralled during busy times. “She is not actually grinding on him.”
“Oh yes she is,” said Rom, the office receptionist. “Did you set this up, Jo-jo?”
Rom was allowed Jo-Jo because he got brought her eclairs on donut days. “Hell no. They are on their own.” After the dancing played out and more coworkers left, Gordo and Waneda hunched back into the booth, fresh drinks in hand. “You guys gonna Uber home?”
“I’m frine to dive,” said Gordo, and Waneda didn’t answer because she was trying to sexify her Little-House-on-the-Prairie-style blouse by undoing thirty of its thousand buttons.
The alien was sleeping, but it had somehow left Jo-May with its conscience. She stuck her hand into Gordo’s pocket and fished out his keys. “Finish those drinks and I’ll drive you guys home.”
Jo-May introduced the alien to the thrill of zip lining, a sunburn, sex after forgetting she had Mentholatum on her hands (that was a first for her, too), an owl’s cry, a baptism, and a mammogram. The alien sopped up pheromones like biscuits in gravy. As long as she made it feel something, it didn’t matter if the experience was good or bad. Jo-May had grown tired of entertaining in her body. She wanted to put on sweats and binge watch Netflix with Stan. Who, needless to say, was also exhausted. He’d slept in the den, saying his sinuses were “acting up.” Fortunately, the alien had moved on from sexual experiences to subtler interactions, so she didn’t have to worry about breaking her marriage vows.
But maybe Stan hadn’t been lying because she woke one morning with the worst cold ever. Her nose dripped orange discharge, so consistent she had to keep a stash of Kleenex in her cleavage at work. At home she stuffed twists into each nostril. She forgot to take them out when Gordo skyped her about the weekly status report.
Douchebag wasn’t even sympathetic. “That must be a real turn on for Stan.”
“Stan wouldn’t notice if I grew actual tusks.” She leaned back to avoid leakage onto her laptop.
“Everything cool? I mean I know you’re sick, but... You and Stan alright?”
“Now that you’re getting regular action you’re worried about my sex life? Well, rest easy, sports fan. It’s like three times a night up in here.” Which had been true. “Can you and Waneda say that? Never mind, don’t answer, I don’t want any mental images.”
“We’re talking about you. Something’s off. Is it…lady problems?”
Emotions swirled, perking the alien up. Jo-May had become adept at sensing it, and its current obsession was the coarse grain of emotional terrain - misplaced indignation, embarrassment. “Gordo, don’t try to be a gal pal.”
“Hey. If you need me to run that report I will.”
Another round of emotions roiled. She slapped her laptop closed and rested her head on her arm, like all those years ago in civics class.
The alien was already awake when she came to, sniffing cold hands holding Jo-May’s arm with practiced confidence. The precise pinch, a cool trail up her arm. Jo-May followed along with the alien, an aloof observer in her own body, but as consciousness blossomed so did panic.
“Heart rate’s spiking,” said a voice. More coolness, and a firm grip to keep her from swatting away the oxygen mask. Jo-May couldn’t speak, was smothering with the mask on her face. Then a warm chemical flush subdued her and the alien.
“Jo-May Johnson,” said the paramedic, her face looming over Jo-May’s. Light focused from a pen light passed back and forth over her eyes. “Your husband called us. We’re taking you to the hospital to get checked out. Little bump here.”
Jo-May turned her head as the stretched bounced into the ambulance like bread into a toaster. Her arms were strapped to her sides. “Stan?”
Stan’s face appeared. Poor, worried Stan. “They think you passed out from dehydration. I found you on the floor.” His face transformed into a huge horrific smile, ugly crying. “I thought you were dead.”
The drugs didn’t let Jo-May be alarmed by any of this, and the alien felt like a million tiny water balloons floating through her blood. She giggled, even though she knew this was not the proper response. Stan was holding her hand but he’d turned to talk to the paramedic.
By the time they reached the hospital, Jo-May felt better. Her nose was running again, but with her arms pinned, she had to rely on the staff to wipe it. There were stickers and squeezers and beeps and alarms.
They were not happy with the drawing her heart made on the paper, or the color of what leaked from her nose. “I hab a colb,” Jo-May opened her mouth to say, but the alien spoke for her. “Come closer, doctor. I have a question for you.”
A conversation happened that Jo-May participated in, yet didn’t remember, and yet the result was that she felt better, so very much better. Impossibly better, even though she was looking at her body, which was now, obviously, dead.
Dr. Alicia Beede told Sam a virus had infected Jo-May’s brain. A rare occurrence. With a hand on his arm she assured him there was nothing he or anyone else could have done to prevent it. Jo-May snorted, ineffectively. She was no longer corporeal, trapped with the alien in Beede’s body. Correction. She was one of many beings inside Beede. “Let me out of here,” she projected. “Put me back in my body.” The hand on Stan’s arm flew up, the pointer finger wagging in the direction of Jo-May’s body.
The alien crossed Dr. Beede’s arms and walked back to the stainless steel table. Jo-May dove toward it but Dr. Beede kept walking. It was futile, the others told her.
Jo-May interacted with some of the other essences, most of which were not human. “I know,” Jo-May said, “my body was already dying.” This essence was familiar, the one who had guided her to many kindnesses. Others joined the conversation, and she recognized discrete personalities she had thought were changing moods. The image of a present appeared and she realized they were reminding her that she had accepted the alien as a gift.
The minds reveled in their new flesh home, the doctor. That is how Jo-May saw herself, as part of a tour group in the big ol' bus, Alicia Beede. Tasting a Quarter Pounder was strange, the tiny rectangles of onions more prominent, the ketchup tangy, overpowering.
Jo-May thought of Stan, missing her. Her last conversation with Gordo. It wasn’t fair, what the alien had done to her. If she had known what it meant by immortality she would have done things differently.
Dr. Beede was kissing her girlfriend. Jo-May critiqued the unspoken way the girlfriend knew just what Dr. Beede liked. She thought of Stan again, how he had to be directed, and Jo-May laughed.
“What’s so funny?” asked Dr. Beede’s girlfriend.
“Nothing. Work.” Everyone leaned in with Dr. Beede for the kiss but hadn’t gotten the hang of the new vehicle yet, and the girlfriend rolled away.
“I had rough day at work, too.” The girlfriend’s expression reminded Jo-May of that first night with Stan, how he’d pulled away.
“Did you steal a body,” Jo-May asked through Beede’s mouth. The words mumbly and wet.
The girlfriend rolled her eyes and walked away, so she didn’t see the battle play out as Jo-May tried to move the feet toward the door while the other essences tried to pin the body back down.
#
The essences and the alien were sleeping. Dr. Beede was in a meeting, listening to medical statistics. Jo-May took her time making the legs stand up. The essences woke but Dr. Beede didn’t react, almost as if she was glad someone was taking the initiative to get her out of there. Holding onto the plastic handrail with two hands Jo-May prodded Beede like a marionette into the hallway. The whole meat sack was so dense and unwieldy. “Find Stan,” she commanded. Jo-May sensed the doctor’s mind seeking to define stan.
The alien began to send signals of its own into Beede’s nerves. Jo-May experienced this as prickly energy. But the alien didn’t make Beede return to the meeting. She paused at the hall’s junction, then turned toward her office, where she pulled up Jo-May’s file.
It was weird, being back in her own house. Despite the flurry of people from the funeral, the house was dim. Tupperware and casserole dishes covered in foil covered every surface, like fast-growing fungus. Waneda passed by, and Jo-May made Beede’s face scowl. Beede fought her, but the alien was giving Jo-May more control. On the wall she saw the YOLO. Stan had given it to her on her fortieth birthday when she’d been too depressed to do their usual beach trip. Now the Y, which was shaped like a pointing finger, seemed to be taunting her.
She stuck Beede’s finger in a few of the dishes, prepared to bump anything to floor that was not what Stan liked. Tastes were still strange, and Beede’s feet were killing her. Haha, rang the chorus, reminding her that she made no joke alone. She settled Beede’s rump into the breakfast nook and kicked off the heels. Here was a concoction of canned pears with mayonnaise and cheese. It was horrifying, like something offered as a dare. And so many calories. Well, it was Beede’s body. She stuck the resisting fingers into the morass and cradled a pear like a baby chick. When Beede opened her mouth to protest she shoved the whole blob in.
“Excuse me, were you a friend of…”
Beede’s head turned, cheeks puffed, cheese feathering like whiskers on her cheeks. Stan, wonderful, helpless, Stan.
“Um, you’re the doctor from the ER.” Stan’s bemusement was so endearing. He was wearing a suit, the checkered one, damn him. He was like a buoy just out of reach and she was drowning.
Get up Jo-May commanded, and the doctor tottered up, legs splayed like a newborn calf, the chair clattering behind her. None of the passengers, not even Beede, tried to control the body. It was as if they were holding their collective breath as the cart clacked up the track, anticipating the delicious plunge down that big hill.
Stan rubbed his neck, where the hair grew up instead of down. Beede took a giant step toward Stan. He mirrored Beede’s advance in reverse.
“Want me to pass out plates?” Gordo said, coming in from the living room. The double good fortune of both of them being here unseated Jo-May’s control and Beede clamored away, grabbing a napkin and spitting pear dregs into it.
“I’m sorry, I need somewhere quiet,” said the alien through Beede’s lips, waving her phone. “Hospital.”
Stan didn’t notice that the doctor’s other hand was tugging at Gordo’s sleeve. That was Jo-May again, focusing all her energy on controlling that one hand. It was a losing battle, because now the essences and Beede were helping the alien.
In Jo-May’s bathroom the alien froze everyone else, coalesced into a dark vapor and began miming. This time it wasn’t a benevolent script offering opportunities.
“I wasn’t done. With Stan.” The words came out of Beede’s mouth, but it wasn’t until she said them that Jo-May realized it was true. She added, “You promised me eternal life. I didn’t want to die.”
She didn’t die, for here she was. But it conceded that her body had failed early. The alien wanted to know how Jo-May learned to control Beede’s flesh so quickly.
All Jo-May could offer was that she couldn’t leave Stan so unprepared for the rest of his life.
The dark vapor sagged. Jo-May, being so intimately connected with the alien, recognized its empathy. Then came anger. “Doesn’t it always go like this? You steal a life under false pretenses?
The alien swooped back into Beede’s body, lit up every neuron showing possibilities, what had been, what it wanted to share. Memories of long lives enhanced by the memories of thousands of species, of mates, children, friends. Beede’s face reddened and beaded sweat from the alien’s emphatic display. It wanted to give her all that it had promised her. It had wanted to share Jo-May’s life, had expected an incredible life.
Fingernails tapped on the door. “Dr. Beede?” Waneda, voice hushed. “Mr. Johnson asked me to uh, check on you?”
Jo-May cleared Beede’s throat. “Just a sec.”
“Jo-May?” Silence, and then, “Let me know if you need anything.”
Using the high acuity the alien had charged her with, Jo-May said, “Wait. Could you go downstairs and ask Mr. Johnson for some aspirin and bring them back up here?”
“Oh… sure. Be right back.” Waneda sounded relieved.
The alien quivered with anticipation.
“When we,” asked Jo-May, circling a finger to encompass all the essences, “inhabit a new body, what will happen to this one?”
The alien intimated that it had not been in Beede’s body long enough to imprint. A premature decoupling was unusual, but not impossible. Beede might suffer a temporary anxiety from the experience but as a medical professional she would consider it stress-induced.
“No lasting distress will come to her?”
The vapor wavered.
“Maybe.” Jo-May whispered aloud what she thought the alien meant, but the alien offered no further assurance.
“Release Beede. Make the offer to Waneda.”
The alien mimed. Jo-May had a meaningful yet nonsexual relationship with Gordo. Joining with Waneda would alter the relationships between all connected.
A tendril of aversion gave Jo-May pause.
“Knock knock,” whispered Waneda.
“Do it,” said Jo-May, feeling the other essences awakening, sliding out of Beede. The last thing she heard was the alien speaking in Beede’s voice, saying, “Come in. No, I feel better and don’t need that. Can I ask you something, though?”
Downstairs, the mourners had gone. Gordo and Waneda stayed to help. Waneda watched Stan move, making sure he was going to be alright, once they too, left. It broke her heart to leave him alone. But she would come back, as often as needed. Already he was laughing, as Gordo told him a joke about the Braves chances this year.
Gordo touched Waneda’s elbow, in that shorthand body language they’d developed. It felt good, and right, the way Waneda’s flesh responded. He kissed them good night and when
Waneda fell asleep and dreamed, all those within her dreamed too, of a vast future that stretched out before all of them, bigger than any they’d known before.
© Copyright 2023 Sandy Parsons
About the Author
Sandy Parsons is a Pushcart Prize nominated author and the winner of the 2022 ServiceScape fiction contest. Her fiction can be found in many places, including Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Escape Pod, and Reckoning. In addition to writing fiction, Sandy narrates audio fiction. When not writing, she works as an anesthetist in Georgia. More information can be found at http://www.sandyparsons.com