Nothing is normal. I’ll not be ‘fine’, not anymore. Everything feels tawdry and cheap, and no matter what kind of meaning or purpose I think my life used to have, well, that’s all gone now. Reverberated away like a beautiful song sung into the wind, it can only travel so far before it dims into nothing. This is my life now, I’m on the cusp of accepting it. It’s only a matter of time until I’m all used up, and with my new purpose ‘fulfilled’, it’ll move on. The cycle will continue. Whenever it’s done with me, I’ll be like one of them. Just like one of them. That’s the only part I cannot accept, but no matter my denial, I know it’s inevitable.
I grew up wanting to be a singer, to create something temporary and beautiful with little more than a breath and a piece of my soul merged into it. It was my dream. I wanted to be able to move people with my sound and my words, to make them feel genuine emotion by vibrating my vocal cords in a manner that brought feeling, whether it be joy, elation, intrigue, or even sadness. I grew up listening to the great opera performers and envying their talent, their dedication. To convey so much feeling, it’s as if they’re feeling that emotion themselves completely and fully, so fully that it overflows out and infects those within earshot, causing them to feel as well.
I don’t envy them anymore, because since my run in with the worm I now have that gift, except the things I infect within my audience are sinister. I can only express what the worm feels. You don’t want to feel what the worm feels. They say that due to the way their nervous system has developed, or rather lack of development, that worms cannot ‘feel’. They are annelids, possessing no brain, with a single nerve cord running the length of their body. Scientists think that because of this they cannot feel pain. They cannot think. Their primitive anatomy would have them believe that they are mindless little decomposers, their only purpose to consume and convert old dead things into nutrient rich waste. Little organic fertilizer machines. I wonder how those same scientists would feel if they could see what I had, if they could hear me sing the worm’s song. They would feel how everybody else feels when they hear it. It cannot be put into words, for worms have no words, but the effect it will have is undeniable. To dissect the feeling and pick it apart would be an exercise in futility, a lesson of hubris. The results would be irrelevant.
Thinking back to that day, I wonder what my life would be like now had I never stumbled upon that hole. If my friend never invited me hiking at the base of that gargantuan mountain, or had I put up excuses as to why I couldn’t go, my life would be different. Normal.
Had I never decided to stray from the well beaten path and fallen into that hole, I might have been able to fulfill my dream of becoming an opera singer eventually on my own merit, and not with this creature’s prenatural curse infecting my larynx, coiling it’s way down into my trachea.
Had I never went to investigate that gorgeous siren song that in truth, was a swan song, I may have lived a rich and full life instead of this cursed half life I’m now burdened with, the worm’s head snaking its way up my epiglottis like a charmed cobra everytime I sing.
Had I not screamed when I was face to face with those half rotten corpses, surrounded and wedged into the bottom of that chasm by their putrefied remains, then perhaps one of them wouldn’t have slithered its way down my throat so easily. All of the cadavers’ mouths hung open as the demon worms sang their beautiful and deadly chorus from what was left of their hosts, their heads poking through opened throats and rotten flesh.
Had I not chickened out of ending my life once my new parasite made its intentions known, maybe the worm’s tendrils wouldn’t be worming their way deeper and deeper into my brain right now.
My dream of becoming famous is now my nightmare, because I know once I’m on that stage, hundreds of eyes and ears on me, the worm will sing her misbegotten song. Chaos will erupt, not at first, perhaps not for a very long time, but once the notes go into their ears then eventually they will belong to the worm. It takes time for a flower to bloom, just like it takes time for a corpse to decompose, but once it starts the process there is no stopping it.
The children of the worm gestate, being born from mere sound alone. The seed is planted and the eggs are laid.
When they finally hatch, they will feed on the various blood and cerebrospinal fluids until they mature, at which time they begin controlling their gracious host. Little things at first. They have to learn how to walk before they can run, after all. It may start with the twitching of a limb, the spasm of a muscle.
Once they further develop, simple spasms and twitches become more refined- the kicking of a small animal, the slapping of a co-worker.
When they are closing in on the end of their life cycle, they have full control- the murdering of a friend, the mutilation of a loved one.
When they are nearing the end, having lived a full and productive life, they find somewhere secluded. Usually somewhere isolated, but with a great chance of being heard. Their siblings who were all born from the same song, or what’s left of them, begin to congregate, usually in clusters of about a dozen. With their help, they begin digging their hole. It’s deep, and just wide enough to accommodate the cluster of their hosts bodies, with room for one unsuspecting victim in the middle. The shaft has oddly acoustic properties.
They crawl in, and they wait. They wait while their hosts slowly decompose. They wait to be taught how to sing. They wait for mother to come and teach them. With their mother’s dying song, they learn. Only one at a time will they get to go on and continue with their life cycle, to infect another host so it too can sing for the world.
I know all of this because the worm wants me to know. It wants me to understand, in hopes that with understanding would come some sense of grand purpose. To know that my death wasn’t in vain.
I’ve been in the control of the worm for some time now, and I’ve become an observer of my own life. The mother worm, the one that sings to create its children, doesn’t start out in the brain like its kids do, and doesn’t indulge in violence. It nests in the esophagus of its host, and with time, grows little tendrils that invade the sinus cavities, eventually making its way to the brain. Because of this, it takes longer to reach its final stage of life, and therefore longer to take full control of its host.
There are still brief periods where I resume control, and I write this during one of those. Snippets of clarity that grow shorter and shorter every time.
Before the worm had any control, after I was rescued from that god awful pit, I found that my singing voice had improved exponentially. I could hit vocal ranges that I never dreamed I would be able to master, much less even accomplish successfully. My voice was sublime. Utter perfection.
I used my newfound skill to seize my dreams of getting leading role after leading role, my fame and accolades growing with each performance. As my fame grew, so too did the influence of the worm, branching deeper and deeper.
This evening’s performance will be televised, and I plead with you all not to view. The worm almost has complete full control, and tonight’s performance will be the inseminating one. Never has a worm gotten to sing it’s impregnating song to such a large audience, and I fear all of the chaos and murdering it will cause down the line. I want to kill myself, to end it all, but the worm has enough control over me now, even in my brief waking spells, to stop me every single time.
I need to hurry, I can feel it waking again. If by some miracle the worm doesn’t find and delete this, please, for the love of everything you hold dear, don’t listen to my voice. It’s not really me, it’s the requiem of the worm.