(PARASYTE X WORM) CHAPTER FOUR

Taylor didn’t understand what she was looking at.

For a few seconds, maybe longer, her mind simply refused to line things up into anything that made sense. Her textbook lay open across her lap, pages half-turned, and her right hand rested on it like it always did when she read. That part was normal. 

Everything else wasn’t.

There were eyes where there shouldn’t have been, small and glossy, set into the extended fingers of her hand like they had always belonged there. A mouth too, split along the side of her palm, moving slightly as if it were sounding out the words on the page. And then something else unfolded from one of her fingers, shaping itself into a smaller, thinner hand that traced along the lines of text.

It was reading.

Taylor blinked. Once. Twice.

The image didn’t change.

Her breath came shallow as she stared, her eyes burning with the effort of keeping them open as she waited for it to blur, to snap back into something normal explainable. A trick of the light, maybe, or the vestige of a dream she hadn’t fully woken up from yet. 

It didn’t.

Instead, the thing shifted slightly, the smaller appendage tapping the page almost impatiently, the mouth pulling in a way that almost resembled a frown. And something in her finally caught up.

That was her hand. Those were her fingers. Her skin. 

And it was—

“Oh—”

The sound broke out of her before she could stop it, low and strangled, and then the rest followed all at once.

Taylor screamed.

It tore out of her, loud and sharp and completely unrestrained, the kind of scream that scraped her throat raw as it forced its way up. She didn’t think about who might hear it or what it would sound like outside her room. She didn’t think about anything at all.

She just screamed.

The thing on her arm reacted instantly.

The eyes snapped toward her, focusing with a sudden, unsettling intensity, and the mouth twisted into something that looked a lot less absentminded and a lot more aware. The smaller hand recoiled, folding back into her wrist in a motion that made her stomach lurch.

Then it changed again, folding in on itself in ways it was never meant to and stretching into something long and thin and sharp. It curved toward her throat, a blade drawn too close, the edge hovering just a breath away from her skin.

Taylor’s scream cut off, silence rushing in to fill the space it left behind.

She didn’t move.

She wasn’t sure she could.

Her eyes locked onto the thing hovering at her throat, tracking the way the weapon glinted in the morning sun. Her own pulse hammered in her ears, loud enough to drown out everything else, and she became acutely aware of how close it was. Close enough that she could feel it without touching it.

If she swallowed—

The thought stalled there, unfinished, as her doorknob turned.

The sound was small, almost insignificant, but it hit like a gunshot.

Taylor’s head snapped toward the door just as it opened, and in that same instant, the blade vanished.

Her hand was just her hand again.

Five fingers. Pale skin. Nothing else.

Her dad stepped in, already speaking, his voice filled with concern.

“Taylor—what happened? I heard you scream.”

Her breath came back all at once. But for a second, words wouldn’t form, her mind still stuck on what had just been inches from her throat.

“Dad!” she said, pushing herself upright, the word coming out sharper than she meant it to. “My—”

“If you tell anyone about me, I will kill them.”

The voice cut through her thoughts cleanly, high-pitched and soft in a way that didn’t match the threat at all. And it came from her hand.

Taylor froze.

Slowly, carefully, she looked down.

The mouth had come back, smaller this time, tucked against the side of her palm where her dad couldn’t see it from where he stood. It moved just enough to form the words, the sound barely above a whisper, meant for her and no one else.

Her stomach dropped.

For a moment, she thought she might actually pass out. Thankfully, she didn’t.

Her throat worked as she forced herself to breathe, to think, to do anything other than sit there and stare. Her dad was still there, still watching her, still waiting for an answer she hadn’t finished giving.

She gave a small nod.

The mouth stilled.

Taylor dragged her gaze away from her hand and back to her dad, every muscle in her body tight with the effort of acting normal.

“I’m okay,” she said, and her voice almost broke at the obvious lie. “It was just a bad dream.”

Danny frowned, the lines in his face deepening as he studied her.

“A bad dream?”

She nodded again, quicker this time.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.” The answer came too fast, and she forced herself to slow down, to soften it. “I mean… no, I’m fine. Really.”

His eyes stayed on her a second longer than she liked, searching in a way that made her skin itch.

“Are you sure?”

Another nod, this one sharper, almost desperate.

“Yeah.”

A pause.

Then, finally, he exhaled.

“Alright,” he said, though it didn’t sound like he believed her. “If you change your mind—”

“I won’t,” she cut in, then winced at herself. “I mean… I’m okay.”

He gave her that same searching look before stepping back.

“Okay,” he repeated, quieter this time, and pulled the door closed behind him.

The latch clicked.

Taylor didn’t move until his footsteps faded down the hall. Only then did she let out the breath she’d been holding, her shoulders sagging as the tension drained out of them all at once.

For a second, she just sat there, staring at nothing. Then she remembered. Slowly, like it might react if she moved too fast, she lifted her right hand in front of her face.

It looked normal. Completely, perfectly normal.

Her fingers flexed once, twice, the motion familiar enough to almost be reassuring.

“Just what are you?” she asked, her voice low, shaky in a way she couldn’t quite fix.

The hand didn’t answer.

But she could feel it there, anyway.