Writing for Fun
October 2016
The Parasites - Jan Osborne
The host knew she was undergoing her death throes. Unimagined pain seared through her very core and seismic convulsions were ripping her huge body apart; pain worse than the hottest fires of an imagined Hell rippled over her surface where her life fluids now oozed or in some places gushed through her wounds.
She could hear the screams of agony as the very cause of her death, her myriad parasites scuttling over her skin also writhed and burned in their very own demise.
In the split second before her oblivion she saw her own life flash before her; she, like all things in creation, had been born alone but with the passage of time she had acquired parasites that had found food and sustenance on her surface. As their demands were small to begin with, just enough to sustain life, she had tolerated and even enjoyed their companionship.
However, time passed and as the decades rolled by the tiny beings bred indiscriminately and became more voracious, even boring into her body to obtain nourishment and create more comfortable habitation for themselves.
She had tried hard to accommodate the, by now, trillions of creatures rampaging over her. They ripped and tore her body until she could not repair the damage done quickly enough and many of them died due to their own greed.
They seemed blind to the consequences of following this, their chosen path. In their frenzied gorging of her flesh to feed their selfish cravings and desires that were over and beyond simple sustenance they could not see that their actions were killing their host.
Mother Earth screamed her final cry of indescribable sadness at the insensibility and crass stupidity of her tormentors, Mankind. No voice echoed back from the vastness of space.