Worm

18

I’m coming for you, motherfucker. I’m coming to kill you. I’m going to beat you to death.

Clutching the fireplace poker in her white-knuckled fists, Kathleen stalked the thing that had slid into her house like a vein of shadow. She would find it. She would kill it. Then… then… then… then she would go quietly mad because she wasn’t too far away now. Maybe not in the same house, but definitely living next door.

The trail of muck was easy enough to follow.

If the creature—snake, had to be a goddamn snake, a fucking python—was trying to practice stealth, it was failing miserably. It was about as stealthy as a shit-leaking pig. That was the comparison that leaped into her mind and she almost screamed because that’s exactly what Pat would have said.

Don’t you dare fall apart. Not yet.

Trembling, sweating out hot/cold beads of perspiration, she followed the muck trail, turning on lights as she went. The trail led from the bathroom to Jesse’s bedroom. Where was that fucking thing and where was her baby?

She tensed.

She heard a low, rolling rumbling sort of noise just as she had when this whole nightmare started. The house shook. It shook again. The rumbling grew louder. The house moved and she went down on her ass in the muck again as ceiling tiles cracked and jagged rents opened up in the walls. She could hear things falling and crashing downstairs. She was certain one of them was the picture window.

The house is falling down.

She scrambled to her feet in the oily black filth and jogged down the hallway to the stairs. She did not know where she was going. She did not know what she would do when she got there. Her brain was moving, it seemed, in every direction at the same time. And what was behind it, what was fueling it was not the loss of Pat or even that damn snake but something bigger, something vastly more important: the baby, the baby, the baby… where is the baby? All she could see was the baby. She was hypercharged with maternal need to protect her child, only she did not know where her child was.

Move! Do something! Do anything, but you must find the baby!

The words made perfect sense, but she did not know what to do. Her animal instinct told her to find that fucking snake and kill it, but her maternal instinct told her all that mattered was finding her child. The rest could be sorted out later.

She had to search the upstairs.

That’s what she had to do.

And this was exactly what she was going to do, but the rumbling started again and this time the house trembled like a dog had seized it and shaken it. She reached for the railing, but lost her grip and went tumbling down the steps, thud, thud, thud.

The house continued to move.

Everything was in motion. The floor seemed to be rolling beneath her the way they said it did during earthquakes. The lights flickered. They went out, then came back on. The walls were cracking open, coughing out clouds of plaster dust. The dining room ceiling caved in, crashing down onto the antique cherry wood table. It hadn’t been the picture window she heard, but the kitchen window. No matter, the picture window now followed suit. The parquet floor shifted, buckled, the individual blocks pulling apart. The ceiling fan came crashing down.

Then the house began to bleed.

At least, that’s what it looked like. Oceans of dark, bubbling blood oozed up from the cracked, disrupted block floor.

No, not blood… muck.

The same sewer-stinking filth that was in the streets and had vomited from the upstairs bathroom.

My house, my fucking house… it’s coming apart! It’s all coming apart!

Kathleen sobbed. Her body shuddered. Something had let go in her brain now. And even though she was far too gone to realize this, she still felt the sense of loss, the sense that there was a great and jagged division between the here and now and what her life had been only a few hours before.

On her hands and knees she began to crawl as the house moved with occasional tremors around her. She crawled through the muck that bled from the floors, moving from the living room into the trashed dining room and kitchen beyond. Ghost fingers of dread slid along the nape of her neck, trying to warn her away from the muck and what might wait in it, but she was oblivious to just about everything by that point.

Still clutching the fire poker, she stopped.

She cocked her head and listened intently like an animal.

She could hear pieces of the ceiling still dropping. Water running. The muck dripping. But she wasn’t interested in any of that. She was listening for the reptile that had come into her house and taken her life away from her. She would kill it. There was nothing else left in her mind but the desire to kill the thing.

It was here.

She knew that much.

If she kept listening, she would hear it sliding from room to room, stalking her… an evil serpent, its form reticulated and silent, its triangular head set with glittering green eyes, raising even now to strike—

There!

Her breath caught in her throat as she heard something soft and large drop to the floor in the living room the way a boa constrictor would drop on its prey from a jungle tree. Yes, it was coming for her, thick-bodied and serpentine, seeking her out in the semidarkness. It would not show itself until it was certain of the kill. It slithered forward, winding through the muck, closer and closer.

Kathleen stripped her coat away so she could fight unimpeded.

Closer. It was almost visible now.

She tensed, bringing up the poker.

She could see it now… its spiraling shape rising up and up. It knew where she was and now it would strike. With a cry, she swung the poker at it, striking it with a fleshy impact that threw stinging fluid in her face. Had it spit poison at her? Her eyes were burning. She pawed the stuff away with her free hand and it felt like cool jelly. She swung the poker again but something happened. It didn’t strike the thing so much as glance over it, more jelly spraying into her face. The poker slid along its oiled length and out of her fingers. She heard it clang to the floor.

The snake made a hissing noise and came right at her.

Before it could bite her, she seized its neck in her hands. Its touch was repellent. A big snake was supposed to feel smooth and rippling with muscular contractions, but this thing was soft… almost gelid. Her stiffened fingers actually pierced its flesh. It was pulpous like the brown spots of decay on a rotting apple. Every inch of it seemed to be crawling and greasy, fluid gushing over the backs of her hands. It had spines that cut into her fingers like the thorns on a rose stem.

It was no snake.

It was a worm.

An immense, semigelatinous worm. It was thicker around than a beer can, seeming to swell by the moment. It writhed in her grip like a fire hose under high pressure. It slid through her fingers and she couldn’t seem to get a grip on it. It was like trying to take hold of a rubber tube greased with bacon fat. It moved. It squirmed. It twisted with corkscrewing undulations.

Then it was loose.

Its obscene weight fell in her lap and it attacked immediately. She thought it would go for her face, her eyes, or her throat. But it did none of these things. What it did was that much more appalling: it brushed between her legs like an immense and flaccid penis, then darted its head upward, sliding under her hoodie and up over her belly, the bristles of its skin tearing into her navel. Its swollen length slid between her breasts the way her husband once had.

The effect was nauseating.

Her breasts were heavy with milk and the worm seemed to know it.

She cried out, falling on her ass in the black slop. She yanked and pulled at the worm but it looped in her fingers, thick gouts of foaming slime issuing from it. She could not hold it or tear it away. Its mouth flexed open, shearing through her bra, and enveloped her left breast. She screamed. Its mouth was cool. She could feel its teeth scrape against her like piercing needles. She beat at it, her nails cutting trenches in its flesh, but the teeth bit right into her.

Kathleen let go with a wild, shrieking cry.

The worm’s teeth slid into her breast, impaling deep into her mammary glands, bringing forth blood and warm milk as the ducts were pierced. She fought all that much harder, but the teeth held on. The mouth shriveled to a puckered hole, suckering to her nipple. She could feel its length pulsating as it drained her with unbelievable pain. It was like being hooked up to a milking machine. But the real agony was not that, but when it tore her nipple loose from its intense, vigorous suction.

At the same moment it did, its teeth lost their traction and she yanked it free, jerking it out from beneath her hoodie and tossing it across the room. She was doubled over with incredible, devastating waves of pain, her hoodie soaking red with her blood.

But the worm was not done.

It was coming to finish her.

It slithered through the muck and vaulted at her. She snatched its writhing form in midair with two blood-spattered fists. She squeezed it, trying to tear it apart but it was elastic and fluid. Then with a manic cry, she brought it up to her mouth and bit into it, her teeth rupturing its membrane. This combined with the force of her hands pulling it in opposite directions sheared it. She bit it in half, her mouth filled with an eruption of gurgling slime and gushing worm jelly.

She went over, vomiting, emptying herself. The heaving was agonizing with her injured breast. Before she passed out, she knew she had to get free, she had to get out of the house.

She ran stumbling out the door, leaving the wriggling worm sections behind her. Screaming and sobbing, she waded out into the thigh-high muck that bubbled and coursed around her legs… vile, yet almost soothing with its warmth.

There was something floating out there.

“My baby,” she said picking it up. “My… baby…”