There is a small classroom filled with young kids. I am sitting in the back, the same age as the rest. I am a boy.
The teacher is an old woman. She has a hunched back, wrinkled hands and her white hair is tied up in a frayed bun. But her face does not look old, the skin is smooth. Her eyes are reddish blue, and the angles of her face yield distinguished, dancing shadows. Her voice is wicked and manly, and she speaks as if she delivering a eulogy.
She talks about energy and how it is sourced from either the hands or the eyes. She says that energy travels back and forth from the hands to the eyes, to the eyes to the hands. She says that pain is energy.
On her desk, behind her, is a tin, narrow-bladed knife. She takes it in her right hand and runs the blade through the palm of her left. If you don’t look, it wont hurt, she says. Energy needs two directions. The hand can’t feel with out the eye’s conception.
She digs and turns the blade still through her hand. Blood pours from the gash. She smiles. Her teeth are perfect, white and straight. Her incisors are sharp and pointed. Her eyes have been closed since she picked up the knife.
The kids in the class all stand up and turn to me. They pinch and slap me and call me names like weird, or ladybug, or loser. I am still my young self. I am confused, and the children hurt me.
Now I am my current age, a grown, grocer of a man, and I am still sitting in the back of the class, crying. I scream, “Let me wash my hands.”
The classroom changes into a sort of den, with a bar in the middle of the room, and benches line the brick walls that encase the den. Above the benches are rows of computers, and men in suits stand in front of them and press their foreheads against the screens. Around the bar, lights flash all colors, blinking fast then slow then faster then faster. There is repetitive, electric, industrial music. Irwin is playing saxophone in the corner, but none can hear his music.
The clanging of synthesized anvils masks all other sounds.
The crowd is now hundreds of human-sized worms. Writhing worms that squirm to the pulses of the flashing lights. Their bodies lick each other like long tongues. The creatures do not look like earthworms, or tapeworms, or any other worm I have ever seen. But they are worms, with mouths that sprout sharp needles for teeth, needles that grow out of their black gums. The crowd of worms tie knots with each other as a cloud of gas begins to cover the scene.
Irwin’s sax turns into a worm creature, and Irwin screams Never, and the worm bites him, and Irwin becomes a cloud of red smoke.
I stand in the center of the mass, of the heathen.
The worms hiss at me, yet their blank-pink eyes assure me that they are frightened. The gas cloud becomes more thick and a green light streaks like a laser through the cloud. It is coming from one of the corners. It is a very bright green light.
I move to it, spinning my way through the mass of worms. Each one I touch leaves a glue-like film on my hands, a slime that is both musky and cold. I continue to walk to the green light.
When I get to the corner I see a young figure in a black shirt. His face has no detail, it is only a blur of green light with two, black, puncturing eyes. The black spheres stare at me. He now smiles a black, thin line that cuts the green light and the cloud of gas. He welcomes me.
What does it mean? He says. What does it mean what does it mean what does it mean? His voice is calm and a little raspy. He stops speaking and just stares at me. I feel his confidence as warm pressure in the green light that hits me. His brow makes yellow wrinkles in the green light.
From behind me the hissing becomes cacophonous. It sounds like radio static. I turn a half turn to see the worms. They move towards the bar, because now there is a bed on top of the bar, and now the bar is a podium, now an altar, and the bed is still on top of it.
The worms circle around the alter, and pull on the white sheet that drapes over the bed, and underneath the sheets a body is shaking and sweating, sweating so much that part of the sheet that is pulled over his head is now translucent.
It is me, as a boy.
I am still grown and in the corner with the green light, and I am watching my young self being poked by the tails of worms. They tie themselves around the draped sheet and pull, but my young self has the sheets too tightly wrapped around his head for the sheets to come off the bed.
GO AWAY, LEAVE ME ALONE, I DON’T FEAR. IT HURTS. FEAR HURTS, my young self is screaming. IT HURTS. I’M AFRAID.
The tone is strained infant and chilled with the pitch of fear.
The figure in the green light says GO.
I look at my hands and they are taped, but not gloved. They are wrapped into fists.
I lunge at the worm crowd and punch and tear my way through. Each beast I hit explodes as a rain of musky slime, covering me in ooze. I don’t stop. I fight my way to the bed on the altar in the center, to save my infant self. But the mass becomes harder to defeat.
They start to predict my moves and punches, and they weave with each other until they form a net that is twitching and pulsing. It surrounds me, pinning my arms and feet to my body. I am stuck, and cannot fight free. One of the worms places its face flush with my cheek. If you don’t look it won’t hurt, it hisses, and it opens wide its mouth full of needles and bites my arm.
I feel pain for a second, and everything disappears.
I am in a place of blackness. I know no sense of direction and I can’t feel my body. All I know is that I am still and I am paralyzed.
Ahead, a spec becomes pronounced against the black setting, it is an insect, somewhat resembling a spider, but with a larger abdomen and a smaller face. It is a tick, and it is growing, fast. Its body swells.
Now it is as large as a person and it still grows. I can see the fine hairs on its legs and its mouth is covered in blood. It grows, bigger than a house. Its abdomen beats and its black eyes reflect my face. Now I can barely make out its whole shape, only a portion of its black body. It is the size of a stadium. It is the largest shape my mind can conjure.
I hear a low rumble that sounds poignant and quick, like an explosion, but it is a low boom of a murmur. It has burst.
Waves of blood cover me. I drift, completely submerged in an ocean of blood.
The worms sink past me, because they have no hands to swim with. It is entirely black again, but I no longer feel paralyzed. I swim, looking for a change of color, trying to find where up is, so I can breathe. I make out a light, a surface to the blood sea.?
I am in my bed. My room is normal, but it is silent. Now I hear footsteps coming fast towards me. I can’t move. I feel anxiety as haze on top of me. The footsteps are louder, a black shadow figure soars aside my bed. I try to move. I am not afraid of you?
I woke up. My sheets were soaked and I was cold.