By Gavin Turner
Giles was staring in the mirror, his reflection being the second most important thing in his life apart from his actual perfectly preened face. Once he had raised enough funds, he was set to fork out for the teeth inliners. Then he would be able to bring out the smile that he felt he always deserved. He spent a fortune on the best moisturisers for his skin, the best razors for his sharp designer stubble and every other accoutrement that you could imagine. All of this self-care indulgence came at the expense of his rather grotty apartment which he could clearly never let anyone see. There was nothing about it. It seemed ignoble to have such a well preened individual living in such a squalid little hole, but he told himself that this was just temporary. In any case it was not possible to judge him by an apartment that you would never see. They could judge him on the beautiful bars he hung out in instead. Fake it till you make it right?
He was just taking one final look before he was about to head out. That was when he saw it. A slight blemish to, in his mind, his otherwise perfect visage. An elongated hair protruding from the otherwise smooth flick of his left eyebrow. Sadly, he didn’t have time to deal with it now. Already late for the train. He would make sure that he paid it significant attention on his return, find the tweezers and use the lit mirror from the bathroom. If he couldn’t find the tweezers, he would just use the kitchen scissors and get as close as he could. He grabbed the keys to his poky flat, kicked the pile of post to one side and shut the door behind him. That was the first sign for Giles that something today was not quite right. 15th March. Remember that date. We all do.
As it turned out, and as you will no doubt be aware, there was no need to rush for the train that day. Giles found himself standing at the station, slightly sweaty in his designer suit, gripping his ticket between his fingers in his right-hand pocket in case it should tumble out.
The station was desolated. An impromptu strike it seemed. No trains passing through today. It was supposed to be a face-to-face meeting day. Work insisted on holding them occasionally. There was no way he could reach his destination now. He would have to dial in which he hated, being up on the big screen in front of everyone. That was when the judging would be happening. He would be all sweaty, and then there was the eyebrow hair which maybe not everyone would notice but some people would for sure. He liked to present himself with this crisp in control image which was about to be debunked as soon as he pressed the present button. He had been in those meetings before when Julia was up on screen and had spent the whole morning wondering whether she was aware of her slightly lazy eye, or that her roots had started to come through again. They would be applying the same level of criticism to him no doubt and that was the problem. He did not take well to criticism at the best of times but when he already felt flawed, well that might just be too much.
Giles ambled back to the flat. It was a cool morning and the chill from a departing Winter was helping cool him down. He made a filter coffee, cleared the plates and cups from his desk space and took a deep breath before clicking on the screen. He saw the meeting room expound before him and heard the general chatter of the attendees milling around, sipping coffee, comparing notes, straight to mute. As his boss Melinda entered the room, he sensed the atmosphere change. The meeting sound was still muted but he could pick up on the animation in front of him. Melinda seemed to be pointing outside as if she had just witnessed something. Some of the women put their hands to their faces and the men put their hands on their hips or reached for their phones. There seemed to be a general air of panic about the group now. He tried sending a quick chat message to ask if everything was ok, but it seemed to get ignored. He had already noticed that there were a number of people who were absent.
Not just because of the train strike but because they had called in sick. He flicked the sound back up to see if his intuition was right. Perhaps it had been a mistake to not really pay attention to the news this morning.
At this point Susanna leaned in close to the screen. It appeared at first that she was going to say something. Then the screen went blank, and the call ended. Almost immediately after this he received the cancellation notice on his phone, unforeseen circumstances.
“Day off then” he said to himself. He started to lean backwards and put his hands behind his head, then remembered the strand he intended to deal with and proceeded to the bathroom to try and remove the ugly straggler.
He ran his finger across his eyebrow. He could not be sure, but it did feel as if it had increased in length in the last hour. It was almost imperceptible. He gave it a gentle tug to see if it was one of those weak hairs that might just fall out, like the ones on top of his head. It didn’t snap, it just seemed to go with the flow, pulling and pulling further and further. He gave it a yank with the intention of breaking it off. This did not work as he felt the other strands of hair in his eyebrow twist around this single strand and seemed to move with it. It was as if the strand had invisible finger-like strands of its own, gripping tight to anything that happened to be nearby. The eyebrow and surrounding flesh began to deform and twist the expression on his face. The skin pulled painfully taut, and he immediately let go.
The whole of his eyebrow was unravelling. He tried pushing the hair upwards into his hairline. No, that wasn’t going to work. He tried twisting it round on itself. Again, this just seemed to make it stronger, more like a thick thread now than a hair. What was going on?
Outside, he could hear crying in the distance, probably the baby across the street. It was always crying, why didn’t they pick it up, look after it properly?
“Why have a baby if you don’t want to look after one?” he said to himself.
It did seem to have been going on for a while. Come to think of it, the baby may well have been crying before he left the house to catch the train. It seemed like a long time to keep going like that. Maybe it was a different baby. He made an arbitrary mental note that he should really try and pay more attention to the other people who actually lived on the street rather than being so self-absorbed. He just couldn’t be bothered with all the small talk, about the changes to the weather, or how it was always raining. Plus, people with babies were the worst. A single solitary mind numbing topic of conversation, talking in a way as if their experience of parenthood was unique to them. He imagined a baby with thick bushy eyebrows and smirked to himself. Now that would be a talking point.
The last thought snapped him back into the room and he stood there trying to decide what to do next. He was frightened that if he pulled any further, he might rip his own face off in the process. Rummaging in the drawer he located some nail clippers. It wasn’t the tweezers he originally desired but then that approach clearly wasn’t going to work. He threaded the now entangled hair through the tiny slot between the metal teeth and pressed hard. There was an audible clip as the hair dropped away, much like you hear when a toenail pings off across the room. This was unusual, hair is not normally so brittle he thought, but this was clearly some kind of rogue hair that he just wanted off and away. A single tear of liquid seeped from the follicle. He rubbed the liquid between his finger and thumb before quickly recognising the searing pain now rushing through his skin. The liquid felt like greasy searing oil, straight from the frying pan. He ran his hand under the cold tap for a few seconds which seemed to do the trick. The skin had quickly numbed but felt like a blister coming with a telling pulsing throb in the background. He knew by now this couldn’t be a hair. It was something else. Outside, the baby seemed to have stopped crying momentarily. Outside the world seemed incredibly quiet and distant.
This was not going well. To deal with the two inflicted injuries at once seemed a tricky task. Grabbing a wad of tissue and holding it to the side of his head. He pressed the wad between the two fingers that suffered the grease. It wasn’t helping the pain but at least it would keep the wounds clean. Giles left the bathroom and tweaked the thick curtains on his bedroom window with his uninjured hand. There wasn’t any traffic passing the flat window. Just a couple of joggers on the street. They were going at quite a pace. Runners or sprinters would have been a more apt description.
“Fitness freaks,” he muttered to himself and then absent mindedly pinched his belly fat to see how this had been going over the past few days. He had a good idea of what it should feel like, what was a good level, what was a put down the doughnuts down you fat lump level. That was when the next thing went wrong. As he was gently squeezing the excess fold in his tummy he heard an audible pop sound. It was like a flat squelchy pop. The realisation of what had just happened was quickly followed by the urge to retch his miniscule breakfast straight onto the threadbare carpet.
Giles suddenly didn’t feel well at all. He knew this would require a surreptitious inspection of the ‘pop’ area, but he almost dared not find out what had happened. He had experienced issues in the past, a hernia which was horrible, and during one restless uncomfortable night he had even forced himself to take a haemorrhoid selfie, having to see what was keeping him awake. The resultant graphic image had given him terrible nightmares when he did eventually get to sleep. It was like a small bunch of pulsing pinkish grapes, loitering round an open grave.
Giles gently pulled at the tails of his shirt, lifting it out of his trousers and peered downwards. He almost vomited down his wool jacket. It appeared he had somehow, almost inexplicably managed to pop his belly button out. Surely not, perhaps it was some kind of hernia but was just right over it. He gave it a gentle nudge. The belly button squirmed a little as if trying to fathom its new surroundings. Then it looked at him, or at least it would have done if it had eyes. It sensed him, sensed its host. The tiny folds of the button began to stretch and yawn, revealing a small pink tongue.
“Allo Gilesy babes” said the belly button.
He screamed at this new wiggling extremity holding his hands as far away from it as he could.
“Stop that screaming you preening twit, don’t be a liability” the belly button rasped.
Giles changed tack and tried to make a grab for it. Perhaps he could rip this thing out. The button seemed to guess his move and recoiled, pushing its way back inwards as Giles fought to try and grasp it. In the struggle he had barely noticed the elongated eyebrow thread had also began pushing its way further and further out of his skin. Before he realised what was happening. He felt the not insignificant thread wrap itself tightly around his throat, paralysing him momentarily.
“Now…that wasn’t very nice, was it?” the button hissed. Be careful boy, I can see there’s work to do with you. Lots of work”
“Leave me alone!” Giles screamed.
“Too late for that caper Gilesy babes” the belly button replied. “We are already so well acquainted”.
The thread, sensing that a moment of pax had arrived, loosened the grip round Giles’ neck just enough to allow significant air to pass through the windpipe, but no more.
Giles’ smallish brain was reeling. He was trying to think if there was anything in the hours of late night tv and TikTok reels that would help him in this situation. Of course there wasn’t. Even he knew that was all vacuous nonsense. It must be some kind of parasite he thought, perhaps from that trip to Thailand. He had heard they could grow without a person being aware of it and that it is possible for them to remain dormant in the system for a while. But he had never heard of one that could speak. Perhaps he was actually going mad, it was happening.
He slowly moved his hand down to his pocket. The grip around his neck had not reduced and the belly button seemed to just be glaring at him. If it had eyes, it would have been glaring. Glaring with its little dribbly mouth.
He pulled up the phone out of his right pocket and tried to ring the doctors. Just an answerphone. The message advised that he could try for an appointment in a couple of weeks, but they would likely be too busy to see him.
The belly button had been paying curious attention to his actions.
“Oh dear, I don’t think the local doctor is going to help you here chum, do you?” It had a curious raspy wet laugh.
“What do you want?” Giles whispered, his throat constricted by the thread, and fear.
The button paused as if considering how best to answer the question.
“Quite simple Gilesy baby, you, or more accurately, your lovely wee face”. The end of the thread gently stroked Giles cheek. He tried to bat it away, but it was far too thin
and quick to make any difference. He just ended up slapping himself in the face. It kind of helped.
“You need to calm yourself, boy. I have plans, but don’t worry. You just sit yourself down and relax. Let me take care of things from here on in”
“But I have work, my life, how can I?”
“Like I said Gilesy baby, just let me see to all that. Now sit down. And relax”. As the final words rasped from the button, Giles felt a kind of calmness come over him, as if he had just been injected with some kind of sedative. He let his body slump into the chair. He felt his left hand reach for the remote and press the button, sparking the TV to life again.
A wave of chaos slewed across the screen. In his dazed state, at first, he assumed the image was somewhere far away, a third world country perhaps where riots were plentiful, till he saw something familiar. A red post box. There was a man standing on top of it wielding what appeared to be a large samurai sword. The man screamed something unintelligible before plunging the sword into his own naked guts. There were two things which made Giles curious about this. One was that the man had attacked himself, which was odd, but he had all too recently done the same thing, admittedly not with a samurai sword, but this was mainly because he didn’t own one. He had a set of steak knives somewhere at the back of the cupboard, but it was hardly worth the effort. The second noticeable item was the red post box because this told him that this was happening here, in this country. The processing of all these facts seemed to come at him in measure stages. His brain not able to fully process more than one element at a time. In fact, as he paid more attention to the picture on the screen, he realised that the shop where the post box was outside looked increasingly and alarmingly familiar. This was down the road. Literally down the road. He tried to reach the window, but his legs would not allow it. A further piece of information appeared on the horizon of his horrified brain. They weren’t joggers he had seen previously; they were running for their lives. The baby he heard screaming wasn’t a baby at all. It was constant. It was the scream of many many different voices, intermittent, from different directions. Whatever was happening out there now he knew he needed to keep himself safe. It then crossed his mind, that perhaps the thing that was out there, was already in the house, and he had just caught a glimpse of it.
“That’s right, ” said the button. Can’t hide from me boy. You need to relax, and I have work to do. I will be talking to you again in the morning Gilesy babes. In the meantime, don’t go anywhere”.
The belly button retreated. The hair slowly retracted itself into his eyebrow. Within a few moments, everything inside the flat appeared to be as normal as it had been. He felt the control return to his numb limbs; he felt calm. Giles slid down from the armchair. He was sweating profusely. He was exhausted and very very frightened. But whatever this thing was, he had seen what was happening outside. One battle at a time. He double locked the door. He had no intention of going out there tonight. And he definitely had no intention of letting anyone in.
The next day it was back, this elongated hair, thin as a whisper protruding from the side of his head. He had not felt any further movement in the night, despite regularly checking and feeling around to see if he could find something. No, whatever it was seemed to have disappeared, at least from that end. He had not noticed the TV powering down, but it was definitely not working now on any channel. He knew the next video call was scheduled for 9am and surreptitiously he managed to get himself together. Slicked back the elongated headband and tucked it beneath his hairline with a handful of hair gel in the hope that no one would notice. But the call never happened. He tried numerous times to get online and call his colleagues, even the ones he didn’t like much. He couldn’t get through to anyone. It was as if everything had just stopped.
For the next couple of days, he became less concerned about the wisp of hair. It did not seem to grow or shrink and actually seemed to respond positively to his touch every now and again, it slid back in line with his hairline. It felt like the hair, or tail, let’s be clear here it is definitely more like a tail than a hair was willing to at least give the illusion of being compliant.
The button had not returned. He had felt fairly unwell for the last couple of days, but not going anywhere and resting had helped. Eventually work seemed to get back to normal. It was put down as some kind of major IT glitch that had righted itself. As if someone had reset everything. Work had seemed to pass in a daze, and yet unlike previously, Giles was actually getting compliments from his colleagues. ‘Great idea Giles’, and ‘you have aced this one Giles’ were becoming regular catchphrases. He did not really recall having done anything different to his usual approach or level of effort. In fact, he hardly recalled doing any of the usual work at all. The work was getting done though. It probably felt like anyone’s idea of the perfect day, you can be passive, do nothing and yet the work still gets done and the company is happy. We want to keep people happy, don’t we?
In the evenings he would usually chill out with a couple of beers and a bit of TV. Again, there was some sense that something terrible had been happening, but that he really should not spend his time worrying about it. There were some fairly awful things going on in the world most of the time. Typically, these were things that we humans were doing to each other, so why would we be so unduly worried about anyone, or any other thing seemingly causing there to be no really important issues of the day. In some ways it might even seem like the world was potentially getting better for most of us.
“Allo Gilesy babes” said the button, waking him sharply from a beer induced slumber on the sofa.
Giles opened his eyes wide and watched the snake like button wend its way towards his face, simultaneously wrapping its stringy tale around his neck. “Long time no see” it chuckled, before plunging the thread of its tail directly into his left eye socket. Giles felt the searing pain, as if every thought and feeling he ever had was being ripped away and spiralled round this single white-hot spike. He tried for several seconds to keep himself conscious but eventually succumbed to the painless dark.
Not sure how long he had been out for, but it appeared to be a morning, not necessarily the next morning. It could have been a week. He felt hungry, but somehow rejuvenated, as if a lot of the pressures and stress he had previously experienced were behind him. He somehow felt obligated to join the work call again this morning. As if it held so much more value now than it did before. He did not expect the call to work, but somehow it did. It would seem the network had somehow reestablished itself.
The tone of the call was very different this morning. People had joined because they felt obliged to. At least some people had joined – there were still a number of absences this time and he suspected he knew why. Giles felt very present and absent at the same time. It appeared that he had been put in charge at work. Everyone seemed very happy about this. He was happy about this. He was very happy. Although you would not be able to tell from the vacant expression on his face. He muted his call and sat staring at the screen, listening to them waffling on. He did not notice the hair unravel itself from his hairline, so wrapped up in what he thought may still be inside him and how cold he felt, wrapped in all that anger and fear that it was as if he was in a kind of daze. His mind would not work or contribute to the call. It was several moments before he noticed that the chat was lighting up, even though no one seemed to be typing as far as he could tell. There was text appearing, messages pinging at a rate he had never seen before, not that any of the words he saw made any sense. It was not in a language he could understand anyway. Then he saw the hair, lightly drifting down towards the keyboard in front of him and the keyboard lit up. The hair, or what he thought was a hair was subtly pressing the keys. He watched it in horror as the final return key was pressed and a message from him blipped up on the screen. Suddenly he understood what was happening. This was the tail end of the thing inside him. It was communicating with the others. He stared closely at the screen. He could see that they also had hairs unravelling from their faces. They were all talking to each other. Suddenly, with a final flurry from his own eyebrow hair the call ended, as if a final instruction had been passed between them. He understood the plan now. They were using people to host them. Using people as vehicles for them. They couldn’t make it work otherwise. Perhaps there was more to it than that, he did feel things, but not feelings he had ever experienced before, a sense of team, comradeship, belonging. He had been working in silo for so long he did not really know if he knew anyone properly, as if they were just aviators in a very realistic game. Not living things with feelings and emotions, just bags of skin.
Giles was renewed, but the old Giles was still there somewhere in the background, only able to watch as the thing that had taken over his body and his mind worked with its colleagues, holding conferences, developing plans, making calls. Arranging the next stage of their invasion.
FIN
