It all began with a single worm that I found in my grandparents backyard. I was visiting them over summer break and they paid me 5 dollars to go dig up the weeds. as I pulled out the roots with my trowel my eye caught flickering movement in the dirt. Rather than crawl back into the dirt, as I might have expected, the worm crawled out of the hole. Then, it seemed as though everything I saw in front of me was being painted over outwards from the hole with a worm-shaped brush. It seemed as though the worm had somehow burrowed its way into everything I could see. I became certain in that moment that if I were to put a microscope to any of what I saw in that backyard, I would see millions of tiny worms making up the matter present. Was I delirious? Was I having some weird reaction to some chemical in the garden? I gave up on my 5 dollars, and went back indoors to take some ibuprofen.
My grandparents had two guest rooms in their house, one that I was staying in, and one that my parents were staying in. My parents had the most storage space in their room, so all the medication was stored in their closet. Holding a glass of water I brought to drink with the pills, I knocked on the door to their guest room.
No response.
A shot of pain went through my head, so intense that it made my vision go blurry. I yanked on the doorknob and barged my way in. As my vision cleared, I saw my parents on the bed, sitting upright, faces pressed into each other, lips together. A sight that I’d usually tried to look away from, but that I’d seen enough times to be used to. It took me a second to spot the new element. Each of their naked chests had, on the left hand side, a large hole from which a large worm had emerged. The worms in each of their chests had knotted together, the ends ' of the invertebrate creatures pressed together and intertwining. I walked toward the drawer that held the painkillers in it and grabbed the bottle, before running out of the room, slamming the door behind me, getting out of there as quickly as possible.
I had no time to consider what that was that I saw in that room, as immediately afterwards I saw my father coming out of that room, finishing putting his shirt on as he walked.
“You alright, kid? You looked kind of out of it there.”
I washed the pills down with the water in my glass. “I got a huge headache all of a sudden after seeing this worm in the garden.”
“Heh, maybe it’s a sign. I guess we should have left the medicine out somewhere where you can get it without disrupting your mom and I’s private time.” he said.
“What the hell were you doing in there anyway?” I said. My headache was already starting to clear, as was my embarrassment at barging into a situation like that, and I needed to know why my parents had worms coming out of their chests.
“Let’s go to your guest room. Somewhere where your mother won’t hear me giving you the talk.” My dad pulled my hand along and led me to my own bed, where he sat me down.
“Teens around your age usually start to notice certain...biological needs...that they didn’t have before. Usually, we don’t talk about these needs, because they can be a little superficially gross. But once you’re familiar with the process, satisfying these needs can be a beautiful thing.”
As he said this, my father pulled out his wallet and began to search around in it for a picture. He pulled out a photograph that appeared to be of a tank of water with what looked like a wet, fleshy rope inside of it. He said, “When I was your age, my father introduced me to this beautiful creature. You see, people might be able to survive on their own, but they aren’t supposed to. Ever since my partner here, ” which he accompanied with a gesture towards the left hand side of his chest, “started living with me, I’ve been an infinitely happier man.”
“So you have a worm living inside your chest?”
“Every adult does. I’ve enjoyed life infinitely more because I got to experience it together with my worm.”
He looked at me, and seeing my confusion and horror said, “Look, I’m not the best at explaining things. What say I take you in person to look for a partner tomorrow?”
“Weren’t we supposed to visit the mall tomorrow?”
“I mean we were, but this is much more important. You’ll look back on this day as the most important day in your life.”
I went to bed, and again, the worm visited me in my dreams. I was floating along through the sky, and along the ground, the worm was burrowing, following me. Or rather, I was following it. It was carving a trail through the earth, and all I could do was float along bearing witness to it.
I was dragged along by my father to the bus stop, and then a transfer to the train. I could swear along the way that I saw a few peoples’ chests wriggle and squirm under their shirts. I watched a couple of young adults press up against each other in their seats on the train, and unbutton their shirts, forming a tent underneath their shirts under which something moved. Eventually, we arrived at the train station, and walked to a store with large worms crawling along in the display window.
We went inside, and passed by probably hundreds of glass cages filled with worms each roughly the size of a small dog. There was one that banged its face into the glass, startling me. It was staring at me, and I thought that it seemed hungry, like it had spotted me in particular as a meal it wanted. My dad saw me staring and commented, “Oh, that one’s a real looker.” He called out to one of the store workers, who came by and grabbed the glass cage off the shelf. Before I knew it, my dad and the worker had pulled me into a private room, and unbuttoned my shirt at the top, pulling the fabric aside to reveal part of my bare chest. The worm in the glass cage was frenzied, smacking itself against the glass so hard cracks had begun to spread. My father brought the cage up to my chest, and opened the lid on top. The worm slithered out, and crawled into my chest. I suddenly found that trying to breathe felt overwhelmingly complicated, and that was the last thing I remembered at the store.
I dreamed that I was sitting on a park bench, checking my watch. I knew that someone was coming to meet me on this bench, so I was checking my watch every few minutes. It was just coming to the time when we were supposed to be meeting up when I saw the earth in front of me start to move. The dirt and grass parted as a fleshy bulge emerged from the hole being made. Out of the hole rose the worm, human-sized this time, and it stood up like a person and sat down on the bench next to me. We sat next to each other in tranquil silence for a few minutes. We might not have said anything to each other, but we felt the same grass around our toes and the same sun on our faces. Then the worm turned towards me, and opened its mouth wide. The mouth stretched, forming a tent around me, and the sky darkened around me as I was enveloped whole.
I woke up, feeling like my lungs were being pumped faster and faster no matter how much I wanted to slow down. My bedsheets were soaked with my sweat. I peeled them off of me, and looked down at my body in front of me. The part of my chest where my heart would be was instead a hole, with the worm coiled up inside of it. I tried my best not to think about it, and I put a shirt on to cover it up. I glanced at my alarm clock as I got the shirt over my head, and I happened to have woken up around the time we’d usually be having dinner as a family. I headed out to the kitchen, where my parents were sitting down to eat.
“Look who finally decided to wake up.” my mother said.
I didn’t respond. I didn’t have the energy. I just scooped some pasta onto my plate and started to eat. It was then that I felt a tug in my chest. I ignored it at first, but as I ate the tug felt stronger. It was the worm, pulling itself toward my plate, hungering for it. I felt overwhelmed and overstimulated by the signals. I must have looked like shit, because my father looked at me and said “You should give your partner some food.” I wanted to protest, but I also wanted the tugging to stop. I grabbed a spoonful of pasta and held it up to my chest, and then pulled down the shoulder of my shirt. The worm lunged forward, engulfing the spoon, and disappeared just as quickly. The tugging stopped. My spoon was covered in this scummy slime. I excused myself and went to go wash it, but instead of coming back to the table I just went back to my room.
This continued on for the next several nights at my grandparents house. I would be eating and I’d feel a tug, and the tug would gradually get worse and worse as I ate. I’d eventually give in and feed the worm, wash my spoon, and lose my appetite. As I started to get used to it, I’d begin to feed the worm as soon as I felt a tug. I’d bring two spoons to the table, one for the worm, and one for myself. I’d enjoy the peace I got after the worm had been satiated. It wasn’t so much that I’d come to mind the situation less, but more that I’d come to accept the reality and learn to work around it.
It was a few days after this that the tugging began to happen outside of dinner time. I would be minding my own business, reading a graphic novel I had taken out from the library back home and brought up with me to my grandparents house. Then I began to feel the tugging again. I went to the kitchen and grabbed some leftovers, and held them up to the worm. It wasn’t interested. The door to leave the house was right next to us, and I felt the tugging pulling me in that direction. I went outside, and felt myself tugged towards the ground. I lowered myself down as long as the tugging kept continuing. I was laying down on the floor when I felt it stop. I felt the worm pull and extend out of my chest into the ground, burrowing through. The worm was still connected to me, but it was also burrowing through the ground, so I was stuck there, face to the ground, until the worm coiled back into my chest. Then it was over.
This too repeated for the next several days. I would feel the tugging towards the door, I would go outside into the yard, and I would be pulled to the ground for what felt like several minutes, and then it would be done. When I got back home, though, things began to change. My grandparents had their own front and back yards, but back home we lived in an apartment. The day after we got back, when I stepped outside to give it access to the ground I felt headaches like when I first encountered the worm, and I ran, head in my hands, into the park. I lowered myself to the ground, and felt the tugging subside as the worm pulled itself through the dirt. As I rose up from the ground, I saw a few others around me plastered to the dirt, performing the same ritual I did. With this, the worm learned how to get to the park, the tugging becoming more gentle and leading me in the park’s direction every day.
This wasn’t without an impact on my schedule. The food sharing was fine, it happened during dinner time anyway, but the dirt ritual usually happened a little before 10:30am, and took a good half hour out of my day. I ended up scheduling my life around this, and it meant less times when I was available to meet up with my friends. They grilled me pretty harshly on this over the phone, given I hadn’t told them what it was that kept me busy in the morning.
I sort of took pride in being able to adapt to the worm’s needs. It was exhausting, it was frustrating, it was lonely, but handling it made me feel strong. Eventually, though, it began to wear me down. I tried to tell my father how much the tugging was hurting and he just said “That’s just one of the things you have to deal with in a relationship like this.” I eventually told one of my friends the situation over the phone. They responded to almost everything I said with a “What!?” or a “Ex-cuse me!?”. I finally caught up to everything that had happened, and we were silent for a while, until my friend broke the silence with a single sentence: "I don't care what your parents or anyone else says. You shouldn't have to deal with a worm in your chest controlling your life. Nobody should." That was what I needed to hear. This wasn’t normal, no matter how much I was used to it, or how much my parents said otherwise. I felt my heart beat, muffled by the worm’s body, with renewed fear.
Next morning, around 9 am, I grabbed a large chef’s knife from the kitchen and put it in my sweater pocket. I also held on to the first aid kit in the bathroom. Around 10:30, I felt the tug to go outside, and I dutifully followed the worm to the park. I placed myself on the ground, and waited until the worm had fully burrowed in. Then, I felt around with my knife and pulled into the flesh coming out of my chest. The worm’s flesh came loose, and I pulled myself off the ground. A bloody mass of flesh was burrowed into the ground below me. On my own end, the bleeding wouldn’t stop. I tried to apply gauze and bandages from the first aid kit, and though it was a very large wound, eventually I was able to get it covered. Covered, however, did not mean healthy. I felt, on the left side of my chest, where my heart should be, an empty void. There was no thumping, no beating, just the tail end of the worm. When it left my body, it took my heart with it. That was the last thing I remember before falling back into a dream.