Worm

9

Eva Jung lay in bed and waited for the end of the world the way she used to wait for Leonard to make love to her. It was a strange thing to think of and particularly now with Leonard having been gone all these years. But, maybe, as her final hour approached, it wasn’t that unusual for a woman’s heart to return to romance and things sweet and hot and long gone as the summers of her youth.

The years are leaves and they blow away one by one until there’s not a single one left in the yard.

Eva knew that the National Guard and police would never get to Pine Street. There were 5,000 people in Camberly and by the time they got organized and started rolling, it would be much too late for most everyone. She knew this because the sun was beginning to set and then it would be dark. And dark was when the monsters came out. She knew that very well. Maybe as an adult she had tried to pretend otherwise as all adults did… it was easier to sleep at night that way… but she’d always known it was true. Tonight, the monsters would get into every house and kill every man, woman, and child.

It would not be a dark night like the nights always were in the stories her mother told her as a child. No, the moon would be up, it would be luminous and fat and brilliant. The stars would be out, winking long-dead light like diamond chips.

The better to see you by, my dears. The better to eat you by.

Eva thought of her neighbors. She had heard many screams already and she would hear many more by the end of the night. But she would not listen. People would die horribly as she would die horribly and it would be none of her affair. Her neighbors avoided her and that was fine. She held no grudge over it. She was a woman, not quite old at fifty-three but certainly not young, who lived alone in a big wind-trembling house that creaked and rattled at night.

What would they say to her even if they were to talk to her?

How does it feel, Eva, to be all alone in that big house with nothing but yellow memories for company, your husband long dead, nothing to listen to but the screech of a hoot owl on the rooftop late at night? She was glad they didn’t talk to her so she wouldn’t have to answer that. Because if she did, she would have told them it was awful, simply awful to wake up at three in the morning and reach out for the strong shoulders of your husband and find only emptiness. It was awful to be lonely and listen to your own rising anguish as tears spilled hotly down your cheeks.

But tonight, she was not alone in her suffering.

The neighborhood suffered with her.

They would die together and perhaps, just maybe, be reborn into a better place that was free of suffering.

She listened to the muck flooding into her house and the slitherings of the monsters in the pipes. They would make themselves known soon and she would be waiting for them as she had once waited for Leonard. She would accept the death they brought with open arms because death was painful like love and true love was resurrection.