The Three Resurrections of Jessica Churchill

The Three Resurrections of Jessica Churchill

By Kelly Robson (excerpt)

September 11, 2001

Jessica waited alone for the school bus. The street was deserted. When the bus pulled up the driver was chattering before she’d even climbed in.

“Can you believe it? Isn’t it horrible?” The driver’s eyes were puffy, mascara swiped to a gray stain under her eyes.

“Yeah,” Jessica agreed automatically.

“When first I saw the news I Thought it was so early, nobody would be at work. But it was nine in the morning in New York. Those towers were full of people.” The driver wiped her nose.

The bus was nearly empty. Two little kids sat behind the driver, hugging their backpacks. The radio blared. Horror in New York. Attack on Washington. Jessica dropped into the shotgun seat and let the noise wash over her for a few minutes as they twisted slowly through the empty streets. The she moved to the back of the bus.

When she’d gotten dressed that morning her jeans had slipped off her hips. Something about that was important. She tried to concentrate, but the thoughts flitted from her grasp, darting away before she could pin them down.

She focused on the sensation within her, the buck and heave under her ribs and in front of her spine.

“What are you fixing right now?” she asked.

An ongoing challenge is the sequestration of the fecal and digestive matter that leaked into your abdominal cavity.

“What about the stuff you mentioned yesterday? The intestine and the … whatever it was.”

A ressurection... Photo by Elena

Once we have repaired your digestive tract and restored gut motility we will begin reconstructive efforts on your reproductive organs.

“You like big words, don’t you?”

We assure you the terminology is accurate.

There it was. That was the thing that had been bothering her, niggling at the back of her mind, trying to break through the fog.

“How do you know those words? How can you even speak English?”

We aren’t communicating in language. The meaning is conveyed by socio-linguistic impulses interpreted by the brain’s speech processing loci. Because of the specifics of our biology, verbal communication is an irrelevant medium.

“You are not talking, you are just making me hallucinate,” Jessica said.

That is essentially correct.

How could the terminology be accurate, then? She didn’t know those words – cervic and whatever – so how could she hallucinate them?

“Were you watching the news when the towers collapsed?” the driver asked as she pulled into the high school parking lot. Jessica ignored her and slowly stepped off the bus.

The aliens were trying to baffle her with big words and science talk. For three days she’d had them inside her, their voice behind her eyes, their fingers deep in her guts, and she’d trusted them. Hadn’t even thought twice. She had no choice.

If they could make her hallucinate, what else were they doing to her?

The hallways were quiet, the classrooms deserted except for one room at the end of the hall with 40 kids packed in. The teacher had wheeled in an AV cart. Some of the kinds hadn’t even taken off their coats.

Jessica stood in the doorway. The news flashed clips of smoking towers collapsing into ash clouds. The bottom third of the screen was overlaid with scrolling, flashing text, the sound layered with frantic voiceovers. People were jumping from the towers, hanging in the air like dancers. The clips replayed over and over again, The teacher passed around a box of Kleenex.

Jessica turned her back on the class and climbed upstairs, joints creaking, jeans threatening to slide off with every step. She hitched them up. The biology lab was empty. She leaned on the cork board and scanned the parasite diagrams. Ring worm. Tape worm. Liver fluke. Black wasp.

Some parasites can change their host’s biology, the poster said, or even change their host’ behavior.

Jessica took a push pin from the board and shoved it into her thumb. It didn’t hurt. When she ripped it out a thin stream of blood trickled from the skin, followed by an ooze of clear amber from deep within the gash.

What are you doing?