The Gastropoda Imperative by Peter Barns (parable of the sower read online txt) 📕

Tonight was the night, he was sure of it. She hadn’t exactly agreed to sleep with him, nothing so upfront as that, but she had agreed to come along to see the view out over the Bristol Channel from the headland off the Hartland cliffs.

When the path suddenly disappeared, Emilia put her hand on the dashboard in alarm. All she could see in front of the car was a long drop to the sea shore below.

David chuckled as he stopped the car, turning off the lights and engine. “We’re here,” he said.

Emilia looked out across the bay, her breath catching as she took in the view. The night sky was clear, a bright moon throwing a yellow stripe across the sea’s smooth surface towards them. She got out of the car and stood by the edge of the cliff looking out across the water.

“I told you it was great, didn’t I?” David said, standing with his arm around her waist. “What a view, hey?”

Emilia’s hobby was photography and she took it very seriously. When David had first told her about the view from Hartland cliff, she’d thought it was just a come-on to get her up here for a bit of hanky-panky. Not that she objected to that, he was very handsome. He was married of course, but that didn’t bother her any. If his wife couldn’t keep him at home, that was her tough luck.

“Grab your camera and come over here,” David said.

Emilia followed her boss across some tufty grass and watched while he made a small fire from bits and pieces of branches laying about amongst the bushes. He went back to the car and returned with a blanket and a couple of glasses. When she raised her eyebrows, he told her that he’d be back in a second, and he was, clutching a bottle of Champaign.

She gave a delighted laugh and pecked him on the cheek. “Why don’t you get things ready while I take a few photos,” she said.

Half-an-hour later they were laying in each others arms, enjoying the view and sipping from their glasses.

“David?”

“Uh huh?”

“I hope you don’t think I’m one of your easy lays.” She saw the frown form on his face. “I’ve heard all the rumours, you know.”

“But Emi—”

Placing a cool finger on his lips, she smiled. “Just shut up and kiss me.”

David rolled onto his back, pulling her on top of him, and as he slipped his tongue into her mouth, she could feel his hardness against her thigh. She kissed him deeply, running her fingers through his hair. He kissed her back, grunting.

He grunted again, then pulled away, levering himself upwards on one arm, tipping her onto the ground. “Shit!” he said. “Something’s bitten me. Fuck that hurts.” After a short pause, he swore again, slapping at his leg. His voice rose to a shout. “Fuck. What the fuck’s that?”

Emilia scrambled to her feet, frightened as she watched her boss thrash about on the ground. She pulled at his arm. “David. David. What is it? What’s the matter?”

He began a continuous wailing, flapping his arms, trying to reach behind him. “My back. My back. It’s on fire. Jesus, help me Emi. Fuck it hurts!”

Giving a violent lurch, he arched his back, only feet and head touching the ground. Then screaming a last desperate plea for help, he collapsed back onto the blanket and lay silently staring up at her with unfocussed eyes.

Emilia dropped to her knees beside him, shaking his body. “David. What is it? Tell me.”

When he didn’t respond, she turned him over, her mouth dropping open in horror as she stared at his back. It was then that her own screams echoed across the clifftop, but there was nobody there to hear Emilia’s cries of terror.

Covering her face, she screamed again and again, her whole body shuddering as the adrenaline pumped through it. The clothes had gone from David’s back, the edges ragged and bloody. Where his skin and muscles should have been was a big bloody hole.

Even his ribs had disappeared. She could see his heart beating feebly, spurting out his life-blood, black under the bright moonlight. But what tipped her mind to the edge of madness was the sight of the wriggling creatures burrowing their way about deep inside his body.

Emilia felt something bite the inside of her thigh. Then another bite, her ankle this time. Jumping to her feet, she looked about wildly for whatever was attacking her, but could see nothing.

Almost hyperventilating now, she gulped in air, finally managing to pull herself together enough to get her mind into gear. She had to get help. Call an ambulance.

The car. Her bag and mobile were in the car.

Running across the grass, Emilia stumbled as her ankle was bitten again. It burnt, as though someone had dropped acid on her skin. She reached the car, wrenching open the door and tumbling into the driver’s seat. Slamming the door shut behind her, she scrambled for her bag, dropping it on the floor.

Help. She needed help.

Emilia’s head felt woozy, she was becoming disorientated, almost sleepy. Brushing off the feeling, she started the car, trying to find the clutch with her foot.

“Damn! Damn!”

She pushed and pulled at the gear stick, the gears grinding alarmingly. Then she had it. Slamming her foot on the throttle, she floored it.

It was only when the car had leapt over the edge of the cliff that Emilia realised the terrible mistake she’d made.

The car hit the cliff halfway down, bursting into flames. Bouncing off, it did a slow roll, then hit the sea. By the time the car sank under the waves, Emilia had already burnt to death in the inferno.

Up on the clifftop, there was little left of David Scott, just a metal buckle from his belt, a zipper, and some loose change from his pockets.

Piers Booth woke screaming in a tangle of sheets, still fighting off the creatures that had been trying to kill him. One big slimy monster had been trying to suck his brains out through his empty eyesocket.

Rolling off the stained mattress, Piers gave a soft groan and stumbled to his feet, glancing around the bothy, searching for the horror from his nightmare. The large single room was cold and silent, just a shaft of moonlight pouring through the small window, picking out the dust specks floating in the air. They had come for him again. In his dreams - as they always did - catching him asleep so he was unprotected.

They came in the dark. Always in the dark.

Staggering to the window, Piers looked out. Dawn was just breaking, splashing the horizon with a hazy red light, the sign of bad weather to come. Licking dry lips, he screwed up his face at the terrible taste in his mouth. Dry. Dry like the empty beer bottles scattered about the floor around his mattress.

Kicking the bottles aside, he pulled on a pair of dirty jeans, and boots that had seen better days. Then making his way over to the chipped butler sink, he turned on the single cold tap and rinsed out his mouth. Filling a battered aluminium kettle, he lit the gas camper stove and set the kettle to boil.

While he waited for the hot water, Piers pulled on the hoodie he’d been wearing for the past week or so, then opened a tin of beans, digging into them with a long handled spoon, wiping away the juice running down his chin with the back of his hand. Finally the kettle boiled and he shaved, washed, and drunk his tea.

Leaving the bothy Piers walked across the dew laden grass to the privy he’d dug amongst the trees, did his business and threw in some earth after it. He felt safer now. The sun was rising and they seldom came in the daylight.

They came in the dark. Always in the dark.

Piers Booth had been born twenty-eight years previously, to a schizophrenic mother and an alcoholic father, not far from where he now lived. Over the years his father - during his many drunken rages - had abused them both, until the day the bitter old man had finally died of a heart attack.

Piers’ mother, always a fragile woman and constantly blaming herself for her husband’s death, had committed suicide. He had found her body out on the moors after the snows had melted, her face eaten away. A fox they’d said, but Piers knew better. It was no fox that had killed his mother. It was the monsters from his nightmare.

His mother’s death had tipped Piers - himself suffering from an undiagnosed long term paranoid personality disorder - over the edge into full blown paranoia. Now people gave the muttering, shambling man a wide berth. Except some of the village youth, who thought it hilarious to get him drunk and listen to his tales of alien life on Flat Rock Island.

At first Piers had coped well on his own, but then he had begun drinking. He’d never had a proper education or occupation, but he did have a knack for finding odd jobs around the village.

Piers liked helping the boatman on his trips over to Flat Rock Island the best. The boatman never paid him much, but he did give Piers lots of second-hand sci-fi books. Something that Piers couldn’t get enough of.

The arrangement suited both of them, as the boatman didn’t want to spend a lot of money and Piers couldn’t afford to buy his own books. He loved loosing himself in the wonderful worlds held within the book’s pages, imagining that he was the hero who would save the world.

Regularly behind with his rent, Piers’ landlord had finally got fed up with him and kicked him out. After sleeping rough in the woods for a couple of weeks, Mrs Proctor had offered him the use of her old bothy in return for helping out with her animals and doing odd jobs around the smallholding. She even came over now and then to tidy up for him, always berating him about the bottles scattered about the place.

Living in the bothy had been the happiest time of Piers’ life - except for the aliens that is. Since his mother’s death, the aliens had been quiet, only coming to terrorise him in his dreams. But he knew they were out there somewhere, waiting for him. That one day soon now they would come for him, as they had come for his mother.

Piers always felt empty when he thought about his mother and how the aliens had killed her, had taken the only thing that had ever had any meaning in his life. Piers had been frightened at first that he had somehow caused his mother’s death, that the aliens might have followed him here from the island and had then taken revenge by killing his mother. It seemed that way in his frequent nightmares.

He knew that they wanted him dead, because of what he had seen on Flat Rock Island and that terrified him. So Piers had slowly laid out his plans. How he would find out where they had their nest and how he would kill them.

Nobody else believed in their existence but Piers knew different. He had seen them on Flat Rock Island. He knew what they were capable of. His plans were near completion now and soon he would be able to stand tall.

“I’ll make you proud of me mother. You see if I don’t.”