Gut Worms

by Cody Walzel

Part 1 appears in this issue.

conclusion

Rolando nearly fainted with panic when he broke into the records room, but he was able to triangulate patient addresses to the outbreak source. It was the same place he’d gotten his worm.

All that was available in the slum after electric shifts were dirty, nomadic, unlicensed bars called “trap shops.” These sold fermented home brews, followed no health codes and paid no taxes. They were so named because they were raided by corrupt police who beat everyone with nightsticks and stole their money. To avoid this, the bars operated out of makeshift tents and moved every night.

Rolando and Sibley held electric lanterns as they followed drifters through maintenance grates. Oil drum fires blazed a path through a utility tunnel while mole people climbed up ladders from the abyss below.

Inside the tent, glowing jars hanging from ropes lit the space. Rolando and Sibley pushed their way past weary, bloated deviants to a bar built with stolen construction equipment. A hostile bartender gestured to unlabeled tankers of toxic-looking liquids.

“Which?”

All beverages in this place gave the same potent, poisonous buzz followed by a throbbing hangover. Rolando pretended to nurse his stinky cocktail and scanned for the infected. He elbowed Sibley toward a blotchy, sallow-eyed customer.

“How’s it going?” Sibley asked.

“I’m alive.”

“That’ll do.”

“It’ll have to.”

Dr. Sibley searched for a transition. “Just run down from work? Or... hey, you know, you should get checked for worms. They can be deadly.”

“Drink your swill and buzz off.”

Rolando chimed in, “Sorry to eavesdrop, but I’m in medicine. There’s actually a simple test we could do here. No charge.”

“And what’s that?”

“It’s, uh, a fecal larvae test.”

The blotchy man didn’t like that. “What?”

“It’s standard,” Sibley said.

“You want me to drop one on the floor?”

The bartender leaned in. “You guys knock it off or leave.”

Rolando persisted: “No, you use this sterile cup and I poke through the... uh, sample with a UV light.” Rolando braced, waiting to get punched.

“It’s free? Yeah, okay.”

They slipped out to the Porta-Potties. The blotchy man produced a sample, and Rolando discovered worm larvae. He warned the man that unchecked, the worm would commandeer his endocrine system, expanding until it ruptured his intestines. They set an extraction appointment at discounted rates.

New customers came easily. The intoxicated were more willing than the sober to show strangers their feces. Sibley opened conversations, Rolando closed with details about septic organs and anal blood. It had become clear to Rolando that “Dr.” Sibley wasn’t even a dentist, but they still made a good team.

They took customers to and from the Portos so many times that a bouncer accused them of prostitution. Sibley scared the bouncer into giving a stool sample, and they won him over by offering a free removal.

Most of the bar patrons had a worm. Ironically, the few that didn’t proved the most difficult interactions. Rolando poked through their poop and declared them clean, then the patient regarded them with suspicion.

“Is this some kind of twisted sex thing?”

“No, no!” they’d say. “We’re medical professionals. We’re not... being weird right now.”

* * *

At work, Rolando studied surgeon’s techniques and pilfered equipment: a scalpel, pieces of a robotic arm, anesthetics. The guilt he felt was tempered by the knowledge that clinics up-charged ten thousand percent for everything from plastic pill cups to bedpan rentals.

Rolando and Sibley operated out of patients’ homes, laying down plastic tarps like serial killers. Some lived in curtained stalls like Rolando; others, in closet-like rooms with barely the space to lie down; and still others, in caves carved into the concrete sides of maintenance corridors. Home surgery was less risky than breaking into doctors’ offices, and it satisfied their perverse fascination with seeing people’s living spaces.

Rolando felt corrupt and worried about prison time. But the operations went well, the money came steadily, and people walked away healthy. Sibley handled the paperwork, then Rolando parsed out stolen antibiotics.

Sibley held the blood-stained mason jars of yellowed liquid to the light. He’d examine the worm’s knotty tissue, the concentric rows of teeth inside heads the size of lug nuts. “Another perfect specimen,” he’d purr.

Then he’d whisk the worm away into whatever godforsaken network traded in the illegal sale of parasites. Credits appeared in their bank accounts. They’d celebrate by sucking down jars of pure glucose gel out in front of the Automat.

Once, Sibley pulled a still-wiggling worm out of a patient by its tail, then slammed it to death against the wall. He cooked the end with a sanitation torch, then nibbled the tip. Nausea scorched Rolando’s throat.

“My God...” Sibley said. “It’s delicious. I’m not kidding, you’ve got to taste this.”

“No thanks.”

“Just a bite.”

“Absolutely not.”

Sibley bit too far into uncooked worm and hemolymph fluid sprayed his face. Rolando gagged and laughed. Then Sibley kept eating, and Rolando had to wrestle the raw worm from his hands.

That ruined Rolando’s appetite. He lived off vaping and vacuum-sealed liquid meal supplements. They were nutritionally insufficient and grayed his skin, but he liked to think his undernourished body made him look like a musician.

Mr. Privilege found out about their work, and a gift basket arrived containing silly string, jump ropes, gummy snakes, sausage chains, and several other worm-shaped objects, with a card signed “Mr. P.”

Rolando became a punching bag at work. Moonlighting surgeries left him loopy, and he made frequent mistakes. Supervisors noticed missing equipment, and security tightened. When he fell asleep in the break room and people drew pictures on his face, his last hopes of workplace romance died.

* * *

The worm hijacked Rolando’s endocrine system, releasing bonding chemicals. He obsessed over his distending belly. His appetite returned with such a force that he’d gladly drink a wet-market algae fart jar in sober daylight.

He lacked the energy to be neurotic and carelessly snuck Sibley into his clinic’s imaging room to x-ray his worm. The radiograph stunned them; they’d never even heard of this. “Twinsies...”

Two worms. Both huge. He’d been eating for three, the fat payday swelling with each meal. Their wriggling felt like profit. He rubbed cocoa butter on his protuberance and imagined freedom from debt.

Rolando was strangely proud that they’d grown so large. Other people took theirs out sooner, but Rolando was taking the right supplements, monitoring their growth. Girth could be dangerous, because their scales tore intestinal walls. But he fed them a high-fiber, low-protein diet. Grow them long and you’re golden. He was golden. They burrowed to the very ends of him, and still there was no blood in his stool. His perfect twins, so valuable.

A routine formed: trap shop, fish for customers, surgery and repeat. The pair became barflies, showing up on off-nights. They paid off staff and found the trap shops by drunkie instinct. They scanned cocktails with UV lights and drank barrels worth then, when the electric shifts buzzed on, stumbled home arm-in-arm, singing ancient sea shanties.

At work, Rolando assisted surgeries after all-nighters, avoiding arteries while hung over. He paid more into his loans, and the total debt began to shrink. Then a twisting pain pinched his nerves, he flushed, and collapsed. He came to staring up at a circle of glaring co-workers. At home, he found blood in his stool.

* * *

Sibley rushed over to help remove the twins, but Rolando insisted on operating on himself. He turned the IV high enough to dull the pain but not his coordination. Drugs slammed his system, and his hands grew leaden as he attached the scalpel to the robotic arm. He took the controls of the Surgery Assist Device and pressed blade to skin. A thin red line followed the point, then he clamped open the incision and dug in.

Blood spurted onto Sibley’s nose. The monitor rang a warning.

“Turn down the drugs,” Rolando said.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to operate?”

“Just turn them down.”

Sibley reduced the drip and the pain flooded in. Rolando struggled to control his breath as the S.A.D. arm pivoted and burrowed past the numbed flesh into raw innards. He screamed. Past the curtain, floormates shouted for him to shut up. He felt he was carving out his own insides with a linoleum knife. Sibley gave Rolando’s trembling hand a sympathetic squeeze.

Then Rolando took a wrong turn inside himself, bile began to flow with the blood, the S.A.D. controls clattered to the floor, and the two worms visibly burrowed toward safety beneath thin layers of viscera. Neighbors voiced their outrage as monitor alarms went haywire.

“What do I do?” Sibley asked.

Rolando lacked the breath to direct him. Enraged floormates burst through the curtains then backed out in horror. A panicked Sibley strapped a nasal mask onto Rolando and cranked the nitrous oxide to high, then the nightmare intensified as surgery became a hellish torture-carnival infused with Rolando’s own uncontrollable laughter. Spasms shot through him. His nerves gave way, his digits clenched involuntarily and he urinated. Even through the pee and the gas, Rolando could still smell the copper stench of his own insides.

“I’m... going to die.”

“Eventually, brother, but no, not today.”

“If I go... you can have all my stuff.”

“That’s just the gas talking, hold on...”

Sibley grabbed barbecue tongs and pulled a fleshy rope from the incision. For a terrifying moment, Rolando thought he’d yanked out some intestine. He watched deliriously as each worm streamed from him, as endless as a clown’s handkerchief.

Pop. Pop. Sibley coiled a collective 80 feet of worm in two garbage cans. Rolando felt a deep satisfaction, then endorphins rolled over him like a wave, and he passed out.

* * *

He awoke handcuffed to a clinic bed at work. Sibely began picking the lock.

“What’s happening?”

“You’re wanted for questioning for trying to remove your own worms.”

Rolando noticed Sibley left himself out of the procedure. “Why’d you come here?”

“It was close. You were in a bad way.” He handed Rolando a clipboard. “Here’s the other bad news: you’re being sacked for illegal surgery. And poor hygiene.”

The cuffs opened and Sibley stood Rolando up.

Someone shouted, “Wait, stop!”

Sibley pulled Rolando, pantless and moaning, through the exit. Clinic staff exploded after them, but the pair had already vanished into the crowd. Sibley produced a stashed wheelchair and steered Rolando through the busy streets.

“We’ve got some competition in the worm trade.”

“What?”

Sibley pointed out Rolando’s apartment building, caution-taped off and seeping brackish water. “The rich worm-freaks are dowsing whole buildings with contaminated leaks, infecting people on purpose. They’re turning us into worm farms.”

“Plan C...”

* * *

Sibley took Rolando home to his underground lair deep in some forgotten train tunnel. It was spacious, comfy, the floor carpeted in a patchwork of salvaged rugs and full of stolen furniture. Thanks to his duplicity, Sibley lived like some debauched sewer king.

Rolando’s painkillers were fading, and his body ached. He was homeless, his career was over, and he was now a fugitive from the law.

Sibley seemed to read his thoughts. “Hey, man, stay down here as long as you like.”

“Did you at least get a good price for my worms?”

“They, uh, got confiscated.” It sounded like a lie.

Rolando stared as Sibley avoided eye contact. “You ate them!”

“What?”

“I know you did! You ate the twins, you horrible bastard!”

“Hey, calm down, I... Okay, so maybe I ate them.”

“I knew it!”

“I was under the weather. Turns out eating them has major health benefits. Demand is skyrocketing. That’s why it’s becoming a corporate thing. But there’s good news there.”

“What possible good could come from this situation?”

“The project is backed by a cabal of billionaires and a major food distributor. They’re gonna need staff: ‘Parasite Removal Specialists.’ It’s steady work, we could join a Retrieval Team. Because of your uh, legal situation, you’d need some minor facial reconstruction. I could get it for you, cheap.”

Rolando meditated on the shambles of his life. Was this what opportunity looked like, helping rich worm-cravers harvest nutrients from the world’s broken? Why couldn’t success ever be a reward for a service provided to humanity? Did nature require prosperity to be stolen from his fellow ground-dwellers?

He’d dared ask more from life and lost what little he had. Why are those born to advantage continually blessed with more, while the rest of humanity seems doomed to serve them? Why are those given to hardship heaped with more of the same? Punished for risk, beaten to collapse.

Rolando wondered why, in spite of consequences, those destined to crawl through the dirt can’t help but inch towards the light.