“Just crest over this dune on your right and there’s a nice spot we set up below it.” Scott said, pointing over the dashboard until his finger touched the windshield. His wavy, long brown hair blew backwards from the fierce A/C.
The rented off-road truck bucked and wobbled as it struggled for grip in the dense layers of sand. We jerked back and forth in our tight, plastic seats as we began climbing the sand dune, coarse tan partials spraying off the tires and up onto the side windows. I thought I saw a strange shadow behind me, but when I turned to look, nothing was there.
The sun’s rays grew longer and a darker shade of reddish-orange as they began to disappear below the distant horizon. An armadillo peeked around a rock. A gila lizard, basking in the evening sun. Coyotes perched high up on cliff faces, eagerly anticipating the moon’s arrival.
Somewhere, over the never ending vastness of sand, lay lost ruins, a civilization trapped in another dimension, eroding away in the never ending winds of time. The dunes themselves, the weather sweeping them away, only to make new, identical looking dunes, stretched onwards to eternity.
These sands, which had once been thriving, translucent seas, now lay barren and inhospitable to all but the most ambitious of creatures.
As our truck crested the steep embankment, the sun set fully below the western horizon. This did not come with a much needed reprieve to the heat, at least not right away. The orange sunset faded to purplish-blues as we set up our camp in the truck-we didn’t like tent camping. Scott decided to sleep in the bed of the truck, out in the open night air, and I decided to sleep in the cab, laying flat on top of the backseats.
Near the end of our brief camp set-up, Scott hollered and asked me to fish his flashlight out of his backpack. I obliged, heading over to the other side of the truck.
Unzipping the pack, I searched in the darkness without any luck. I couldn’t find the light he was looking for. As I stumbled around in the bag, I came upon a small, hidden pocket inside it. My curiosity, now peaked enough to invade his privacy, decided to reach around the various protein bars and water bottles and unzip the pocket. I felt around in the bag, until my hand grabbed something grainy. It felt like a stick of some kind.
I pulled it out, and it was…
… a worm.
An ornately carved, wooden worm.
Dumbfounded, I stared at the strange, hand-sized sculpture, unblinking. My brain, as if a frozen computer screen, stopped processing thoughts, the neurons refusing to fire.
I squinted in the darkness at its cavernous mouth, confused. Its teeth were pointed and jagged sharp spikes. A tongue extended out past the teeth. The eyes, if one could call them eyes, seemed to move and stare into you regardless of what position you held it. Almost like the eyes of an actor on a theater’s movie poster… the eyes seem to follow you.
The worm’s body was ridged and, in the higher areas of these ridges, carved in a circular pattern, was hieroglyphs. They were small, but after holding the worm close to my face and squinting, I managed to discern some of the carvings. Strange depictions of mutilated dogs, men and women enjoying themselves in blastohemous sexual positions, then more men and women, these ones decapitated. The carvings were colorless, except for small splotches of red paint, symbolizing blood. The worm began to cause my head to spin and become disoriented. I blinked and tilted my head back away from the sculpture to try to dispel the sudden episode of vertigo.
A coyote howled in the distance. A tarantula waited beneath a rock for a midnight snack. The white moonlight bounced off me.
“Hey, did you find that flashlight?” Scott asked, awakening me from whatever spell I was under.
“No, it’s not in here.” I shouted back, carefully slipping the worm back in the pocket as I quietly zipped the backpack shut.
“I’ll just hold my phone for you.” I said.
“Yeah, that’s fine. Just shine it so I can unroll my sleeping bag. I can’t see the clips I need to unbuckle.” Scott instructed. After helping him set up his sleeping arrangements, I retired to the cab of the truck, and attempted to get some sleep.
As I lay there in the darkness, coyotes howled to the full moon, its light cast more of the strange shadows as my eyes began to shut.
I awoke a few hours later in the early morning hours. My eyes adjusted to the surroundings, my back stiff and twisted from my cramped quarters. Then, suddenly, a noise. Outside to my left. Scott.
“OH YEAH, UGH, UH, UH, UH!” I heard subdued sexual moaning from the bed of the truck. I was revolted, the thought of my friend jerking off so close to me made my stomach turn in knots. Against my better judgment, I snuck a glance out the back window to see what was going on. My initial disgust was confirmed as I surveyed the scene. Scott was completely naked. His, shall I say, body, was completely shoved inside of the same wooden worm I had found in his backpack.
Except the worm was larger now. It seemed to pulsate with him. It didn’t seem wooden either, it seemed soft and fleshy.
ALIVE.
The worm emanated a faint, green glow that brightened each time Scott thrusted into it. This glow also illuminated the carvings on the worm’s body.
Horrified, I quickly laid flat down on the seats once more, out of Scott’s view. I turned my head to the side to try to fall back asleep, not wanting to involve myself in whatever ritual was going on outside. Our relationship, I had decided, was effectively over. I couldn’t handle something so odd and so strange.
Except… I was out in the middle of nowhere with him.
Fear and adrenaline coursed through my veins like a drug as I happened to sneak a cursory glance at my arm. Light caught the reflection of something strange on my arm. I squinted in the moonlight. My blood ran cold.
The same hieroglyphs carved on the worm were now raised, fleshy lumps on my right arm. Mutilated dogs. The sexual positions. The butchered people. The red blood was colored into my skin like a tattoo. These hieroglyphs started at my wrist and extended up to my shoulder.
The itch from each bump was maddening. Desperate for relief, I dug my fingernails into one of the lumps, this one depicting a beheaded dog. My skin was loose and soggy over the lump; green puss oozed out of the spot as my fingernail easily broke the skin. It didn’t hurt, but the itch was causing me to flounder around helplessly, hoping to feel some kind of relief that never came.
Then, suddenly, the same feeling of vertigo that I experienced earlier rushed over me. I felt dizzy, even while laying down. My stomach threatened to wretch and empty itself. Then, silence. Nothing.
I felt the truck shift as footsteps approached the cab. Scott. Oh shit. I hurried and shut my eyes, hoping that he wouldn’t catch on to me being awake. The door opened.
“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” A piercing scream jolted my body, my heart nearly exploding.
“WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?!” Another scream. A woman’s scream.
“Uh, uh, what?” I blurted, my brain not comprehending. A woman stood behind the driver’s side door, her hands to her mouth, eyes wider than I’ve ever seen eyes. I propped myself up on the back seats. The bottom of her face was partially obscured by the darkness. She seemed.. familiar somehow.
“WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?!” The woman repeated behind her hands.. I stared blankly, confused and terrified.
“I HAVE A KNIFE!” I heard footsteps walk around the truck, a dark silhouette was outlined in the side windows.
“Wait wait wait…” I shrieked, putting my hands up in the air. I heard a knife being unsheathed.
“GET OUT! NOW!” She screamed, footsteps getting closer to the open driver’s side door. I opened the back door to my right and gingerly exited the truck. I began running barefoot, the sand digging its way between my toes. I ran as fast as I could. I didn’t look back. I never got a complete look at the lunatic. That bothered me.
“Scott?! Where are you?! Scott?!” I heard screaming from behind me as I slid down a sand dune out of sight of the crazy lady.
“Where are you?!” She screamed, the words echoing off the cliff faces.
I panted and wiped sweat from my brow as I lay back against the dune. I listened to the woman search, her anger progressing to the point of rage. She screamed into the desert sky, the early morning sun peaking above the horizon. Guttural, ape-like, inhuman screams that caused goosebumps to rise on my flesh. The hieroglyphs on my arm were gone.
I stood and started to run again, faster this time. I found a cave and snuck into it as the sun began beating down ruthlessly. I heard the truck faintly driving off in the distance. The more I thought about it, however, the less any of it made sense.
Who the hell was the woman? How did she know Scott? How did she know where we were camping? Did she follow us out here? Where was Scott? How did he disappear overnight?
My brain physically hurt, I felt a migraine coming on. I sat down on the dry floor of the cave. I looked up at the ceiling of the cave, and saw the same hieroglyphs that were on the worm. The same horrifying depictions of violence, the same red blood splatters, everything.
Then a new hieroglyph. This one, carved into the sandstone of the cave, showed two people, man and woman, side by side. Two arrows pointed in opposite directions. My blood ran cold. Then I saw it, to my left, a ray of sunlight caught it…
The worm sculpture, sitting on top of a rock. I crawled to it, and held it in my hand. Wooden, like before. I began running my fingers up and down the surface. Nothing. I pulled down my pants.
The cave hieroglyphs began lighting up green. I recoiled, dropping the worm. The worm fell with a fleshy splat. Voices in my head now, telling me to pick up the worm and fuck it.
The worm began growing longer, its wooden ridges loosening into fleshy sac pods. It glowed green as I picked it up by its slimy surface. I shoved the worm’s body into my own, the warmth and penetration overwhelming. The voices in my head grew louder as the entire cave lit up green. Hieroglyphs began forming all over my body. They itched insanely, but not enough to stop my ritual.
I remember… transforming. I saw a bright light, then darkness. I was awakened by the sound of a truck engine. I heard frantic footsteps running towards me.
“Oh my god! I’ve been looking for you for hours! Are you ok? Are you ok?” I groggily turned my sand dusted head. I felt… different.
“What the hell was that?” I asked. My voice… what?
“What was what?” The voice asked. It sounded feminine. I stood gingerly, my knees weak.
“The worm? What was that thing?”
“Scott, what are you talking about? What worm? What the fuck?!” She asked me. Why didn’t she remember?
“Whu… what?”
“Oh come on Scott.” No, it was all wrong. I wasn’t Scott. Who was I?
Wait, the cave hieroglyph. The man and woman with the arrows. No…
Did I… switch bodies with Scott?
Did he switch bodies with me?
“Scott, you’ve been missing for the whole day! You must be hallucinating! You need a doctor!”
“No, I’m…. not Scott.” I protested. But I knew. My new reality. I wasn’t a woman anymore.
“Really? First I see my doppelgänger in the truck and now this?”