Hyperparasitism

It had never entered his head that his son was not his own blood. How could it have? But doubt was such an insidious thing, digging into the day-to-day, distorting everything it touches, and even Kal couldn’t deny it.

 

“Jon? Are you still awake?” Kal rasped outside his son’s bedroom door and waited. His hands itched to knock, but he just stood there. It wasn’t rational, how could it be? To doubt his wife—bless her, who passed well before her time, through some disaster that not even he knew the full extent of, other than the fact that she’s died died died—wasn’t in his nature. Dishonouring her memory is an evil he didn’t want to contemplate. But May never did tell him anything on a whim, without being certain. He didn’t know what to weigh higher: Irene’s love and fidelity, or his sister’s all-knowing, all-seeing eyes.

 

He shivered at the thought. May might be wrong, but she rarely is—a gift and a blessing both.

 

“Jon?”

 

“Yeah, Dad?” In the back of his mind was a persistent static, telling him to leave it alone. It made him respond before he realised it, like some evolutionary survival mechanism—one that hadn’t let his ancestors down, and one that refuses to die here.

 

“Nothing, just—don’t stay up too long, okay? I’d better see your lights off in an hour.”

 

“Sure, Dad.”

 

“Okay, ‘night.”

 

“Good night, Dad.”

 

———

 

The other thing about doubt was that it brings everything else into focus. Every action—the ones he had written off as eccentricity—was brought to light. But there was something else too, because even if Jon wasn’t his own, he certainly wasn’t anyone else’s.

 

Perhaps Kal needed to be clearer: his son is a carbon copy of him. The only difference between them was Jon’s blue eyes, something that has always seemed odd to both him and Irene. Kal’s own eyes were brown, and Irene’s were a brilliant green. He remembered asking Irene about it, on the hospital bed, when he would talk about everything and nothing, when Jon was only a few years old and already on his way to losing his mother.

 

“Well, Kal, you know my mother has grey-ish eyes and your grandfather has blue. It’s lucky, really, because otherwise we wouldn’t be able to distinguish you two.” Irene had teased, but her voice had been flat, and Kal couldn’t help but wonder what she meant, with her skin pale—paler than sickness, closer to death, but hindsight always makes things clearer than they were at the time—and eyes blown wide. She knew, somehow, even then, that Jon would grow up to look just like him.

 

“He has your nose, dear.”

 

“No, he doesn’t, Kal. Stop lying.” She had looked at him, amused, but underneath was a disappointment that spread. He hated it, when she looked at him like that—guilt, and something else, always spiralled in his stomach whenever she did, and Kal could never meet her eyes. 

 

He always thought, back then, despite how she was stuck in bed rest for weeks, that he would always have a chance to learn. To meet her gaze straight on and hold his ground. He guesses he’ll have to be content with her memory. The memory of her smile and her hand clasping his, warning him about something—because her words couldn’t be anything else, a warning, but of what?—all the while he tried to read between the lines.

 

“Kal! Did you leave your specs at home again? I told you you should bring them whenever you go out. Otherwise, you spend an hour trying to read the clock.”

 

Yes, Kal has to be satisfied with what she left, even if that boy wasn’t his. 

 

———

 

Kal thinks he can be even clearer. He can trace his paranoia to one instance. But just because he could, didn’t mean he should. Everything would be fine if he had hallucinated the entire incident, but he knew he couldn’t have. He remembered the coffee he was drinking earlier sticking to his mouth, the open window that brought in a bit too much breeze, but not enough to force him to close it. 

 

“Hey, Dad, why do you watch these documentaries so often?” Jon had asked him, burying himself among the blankets of the sofa.

 

“Well, your mother and I watched these a lot. She used to be a zoologist, you know? This insect stuff always fascinated her.”

 

It had been a few years after Irene wilted away on that bed, and Jon was nine. Insects and parasites, if she ever got the chance, Irene told him multiple times, would be her life’s calling. Kal thought that the most interesting thing about them was how deceptive it all was. The bright colours, the iridescent shells in the light, all hiding something else. That they have their own world, one that humans couldn’t peer into. And as the hairworm dug into the cockroach’s mind, controlling it like a puppet, Kal was sure he was fine with not knowing. 

 

“Well, you know, Dad, that project I had to do at school?”

 

“The one about the senses, Jon?”

 

“Yeah, my group had to do ours on taste. But most of our group was sick, so it was just Alex and me.” Jon sank deeper into the cushions, humming, “It’s really cool, Dad, the way the human senses mix together. A lot of what you might taste is just a product of smell.”

 

“Oh, so that’s why your Aunt May is always so picky. She says that some foods she can’t stand because ‘the odour is too strong’.”

 

Jon nods, mechanically in agreement, continuing, “Taste buds play a role in taste. You know, determining one of the five major types of flavours that a food has. But, Dad, the nuance and the real depth come from smell, which the brain makes into a complete ‘taste’.”

 

“Honestly, sometimes I think you eat more with your eyes than your mouth, Jon. Don’t think this justifies you not eating your vegetables.”

 

“Of course not, Dad.” Jon turned back to the TV, just as an ant fell victim to the tapeworm’s parasitic growth, and climbed up a blade of grass. It waited to be eaten by the grazing sheep, to start the fluke’s life cycle again. 

 

Jon stilled, but not at the grim sight in front of him. Kal didn’t want Jon to watch it. Even now, Kal was unsettled by the cruelty of these small things. There was an uneasy feeling that followed him, like a pricking on the back of his neck, when he learnt about the way that worms make fish flap over the surface of the water into the mouths of gulls. But Jon sat there, maybe absorbing what was happening on the screen or maybe thinking of something else entirely.

 

His eyes burned with intensity, and his face was blank, before he asked, “Say, Dad, what perfume did Mom use before she died?”

 

“She liked switching it up, but I think her favourite was this green tea one. She said she liked it because other perfumes tended to be too sweet for her.”

 

Jon nodded, like he had thought so, before moving all his attention back to the documentary in front of them.

 

And if Kal strained his ears, he could have sworn he heard something mummuring, “Yes, she did taste a lot like that.”

 

———

 

“May, am I going crazy?” Kal buried his face in his hands, a flush travelling up his neck. He felt ill, if anything about it all. Never mind blood or paternity or any of that, because right now, Kal wasn’t even sure if Jon was even—

 

“Human. You think he isn’t human?”

 

Jon was fifteen now. Kal carted him off to his football practice, and he called his sister to meet him at the nearest cafe between her accounting firm and the soccer field. He had an hour, maybe two, before Jon’s practice was over. He and May are tucked into a booth inside the store, and his hands shook as he held his cup, knuckles white.

 

“I… when I told you two years ago that Jon wasn’t your son, I didn’t think that—”

 

“But you agree with me, right? That he’s something else?”

 

“Are you sure that you heard him right?”

 

“I don’t know what to think, May. I— I don’t.”

 

Jon hit his first major growth spurt seven months ago. He still looked so much like Kal that it was unnerving, but Kal knew that it was more than that. Jon was only slightly shorter than him, and Kal didn’t even know what creature—and how sick it made him, the guilt that choked his throat, the thought of how disappointed Irene must be in him in thinking of their son like that, and how disappointed he is in himself when the idea that she might have known crossed his mind—shared his home. Sometimes, Jon had nightmares, and he would ask to share the bed with him. Not as much anymore, but when he was younger and the possibility that Kal might wake up mutilated, faceless rattled in his skull. If he even woke up at all.

 

The idea that this thing that he’s been calling his son might not be his son anymore. (How does he know if ‘Jon’ was his son at all, in the first place?).

 

And the belief—because that was what it was, an unwavering belief, the certainty of the matter—that if Jon decided to attack him, or god forbid, May, there wasn’t a thing either of them could do.

 

“He’s not going to hurt you, Kal.”

 

“How do you know that? He’s stronger than me now, or at least he comes close. You should see how strong his handshake is.” Kal laughed because the alternative was shutting down, “It’s only a matter of time.”

 

“Kal. Listen to me. You’re convenient. You feed him, you clothe him. Maybe one day he’ll do something, but right now, you’re useful to him.”

 

“And for how long will it stay like that, May? What? Until he graduates? Until he finds some mate, and makes another empty, doll shell? For all we know, his kind are aliens, or parasites, or a million other things. Oh God, what if his kind reproduce like jewel wasps and Irene was the host—is that how she— ”

 

He couldn’t think like that because otherwise he wouldn’t be able to think at all. This— this whole thing was inconceivable, large, unthinkable. He tried to keep his voice down, since they weren’t the only customers here. But May did not look surprised.

 

“Kal. Breathe. Does he know you suspect anything?”

 

“May, I, I–”

 

“Does. He. Know?”

 

“No. I don’t think so.”

 

“Then, we’ve got the advantage. Here’s what we’re going to do—”

 

A ping from his phone buzzed against his leg. He took his phone out. On the screen, Jon’s name flashed. The text message read: ‘Can you come pick me up soon? I think we’re going to finish in ten minutes. Say Hi to Aunt May for me, Dad.”

 

He and May shared glances. For a moment, everything was quiet, but they both had their roles to play. May motioned him to leave, brushing the words, ‘meet me here next week’, on the off chance that Jon was somehow watching both of them. Kal didn’t think it helped, or really even mattered.

 

———

 

Time was a strange thing. That thought crossed his mind when Irene passed on, when Jon first crawled into his arms. Eighteen years go by in both an eternity and a second. Well, Kal supposed it was more than that now, considering Jon’s birthday was two months ago. But it was time to let go.

 

Jon grew taller than him. Not by a lot, but he notices it whenever his son stands close to him. When they sit together, once in a while, to watch another documentary. When it’s up to Jon to choose, he always picks one about people, about the wars of the past and the ones in the present. Kal wonders if he views people in the same way he views insects. Something familiar and yet so foreign, existing in some other world. 

 

In his graduation gown, Jon is striking. In the ceremony, all the parents say the same things, ask the same questions. It would go like this.

 

“Your son looks so much like you!”

 

Kal would only nod his head in a dismissive sort of agreement in hopes of changing the subject as soon as possible.

 

“Oh, where’s his mother?”

 

Kal would say that she passed away when Jon was young, and after the condolences and ‘did you not get remarried?’ and ‘it must have been so hard for the two of you’, the conversation peters out, and Kal asks about their kids instead. 

 

“Did you know, Kal?” May whispered to him, when they sat down for the ‘speeches and final farewells’ part of the ceremony, “Your son’s valedictorian.”

 

Kal wonders if he should finalise his will. He wondered if it mattered.

 

“Thank you, everyone, for this great opportunity.” Unnatural, like rubber forced into something it’s not. That’s how he feels, listening to his son’s words and glowing happiness at this grand honour. But he pulls his face into a smile, because even if this parasite hijacked his life, he will make sure Jon grows into a blooming rose, a soaring butterfly. That’s what a parent was meant to do, and it was what Irene would have done if she were still with them. Affection is a sickness in and of itself, Kal supposes. 

 

“I want to thank my dad, most of all. He was the one there for me—always there for me. I think some people might pity me for it, but I never cared that it was just the two of us. He’s my inspiration, my rock, and I hope to make him proud.”

 

And the tears down his face are not forced. He hopes that Jon feels the same about his words.

Writer – Areeba Zabrina
Editor – Alvia Farooqui
Artist – Maryam Nawaz

–May 2026–