Ade Grant - The Mariner

[The Mariner] became transfixed by the gentleman’s confidence. Could it be true? So many therapies had been meaningless, vague attempts to pretend the problem was not there. Would this one finally remove that corruption that ate at his soul?

“I want you to look in my eyes.”

“I hope you’re not going to try to hypnotise me,” he laughed, only half-joking.

“No, no, nothing like that. But, like hypnotism, I need you to work with me. You remember what I said a moment ago, likening root problems to islands in an ocean? Well I want you to begin locating those islands now. You said you identified with that ship in the book, well imagine now that you are that ship, searching them out, putting them on a map for me to find. Can you do that?”

[The Mariner] nodded, trying his best to think of all the worst moments in his life. They hopped and squawked for attention, and many needed suppression to make way for more destined chicks.

“Good lad,” the therapist said, his voice sounding almost hungry. “Focus on all the aspects you’d like to be rid of. Can you do that?”

Indeed he could, there was so much about himself that he found disgusting, repulsive and shameful. So much in his brain that had become wired in the wrong way, grown in the wrong directions. The idea that they could be removed, pruned back, truths weeded out, seemed the only clean path to take.

“Focus. Focus. You are aboard that ship. Searching… Searching… Where’s the island? Guide me to it…”

And indeed, he was almost upon that ship, with the salty wind in his hair and the open ocean stretched out ahead. Great islands containing his horrors and shames lay scattered across the horizon. He guided the sails as the ship soared towards them, eager to tackle the para—

WASP

—tackle the parasite—

WASP

—parasite within—

WASP!

His mind swelled with a billion screams. It were as if every thought ever concocted chose that moment to rush into his head. The ocean swelled and grew furious, the islands blown apart in showers of stone and dirt that blotted out the sky like a billion locusts.

As if awoken from a dream, he was back in the office, the illusion gone. The therapist’s mouth hung agape and his eyes were droopy, looking like a well-fed cat in peaceful digestion. [The Mariner] vomited, clutching his head as it began to pound and throb.

The screams echoed in his mind as one vast roar, yet slowly singular voices were heard, disorientated and alone in the seething mass, a cathedral full of lost minds, their fearful voices mixing amongst the rafters.

Was he having a mental breakdown? Was this a brain haemorrhage? He longed to howl for help, a scream to match the ones in his head, but his voice box was frozen in panic. [The Mariner] tried to stagger away, but collapsed forward, body crumpling against the glass window. Perhaps he could bang against the pane for help? Perhaps a good Samaritan would notice and come running?

But the streets of London offered no relief. The bustling, pushing, grabbing, seething mass of commuters, tourists and locals no longer heaved against one another. Now they too lay sprawled on the ground, grasping their heads in their hands as if trying to prevent an explosion within. Some thrashed on the concrete, fingers dug deep into their ears, others simply tried to out-yell the sudden noise. But neither could blot out the screams, they were coming from inside.

He was with them. He could feel their anguish and confusion. In one instant he was aware, yet unaware, connected somehow to not just the people below, howling in the street, but everyone , every last thinking mind in the world moulding into one entity.

And the overriding feeling of this entity was loathing. Loathing, fear and disgust.

Just as he thought the screams could get no more intense, their wailing was amplified into one of pain. The collective was splitting, a great tearing taking place, driving the mass into an agonised fury, a psychic earthquake trembling both body and mind.

The therapist, still appearing fed and sated, slowly opened his eyes, realisation dawning like a frosty chill. He leapt to his feet, mouth open, shuffling like a dog caught with a stolen sausage, torn between feast and flight.

The tension in [the Mariner]’s head was immense, and suddenly whole sections of him seemed to depart, dragged off by the screaming voices. His name, his history, a lifetime of thoughts and feelings, all extinguished in one brutal rip. In an instant they were gone, leaving only ugliness, only those feelings inside that had tormented him since his life began. And they swelled to fill the void.

As abruptly as they’d arrived, the screams were gone.

He slipped to the ground, body absorbed by the carpet. Weak, limp and scared, vast sections of his brain continued to desert. He felt like a puddle evaporating on a sweltering day.

He tried to grab onto something, some aspect of himself that wasn’t being stolen, some part other than the disgust, the hateful thoughts left untouched in his head, the masochism, insecurity, the addiction to sexual pain, anything but all that filth, but all he could grasp was the ship and the ocean and the search and the islands and the Neptune and the-

Water surrounded him, carrying his body like a leaf. Dimly he could hear the sounds of windows cracking as the room filled, and soon he was dragged away by the torrent, out into the abyss, into a life he no longer remembered, and into a world broken in two.

GROANS AND SCREAMS CONTINUED TO issue through the midnight air, yet between the two figures hung a silence that continued as the memories settled in the Mariner’s head. The Pope looked somewhat relieved, as if he’d finally passed a bout of unpleasant gas.

“I’ve returned what I took. What else is gone, went with the Wasp. That I cannot bring back, it has been born and flown into the Soup. Not far though, it’s hovering just beyond, unable to leave its birthplace behind.” The Pope spoke whilst the Mariner lay in the mud, trembling from the memories now running riot in his head.

“You!” the Mariner gasped. “You were him , my therapist! You stole a part of me!”

“Not a part of you ,” the Pope explained. “A part of the Wasp . Your mind is a parasite, shared by every human being, for it is not a multitude of parasites, but a single vast one: The Wasp. Mankind was its host. Your world is its nursery.”

“My mind is a parasite?”

“Yes. You are skin and bone and guttural instinct. All those disgustingly fleshy things. The Wasp exists beyond that. You are genes, the Wasp is memes. Every thought, memory and word dancing about in that dome of yours, is part of the Wasp. Each one connected, like single cells, unaware of their significance in the larger creature. A larger creature that slept as it grew.

“For the Wasp, you humans were a host, organisms chosen by its mother to nurse her infant. She laid her eggs inside you and they’ve grown. Language, inventions, science, all these a part of the Wasp’s being, gestating inside you for so long, you believe it natural, ignoring its true parasitic nature.

“You see, without the Wasp in your head you quickly revert to your natural state, a mindless creature, hateful in its desperation to regain the thoughts once believed its own, memories that have since burst forth.”

The Mariner struggled to understand. “But the Mindless are infected with something. Aren’t they?”

The Pope laughed. “Quite the reverse, it is you who are infected, not them. You still carry some of that parasite, they do not. You call them ‘Mindless’, I would simply call them, ‘human’.