Tim Curran - Worm

Please, oh God, please don’t make me wait, please… please…

Though she was hardly aware of the fact, Eva had uncovered herself, exposing her secrets to her lover. She spread her legs so he might enter her. Her lover raised his head above the level of the bed. Eva did not dare look upon him and destroy the beauty of these precious last moments. It was Leonard and she believed it was Leonard. To look upon the obscene, glistening foulness of the ichor-dripping thing that had come for her would shatter the illusion and it had to remain whole. So she refused to look at the immense, bulging vermiform creature that hovered between her spread legs, its segments pulled back like a foreskin to reveal an enormous oval mouth and the circular rows of razored teeth hanging with caustic threads of slime. Droplet by droplet, she felt its saliva burning hot against her sex.

Now… make it now…

Her lover did. Spinning with a corkscrewing motion indicative of its species, it entered her with a cutting, terrible velocity that brought blood and searing agony as she was torn open and ruptured, sinking into the bed which became a soup of her own fluids. She screamed and screamed again, dying with a last perverse taste of wickedness as she was quite literally split in two, knowing death was surely love’s last enduring kiss.

Kathleen moved out into the muck, unable to smell the steaming rottenness of it anymore. It seemed the world had always stunk like this. In the tight, crowded confines of her mind, she was unable to remember a world that was not flooded in bubbling black sludge. She stood there watching it, feeling it moving around her with tiny, sluggish currents.

“Don’t worry, baby Jesse,” she said, “Mama will get you out of this. One way or another.”

Weak from the loss of blood, she blinked away the dizziness that made her world pitch this way and that. She had to concentrate or she’d never get them out of this. Luckily, the baby didn’t weigh much.

She moved forward, being very careful of where she placed her feet. It wouldn’t do to slip in the muck now.

Sobbing, she clutched the baby tighter to her breast even though the agony of doing so sent white jolts of pain through her. But that was okay. The pain kept her conscious and kept her moving.

She wondered if anyone was left in the neighborhood.

She saw a few lights, but that didn’t mean anything.

“Okay, Jesse, Mama’s going to keep walking until she gets us somewhere.”

Kathleen didn’t know where that would be because so many of the houses on Pine Street were coming apart now. But she had to keep looking because it wouldn’t do to have Jesse out in this and, by God, she needed to sit down.

Moving with the stiff-legged locomotion of an automaton, she moved forward into the mud sea.

At the O’Connor household, Fern waited.

She waited in the kitchen, peering out into the darkness.

Marv’s been gone an awful long time, she thought as she stared down into the drain, wrinkling her nose at the smell coming up which was enough to curl the hairs in her nose. He should have been back by now.

There was no point in calling over to Tessa’s. She’d already done that three times now and there was no answer.

Fern didn’t know for sure what she was afraid of, but the fear would not leave her. It existed inside her, cold and slow-crawling, casting a shadow over her rational mind. There were a lot of things that could have happened. Marv could have been washed under and drowned. That seemed unlikely because he was a very sturdy, strong sort of man. He could have been overcome by the gases. But again, that didn’t seem plausible either. The houses in the neighborhood were coming apart and he could have been caught in a fall of wreckage. The only thing that had saved their house thus far, she figured, was that it was made of brick and would have probably outlasted the others by many decades if not a century.

When Tessa called earlier, she claimed she had been attacked. Attacked. But by whom or what? This was what Fern feared most, that whatever had gotten Tessa had also gotten Marv.

Oh, why hadn’t he taken his rifle with him?

Fern listened to the girls in the other room. They had uplinked their Nintendo DS systems and were having some kind of war. They were laughing, teasing each other, squealing with joy and growling with derision. Kids were really something. They could adapt very quickly. Thank God the Internet was still working or they’d have to play a board game or (gasp) read a book.

Barbaric, perfectly barbaric.

The smell coming out of the drain was getting worse.

So bad it made Fern almost woozy.

“Well, there’s only one cure for this,” she said under her breath. She went into the broom closet and came back with a jug of Hilex bleach. There wasn’t anything down there bleach couldn’t handle.

At least, she hoped not.

It was Tony that found Marv after Marv staggered out of Tessa Saldane’s house, the carving knife still in his hand.

“Hey,” he said.

Marv clicked on a flashlight and aimed the beam directly in his face.

“Jesus,” Tony said, covering his eyes.

“Who… Tony?” Marv breathed. “What’re you trying to do? Give me a heart attack?”

“Sorry.”

“I guess we’re all on edge tonight.”

“Yeah.” Tony swallowed. “Ain’t that the truth?”

“I’m glad you’re still kicking.”

“Neither of us’ll be kicking long if we don’t get out of this slop.”

They trudged side by side. After a time, Marv said, “The worms?”

“Yeah.”

They exchanged stories quickly. There was no beating around the bush. They’d both seen them and there was no doubting the reality of the things. The hows and whys would have to be hashed out later.

“Have you checked out any other houses?” Marv asked.

“Yeah. They’re either empty or… well, they’re not empty and nothing’s alive in them.”

They took a breather after a few minutes, the muck wearing them down. It was like wading through wet cement. They leaned against a light post, gripping it like they might get sucked away.

“What are we going to do?” Tony finally asked, dragging off a cigarette.

Marv sighed. “We’ll get back to my house. We’ll hole up there with Fern and the kids. We find anybody else, we bring ’em in with us. I’ve got some guns, camping equipment in the garage if we need it—lanterns, flashlights, a cookstove. We should be all right.”

It seemed reasonable, Tony figured. As reasonable as anything he’d heard lately anyway. Together, they might have a fighting chance while they waited for the National Guard and emergency services. He was going to say just that when Marv grabbed his arm.

“Somebody’s coming,” he said, listening to a slow, dragging splashing moving in their direction.

As Fern poured the bleach into the sink, the most amazing and shocking thing happened: something came worming its way out of the drain with a bubbling, foul-stinking black goo. And worming was the right word, she realized, because what came slithering out was indeed a worm.

Not a snake, as she first thought.

A fucking worm.

She jumped back and nearly dropped her bottle of Hilex. As it was, she cried out low in her throat and if her lips hadn’t been sealed tight it would have been a scream. What in the hell is this? What the hell…

The worm came up out of the drain with a convulsive, dying shudder, twisting and writhing. It was about as long as her forearm, but thick in body, fleshy and absolutely disgusting. It flexed with violent muscular contractions, a jellied ooze pouring out of it in a snotty tangle. How something that big around fit down the drain in the first place was beyond her.