Last weekend my daughter Kayla came over to stay for her court-appointed visit. Ever since the divorce, I’ve been a lot more lenient than when I was married. I let her do whatever she wants and give her anything she requests. ‘No’ is not an option and she knows that. Let mom be the bad guy. She’s the one that wanted all this, not me.
That Sunday, as I was shaving, my daughter commanded me to stop and hold still, as if posing for a portrait. She climbed up on the bathroom sink- with a little help from myself- and begun to draw a rudimentary third eye on my reflection in the middle of my forehead. I watched her clumsily lean against the mirror and trace out a large cartoonish eye. She leaned back to admire her work and kissed her little fingers. “A masterpiece,” she proclaimed. I’ve had a good chuckle everyday this week, brushing my teeth, getting ready for work, and having a little of Kayla’s art work staring at me, reminding me how lucky I am that she’s still in my life. Still, I worry. There’s a new man in my ex-wife’s life, a possible new daddy, maybe even a better daddy than me.
Next Friday, I had come home early from work. My head was pounding, one of the many migraines I get. I was just going to wet a rag with cool water, put it on my forehead, and lay in the dark. No partying this Friday, just a date with darkness and some strong medication. I was soaking a rag when I heard an explosion outside, a thunderous crack that shook the house.
I opened the front door, but I couldn’t see much past the wall of water that was falling from my gutter. It was a downpour, one that I hadn’t expected. I didn’t remember seeing anything on the weather report this morning about a storm. Go figure, the weatherman was wrong again. Suddenly, the hair on my arms stood straight up. I heard another explosion, but this one was much louder. Th screen door shook, and I felt a thump in my chest. There was an immediate flash of light and then the rain ceased. The clouds quickly dispersed, and the sun appeared, glaring light reflecting from the scattered pools all along the road.
Although the rain had stopped, I could still hear falling water, or at least what I thought was water. I looked all around to see if there was rain still falling somewhere in the vicinity. Maybe I had caught the tail end of the storm and it was still raining close by as the clouds methodically moved through the neighborhood, but that wasn’t the case. The clouds were moving quick and to the west, far from the neighborhood where I live. I could see a little rain in the distance, but the sound was coming from the east, at the top of the cul-de-sac.
I live in a modest neighborhood on a cul -de-sac. My house is near the end of the street, three houses down from the top of the street. There at the end of the cul-de-sac is an abandoned property, with no grass, and one large Magnolia tree. Nothing grows there but that massive tree. It’s as if it sucks the life out of everything else nearby. The property is a barren, rocky, Martian landscape.
The white flowers on the tree had increased and opened wide. The tree looked infested with a patchwork swarm of ravenous white aliens. Some flowers were depositing a heavy stream of objects to the ground, like a busted pinata. Others were moving side-to-side, attempting to begin their reproductive dance, and new ones were blooming in rapid succession. Soon every flower on the tree was depositing its contents to the ground, the sound of which reminded me of hail falling onto a tin roof, but with the volume magnified ten times than normal, causing curious neighbors to gather in the street.
I met one of the neighbors, Jared, in the street. He approached me and was talking but I couldn’t hear him over the falling tree debris.
“I can’t hear you,” I mouthed.
He walked up and spoke into my ear, “What in the world is happening?”
I shrugged my shoulders and was about to yell something in response when the noise suddenly stopped. The flowers on the tree had ended their little escapade and were folding back into themselves. Lying all around the tree was a hill of debris, but debris that looked to be squirming. Some of the hill collapsed and cascaded into the street.
“What came out of those flowers?” I heard another neighbor, Mrs. C ask. We called her Mrs. C because no matter how hard she tried, no one knew how to pronounce her name.
“I don’t know, but whatever it was, it seems to be alive.” I answered.
There was a buzz of conversation in the street as everyone had gathered around to see what was happening. No one was approaching though, so I took it upon myself to investigate. Seeing me approach the pile, motivated Charles to follow behind.
I approached the moving mound of living biomass. It was a slow creeping glacier of pinkish two-inch grub worms, with bulbous veins running throughout, and dark green heads. They were fighting and the victors were consuming the losers whole. As they consumed, the bigger they got.
“Holy Shit. I’ve never seen anything like this. I mean, Cicadas, yeah, but this is sick.”
“Maybe they’ll eat each other up, or at least until a few are left and then we can get rid of those,” I reasoned.
The rest of the neighborhood had found enough courage to approach. There was talk of calling the police, but what could they do. Randy, my neighbor, who was crazy anyway, wanted to pour gas on the pile and light it up. I admit, I kind of thought that would be fun myself, but Mrs. C stated that the smell would be awful, and the fire might get out of control.
“No,” I said, “It’ll work itself out. Just let it be. It’s confined to this yard and the top of the street. Let’s see what it looks like tomorrow.”
People mulled around for a while, taking photos with their phones and talking to one another about this being something that probably only happens once-in-a lifetime. Over the next few hours, people got bored and headed back inside their homes.
At around six in the morning there my doorbell rang. I picked up my phone. It was Randy, looking nervous and pounding his hand against his thigh.
“Man, come on out. I told you we should have lit them damn things on fire. Hey man, you awake.”
I got out of bed and put on some clothes. I went downstairs and opened the front door, but Randy didn’t need to say anything. I saw over his shoulders what was left of the massive pile of grub worms. It had been reduced to six, but they were as large as men, clumsily writhing in place, smashing their large heads against the road. They were trying, with little success to move back towards the grass. Most had utterly failed except for one. It had made its way into Mrs. C’s yard.
Their appearance had grown more grotesque. They had become segmented and the green in their head was now matched by green spots in various places on their pink bodies. With the larger size, some of their other features became more noticeable. The veins heaved up and down with laborious effort. They had numerous small jagged teeth with large flat black tongues that incessantly fell out their mouths. Strangest of all though, was the eyes. They weren’t monstruous, but human, perfectly human, and perfectly out of place.
“Get this thing out of my yard!” Mrs. C yelled out of her window.
“I’ve got an axe,” said Randy.
“Go get it. Jared has a chainsaw. I’ll get him up,”
Randy ran back home. I made my way to Jared’s house. His house was adjacent to the empty lot, so I was surprised he wasn’t already up cleaning up the leftovers. He was meticulous about his yard; he had one of those golf green yards. He would even sweep the driveway.
I rang his doorbell but there was no answer. I walked around back and saw that his garage door was open. I yelled for him but no answer. I did hear a moan. I immediately thought that Jared was hurt, but I didn’t anticipate the kind of hurt he was experiencing. Jared was lying on the floor, face down and not moving. Next to him was one the grub worms, but the upper part of its body looked just like Jared. The lower half of its body still looked like a worm. It was a fat, clumsy version of Medusa, a merman flopping its tail in exasperation. It was the worm moaning, not Jared. To see Jared’s face and his expression rudely attached to a body of a warm made me sick. There was an appendage from the worm’s body connected to Jared’s gut.
Although the worm’s Jared-like face manifested fear, apparently its hunger was not satiated. I hadn’t noticed before, but Jared’s arm was severed and lying next to the worm. The worm picked up the arm and started to eat it. I realized at that point that this I how they blend in. They clone their human hosts and then eat the body to get rid of any evidence.
“Holy horseshit. What the hell?” Randy said as he ran up beside me.
“I don’t know. Just be careful. They can attach to you.” I was going to mention something else but before I could Randy had walked over there and put his ax in the beast’s neck. There was a high pitch screech and thick green blood exuded from its wound. The tail start flapping in pain.
“Move!” I grabbed Jared’s chainsaw and finished the job, chopping off the cloned head, the torso falling back against the garage floor. The tail moved sporadically and finally stopped.
We were silent for a moment, standing in awe at the unbelievable once-in-a lifetime scene we were staring at.
We heard Mrs. C screaming frantically. We both ran to the front yard. Next door we could see that the worm in her yard had sprouted its lethal appendage and was trying to work it through her open window. Randy ran over and swung his axe down through the appendage, easily breaking it from the worm’s body. With the chainsaw still running, I ran and plunged it into the side. I pushed in deeper and I could hear Randy cussing and grunting as he worked vigilantly on the head. Soon, with green blood all over my face and shoulder, I shoved the chainsaw even further in the side of the creature. With that last effort, the creature stopped moving.
Mrs. C came out of her house and even though I was covered in blood, she gave me a hug.
“Oh, thank you. Thank you. I love you guys. What about all the rest?”
“We’ll take care of them. Just stay in your house.” Something felt odd about the hug. Mrs. C was a hugger. When I first met her, she hugged me. It was a little unusual at first but I got used to it. Whenever she hugged me, she always put her head over the top of my shoulder, since she was about the same height as me. This time she hugged me and rested her head on my chest. I watched her walk back inside her house. She seemed to be a little shorter.
Randy and I didn’t want to chance it, so we called the police and explained the story at the beginning of the cul-de-sac. They didn’t believe us at first, but when they saw the scene, they called the National Guard, then they called the FBI. The entire street was quarantined. We were asked to stay inside until we were instructed that we could leave.
After explaining everything to the authorities, I went home. I was beat and filthy. I took a shower and when I got out to brush my teeth, I noticed Kayla’s eye was no longer on my forehead, but moved over the center of my nose. I ran through the house looking for clues. Those things were too clumsy and with their burdensome bodies, how could they ever get up the stairs? There was nothing to suggest that one had gotten in the house, but when I looked out my bedroom window, I saw one of those appendages, lying loose and bloody in the backyard. I don’t feel different, but I can’t help to wonder, if Kayla will ever notice the difference.