Underground War
Worms inhabit my brain. I know they’re in there because they give off an odor like the one I remember from going fishing with my father early mornings just as the sun was rising.
The worms come and go at night, using my nostrils and ear canals as passageways. Not long after I drift into sleep, they depart, sliding out into darkness like top-secret spies, each one on a different mission to collect information on the ants.
“One day insects will rule the world,” Mr. Niles told our sixth grade science class.
This was during the week after Easter vacation, and I’ve been waging war on the ants ever since. Every day after school I spend my time on the patio using a sharp-pointed stone to drill their heads into the concrete. To make it interesting, I pretend the stone is a high-powered rifle. I make shooting noises and imagine myself as a sniper.
Sometimes my mother watches me through the kitchen window as she prepares dinner or washes dishes – debating, no doubt, whether or not to take me back to Dr. Seville, the quack I had to see for three full months after my father died last summer.
My sister thinks I’m whacked, too. She’s a year older than me and relishes in telling her friends how I spend all my free time murdering ants. If she knew how many ants would eventually be crawling all over her every night as she slept, I think she’d view my actions differently.
***
Each morning, no matter how far they venture off, no matter how difficult their nightly journey, the worms come back. Some mornings, in shallow sleep, I swear I can feel their return, their slithery but gentle wriggle back through Eustachian tubes and sinus cavities. A sensation of pressure goes along with it, a sort of stuffy-head feeling, like when I’m getting plugged up or have a cold. When the worms depart, the feeling is the opposite; as they slip out of my ears and nostrils, it’s as if they are oozing out of a toothpaste tube or giving birth to themselves.
Once safely back inside my head, they communicate to my mind whatever ant conspiracies they have discovered during the night. Then, hidden throughout the remainder of the day, they rest, nestled in the convoluted furrows of my brain.
No one else knows about the worms. When I wrecked my bike into Mr. Arnold’s car last month, not even the CAT scan or the X-rays I received at the hospital could detect them. The doctors found only a mild concussion.
***
Some nights I dream I’m buried deep in dark soil, and the worms merely pass through me as though I am part of the earth. If I turn my head to either side I can see large formicaries – growing kingdoms, huge underground networks most people don’t even realize exist.
Often the dream continues until it reaches it’s most horrific part, which happens when the ants discover I’m lying there, defenseless. Then, one-by-one, they close in from all sides and begin to feed on me. As it becomes clear I’m nothing but fodder for the new world order, I usually wake up, sweating and half screaming.
When I envision my father buried in the ground like that, I pray that his casket is impenetrable – solid, built to last forever. I often worry it might not be sealed tight enough, that thousands of ants might at this very moment be thriving on his remains.
***
This morning, after one of those dreams, I’m awake before dawn. My heart is racing. I already know I won’t fall back to sleep, which sucks, because after lunch I have study hall and will certainly crash – which means another detention and another hour taken from my mission.
It strikes me then that a surprise predawn attack could prove enormously successful.
I sneak down the hall into the kitchen and quietly open the door that leads to the garage. The cool damp air smells of cut grass caked inside the lawnmower. Searching in darkness, I find the flashlight on its shelf and locate the spade shovel and a can of Raid.
The eastern sky has begun to whiten. I head across the backyard toward the huge anthill behind the rhododendrons. I set the flashlight on the dew-soaked grass and aim the bright beam over the elongated mound. Then I attack. The ants go berserk, darting helter-skelter in every direction as I dig and chop into their kingdom and spray them with Raid.
I don’t realize I’ve been yelling until my mother comes around the rhododendrons in her bathrobe. “Gary!” she yells. “What are you doing?”
Startled, I drop the can of Raid. My mother picks up the flashlight and shines it on the hole I’ve dug. “Oh my God!” she says.
***
She makes me sit at the kitchen table and in a concerned, shaky voice begins asking me questions about what I was doing and why. I explain how ants are conquering the earth. But this only makes her more upset. “Remember when you thought bees were taking over the world – how you thought honey was poison?”
“This is different,” I say. And that’s when I goof by telling her about the worms.
My mother stares at me, stunned. She tries to say something but stammers. Then her lower lip quivers and her eyes well up. “Oh, Gary,” she says, all croaky. “Everything will be okay, baby.” She hugs me and starts to sob. “I’m going to get you help.”
When she blabbers on about how Dr. Seville will get rid of the worms, my whole body cringes. She doesn’t understand. Without the worms we are doomed. It’s only a matter of time.
I break into a cold sweat. Outside, the sun is rising over our ant-infested backyard.
I can feel the worms squirming inside my head.
ETERNAL RETURN
…tripping, we talked about the perpetual metamorphosis of light, the immanent womb of the universe and the mega-earthworm of death; the cruel torment of the winter sun; the agonized souls of Joplin, Hendrix, Morrison. And I admitted that once again events happening in the world had begun to flicker by me, how I felt as though I was sitting alone in a movie theater in which the reel has ended but continues to turn and flap with deafening rapidity because the projectionist has either fallen asleep up there or left the booth unattended.
The clock cannot rewind, you said, never recovers, and then you told me to quit reading Nietzsche. Immediately afterward, you dropped your cigarette and started coughing, wolfing down time, looking at me as if I should help. The light sputtered, jagged in its quiescent sloth. We sat on the front porch, not at any movie – instead, in front of a lower-class residential tableau. Your pupils were wide, laying claim to the gray ceiling, your clumsy stare roaming over the paint chips as your head slanted back. Since I have come to know the body better, I replied, the spirit to me is only quasi-spirit. And I Swear I remember you murmuring: soothsayer, wanderer, you are all too human...
Worms inhabit my brain. I know they’re in there because they give off an odor like the one I remember from going fishing with my father early mornings just as the sun was rising.
The worms come and go at night, using my nostrils and ear canals as passageways. Not long after I drift into sleep, they depart, sliding out into darkness like top-secret spies, each one on a different mission to collect information on the ants.
“One day insects will rule the world,” Mr. Niles told our sixth grade science class.
This was during the week after Easter vacation, and I’ve been waging war on the ants ever since. Every day after school I spend my time on the patio using a sharp-pointed stone to drill their heads into the concrete. To make it interesting, I pretend the stone is a high-powered rifle. I make shooting noises and imagine myself as a sniper.
Sometimes my mother watches me through the kitchen window as she prepares dinner or washes dishes – debating, no doubt, whether or not to take me back to Dr. Seville, the quack I had to see for three full months after my father died last summer.
My sister thinks I’m whacked, too. She’s a year older than me and relishes in telling her friends how I spend all my free time murdering ants. If she knew how many ants would eventually be crawling all over her every night as she slept, I think she’d view my actions differently.
***
Each morning, no matter how far they venture off, no matter how difficult their nightly journey, the worms come back. Some mornings, in shallow sleep, I swear I can feel their return, their slithery but gentle wriggle back through Eustachian tubes and sinus cavities. A sensation of pressure goes along with it, a sort of stuffy-head feeling, like when I’m getting plugged up or have a cold. When the worms depart, the feeling is the opposite; as they slip out of my ears and nostrils, it’s as if they are oozing out of a toothpaste tube or giving birth to themselves.
Once safely back inside my head, they communicate to my mind whatever ant conspiracies they have discovered during the night. Then, hidden throughout the remainder of the day, they rest, nestled in the convoluted furrows of my brain.
No one else knows about the worms. When I wrecked my bike into Mr. Arnold’s car last month, not even the CAT scan or the X-rays I received at the hospital could detect them. The doctors found only a mild concussion.
***
Some nights I dream I’m buried deep in dark soil, and the worms merely pass through me as though I am part of the earth. If I turn my head to either side I can see large formicaries – growing kingdoms, huge underground networks most people don’t even realize exist.
Often the dream continues until it reaches it’s most horrific part, which happens when the ants discover I’m lying there, defenseless. Then, one-by-one, they close in from all sides and begin to feed on me. As it becomes clear I’m nothing but fodder for the new world order, I usually wake up, sweating and half screaming.
When I envision my father buried in the ground like that, I pray that his casket is impenetrable – solid, built to last forever. I often worry it might not be sealed tight enough, that thousands of ants might at this very moment be thriving on his remains.
***
This morning, after one of those dreams, I’m awake before dawn. My heart is racing. I already know I won’t fall back to sleep, which sucks, because after lunch I have study hall and will certainly crash – which means another detention and another hour taken from my mission.
It strikes me then that a surprise predawn attack could prove enormously successful.
I sneak down the hall into the kitchen and quietly open the door that leads to the garage. The cool damp air smells of cut grass caked inside the lawnmower. Searching in darkness, I find the flashlight on its shelf and locate the spade shovel and a can of Raid.
The eastern sky has begun to whiten. I head across the backyard toward the huge anthill behind the rhododendrons. I set the flashlight on the dew-soaked grass and aim the bright beam over the elongated mound. Then I attack. The ants go berserk, darting helter-skelter in every direction as I dig and chop into their kingdom and spray them with Raid.
I don’t realize I’ve been yelling until my mother comes around the rhododendrons in her bathrobe. “Gary!” she yells. “What are you doing?”
Startled, I drop the can of Raid. My mother picks up the flashlight and shines it on the hole I’ve dug. “Oh my God!” she says.
***
She makes me sit at the kitchen table and in a concerned, shaky voice begins asking me questions about what I was doing and why. I explain how ants are conquering the earth. But this only makes her more upset. “Remember when you thought bees were taking over the world – how you thought honey was poison?”
“This is different,” I say. And that’s when I goof by telling her about the worms.
My mother stares at me, stunned. She tries to say something but stammers. Then her lower lip quivers and her eyes well up. “Oh, Gary,” she says, all croaky. “Everything will be okay, baby.” She hugs me and starts to sob. “I’m going to get you help.”
When she blabbers on about how Dr. Seville will get rid of the worms, my whole body cringes. She doesn’t understand. Without the worms we are doomed. It’s only a matter of time.
I break into a cold sweat. Outside, the sun is rising over our ant-infested backyard.
I can feel the worms squirming inside my head.
ETERNAL RETURN
…tripping, we talked about the perpetual metamorphosis of light, the immanent womb of the universe and the mega-earthworm of death; the cruel torment of the winter sun; the agonized souls of Joplin, Hendrix, Morrison. And I admitted that once again events happening in the world had begun to flicker by me, how I felt as though I was sitting alone in a movie theater in which the reel has ended but continues to turn and flap with deafening rapidity because the projectionist has either fallen asleep up there or left the booth unattended.
The clock cannot rewind, you said, never recovers, and then you told me to quit reading Nietzsche. Immediately afterward, you dropped your cigarette and started coughing, wolfing down time, looking at me as if I should help. The light sputtered, jagged in its quiescent sloth. We sat on the front porch, not at any movie – instead, in front of a lower-class residential tableau. Your pupils were wide, laying claim to the gray ceiling, your clumsy stare roaming over the paint chips as your head slanted back. Since I have come to know the body better, I replied, the spirit to me is only quasi-spirit. And I Swear I remember you murmuring: soothsayer, wanderer, you are all too human...
