The Parasite: Chapter Two

II: Parasite

“You may spin faster, ladies”, John said. Two spinning wheels were amongst them and the women had brought them outside to the small clearing in the middle of the cottages. A nice day for it, the clouds were hurrying along in the breeze and the sky was pale blue overhead.

 After what John had deemed a pitiful effort, he could see his old aunt Cathleen struggling to feed the wheel the fibres, and her calves were bulging blue and red with veins as she worked the treadle on the ground.

“Rosemary, take over. And spin as much as you can.”

His wife, who had been digging through a barrowful of semi-rotted potatoes, brushed her hands on her dress. “Aye, John.”

John had been out on the fields since he awakened, and had he told someone that his shirt was in fact white underneath the layers of brown grime and muck, they'd not have believed him. He perfectly deserved a break, did he not? For he was the one that was keeping the roofs over their heads. If it weren’t for him, in fact, this herd of old cattle would be roaming, homeless, somewhere in the Glenveagh marshes, dropping like flies. 

He had to kill the bailiff and his men, of course he did, and if he didn’t, they’d have burned the village to the ground. And so what if they come a-lookin’? Because John wouldn’t hesitate to do it again. Big John would do anything for his people, really, and he figured he’d be hard-pressed to find someone who objects to that. After the travesty at Dungloe, everyone seemed to question his actions. Method in the madness, he would respond. He’d do whatever it takes to secure the safety of this family hamlet.

So yes, he figured he deserved to come back and check if there were any remnants of whiskey at the bottom of the scattered bottles in his home. Best to make sure the women were playing their part, too. The fair day was only a week out. And believe it or not, the market for cotton and clothes far outshone the demand for rot-seized crops. 

He lingered amongst the women and tapped a bottle in his hand as he made sure his wife obeyed his order and took over the wheel. There was an awkward, shuffling silence in his presence. Waves swelled and crashed on the other side of the dunes. He watched old Cathleen who looked not like a woman but the ghost of a woman, as she rose and limped, hunch-backed and frail into her cottage. 

He swore, he swore that if he could get away with it he’d take a sickle to the elderly ones, and maybe then the food situation wouldn’t look so dire. He wiped his lips again with a dry, dirt-hardened fist. He could taste blood. Nasty habit, rubbing like that, an infection was the last thing he needed.

Rosemary sat, refraining from eye contact with John, and began with the treadle and the wheel began to spin. The other ladies dropped their heads low. In the silence, John made a pop with his finger on the rim of his empty bottle.

*

Cillian’s heart was a triphammer that wanted to break through his ribs and chest. Just a while ago, his hands were not his but now this world was not his and he floated through it, observing its strangeness like a dream. He walked into the huddled cottages of the village, past his cousins and uncles with wheelbarrows and mother and aunts sitting on their spinning wheels. There was a band around his torso that loosened and tightened and he had to get to his house before he fainted.

The door of the cottage crashed open, almost flying from its hinges and he fell forward next to an old wooden chair by the fireplace. He gagged once and twice, but what was a man to throw up if a man had nothing to eat?

(she knows, how did she… but she knows, and now I have to tell him and he’s going to)

With all his concentration, Cillian pulled in a long breath and tried to settle himself. Kyteller’s mind-reading comments had turned his world on its axis, to such an extent, that he wondered if it had even happened. But it did, of course, it did, ol’ yapper Kyteller read his thoughts like a book. But maybe she’d keep quiet.

(Keep quiet? Thon’ would chat the ear offa’ ya!)

He breathed in. And out, and the rattle in his chest subsided to a dull whir. The cottage was low and the windows were sunken and hazy in the walls. Suit from the chimney had been whipped around the mouth of the mantelpiece and blackened the ground around him. He dragged himself to his feet, leaning on a splintered table that was littered with his fathers’ empty whiskey bottles. There was a mirror above the fireplace, zigzagged with cracks and scratches, and he caught a glimpse of himself in it. 

Himself? 

He moved left and right on shaky legs and watched to see if the figure in the mirror would follow him. It did. But in the scarce light within the cottage, and how the shadows were cast sparsely by the sunken windows, he was sure it was his father. The posture, with the shoulders, slouched forward, and the wiry mess of a beard on his cheeks. It was uncanny. A stampede of remarks came into his head. 

The spit of his father, you are. You’re John in the sod! Two peas in a pod. God, Cillian, I’m sorry to interrupt but it’s just like I’m talking to John, it’s just how you speak!... 

Drunken bastard, 

rotten abusive 

Murderer! 

Murderer!

Whispers and rumours had leaked through his defences throughout the years. Who had his father murdered? He didn’t know. Who did he abuse? He had an idea. But he was yet to inquire, yet to seek answers behind his father’s seemingly-dark past. It’s in the past, he’d tell himself, it’s none of my business. But the reality was that he was afraid to know.

He looked at the mirror and the being looked back, the being who was so like his father.

He stepped forward, with one stride, cocking his blood-dried fist and driving it into the heart of the mirror. In an explosion of shimmer and glitter, the mirror fell around him.

That’s when John pulled open the cottage door. 

He stood as a silhouette in the doorframe with his hunched shoulders. Beads of glass danced to a halt on the ground. He looked at the mirror, then at his son.

“Are they buried? Is it done?”

“Yessir”, Cillian said. 

“Shovel?” John asked. Cillian nodded to it behind the door. 

John looked at the mirror, or the remnants of it, tilting his head curiously like an old Irish Wolfhound. “Good. You’re needed in the fields. Go.''

“Yessir.”