This is the next story in the Mira-series, although you may notice that
there is apparently a new lead character.

Not to worry, though, Mira shall return...

--
Karel Jansens
kareljansens@tiscalinet.be

"We're here to kick ass and chew bubble gum, and we're all out of gum."
(Dr. Zulu of Team Diotoir on Robot Wars Extreme)

Annie was mad.

In a quite literal sense too.

She had been lying motionless, naked, on a concrete floor for what seemed
to her faltering mind like forever, but was in reality a little less than
three days. She had been laid on her back by that woman, her head propped
up with her own clothes so that, as she had put it, "She could see Baby
better". Annie did not know what that woman had meant.

She could not move; no muscle in her body obeyed her anymore. She could
still breathe, though, and her eyes moved. She could even - painfully
slowly - blink, but that was it: her mouth hung open and a steady, but
slinking line of drool dribbled on her chest. And, although she was
unaware of it, she was lying in a puddle of her own piss and shit.

She could smell it though. All her senses worked as before. She could see,
hear the breathing of her friends, smell the stink and feel. Mostly she
felt pain. It started in her pussy with a burning, aching pain, as if
someone had poured boiling water in it - and the water would not get any
colder. From there a sharp line of intense hurt seemed to sear through her
insides, right up into her chest, where a hard ball of suffering grew
every second.

People assume you get used to hurting, but that is wrong. We get used to
pain, because we can focus our mind onto something else. Annie was with
her pain 24 hours a day, without even the possibility to rub the sour
spots; the pain did not go away, nor did she get used to it.

Her chest, she noticed, had now started to slightly convulse. For a second
Annie hoped that the paralysis had started to wear off, but then the pain
intensified - and intensified again. Right below her ribs, the skin of her
belly started to bulge out, and again the pain got worse. Then the blood
came... A fine tricle at first, but as her skin tore, it started to spurt.
Inside her head, Annie screamed and screamed...

Something crawled out of the hole in her chest! It was all covered in
blood and slime, about the size of a big rat, but shaped differently. It
looked more like a miniature human, but there seemed to be something wrong
with its head.

The hatchling lay on Annie's chest, that had already stopped bleeding, and
started cleaning itself. After about ten minutes of vigourous grooming, it
must have considered itself clean enough and focused its attention to
Annie's motionless body beneath it. There still was something wrong with
its face, although Annie was by now too far gone to care anymore.

The hatchling cuddled up on Annie' s chest, almost lovingly lying its head
between her tiny breasts. It cooed over her nipples, and then opened its
mouth, as if it wanted to suckle. But the thing's mouth kept opening
wider, revealing a jawline that incredibly stretched out almost behind its
ears!

And those inhuman jaws were lined with three rows of pointed, razorsharp
teeth! Slowly, showing already the species' sadistic nature, "baby" closed
its jaws over Annie's left nipple and bit it off.

It is hard to say if Annie was capable of feeling yet more pain, but blood
was certainly gushing from the wound; and then, amazingly, it stopped
almost instantaneously. Baby's saliva, unbeknownst to Annie, contained a
strong coagulating agent. In the longer term, this would most likely cause
Annie's death through an embolism, but it was quite impossible that Annie
would live long enough for that to happen.

The nipple had only sharpened the thing's appetite and it was now looking
up and down its host's body, probably looking for the tastiest bits.
Tantalyzingly slowly it crawled up poor Annie's chest, until it sat
straddle-legged on her throat, curiously inspecting Annie's motionless
face. It extended one hand, revealing almost inch-long retractable claws,
and slid one of those claws behind Annie's left eye-ball. It seemed to
take an inordinate amount of effort to pry it free from its socket, but
finally, with a moist and unpleasant sound, it flopped free. hanging from
its optical nerve from Annie's cheek. The girl could amazingly still see
from it, although the last sight was Baby's teeth closing down on it. They
say that the optical nerve does not transmit pain signals. They obviously
do not know what they are talking about...

It was dark. Night, Annie remembered was the word. She did not remember
many words anymore; every time her head cleared up. Baby got hungry again.
There was not that much of her left anymore: She could see that her right
arm had been eaten almost up to the shoulder. It was mostly the fingers
that had hurt a lot, she had not felt much of the rest. Her left leg must
have been eaten also, because that had hurt a lot too, but she could not
see how much of it was left. Her breasts, tiny as they as yet were, were
completely eaten away, leaving only two open wounds, one of which she
thought she could see white ribs peaking through. Flies had already
gathered on it and laid their eggs in the open flesh.

A fresh sting of pain shot through her: Baby must have woken up. This time
the hurt emanated from between her legs, from her cunny! Baby was biting
off her cunny and eating up her vagina! But it was only when the hatchling
started at her clitty that Annie got to a new level of pain...

The parasite had grown considerably, from the size of a big rat to almost
as big as a large dog. It's proportions were still those of a human child
of about fen years old. This shape was necessary for the next phase of its
existence, but for this it needed to grow..

And so this time it did not stop eating, but burrowed itself deeper into
Annie 's ravaged underbelly, eating away at her warm intestines and
working its way upwards.

Annie was now dying, too many vital organs had been damaged or simply
eaten away. Her suffering had transcended to a level of what could - had
she remembered the word - almost be called happiness. Absent-mindedly she
took note of the fact that Baby ate carefully around her heart, preferring
large parts of her lungs instead.

The last thing her eye saw was Baby again emerging from her chest, opening
its huge jaws and closing them over her face.

Darkness...

"Baby's" long, agile tongue licked out the last remains of Annie's brains
from the lower half of her skull. All that remained of the girl was a
jumbled mass of bones, skin and hair. The parasite, now nearly the size of
the ten-year old girl it mimicked, sat next to the remains, washing itself
like a perverted cat. Suddenly it stopped, looking somewhat puzzled.
Until now, its entire existence had revolved around food and eating, but
the food was now gone. Maybe it was devouring Annie 's brain that had
triggered the change, but in any case the parasite suddenly started
thinking...

It needed more food; already it started to feel the first premonitions of
the sharp stings of hunger. And this one was quite finished. The
little-girl shape "knew" how to proceed to get to more food: Buried in its
genetic memory was an intricate knowledge of the sexual behavioral
patterns of its prey and how to turn them into its advantage. For how, it
only wanted to eat, and its shape, coupled to a certain, inviting
behaviour, was bound to attract a subclass of the male population and lure
them into a false sense of safety and control...

But first, it needed a name. And somehow, the sounds came to it, naturally
as if they had always been there.

Having picked up the odd item of stray clothing, Annie left the abandoned
warehouse, happily skipping into an inviting world full of sunshine and
food...