Tim Curran: Worm

Like most days, it began badly.

Before Charise left for work, she told Tony to remember to walk Stevie. To take him out for a brisk run through the park to get his heart going and his blood pumping because it was good for his health and longevity. Not Tony’s, of course—hell, he was just her husband—but the dog. Stevie. Which was a perfectly gay sort of name for a dog as far as Tony was concerned, but then again Stevie was perfectly gay sort of dog: half-Pomeranian and half-poodle. Something dog-loving Charise called a lapdog and something Tony himself called simply embarrassing.

Lapdog? No, it’s a boot-dog. In that when it starts yipping in its gay little voice you give it a kick.

Charise did not find that funny at all. She also didn’t find it amusing when he asked her to get rid of the ugly little carpet-crawler and get a real dog: a Lab or a collie or shepherd.

No, she scooped the little mutt up and kissed its homely pushed-in face. “But mama loves her little puppy, her little baby, her little Stevie-weevie.” Kiss, kiss, smooch-smooch. Jesus. It was enough to make you fucking sick.

When Tony finally got his ass out of bed from his afternoon nap, stretched and yawned, the little beggar was waiting for him. And, oh boy, the look in his eyes. It was almost as if Stevie understood exactly how things worked. That Mama Charise tugged the purse strings and Tony was an unemployed slob, a second-class citizen, a subservient domestic that washed the floor and answered the phone, scrubbed the toilet and made casseroles and walked little Stevie-weevie and cleaned up his accidents on the living room carpet. That Mama Charise wore his balls on a choker chain around her throat and when she said jump, Tony asked not only how high but if he should do a fucking backflip and a double pirouette while he was up there.

God, it was like the damn dog understood.

“Okay, mutt,” Tony said. “Let me work the kricks out of my back and take a leak and then we’ll go.”

Stevie barked… well, it was more of a little yip. If Gollum were a dog, he’d bark like that.

Stevie stared at him. Okay, you lazy slob, but make it quick because I ain’t getting any younger here and my bladder ain’t what it once was, capiche ?

“Fuck you,” Tony said, aiming a kick at the mutt.

Stevie dodged and glared his teeth. Then he made with the staring eyes again. You wanna watch it, you useless slug. I tell Mama about this and Mama will throw your dead ass out into the street. You don’t wanna make her choose between us. You don’t want that at all.

The phone rang. Sighing, Tony grabbed up the cordless. “Yeah?” he said.

“Hey, Tony.” Stephani from next door, she of the perfect body and blonde hair, the liquid green eyes that made his knees feel weak. “This is Steph. Charise told me to call you. Remind you to walk the dog.”

“How considerate of her.”

“Oooh, you sound cranky. Well, don’t shoot the messenger.”

“Sorry.”

“So what’s on your busy schedule today besides walking Stevie?”

The sarcasm, the sarcasm. “I’m wide open today. Tonight, I got a date with a pool cue.”

“Ooooo,” she said. “I’d like a date with a pool cue.”

“Like it would be the first time.”

“Ha. Well, I just got out of the shower and I can’t stand here naked, dripping all over everything, now can I?”

Shameless little flirt. “I could bring over a towel,” he said, imagining it, picturing it in all its pornographic glory.

“You wish. No, not this time. I’ll rub myself dry.”

“You had your chance.”

She laughed.

Click.

Ah, yes. Little Miss Perfect Stephani Kutak. She knew he wanted her as all men wanted her and it amused her. She was a little tease. Yet, for all of that, her little flirty phone calls were about the only bright spot in his somewhat dull existence. At least they broke up the monotony.

Tony stumbled off into the bathroom, noticing that Charise had left a list of chores for him to do and errands to run. It wasn’t like the old days. No little heart drawn at the bottom of the list or Love ya, honey. Char! No, she knew his place and treated him as such. Just get it done, will ya? Tony sighed and made his way to the head. Christ, she left her curling iron out again, cans of hairspray and gel and facial goo, a dozen long, dark hairs in the sink he scrubbed out yesterday. It looked like something hairy was trying to claw its way up out of the drain.

Sighing again, he freed his manhood, which didn’t look particularly manly today… kind of like a snail that was afraid to come out of its shell. He directed his stream, wondering what to make Her Highness for supper tonight. Stevie yipped impatiently again and Tony scowled.

Then the house began to tremble.

What the hell is that?

Pissing was suddenly of little interest. The house shook enough to rattle the mirror over the sink. Right away, he thought maybe it was a big truck passing by—a very big truck—but that didn’t explain it. No, as absurd as it sounded, it was like a fist gripped the house and shook it like a snow globe.

When it happened again, he knew it wasn’t coming from outside.

It was coming from far below where the bad things grow.

Three doors down, Tessa Saldane gripped the arms of her recliner as a low-level rumbling shook everything up, knocking knickknacks off shelves and pictures off hooks. The windows rattled. A Currier & Ives print thudded to the hardwood floor of the dining room, its glass face shattering.

This more than anything got her out of the recliner. She originally thought it was one of those damn jets again, coming in low on its approach to the Price County airport. Now and again, whether by design or accident, they liked to swoop down and set things to rattling as they passed over the rooftops of Pine Street and Twenty-first Avenue.

But this was no jet.

In fact, Tessa didn’t know what in the hell it was.

When she got to her feet—and sometimes when she was settled in like that, it took some doing—it felt like the house was… well, wobbling. Like it wasn’t sitting on solid terra firma but something loose and rolling like Jell-O. As Tessa stood there, not daring to move, everything seemed to be in motion and she was sure she would be spilled to the floor violently. And when you’re on the wrong side of seventy like Tessa, an impact of that sort had a way of dislocating your knees and breaking your hips, neither of which would knit up quite the same again… if at all.

So she stood there, feeling a disturbing fright down low in her belly that pushed cold, reaching fingers up into her chest.

The house shook again and, dammit, she heard her mother’s Haviland eggshell tea set hit the kitchen floor and break into pieces.

Lord, what now? Whatever now?

Of course, she was thinking earthquake … but whoever heard of an earthquake in Camberly, which sat smack-dab in the middle of solid green-grassed, blue-skyed, hay-mowed Price County? This was the Midwest for godsake. Things like that might happen out in California and god-awful places like that—and Tessa wouldn’t have been the one to say they didn’t have it coming with the way they carried on out there—but not here.

Now the rumbling, which sounded oddly like a very hungry belly, had ceased and was replaced by a glub-glub-glub sort of noise. It reminded her of wet cement poured into a well-tamped sidewalk frame. Only it sounded not so much like it was poured, but gurgling up from a drain.

By the time Tessa made her way to the picture window that looked out on green, serene Pine Street, the vilest sort of sewer smell filled the house. It definitely stank of drains, the backed-up kind. It was a rank odor of decay, subterranean drainage, and hot rotten egg sulfur. Gah.