THE SAME THING THAT HAPPENED TO SAM
THEY TRAIN WORMS to be afraid of light, so it’s really incredibly rare to have one come out of somebody’s eye socket. The one time I saw my mother’s worm moving the pocket of dark flesh just underneath her left eye, that was a rarity. Like a solar eclipse. Most of the time, the worms kept to the dark interior territory of the skull, far from any optic nerve or orifice.
Father reassured me that I wouldn’t feel a thing, but what does he know? He’s never had to have one put in. It’s like he’s cavity-free and telling me the dentist’s drill won’t hurt. Sam, my older brother, had one put in last year, and won’t talk to me anymore like he used to. When I asked him if it hurt, he said no, but his voice was all wrong, just air pushed through vocal cords. I can’t explain it.
Stacey Miller had her worm put in just last week. She was mostly the same afterwards. She just ignored me, the same way she has since middle school.
***
Mother and father sat me down at the kitchen table with the website on our family tablet, all swooping cursive headers on blocks of helpful text. Photographs of smiling people on anonymous lawns. Links to government websites and medical facilities.
“Mama Bear noticed you were nervous,” father said. “So we thought we’d go over the worm with you again, but as a family.”
He said “as a family” but Sam wasn’t there. I’d already been on this website. I’d read more than just the free pamphlets that the company had provided; I’ve been paying attention for years.
The nematodes were androids, their guts lined with nanites designed to digest all the connections in my brain that my father and country had determined were “undesirable”. Piece by piece, my gender and my sexuality would become food for worms before I was even buried.
I wondered again what mother was before her worm had been surgically inserted: was she non-binary like me? Or had her sexuality proved to be the problematic part of her? Maybe it was both? My father cleared his throat. I realized it must’ve been the third or fourth time he’d done that while I’d been sitting in front of him, and shifted my focus.
“Yes,” I said, “a special nematode of my own.”
“That’s right, it’s very special! They feed it your DNA in the lab to start your unique bond with it early. Do you know why?”
I touched the cotton ball tightly pasted to my inner elbow with a limp bandage. “So my body won’t reject it,” I said.
“That’s right. Wow, kitten! You’ve sure been hitting the books!”
I looked at my mother, who intensely studied a small square of sticky paper as she tore each corner of it in half.
“What if I don’t get the worm put in?”
My mother stopped tearing her sticky paper. My father put the tablet down on the table. “What did you say?” he asked me.
“What if I don’t get the worm put in?” I asked. “What if I just skip the appointment?”
“Skip the appointment? After you’ve been publicly registered as Worm Food? You’re kidding, right?” he said.
“Go to the appointment,” my mother said.
I locked eyes with her and thought I saw a sliver of movement behind her left eye, but it was impossible to tell for sure.
“You don’t want to get on the wrong side of the law, do you, kitten?” he asked.
“I just wanted to know,” I said.
“They’ll put you in the centers, and then it gets worse,” Sam said.
We all stared at him. Sam looked like he’d just come back from study group. Father looked angry, the way he had before he’d called the cops on Sam when we found out he had a boyfriend. But Sam just looked the way he always did—empty. I’d asked him once, after the worm, if he missed Nate, but he’d just been confused.
I started crying again.
“What’s wrong?” mother asked.
“You’re not getting agitated, are you? We can drive you to the clinic tonight—”
“No, of course not,” I said, “I’m just a little nervous.”
“All right,” father said, “but if it gets to be too much, you can take one of the pills that the doctor gave you. Let me know, and I’ll get one from the cabinet.”
***
It was almost like a party. That night I ate food that I hardly tasted, swallowing dutifully. I kept repeating the thoughts that I loved most in chaotic cacophony, but chaos was interrupted by the most mundane things: opening a present from father and mother (a dress I would never usually wear, pre-worm), a toast, a group photo in front of a cake. The cake had a pink icing worm wriggling in and out of bold letters that spelled “Baby’s First Worm”.
I threw up in the bathroom.
***
The clinic was a beige blankness. I am thankful for that.
***
So much in my brain now is beautiful worm shit.
It’s the kind of beautiful I always hated: all empty surfaces. Glass bubbles breaking open inside me to cut everything tender apart.
***
At night the worm chews on my memories, reordering them into more acceptable patterns. I was never attracted to Stacey Miller. I never kissed her behind the snack stand at the softball field. I was always watching home runs. Boys running in a square that they call a diamond. The lawn was so green and well-groomed it looked artificial.
In order to outrun the worm, I must think new thoughts: stronger, stranger, queerer thoughts than ever before. I think gay things all the time, filling my moments with so many of them that the worm rasps noisily along the inside of my skull with all the eating it has to do.
I make my worm busy with the business of myself, planning my infinite revenges.