It started on a dare, I suppose. I was out drinking with friends, and one of my buddies saw something crawling across one of the tables. He picked it up and showed it to me, telling me he’d slip me a tenner if I ate it. I’m the guy in the group who’ll eat anything – raw meat, trash, banana peels, I even ate doody once – so naturally I took him up on the offer. The thing that was squirming around in his hand looked like it was some kind of worm. It was long and thin and green and, on second thought, maybe it was a bug instead. I don’t really understand the distinction between worms and bugs. “Worm” seems more appropriate, so I think I’ll stick to that. Anyway, I ate the thing, swallowed it whole. Everybody laughed and clapped and I got my tenner, and I didn’t really think about it much past that. Spent the tenner on a forty, shit’s really getting expensive these days.
I woke up the next morning feeling like shit. It was a Wednesday, meaning I had to go to work. I was already on thin ice for fucking up too many times, so taking the day off just wasn’t an option. I thought a shower might knock some sense into me, but it didn’t. Actually, it made me feel worse, maybe some sort of reverse osmosis shit. There was a lot of hair left in the shower after I was done (I’m a hairy guy) and I could have sworn some of it was moving around. I chalked it up to the hangover.
Work was a drag, as usual. I sort trash for a living. You know how people never actually separate their recyclables out from their normal trash? Yeah, it’s my job to do that at the trash sorting center. Basically what happens is that a few bags of trash will get dumped into my work area and I’ll spend the next 20-30 minutes picking through them and setting aside the recyclables. Whenever I find batteries I hide them in my pockets because I can make extra money selling them on the black market. It’s not a glamorous job, but it also isn’t a stressful one. I imagine most people couldn’t physically handle looking at or touching some of the stuff that I have to deal with. Stuff like used condoms and bugs, none of it fazes me. I do my job, I clock out, I go home. Sure, sometimes I make mistakes – that’s why I’m on thin ice – but who doesn’t?
That night, I dreamt that I was drowning in a vast lake of worms. I could feel them pulling at my feet, trying to drag me down, and I was just barely able to keep my head above the worms. Eventually my strength started to wane and I began to sink into the worms, and as my head went under I could feel them rushing in through my mouth. I awoke with a start but it was barely even three in the morning, so I had to force myself to go back to sleep.
When the alarm rang I got up, took a shower, and drove to the trash sorting center. I noticed a floater in one of my eyes that hadn’t been there before. Going blind is one of my mortal fears because if I lose my vision I won’t be able to sort trash anymore, so whenever anything weird’s going on in my eyeballs it really trips me up. I spent all day trying not to think about the floater, but something like that is easier said than done. Around lunchtime I realized that there was a second floater floating around in there and that pretty much killed any focus I had for the rest of the day. The problem is that I have a quota to meet, and if I don’t meet that quota I’ll get into big trouble. So, I was forced into something of a catch-22 situation – work quickly to meet the quota and risk making mistakes, or work slowly to avoid making mistakes and fail to meet the quota. Well, I went with the former.
In my haste I accidentally slashed my hand on a piece of broken glass. Stuff like that happens, it’s no big deal. I ran to the first aid station to get help from a nurse, but when I showed her my wound she screamed and then ran off to somewhere behind the counter. I was confused at first, but when I looked at the wound myself I saw that, mixed with the blood, there were worms crawling out of it. In a panic I leapt behind the counter, grabbed a roll of gauze off the shelf, and wrapped my hand up as tight as I could. I rushed back to my post and was just barely able to meet my quota. That night I had the same dream as before.
The floaters were even worse the day after that. There were four, maybe five, now, and their shapes seemed to constantly change as I moved my eyes. With dread I removed the gauze from my hand before taking my shower, but the blood and worms were gone, and the wound seemed to have almost completely healed. Work was more of the same. I managed to meet my quota even though I was still stressing out over the floaters. I pocketed a few batteries early on, which lifted my spirits and probably gave me the push I needed for the rest of the day. That night, I went out drinking with the boys. That’s what we call ourselves, “the boys”, although there’s actually one female in the group. It was our bimonthly Gnosticism Gnight, and as we drank we discussed the finer points of the Gnostic worldview. If you aren’t familiar, Gnostics believe that our material world was created not by the entity known as “God”, but by an imperfect being, Yaldabaoth, who was created several steps below the true God. Yaldabaoth is unaware of the true God and views himself as the master of all creation. In truth, it is only through the intervention of his creator, the Aeon Sophia, that his evil creations of flesh (I’m referring to humans here) were granted consciousness and free will. What this means is that every human being possesses a piece of divinity within them, something that distinguishes them from the inherently evil nature of the material world. As a result, salvation can only be acquired through spiritual means, through acquiring divine knowledge (gnosis) and ascending beyond the material world. To put it another way, the “God” of our world – the entity that created it – is an evil asshole, and it is a Gnostic’s spiritual duty to see past this evil asshole God and recognize the divinity of the true God that exists beyond the material world. If you’ve played Shin Megami Tensei you’re probably already familiar with this concept.
Gnostic Gnight is my favorite day out of every bimonthly period because it helps me get a tighter grip on what’s important in life. I’ll be honest, sorting trash for a living does get to you eventually. Discussing Gnostic philosophy with the boys reminds me that no matter what I did, whether I changed jobs or just kept on sorting trash, it would get to me eventually, because any kind of work is inherently evil. I don’t mean that in an anti-work sort of way, those guys are total losers, but what I’m saying is that it’s one of those things you don’t really have a choice in. You’ve gotta work because that’s just the way Yaldabaoth made the world, and because Yaldabaoth made it, it must be inherently evil. But that’s okay. Our talks during Gnostic Gnight bring us all closer to the divine truth. When I die, my spirit will return to the immaterial realm and I will exist at peace with the one, true God.
I arose the morning after Gnostic Gnight feeling spiritually woke. The floaters were still there but they hadn’t gotten worse, either, and by that point I was starting to get used to them. Since it was a Saturday, I figured I would start things off right by taking my time and making a nice, hearty breakfast. Bacon, eggs, and an omelet, that’s basically my ideal breakfast, so that’s what I decided to make. I had the bacon and eggs frying, but as I started to cut up the onion for the omelet my hand slipped and I accidentally cut off a finger. I could feel my heart drop down into my balls as an overwhelming urge to puke washed over me. Then, I looked closer. There was no blood, only worms. They were crawling out of the place where my finger used to be, crawling towards the finger, and it was enough to make me blow my load all over the table and stove. The vomit started sizzling right away and the kitchen filled up with smoke and the smell of hot puke. I reached over to turn off the stove, sad because breakfast had been ruined, then ran over to the sink to wash all the puke off me. I was surprised when I looked at my now-clean hands and counted five fingers on each.
I’ve never been into the whole self-harm thing because I just don’t see the appeal, but after the events of the last few days I was starting to feel a little curious. Well, not the good kind of curious, like when you’re a kid and you’re trying to figure out what your parents got you for Christmas. I mean the bad kind of curious, like when there’s blood coming out of your butt and you’re waiting to get the results from your colonoscopy. I started with a few small cuts on the arm. It didn’t hurt as much as I’d expected, in fact I barely felt anything at all. Worms crawled out of the wounds and started to pull the skin back together. In less than a minute the cuts had all completely disappeared. I really wasn’t sure what I was looking at. So, I cut deeper. Again there were worms, and again the wounds were closed. How many worms were there?
There’s a big mirror in my bedroom, so I kneeled in front of it with the knife in hand. I read this story once by this guy, Yukio Mishima, maybe you’ve heard of him. I think they named the dudes in Tekken after him. Anyway, the story was about this soldier who’s told to stop a mutiny made up of his friends. He can’t decide whether he wants to be loyal to his country or if he wants to be loyal to his friends. Somehow that means he has to kill himself, I kind of missed a few of the steps it took to get there but whatever. The way his death is described comes across as very beautiful, I guess you could say, and so when I read that story I decided that if I ever decided to kill myself I would use the same method as in the story. This wasn’t quite that sort of situation, but I needed to see for myself what was going to happen if I tried what I wanted to try.
I grasped the knife with both hands and plunged it into my naked stomach, dragged it from left to right, then gave the thing a twist. There was no pain, only a slight pressure, and I encountered much less resistance than I’d expected. Nothing came out of the hole in my body, no stomach, no intestines, no whatever else is in there. I gazed into the mirror, into that hole, and saw nothing, just a dark void where my guts should have been. No, there was movement. Movement, everywhere, like tens of thousands of worms wriggling around, panicking in the sudden light. I closed my eyes, then. That’s just not the sort of thing you want to see happening to your body. When I opened them, the hole was closed. Everything was back to normal. I was just a normal guy having a normal weekend. Yeah.
In my dreams I found myself once again in that great ocean of worms. I tried to resist but it was hopeless, and before long I was totally submerged. Then, I felt a presence all around me, not the worms but something much greater than the worms, something that encompassed all the worms at once. I could feel the worms in my body, too, all of them, and then I could feel them become one with the worms outside. Whatever I once was, I was no longer. I was an idea, carried in the ocean by the worms. In that ocean there were other ideas, too, ideas like love and hope and wisdom, and I existed alongside them. I felt at peace.
But when I woke up, I did not feel at peace, because I now understood that I was the worms and the worms were me. No, there’s still some part of me left, but as every day passes there’s less of me and more of worm. It’s like that boat, you know, where eventually every part of it gets replaced and you have to ask yourself if it should still even be considered the same boat as before. My heart is made of worms, and worms travel from there through veins and arteries made of worms to deliver oxygen to muscles made of worms, all so that I can move around like some colossal puppet wearing a human’s skin. I suppose what makes us who we are is our brains. My whole body may be worms, but if my brain is intact I must still be the same person as always. Only, I can sense them up in my head, now. A worm acts as a neuron, sending signals to the next worm down the line. How many of the thoughts that I have come from me, and how many come from the worms? I’m still afraid, so that must mean some part of me still remains. But maybe I’m mistaken, maybe this is all part of that higher purpose I talk so much about. If that’s the case, I shouldn’t be afraid. And yet, I am. Gotta stick to my morals, that’s what I tell myself. Maybe I’m a fraud.
It’s Tuesday now. I didn’t feel like going to work yesterday, and I didn’t feel like going today, either. I walked around town a bit. I could see it in the eyes of a few people, something wriggling around behind them. I suppose that means they’re just like me. I’m not sure how happy I feel about that.