Chapter Text
I got a few messages from some acquaintances from school, but not much more.
It’s obvious what they’re trying to pull.
Painfully so.
Or maybe it’s the headache which is painful.
My mind does that sometimes.
Not that I can bother to pay any attention to it anyways.
It’s actually kind of calming.
The pain comes in intervals so regularly I know it better than my friends.
Like waves washing upon the surf, my mind pounds and swells.
I’m sure if I told anybody about how frequently this happens to me, they’d get me on some medication.
They wouldn’t be able to take the pain.
Most can’t.
But is it really that bad?
Any feeling is better than none, as how hell is preferable to void.
Better to feel pain than to feel empty.
At least the pain helps remind me my brain is still there, in whatever state it’s left in.
It got lucky, contrary to my fingers.
Sometimes I forget they’re there at all.
They’ve been nothing but frostbite numb since the worms hollowed them out.
I almost miss them.
Speaking of fingers, one taps on my shoulder.
Seems like my friends have finished up their conversation.
Shame.
I was hoping the others would take longer to set everything up.
When there are too many people, everything gets worse.
And that makes stress.
And stress leads to hunger.
And worms don’t like to be hungry.
Obviously.
Well I mean, some would say it’s better to just get it over with quickly.
I say it’s better to never have it in the first place.
I stopped caring about my birthday a long time ago.
My birthday isn’t even my own anymore.
It’s just an excuse for my friends and family to get together.
Hell, nothing is my own anymore.
I can’t remember the last time I’ve contributed to my friend’s conversations.
Or the last time I’ve really even been meaningfully acknowledged.
I can’t really call them my friends.
I’m just some dead weight which follows them everywhere.
Not by my own volition, of course.
I wish I could rot in my room instead of doing this.
Not that I don’t do enough of that already.
God knows I rot.
My sister once said she can never tell if I’m dead or not when I sleep.
I’m sure she thought she was very clever for thinking up of that one.
Maybe, if I was still whole, I’d have laughed.
…
Oh.
While I was wandering the plains of my own mind, Kel quickly opened the door to my house.
Sometimes I wish he could share some of that energy with me.
Inside the house is nothing but pitch black.
Acting as oblivious as I can manage in my half awake state, I saunter my way in and turn on the lights.
And whaddya know, all my friends and family are there, hidden haphazardly in the shadows waiting to give me a “surprise” birthday party.
With a loud, jubilant, and frankly irritating cry they all hop out and so I am carried away as I drowsily follow their whims.
It’s better not to struggle.
I am soon placed in front of the dining table with a cake awaiting me.
It’s not even my favourite flavour.
My dad pats my shoulders and spits some dogma about me being sixteen now and being old enough to cut the cake myself.
I oblige without a sound.
I press the knife against the surface of the cake, causing it to sink inwards slightly like a body pressing down upon silk.
Moving the knife, it glides slowly across the surface, splitting it almost artistically.
Applying pressure now, it sinks into the flesh of the cake like a fish through water.
Finally, I start splitting it into smaller pieces for the others to indulge in.
They’ll enjoy it much more than me.
Aubrey tells me to get myself a slice while I hand her her plate.
It’s better not to struggle.
Once everybody has had their share I take the tiny sliver of what’s left for myself.
Basil tells me I should get more since it’s my birthday and offers me some of his.
I decline.
Even thinking of eating right now makes me feel sick.
I look down upon my plate with disgust.
Scooping out a bite with my fork, I make my consensus.
Disgustingly sweet.
I almost gag trying to swallow it down, but I go on anyway.
It’s better not to struggle.
I can’t remember the last time I’ve been hungry.
Or taken pleasure in eating.
It’s no fault of mine.
The worms ate my stomach.
Once the cake has been swiftly displaced into everybody’s bodies, Kel eating the rest of mine of course, I am pushed to the living room so that everybody can compete for who has given me the best gift.
This has never been about me.
Basil got me some fancy graphing calculator, lecturing me about needing it next year for maths.
It’s probably the one gift that surprised me.
Kel hands me one of the new handheld consoles.
A return to form for the company I once loved and worshipped, but like I, the love poured into the games has rotted, fallen to corporate greed and sterilisation.
I haven’t even finished a video game in years.
Hero shows me his gift, wholly unwrapped.
A sketch book.
Despite the fact I haven’t completed a single drawing since Mari got me my last one about a year ago.
It’s still half empty, and yet here I am getting a new one.
Mari guides me to a fairly large, intricate box.
Opening it, it’s a new violin.
She says something about my old one being way too small for me now, and that I was due for a replacement.
I remember when I used to hate these things.
I’ve since learnt it’s better not to struggle.
Soon after Kel suggests we play together for all of them.
After a short walk, I quickly tune the violin within the piano room and get up beside said piano.
Mari starts playing a familiar melody, and I follow along like a dog on a leash.
The piano has always been the more defining instrument.
Whether it be the duet Mari wrote for our first recital, or the classical tune we play right now.
It’s better not to struggle.
Really, that’s when this all started.
I only noticed the worms when we started practising for our first recital.
It was unbearable at first.
They ebbed and throbbed under my skin, slithering and stretching across my flesh.
They found their way to my brain and nibbled at its edges.
I stopped seeing what I used to see.
They moved to my chest and ripped chunks off the organs.
My heart never beat right to begin with.
They came across my muscles at every corner.
Not that I had that much for them to eat.
It was a feast.
At first, I fought.
Hard.
Against everything.
Mari,
The worms,
My friends,
My parents.
In the end, it’s better not to struggle though.
Now they lay within the confines of my body, slowly sapping at my very essence.
Engorging themselves on what I have left.
But that’s just how it is.
I’m too tired to fight anymore,
And too hollow to hate.
The still silence draping the room is shattered with the crash of applause.
I rest the violin leaning upon the piano.
Mari gives me a smile as I do so, but the worms writhe at the sight.
Or perhaps that’s me, what’s left of me at least, still struggling against impossible odds.
Though a wave of drowsiness and nausea soon drowns out that theory.
I mutter something about being sleepy and start making my way upstairs.
Once I leave to climb the stairs Aubrey intercepts me, much to my displeasure.
Through her stutters, I’m able to make out something about a gift and reading.
She then shoves a piece of paper into my hand and bolts away.
Correction, a letter, not a piece of paper.
I just bring it upstairs with me.
Finally, now within my little sanctuary, I lay down and close my eyes.
Not like I’m gonna sleep soon.
Time passes.
I’m not sure how, or why, or it’s speed or really anything, but I just know that it passes.
My birthday moves on without me.
The world moves on without me.
I am nothing but an ant in a land so much bigger than I can ever wish to be.
…
It’s quiet.
…
Looking out my window, it’s already night.
Has it been hours already?
The moon’s out.
…
How reminiscent.
Useless junk tied to a world brimming with life, only being able to replicate beauty through the reflection of others.
…
Sometimes I dream of better worlds.
Ones where there were no recitals, and no worms.
They’re probably nothing more than fantasy though.
There always was something wrong with me.
Ways my skin didn’t fit right.
Ways my bones got in the way of my muscles.
…
The recitals didn’t give me the worms, did they?
I was born with them.
Worm eggs, festering within the moist confines of my brain tissue.
The recital just awoke them.
They were bound to hatch eventually.
Spreading from my head to the rest of my body, creeping along my tissue, swimming through my arteries.
Now they have entangled themselves with every part of my body, writhing together like a single mass.
Like a single…
Organism…
…
Sometimes, it feels like all the worms move in perfect coordination, as if they all operated from the same mind.
I never considered…
It makes more sense for there to be one worm per host, I guess.
Evolutionary wise, that just means there’d be less competition.
It makes it feel weirder.
There being a single, massive worm coiled around my entire body.
God knows how long it is.
…
The stars look oddly beautiful.
I wonder what the worm thinks of me.
It must see me as something akin to a house filled to the brim with snacks.
Nothing more than a simple meal.
It’s nothing more than a worm after all.
I wonder if it can see through my eyes,
Whether it emptied them so it could see for itself.
Do I see what the worm sees?
Is it stargazing along with me?
Does the worm see nothing but greys and drab?
Though…
The stars don’t look so drab nor grey.
Their glimmers are almost enchanting.
It’s mesmerising, watching as fog rises from the earth to reflect the star’s light like a dance of a billion fireflies.
Does the worm see it too?
Does the worm see beauty just as I do?
How does the worm feel about me?
…
There is something strangely intimate about being eaten by somebody.
To have your flesh consumed by someone.
Is that not love?
To care for someone so much you bring them as close to your heart as you physically can?
And to share a body with someone…
Is it not like a continuation of living together with somebody?
Where instead of sharing a house, you share your body?
I’ve felt empty for as long as I can remember.
Like there was a piece of myself missing.
And yet…
Somehow, I feel fuller now.
I’ve always said it hollowed me out but…
Has it not filled all the space it emptied, if not more?
I haven’t felt a true emotion in so long and yet…
Now I feel fulfilled?
The worm stemmed from my brain, so is it not possible it can share emotions with me?
Maybe even thoughts?
Yes…
Yes!
It speaks to me!
No, she speaks to me!
She always has!
She speaks broken tongues of incomprehensible chemicals and hormones and yet…
I get her.
Though she may speak only through emotions, is that not the true basis of all language?
Is that not a more human language than anything else?
It’s a pure, unfiltered and innocent dialect.
Purer than anything else.
Dirtied not by our filth and hatred.
It’s almost a naive way of speaking.
It’s a vulnerable way to be.
And yet she lay vulnerable to me.
Is that not pure love?
Is she not more human than we can dream to be?
To love wholeheartedly?
To open one’s heart to someone despite the risk of having it broken?
I see clearly now…
Her name is Nematomorpha, and she loves me.
I’ve always wondered how she’s felt towards me, but now I know.
It’s a tender warmth, a love seldom found in the rot of our society.
She loves me like how a scorpion loves the children she carries upon her back, before eating one whole.
It’s a painful way of love, and yet one that is greater than anything that can be found within our disgruntled way of isolated life.
All the pain I’ve suffered through has all been worth it to truly feel love now.
Is pain not a form of pleasure on its own?
A delight so extreme the feeling overruns our senses?
She has done this all just for me.
I’ve always felt so lonely, but now I shall never be alone anymore.
I remember when I used to imagine Mari hugging me so I could fall asleep, but that was nothing but a pipe dream.
It was tattered by Mari’s own hubris, her unwillingness to accept me, faults and all.
Unlike Nematomorpha.
She wraps me in her tight embrace, so close it encompasses every inch of tissue within me.
A true embrace.
One of a mother before the birth of her child.
Before the cysts of humanity can dirty the bond between mother and child.
Despite the fact she will birth millions, the ant queen is able to love everyone of her daughters wholeheartedly.
When they die, she weeps and yet births them new sisters to love them as much as she loves the dead.
It’s a simple love, so kind and yet so painful.
That’s what love is all about.
To have lows and highs, to have suffering and triumphs.
A kind of love which has been killed among the greed, gluttony, wrath, envy, pride, sloth and lust of humans.
A kind of unfiltered love I have never felt before until now.
I stand in the hangout clearing, open air swirling around me.
How I got here, I don’t know nor does it matter.
Because what matters is that Nematomorpha is here with me.
And she loves me.
Like nobody else has.
I look up at the moon.
A reflection of me as much as the sun.
I never deserved to be named after the sun.
Looking up at it, it resonates with me and Nematomorpha more than anything on this lowly earth could.
A pale pure form, with no atmosphere or crust blocking everything out.
While that leaves it cratered and hurt, it still chooses to be open.
To love.
And there, at the epitome of what could never be achieved down below where orchids grow just to be caged in plastic and die alone, Nematomorpha and I shall meet up to dance forever more among the beautiful stars.
Though, the moon is so far, such an unreachable bait hung right above our heads.
And so, we must get as close as we can.
My eyes reflect the water, which reflects the moon which in turn reflects the sun.
Is life not a series of reflections?
An egg within its mother reflects the original cell, who then grows up to reflect their parents, and then their friends, and finally to be a reflection of the society they live within.
A wretched society of humans.
So, at the edge of the world, I plunge into the endless void between Nematomorpha, I, and the moon.
And with a crash space flows across my skin like the tides of the ocean across rock faces.
From up above the moon, blue orchids spread out like a marvellous blanket of brimming life, so fragile and yet so beautiful.
They live and die in seconds and yet in these short moments more love is felt than anything I could have ever imagined.
And down from the forest of glimmering glass, Nematomorpha comes to me in her true form.
And like she did as a larva, she embraces me fully as I run my hands through her silky smooth black hair.
Her skin is as pale as the moon and as smooth as silk, like the finely crafted body of a true god.
She speaks not, for we have no reason to.
Words fail in a world this true.
And so, like nobility in a ball, we dance our hearts out, bathed in burning neon lights.
While not stoic nor perfect, it comes off as more elegant than any dance done before, as it is a true dance.
One with tears and with celebration, one with disgust and love, one which while it may hurt, has tenfold the amount of comfort.
And for once.
For the first time in an eternity.
I smile.
While lopsided and tear filled, it is one I can truly say with my whole heart is as genuine as can be.
And Nematomorpha, the only one to ever love me, smiles back, as lovely and tender as the exchanges we’ve had.