Parasite by Tejaswinee Roychowdhury - 206 Word Stories - Bag of Bones Press

 

Parasite

by Tejaswinee Roychowdhury

 

 

A mound of noodles in Schezwan sauce. Two lobsters. Eight hot dogs. Fifteen sushis. Twenty-one dumplings. More noodles. An entire chicken; roasted. A six-ounce sirloin steak. Veni, vidi, vici—she comes, she sees, she conquers.

And she does it for him, the one hidden inside her; one to whom she is a host, a companion, a prisoner.

Parasite, she calls him in disgust.

Parasite baby, he corrects her from the hollows of her belly. He does it with an unnerving coo, a deriding coo, a scathing coo. He does it with half a growl, half a whisper. He does it with a sneer, he does it with a stutter. And he tops it off with a bite; a big fleshy bite with his razor teeth on her insides.

She writhes.

She screams.

She relents.

She must, lest the parasite devours her meat and slithers into her bones. Beautiful bones, he will trill. She must, lest the parasite escapes her shell in search of food, and lays waste to the town outside. Delicious town, he will yodel.

You should be grateful, he reminds her.

Perhaps; because the world’s funny. They will laugh, they will drool, and they will pay to watch her eat on their little screens.

 

N

 

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury is a lawyer, part-time Assistant Professor of law, and an emerging writer from West Bengal, India. Her work is published/forthcoming in Usawa Literary Review, The Birdseed, Bullshit Lit Mag, Active Muse, Third Lane Magazine, Kitaab, Borderless Journal, Funny Pearls, and elsewhere. She is also the featured (and interviewed) writer in Issue 2 of Alphabet Box. You can find her tweeting at @TejaswineeRC while she chronicles her list of publications at linktr.ee/tejaswinee.

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