The Concubus of the Palms

Checking the palm of my hand, all those lines leading where?  If I stretch back the skin, I can open things up, peer between the cracks.  I perceive nothing but a white screen.  There’s pros and cons with every addiction.  Mine keeps me alive.  I need new parasites every seven days.  I’m weak and shaky now, and if I don’t find and absorb more, I’ll fade and die.  I need to shock and rejuvenate my body.  Sure, it’s in exchange for absolute dependency, but I make my own choices.

I close my palm line opening, drop my hand to my lap, then fiddle with my computer as my first client enters, a tiny wrinkled up woman wearing several layers of ragged clothing, pulling a cart filled with garbage bags.  She leans to one side as she limps into the room, lowering herself to the chair using an intricately cut wood cane.  I can only hope she’s infected.

“I was pushed into the road by a crazy woman.  She spat my face, and I hurt my hip and back,” her voice quavers.

I look up from the computer screen.  

“Ms. Bonella, tell me about the pusher.”

“She came running and screaming towards me.  A blur.  She spat in my face.  I know I was her target.”  

I nod and write something on a piece of paper.  The clients always like that.

She adjusts the various kerchiefs draped round her neck and head, multicoloured cloths of blue and white.  “The bank echelons sent her.  It was a warning.”

“Yes, she’s their agent,” I reassure. “She was carrying infective parasite cells in her body like so many maggots and passed them on to you with her spittle.”

I take a kleenex and wipe drool off my mouth.  I smell the high already, but I’ve got to play the counsellor game.  Ms. Bonella wipes off the edges of her own mouth too, using a filthy brown tissue and eyes me up and down.  “Are you a witch?”

“No, Ms. Bonella.  Like my card and website say, I’m a palm reader who helps individuals with their difficulties.”

“I am an old woman,” she continues.  “What am I going to do?”

“You are already infected,” I tell her.  “From that pusher sent by the bank echelons. You must obtain treatment.”
Mrs. Bonella pulls her topcoat layer around her, then leans forward some more.  She pauses before speaking.  “Mistress Cindy, the infections are rolling around inside me. Giving me random electric shocks.”  She rubs her side “Those evil bankers are stealing from me. I am a good person.  In my will, I want to give everything to my grand nieces, for their university education.”

“That is very generous of you,” I say, and I mean it.

“Hold up the palms of your hands,” I tell Ms. Bonella.

I walk round my desk and kneel before the client.  

“Look at the ceiling,” I tell her.  

I trace along one palm and proceed to open a riverline of skin with thumb and forefinger.   As I suspected, one milky blue eye shows in the line gap.  It passes by slowly.  Then I see another. Mrs. Bonella winces. I wipe my mouth off again, for I’m drooling with want. The echelons are in her system, those so-called electric shocks are their liquid forms pulsing through her veins.  They’re keeping her decrepit body alive by circulating, but she doesn’t know that.

She holds her side tighter.  “They’re prodding me right now, Mistress Cindy.”

“It’ll be okay,” I reassure her again.  “I want you to place your palms in my palms.”

She sits and I kneel, and her tiny hands push into mine.  I close my eyes and feel the bulbs of the parasites through her skin.  I move my knuckles along Ms. Bonella’s fingertips, making note of every whorl and line. 

“Don’t be alarmed, Ms. Bonella,” I say.  “I’m going to suck out these invaders.”

I put my lips on her left palm and prise open the central palm line with my teeth and jaws.

My tongue slips between that line.  I stick the tip, then the rest of it into Mrs. Bonella’s palm, deep and deeper.  As they parasite eyeballs go by, I grab them, lick them up into my mouth and swallow.  It’s a warm, satisfying drink.  

“What are you doing?” asks Ms. Bonella, “I feel so weak.”

“You are being drained of the echelon energy,” I tell her.  “It’s natural to feel that way.”

I go back in with my teeth and jaw, this time for the other palm, prising it open and sticking my tongue in the opening.

Ms. Bonella slumps back in her chair.
“You can move your fingers now,” I say as I devour the last of the parasites.

Ms. Bonella tries to stand.  She holds onto the chair for a moment

“That was very strange treatment, Mistress Cindy.”

“Go home and rest,” I say.  “Tomorrow you’ll throw away that cane.”

“I feel so weak.”

“No charge for the treatment,” I say, as I experience a few seconds of guilt. 

She’ll never throw away that cane, without the energy from the parasites.  When she sleeps, she will never wake up.  

As she totters out the door, I feel my strength rising.  The parasite electric impulses whirl within me, merge into my brain.  I lift my palm and pull back the skin.  No white space now.  An eye stares back, then rolls by, and another one peeps out.  I whirl my arms around so fast they blur. 

I’m alive again, in full strength and vitality, resurrected by the very parasites that consume my soul, even as they crank my body high.

“I’m sorry Mrs…,” 

I pause and then flail my arms again.  My legs kick out.  I’m wild and high.  All I remember of the old woman are the lines on her palms, widening, opening, showing me inside.

∼ Harrison Kim

© Copyright Harrison Kim All Rights Reserved.