The Worm King
Authors: Steve Ryan
THE WORM King
Steve Ryan
Previously published as
“Jesus Went to
Griffith and Bought a Pie”
Ryan
Publications
Matamata, New
Zealand
Copyright ©
2014 by Steve Ryan
Contents
Maps
Winston
Night
The Worm
King
Pink
.
PROLOGUE
Forsyth
pointed at the shack.
They were
encircled, and it was night,
as it had
been.
His wife was
dead, burnt alive.
‘Maybe
they
have some extra blankets? Sir.’
The
Brigadier’s expression changed, darkening.
‘You’re a
fool, Forsyth.’
And they
kept driving.
.
Winston
Chapter One
Button
S
he looked at him in awe. They were sipping margaritas in the hotel
bar. ‘So you’re in direct contact with those submarine captains all the time?’
‘That’s right. They give me the hydrophonic
readings, and bingo, a few calculations later, anyone could forecast the
weather. Simple trigonometry really.’
‘Always wondered how you guys did it,’ she
purred. ‘Any chance I could go down on one?’
He cocked his head, sceptical. ‘Security’s
usually pretty tight.’
‘So what do those big dishy things do, that
point up. I thought they were for forecasting the weather?’
‘Mostly for catching rain. How do you think
they know how much rain falls each day?’ He laughed and it was loud, other
people in the bar turning to stare. ‘People think they’re complicated, but
really, a big tarpaulin would do the trick about as well.’ He winked, and
smiled. ‘Don’t tell anyone though’.
She drained her glass. ‘Can I have another
drink? Not a margarita though; this one’s got gritty bits in the bottom.’
‘That’ll be the salt.’
Completely motionless. You’d think she were
dead, but no, look carefully, right down at the base of the throat: a gentle
pulse in and out, in and out, in and out . . . They watched
him all the time. Everyone did. Now it was his turn to watch.
One of those buttons, on her blouse,
that’s what he’ll keep.
There were five of them,
silver, each indented with a lucky four leaf clover.
It’s your lucky day
lady!
He grasped the middle button between his forefinger and thumb, and ripped
it off with such fury the blouse only lifted slightly, popping and relinquishing
the luck instantly. His fists clenched into cannonballs and every sinew in each
wrist strained like fence-wire under stretched hide.
He threw back his head and roared.
When she was naked, he dragged the girl
around full circle so her head lay at the foot of the bed, dangling over, jaws
agape. Then he stood at the end of the bed and masturbated into her face. Afterwards
he took a tissue from the bathroom and roughly wiped it away. She didn’t budge
an inch.
A momentary flash of cold, blue light forked
beyond the window. Rain pattered against the glass and thunder crackled, rumbling
ominously through the Blue Mountains.
He put on his clothes then slunk outside to lurk
in the darkness.
Chapter Two
Spew
W
inston woke believing someone must’ve shat in his mouth while he slept.
A train clanked through his head. His eyelids felt gummed shut tighter than any
Fort Knox vault, and even his ears hurt.
The lobes for god’s sake! You never knew
they were there till you felt them
whack, whack, whack
on the inside of your
temple. Those bits weren’t even connected were they? Just trying to untangle
the anatomy of that hurt. His hair: he could feel all that too. Like tiny, savage
daggers drilling mercilessly into his scalp. You saw it in the mirror every day;
combed the crap out of it; but it took beer to really feel it.
Beer. Never again.
Everything seemed to be working, more or
less, although major body movements were still well outside the attainable range.
Something crusty crackled on his shirt. Probably vomit. Or the remains of the
cheeseburger which he vaguely remembered picking up from the chippie down the
road before arriving home.
Fingers clenched slowly, in then out. Eyelids
parted reluctantly and fiery shafts of intense daylight speared painfully through
tender, mushy eyeball jelly.
Far below the stained sheets his thumb sank
into a cold, sticky mass.
Winston froze.
Another tentative wriggle, still no clues. Could
be anything from a gob of brains to a hunk of lung. Something must’ve fallen
out in order to feel this bad? Did that ever really happen? They talk about
spontaneous combustion every so often, so maybe it does:
You could be walking along, minding your own
business, next thing a bunch of your guts just slops out your arse and plonks
on the pavement. ‘Excuse me sir, is that your duodenum you’ve left back there?’
‘Why thank you. Don’t suppose you’ve a sharp
stick I could use to prod it back in again?’
That didn’t help.
The bed was damp and mushy around the
mysterious globule. A fat bead of sweat trickled down his forehead then rolled
into a hairy, greasy eyebrow. If that kind of sweat can get out, maybe other bigger
stuff could too! Slowly, gently, gently he withdrew the hand.
Tomato. That’d be the rest of the
cheeseburger.
Winston felt something stuck to his cheek
and dislodged an almost complete onion ring. It fell onto the sheets but didn’t
seem to untidy the room much so he let it be.
It looked too heavy anyway.
The time had finally come to get up.
This time definitely.
The room was stark white apart from a single
tattered poster, opposite the bed. It was held at three corners by blu-tack,
with the top right edge drooping over threatening to bring down the whole wall.
The faded picture showed a tall, skinny guitarist with a shaved head leaping
across a stage, snarling into a microphone and shaking his fist at the crowd. He
wasn’t even touching the guitar; probably just carried it to hit people on the
head with. That’d give them a headache.
Like this one.
Winston tried to draw energy from the
guitarist, concentrating on feeling the way the musician must feel, in order to
jump up on a stage and do that kind of . . . music. Apparently
the key was to let your thoughts clear, and drift away leaving a single strand
of awareness focused solely on the artist’s energy.
His mind did clear, but this just left a twirling,
cheesy-smelling nausea. Was that another onion ring in his hair? He wondered how
onions effected meditation, which threw the entire divine contemplation loop
into a terminal nose-dive.
Come to think of it, that technique had
never worked.
In few hours he had to go on telly, so it really
was time to get up.
John the Hat sat
on the sofa in front of his keg.
Infomercials blared from the television and
a thick layer of cigarette smoke swirled below the yellowing ceiling. Azziz Ishmael
sat in the big purple chair, reading an anatomy textbook and chain smoking.
‘She says it’ll clear your blemishes in seven
days. Maybe that’ll fix you?’ suggested the Hat, tilting his near-empty glass
at the screen.
‘Best idea is lots of drinking of water on
the night of before,’ advised Dr. Azziz.
‘A fire-hose up the arse wouldn’t flush this
one out,’ replied Winston.
The Hat shifted in his chair, farted loudly
then drained his glass. ‘More beer could be the answer.’ He leant forward to
refill from the keg. ‘The saddle. You know you need it.’
Winston slumped back, eyes closed. His feet drooped
over the edge but didn’t even get close to the floor.
‘If we had bacon, we could have bacon and
eggs if we had the eggs,’ said Azziz helpfully. On moving into the house eight
months earlier he’d never once eaten pork. Now he existed almost solely on pig,
in all its glorious forms.
Azziz also drank beer. The Hat was extremely
proud of this transformation. ‘Why don’t you tear down the shops and grab
some?’ he said, pulling a twenty from his pocket and slapping it on the table beside
the keg.
Azziz jammed the cigarette into an empty Heineken
can on the floor, dropped his book and scooped up the cash. He left the room smiling
broadly, like a fat swarthy elf on his way to see Santa. A somewhat tall elf,
with loads of back-hair and dark rings under his bloodshot eyes. Probably more
troll-like, than elf-like. And as far as Winston knew, elves couldn’t do a
beer-bong in four point six seconds then sit down to half a side of pig either.
‘You still heading to Katoomba?’ inquired
the Hat.
‘Tonight.’
‘You think they’ll put you on?’
‘Shit, I hope not. But another guy in my
class did the same thing a couple of months back and they made him read some of
the report live.’
‘Maybe you should get changed first. Something
with less spew down the front of it. Is that letter from them?’
‘Yeah.’ Winston passed the page across.
Dear Winston
Thank
you for your request for work experience with the Channel Six weather team. We
are pleased to offer you the opportunity to assist with the evening weather update
on September 20th.
The
report will be conducted live from the Three Sisters lookout at Katoomba in the
Blue Mountains. You will be working with our weatherman Dick Snow.
Could you please aim to arrive on set at 8.00pm and bring any
university documentation you may need signed.
Yours
sincerely
Astrid
Simpson
(Producer, The Dick Snow Report)
After reading the letter the Hat folded the
page neatly into a small paper aeroplane and flew it back. The flimsy craft immediately
banked dangerously to port and hit the side of the keg before plummeting to the
floor. ‘When I did that paper, you had to get work experience from a couple of
places. Doesn’t “experience” mean,
ipso dipto
, varied, or at least two
of, by definition?’
‘I’ll stop and see Lord Brown on the way. If
he’s there, get his signature too.’
‘Desperate. You know what they say. Desperate
times call for desperate, something, something, when in Rome.’
‘Who say’s that?’
‘I do. Just now.’
‘I’m screwed,’ groaned Winston. A blowfly
circled the keg table, reluctant to land.
The kitchen door slammed. Azziz had returned.
Ten minutes later the smell of frying bacon sifted through the house like a warm,
buttery fog.