I'd called Darren many names since he disappeared after my first prenatal scan, but a blood-sucking parasite wasn't one of them. After all, it's not like he cleared out our current account or stole the car—he just fucked off without so much as a ‘best wishes’ text, nice and simple.

Honestly, this didn’t really bother me. Much. I mean, who needs some selfish prick clinging to them like a leech? Better to be a single parent if you ask me.

But then, two weeks from my due date, an alert from the video doorbell woke me at midnight, and my immediate reaction was: oh bollocks, my child’s gonna have a crack addict for a father…

There hadn't been a peep out of that bastard (besides a few vague phone calls to his ex-Rugby pals) in months. I’d actually begun thinking he’d never show his face around town again. But now a pale, gaunt version of my ex-boyfriend was standing on the porch, wearing the chequered shirt I’d bought him for his 30th birthday, which now flapped around in the breeze, a sheet drying on the line.

“Darren,” I said into my phone.

“Alison.” He looked up at the camera. A roller suitcase lay by his feet, which meant Ashley from Pilates was right: the bastard had gone off trapezing across the globe.

“Something I can help you with?” I asked.

“We need to talk.”

“Shoot.”

“In person.”

“Goodnight.” I set the phone on the bedside counter, closed my eyes, and tried not to think about how badly I wanted a cigarette.

For five minutes Darren mashed the doorbell, again and again.

“What?” I finally snapped, irritated. “What could be so important we need to speak right this second?”

“Just hear me out, please. I wouldn’t bother you if it wasn’t urgent.” He had a burbly, uneven voice, as though his throat was packed with phlegm.

With a weary sigh, I pulled on a bathrobe and kicked on a pair of fuzzy slippers. If nothing else, this meant an opportunity to laugh—and possibly spit—in his skinny face. Hey, how’ve you been? Really, that sucks. Well, while you were doing blow under a bridge I got promoted, twice. Did you notice the new Toyota Hybrid in the driveway? Plenty of room for a baby carriage in the back seat. By the way, here’s a little ‘present’ for ya…

In the lounge we sat on a pair of armchairs directly across from one another. There was a low coffee table between us, the demilitarized zone.

Blonde hairs, which had noticably thinned since we last saw each other, lay plastered against Darren’s forehead in sweaty tangles. He still had a set of monstrous caterpillars for eyebrows.

His clothes reeked of sour milk, a stench that contaminated the house within twenty seconds flat—thank fuck I’d already passed the ‘nausea’ stage of my pregnancy.

I covered my nose and drew short, quick inhales through my mouth.

Every few seconds Darren’s hands shot up, scratching dry, marble-sized flakes along his neck, some cracked and leaky with pus.

“Well?” I said, after almost thirty seconds.

“I love what you’ve done with the place,” he replied, his brown eyes travelling around the room. Plastic clips covered the wall sockets and corner protectors ran along the sharp edges of the bookcase and cabinets lining the walls. “It looks safe. That’s good. Children need a secure environment.”

“Thanks. I did it myself.”

He scratched so persistently imaginary spiders started scuttling up the back of my neck.

Another few beats of awkward silence passed. “Well?” I said, again.

“You look fantastic.” Dirty fingernails ran across his crotch like a garden rake. “You’re really glowing.”

Tingles raced along my forearms imagining how badly his skin must have itched. “Thanks. You look like shit. What happen, you catch an STD while off on holiday?”

“…Not exactly.”

More dreadful silence, interrupted by an unintentional groan whenever I felt a slow slide across the top of my stomach. Since orienting its head toward the escape hatch, the baby had been kicking like a coked-up mule…

Darren’s eyes flicked toward my mid-section. “Are you still smoking?”

“Not since I found out I was puffing for two.” Although this was true, a sweep of the house would have turned up several Zippo lighters and packs of Marlboro’s stashed here and there. “Knocked the drinking on the head too,” I added.

Again, 100% true. However, I’d held onto some hipflasks and a few whiskey bottles. Knowing my vices were close by made quitting easier, call it a mental crutch or whatever.

While he balled a fist to stifle another coughing fit, I went to stand, letting out a deep sigh as I used the armchair for support, then said, “Well, it was nice catching up but I need some rest. This whole incubating another life thing really takes it out of you.”

“Don’t I know it,” he said.

That remark irked me enough to drop back down. “You know what Darren, you don’t know it. You fucked off to Brazil or Costa Rica or wherever it is you’ve been getting your jollies while I sat here boking into the toilet bowl day after day.”

He leaned forward in his chair, his expression suddenly serious. “You don’t understand, that’s why I’ve been traveling around the world…I wanted us to take this journey together.”

He jerked around in his seat, jaw clenched, as though jolted by an electric shock. The way he moved and spoke seemed slow, sluggish. You might easily have mistaken him for a hospice patient.

Was he sick? Or possibly dying?

Fuck, now things made sense: he’d caught a terminal disease and returned home to break the grim news. Could I still laugh at his misfortune?

...Yes. I just wouldn’t feel quite so smug about it.

Already on my last nerve, I said, “You’ve got thirty seconds to start talking sense.”

“You remember those books I was reading?”

Remember? Who could forget? The day after I surprised him with the pregnancy test, Darren brought home a stack of encyclopaedias on childbearing which I, at the time, took as a positive sign. What a joy, to have a husband so engaged with the process…

“I remember,” I answered flatly.

“Well, when I started reading about pregnancy, it was all so fascinating. The whole affair of creating life, letting it grow and develop, it’s a miracle. A true miracle.”

“No, finding a man who isn’t a complete shit head, that would be a miracle.”

Again with the scratching: neck, stomach, chest. Now I itched from arsehole to elbow.

“Just listen,” he said. “This is what it’s all about. Creation. The cradle of life.”

“Darren—”

“What I’m trying to say is I want us to nurture a family.”

This statement was met with a prolonged, sarcastic laugh. After wiping away a tear, I said, “Thanks, I needed that. But seriously, that ship sailed the minute you took your seven-month sabbatical. Sorry hon.”

“But don’t you get it? I left to start building our family.” A real edge crept into his voice, then came a series of furious convulsions; real watery, ratcheted coughs. “Can I have a glass of water?”

At this point, I only wanted to decipher this nonsense and then send him packing, permanently. After a hard eye roll, I shuffled into the kitchen, filled a glass from the tap, and returned to the lounge, scooping up a spray cannister of Febreze along the way.

Before sitting down, I liberally doused all four corners of the room, showering both Darren and the armchair with a scent of golden orchids for almost thirty seconds. Meanwhile, he just gulped down his water, oblivious. Up close I noticed tiny scarlets of veins along his thin cheeks.

The chemicals made me gag a little but were preferable to whatever you called the stench my ex kept putting out.

I set the cannister on the coffee table and plopped back into the chair, unintentionally moaning.

Darren put his empty glass on a coaster and leaned forward. “Where was I? Oh yes, I left to start building our family.”

“Fair warning Darren: If you dragged me out of bed to announce our child’s gonna have a bunch of half-brothers and sisters, you’re gonna be hobbling out that fucking door.”

Unbothered by this remark, he said, “I found these studies about twins absorbing their peer in the womb. In some cases, the second sibling becomes like a tumour, feeding off their counterpart, and that led me onto fascinating discoveries about the animal kingdom. Did you know when a male angler fish finds a mate, he bites down on her and they fuse and connect bloodstreams? The male loses his eyes and all internal organs except the testes.”

“Is this your way of telling me you’re having your brain surgically removed so you can become a walking set of cock and balls? Because I’m not sure anybody would notice the difference.”

“And it’s not just the same species,” he pressed on. “There’s a parasite known as Cymothoa exigua which enters a fish through the gills, severs its tongue, and actually becomes a replacement. Isn’t that incredible?”

“You came here to talk about fish?” I said, furious.

He sighed deeply. “I guess I’ll just have to show you.”

From across the table, I watched as he stood, unbuttoning his shirt. “I’ve been traveling all over the world: South Africa, Peru, Australia. I’ve been researching different life forms and how they grow, how they find their place in nature.”

After unfastening the final button, he held his shirt together. “And that’s why I’ve come back, so we can become one big happy family. You…me…the baby….”—the shirt got ripped open in dramatic fashion—“…and all of our little children.”

For a moment, my brain couldn’t process what it was seeing. There were uneven lumps all over Darren’s torso, out-of-control cancerous growths that he made shiver, wriggle and pulsate by flexing his arms.

As his body became alive and restless with movement, the pieces slid into place. There were parasites beneath his skin, each bulging out; outlines not unlike giant millipedes, cockroaches, and spiders, the largest longer than my forearm. Some scurried up his chest, others slithered around back, over clearly defined ribs. Every inch of exposed tissue seemed maggoty with life, pulsating, dancing.

I sank into my chair, repulsed, while Darren turned in a little circle, a proud demonstration. One of the largest creatures scurried south and disappeared beneath the beltline of his stained jeans.

Unsure whether a scream or vomit was sliding up my throat, I opened my mouth and let loose. The scream won out in the end.

Darren slowly rounded the coffee table, his frail arms outstretched. “Do you get it now? I’ve become a cradle of life.” He grinned, and as that horrible grin stretched out, I thought I glimpsed black molars but quickly realized his teeth weren’t rotten: larvae had burrowed in between the gums. Beyond the teeth, dozens of eyeballs stared at me from the back of Darren's throat. Something trickled out of his nipples, too—sickly thick globs like you'd find in your tissues whilst suffering the world’s worst head cold.

My mouth made a dry gagging sound.

“Stay away from me,” I whimpered. As he marched forward, I grabbed the can of Febreze from the table and held it against my chest, a shield. “I’m warning you.”

He leaned over my chair, his filthy fingernails digging into the armrests, cutting off any possibility of escape. That close I tasted a warm, muddy bog breath and could see a lice flourishing in his hair. My eyes couldn’t remain trained on his for more than three seconds because there was what looked like a spaghetti noodle coiled beneath his left cornea.

If the two of us touched, larvae would bore from his skin into mine, into my skeleton, slithering through my organs.

He said, “Isn’t it wonderful? In Canada I got a scan done of my lungs, and you could see lifeforms breeding in there. When the doctor pulled up the x-ray, it looked like I’d swallowed a barrel of TicTacs. All these creatures, they’re inside me right now. Growing. Multiplying. I’m an incubator, Alison. Just like you.”

These words bore into my skin, through my bones…

His greasy forehead hovered inches away from mine. This wasn’t my ex-boyfriend anymore, it was a colony. A host. I felt as helpless as a fly caught in a spider's web. My body went wild with furious, unquenchable itches.

“And together,” the creature looming over me said, eyes sliding down toward my swollen midriff. “We’re going to develop this little swarm.”

Another retching fit forced him to turn away and double over. Bumps rose and fell across his throat. Oh fuck, was he ‘birthing’? Is that why he sought me out now? Maybe he’d vomit up countless parasites that would crawl into my mouth, pumping my tongue full of toxins. I cried in a high, frightened voice, one hand clenching the Febreze tight, the other fumbling along the armchair, until my fingers touched something cold and metal stuffed beside the cushion.

Just then, an idea came to me.

Still hunched over, Darren wiped away cloudy phlegm with his forearm, looked up at me, and then said, “Let’s take this journey together, all of us. You’ll be our queen.”

Supressing my deep revulsion, I swallowed a lump and said, “I’ve got a better idea.”

His head cocked to one side. “What’s that?”

In one smooth motion I fished out the Zippo lighter stashed beneath the cushion, held it up in front of the cannister, and said, “This.”

A fat spurt of flames raced out licking Darren’s face and chest. After I released the trigger, he reeled away, quickly patted out the embers, and lunged at me, but a second, longer blast cast in a vertical arc sent him careening onto the floor, his jeans and hair both aflame.

Thank fuck smoking is so addictive…

The climb off my chair took considerable effort. Beneath me hundreds of insect voices screamed and whined along with my ex, or perhaps I only imagined that part.

In a little compartment under the coffee table, there lay a silver hipflask. I juggled it, the lighter, and the Febreze.

As Darren rose to his knees, still screaming, I doused him with the whiskey I’d been denying myself since discovering I was with child. My finger hesitated on the trigger, but only for a moment.

This time my ex really shrieked, although not solely because of the fire. Across his body, bug contours worked their way toward his jaw, searching for an emergency exit from their great inferno, while he writhed around on his back, throat swelling to bursting point.

A fountain of creepy crawlies of all shapes, sizes, and colours erupted from his mouth like a geyser, which prompted me to launch one last column of flames, igniting both Darren’s ‘little ones’ and the surrounding carpet. My ex rolled around on the floor, simultaneously trying to swat out the fire and shiver out of his burning jeans. He hadn’t yet succeeded by the time I shuffled out of the room and through the hall, one hand against my belly for support.

And as I climbed into the car, already on hold with the police, all I could think was: I have the worst taste in men…