"Accident"

A gorgeous white farmhouse, with yellow shutters looms ahead in the distance.

Curls bounce and blow in the wind as a young woman gaily trots along, skipping and humming.

A 13-year-old child follows behind his mother whose gender is ambiguous. The woman with a black ribbon bow on top of her carroty hair spins around, causing her pink and yellow dress to dance before settling down.

The little boy innocently looks up smiling and then shivers. The mother notices this with a surprised and curious look on her face. She crouches down and caresses his upper arms with her hands to warm him up.

"Could it be that you are cold?" The mother asks.

…

The boy's smile suddenly disappears and the light in his eyes vanish, leaving two black holes for eyes, void of any emotion. The mother is shocked as she is seeing this 'expression' for the first time in her son. As she is about to ask her son about this, the boy's lips begin to move.

"No."

"eh?"

The mother utters as she falls backwards. She can see her son's outstretched arms and her hair flowing forward as a result of inertia. Before she realizes what had happened, a horn blares as a meat truck drives into her.

The first set of wheels snaps her arm in the middle and two ends of the bone from under the wheel poke through her skin.

The driver had braked in attempt to help her. Rather than letting the wheels roll by her, the second set of wheels started skidding due to the brakes. The sound of flesh squelching can be heard as the set of wheels shred her stomach beneath it before passing her.

Blood begins flowing from every perforation in her body and orifices. The cherry blossoms lying around dyes red as it soaks from the growing pool of her blood.

The boy remains standing by. Clearly unfazed despite witnessing a bloody scene of violence for the first time. In fact, the boy still had the same expression he did before pushing his mother.

Nothing. The boy had felt nothing. Not even a smile could be seen on the boy.

'how disappointing.' He thought.

He had his hands on his face, examining for any traces of emotion or trails of tears.

"grrrglurh"

The mother gasped. She could not speak due to a broken rib puncturing her lung. Blood pooling into it deprives her of oxygen, giving her the same sensation that a drowning swimmer would have, with lungs full of water.

She had been pushed from the sidewalk onto the street crossing and landed on her back. Had she been standing closer to the edge of the street, her head would have been smashed by the truck wheels. If bystanders did not know how agonizing it was when the truck hit, they would have thought it was fortunate that her head was safe in between the wheels and so she did not die instantly.

Was this a stroke of luck? One would have to factor in the speed, distance and weight of the truck. It would take preternatural cognitive abilities to calculate the right timing upon just noticing the truck approach.

Her arms raised upwards and then reached towards her son, falls a moment later. It is unknown if she had grasped what she had sought to reach. As the son could tell that although her eyes pointed to him, it looked like she was seeing something far in the distance.

'what she was seeing was probably in her head.' He thought.

The truck driver had come to his senses as indicated by the sound of his vehicle door opening. The son looks at his mother's mangled body in apparent shock before crying. When he cried, he did it properly, with his mouth wide open and his eyes slightly open as if trying to halt the burst of a dam but to no avail.

***

A grey blob was swimming through water in complete darkness. It was rod-shaped like a giant bacterium and threshing the water with its front tentacles. Tentacles at the tail-end spin like a boat rotor, propelling it forward.

It has photoreceptors around its body so it has a 360 degree view. Even if there was the faintest speck of light, it would see it. However, it was black all around.

It thought it was strange that there weren't any film projections floating in the air. It had seen many memories in its previous hosts' minds like dreams of eating fish and even faces of the owners in this house.

Each of the mental worlds it invaded had personalized mental structures in them. These hold some sentimental significance. In the cat's world, the ground was made of cat scratching material. Laid on it was a vast array of plushies, cushions and toys.

There were pillars of scratching posts with tree heads on top and safety nets made of stringed together fish.

There was a fountain with a giant goldfish literally made of gold in the center spewing out water and various kinds of live fish.

Giant floating yarn balls in the sky with strings stretching below it that dance like jellyfish tentacles. It was a warm scratchy place.

In Hikaru's mind, there was nothing. It was still receiving torrents of information streaming into its head as it swam deeper into his mind. It had learnt a lot about this planet from Hikaru's knowledge.

It had thought that the dominant species on Earth that built a civilization would have a much more complex mental world than other hosts. However, this could just be a defence mechanism of humanity. It wouldn't know as Hikaru was the first human host it has encountered.

It knew from his knowledge, that he was a prime specimen. His host has a high sex appeal. It was proud that it had found such a magnificent body.

When looking through his memories, it saw him killing his mother. It didn't feel startled because if it had a family, it would slaughter them too… and absorb them. It felt that there was nothing intrinsically wrong with Hikaru killing a family member as he was doing it for his own benefit. It felt a connection with him as like- minded people tend to stick together.

In this world, he would be considered a psychopath. A monster. To it, he felt more like an efficient machine.

However, it felt that Hikaru was an unusual one. Psychopaths get bored easily and despite having a lack of emotions, they seek stimulation and often have grandiose ambitions. Hikaru seemed to have dreamt about something impossible. He wanted to feel what it was like to be 'human', to have real emotions instead of simulating them. Fortunately, Hikaru had given up that absurd idea and picked up something more reasonable. World destruction.

The parasite had reached the deepest layer of his mind, but it was still completely dark. It doesn't know if souls exist but if they do, then is this a body without a soul? Could this be a mind of a psychopath?