Tim Curran - Worm

The only good thing was that it was not only in considerable pain, it looked like it was dying.

“Mom,” Kassie called from the living room. “Are you all right?”

“Mom?” Kalie echoed.

Shaking, a fine dew of fear-sweat on her brow, Fern realized if she did not unglue her mouth and speak right now, the twins were going to come in and they were going to see what she was seeing and she simply could not have that.

“Ah… yeah, I’m fine. Just cleaning the sink.”

The sound of her own voice gave her a modicum of strength and she stepped a bit closer to the sink. The worm was barely moving by that point. What if I hadn’t poured the bleach down there? Would it have stayed in the drain or would it have come out after me? The questions jumped into her mind and she ignored them.

She poured more bleach onto the worm.

It moved sluggishly and spewed out something like several yellow and tangled, ropy tongues. But as revolting as that was, what was even worse was that it was steaming. The bleach was doing something to it. It was deflating and breaking apart, decompressing into a puddle of slime.

Trying to keep her stomach down, Fern forced its remains down into the garbage disposal with a long wooden spoon and turned it on. She listened to it whir and chew at the remains while a bubble of bile slowly rose up the back of her throat.

She shut the disposal off.

Then she stood there, dazed and sickened, wondering if she had hallucinated it all.

Kathleen saw the two men out in the mud sea, but she was barely even aware of their existence. They might as well have been stumps. She was driven by one single overwhelming need and that was to get Jesse away somewhere safe.

When she got close to them, one of them reached out and stopped her. “Hey… Kathleen?”

She pulled away, snarling at them. They were not going to get the baby. She would kill them if they tried.

“Kathleen… easy now… it’s me, Marv. Marv O’Connor.”

She tried to make sense of this, but her mind was like a blender on puree: a great, ever-spinning mix of emotions and impulses. It took her a minute. Finally, she cocked her head like a dog. “Marv?” she said in a broken voice.

“Sure. Tony’s here with me. You know, Tony Albert.”

“Hey,” Tony said.

She just looked at them blankly. She could not connect the names with the faces, but slowly, slowly it started making sense to her. She swallowed, then swallowed again. “I can’t find Pat and my house is falling apart and I have to get Jesse somewhere safe.” She kissed what was in her arms. “Somewhere the worms can’t get us.”

Marv and Tony looked at each other.

“Well,” Marv said. “You better come with us. We’re going over to my house. It’s safe there.”

Kathleen hugged her baby and nodded. Safe. She liked that word. That was the word she wanted to hear and a place she wanted to go. Making a low humming in her throat, she followed along behind them as the blood continued to drain from her wounds.

“One foot in front of the other,” Donna told Bertie. “That’s all we have to do. It’s only two doors down.”

“Maybe that’s nothing to you,” Bertie said, “but when your my age, that’s a goddamn long way, missy.”

Donna had to give her that one. The mud was deep and it was like trying to wade through oatmeal. The fact that she had gotten Bertie out of her house in the first place was a minor victory. All they had to do was make it down to the O’Connors’. On an ordinary day, it was a two-minute walk. In this muck with a frail, stubborn old woman with her, it was like the Bataan Death March: endless.

Bertie almost fell again, but Donna caught her and held her up.

“See no reason for any of this,” Bertie said. “Could have stayed at my house. I knew this was a bad idea. I knew I shouldn’t have listened to you.”

And your newfangled ideas, Donna thought. She was just waiting for Bertie to say that like some cantankerous curmudgeon in an old movie, Walter Brennan maybe. The idea made her smile.

“We couldn’t stay there, Bertie. The place was falling apart.”

“Like hell it was.”

Donna decided she wouldn’t argue. They were over halfway to the O’Connors’ and they were not about to turn back. The fact of the matter was that the house was falling apart. The muck had made it shift. Things had fallen from the walls. A window in the kitchen had broken. And even Bertie couldn’t deny that cracking noise they heard coming from the foundation.

“Just a little farther now.”

Bertie snorted. “A little farther, my ass. We’re going to die out here. Well, I got one up on you: I already have my gravesite bought and paid for. I picked it out ten years ago. All they have to do is carve my death date onto it.”

She seemed very proud of the fact and Donna could only sigh.

What was that?

Donna stopped them there in the muck. For a few seconds, she barely breathed.

A great rippling passed through the mud just ahead of them as if something quite large had passed beneath it.

“Well, what the hell now?” Bertie asked.

“Just wait a minute.”

“I don’t have a minute to wait. I’m near dead now.”

Donna ignored her.

She heard the rippling again.

This time it was behind them. Now off to her right. It was like they were being circled by something under the mud. And as crazy as it seemed, the first thing that jumped into her mind was shark, even though that was perfectly ridiculous. Sharks didn’t swim in mud and they sure as hell didn’t live in fucking Wisconsin.

Yet… that eerie sense that they were being circled did not lessen. It increased.

Behind them, there was splashing… as if something had surfaced and then dove again.

“C’mon, Bertie, we have to get over there. It’s not far.”

“Isn’t that what I’ve been saying?”

Donna tried to move faster in the mud, but that only got Bertie bitching at her all the more. They had to move fast. Donna couldn’t explain it—and she sure as hell did not have the time to—but something out there was closing in on them.

Something very big.

Above, the full moon came out.

Tony wanted to pull Marv aside and say, that’s not a baby she has, that’s not Jesse, it’s a fucking plastic baby doll. Kathleen’s carrying a fucking baby doll. Don’t you see that? But, of course, he didn’t because he couldn’t and he figured he really didn’t need to; Marv was fully aware that Kathleen was crazy. And like Tony himself, he did not want to know the details of what had sent her wandering through the sludge with a baby doll.

Tony was thinking about Fern and the twins.

Did they really want to bring this crazy woman back with them? But then, what choice was there? They couldn’t leave her wandering. Fern would know what to do. Women always did. Tony was almost beginning to wish Charise were there. Even Stevie.

But he didn’t want to think about Stevie.

Kathleen had stopped.

By the time they became aware of it, she was fifteen feet behind them. She was just standing there, making a deep moaning sound that was nearly erotic in tone like she was quite near to getting off.

“Oh… oh… oh,” she said in a voice filled with confusion and delight. “It’s so warm. It’s so very warm. Can’t you feel it? It’s almost hot. I can feel it all over my legs, all over my… my…”

“Kathleen,” Marv said. “We have to go.”

She just stood there, hip-deep in the muck that seemed to be rising by the hour, struck senseless like she was in some kind of religious rapture. Marv called out to her and she started moving again, very slowly, plodding along like she had been wound up with a key.