Earworm

by Aaron Thomas Milstead

  —Disturbed

  9.

  One Donkey

  That night I put on a navy blue dress shirt and pulled on a pair of corduroy pants that used to fit me as tight as a dolphin’s butthole, but suddenly I was swimming in them. For the record I’m only speculating about the dolphin’s anus, assuming that it must be water tight. In no way am I qualified to personally speak on this assumption . . .

  I’d never rape a dolphin.

  I fully tightened my belt and it was still very loose around my suddenly svelte waist. I ran my hands down my sides and realized my love handles were gone and my hips sloped down like Matthew McConaughey in that gay movie where he’s a stripper. Magic Matthew it might have been called. I sprayed on a little cologne that was supposed to make women lose their shit like it was nasal Spanish fly: Axe Anarchy Temptation Bliss. It smelled like a mixture of sweat from John Goodman’s jock strap and a Sweet N Sour chicken fart.

  Sexy.

  I was trying to look desirable because I was set to have dinner with my wife and child in half an hour and it felt like a modern retelling of the Last Supper.

  Does that make you Jesus or Judas?

  I was startled by Bogart’s sudden intrusion and almost sprayed that foul cologne in my eye. Once I’d regained my composure I told Bogart to pineapple off.

  Come on, Ripley, it gets boring in here and besides, you need a wakeup call. You’ve got a one-track mind. You’ve got to get your shit together and quick. You’ve got way bigger fish to fry than worrying about your wife. You could do better anyway, she ain’t all that.

  “I don’t want to do better,” I mumbled.

  That’s exactly your fucking problem, kid. You only see one donkey.

  “What are you talking about, Bogart?”

  It’s one of those stories that you learn a life lesson from.

  “Like a fable?”

  Less gay than that, but yeah, basically. There’s like this wise old man sitting on a hill and one of his students is sitting with him and they look down on this open valley filled with donkeys. A villager comes up to them and asks the old man if there are any donkeys around. The old man points down in the valley and says they are down there. So the villager goes down and ropes a donkey and goes away happily. Another villager comes up to them and it’s the same deal. He goes down into the herd and gets one donkey. A third villager comes up and asks about the donkeys and the old man stares at him for a bit and then he smiles and nods and points down to the valley. This third guy goes down there and rounds up like a dozen donkeys and returns to his village triumphantly. The student asks the old man why the first two people didn’t just round up all of the donkeys like the last guy and the old man told him: ‘They could only see one donkey.’

  “I don’t get it.”

  Exactly. You are a one donkey kind of guy.

  “What did they care about donkeys anyway?” I asked. “I could see if it was like cattle or something but—”

  They used them for working the crops . . . Forget it. The donkey isn’t the important part. I’m trying to tell you to broaden your point of view. You got tunnel vision. You’re the fucking donkey.

  I shook my head and said, “So not only have you referred to the love of my life as a donkey, but I’m also a donkey?”

  That about sums it up.

  “Nice confidence booster.”

  Bogart sighed. I’m not trying to beat you up, kid. I just wanted to put things in their proper perspective. I know that love is blind, so if winning back your wife is such a big deal then let’s just knock that out.

  “Are you serious?” I asked. “You aren’t just busting balls?”

  Ball busting? You got the wrong guy, kid. I’m all about looking out for you.

  “Okay, so how do I win her back?”

  Alright, try this one on for size. I’ll take over some good-looking well-hung stud that she can’t resist, and I’ll have him bang her in like every position in the Kama sutra and—

  “Wait a second, why would I want my wife to have sex with someone else?”

  Wait for the payoff, kid. After he’s banged her for like an hour or so I’ll have him do something really atrocious to her so that she comes running back to you. What are her turn offs?

  “I don’t know, she only liked to have sex on our anniversary or when Grey’s Anatomy is on reruns.”

  Jesus man, I meant like farting in her face or a golden shower or maybe something vulgar. Grey’s Anatomy? You sure you really want her back?

  “Yeah, but I don’t want her to be degraded.”

  I feel you. Okay how about a totally different plan. I’ll be wearing scrubs and she can call me McSleazy. I’ll be banging her doggy style and when I give you the signal you bust in and threaten to kick my ass. She will be so turned on by the tremendous sex I’m giving her that she’ll look up and fall in love with you right as she orgasms. A little sleight of hand, so to speak.

  “No way. How is that so different than your other plan?”

  Okay so I’m banging her during Grey’s Anatomy and—

  “I don’t get why you are having sex with my wife in every one of these scenarios.”

  I’m just bouncing ideas off you. I don’t have to be banging her, she could be giving me a hummer. I’ll have her wearing a little kinky French maid outfit with like a garter belt and crotchless panties. Maybe I’ll have her speak with a French accent. Anyway, while we are doing our thing you will be hiding inside the closet watching the whole deal and at the proper moment . . .

  “Fuck off,” I mumbled. “You aren’t interested in helping me. And only douchebags call sex, ‘banging’ or refer to oral as a ‘hummer’”.

  If you say so, kid. I could see right up front that you were too sensitive for me to be of assistance. Let’s face it, some people just don’t want any help, they just like to bitch.

  I tried to push away the thought of my wife having sex with another man and a sudden realization struck me. “Bogart, you fucked my wife, didn’t you?” My mind flashed on the red-faced muscle man with the suitcase as he quickly slipped out of my wife’s back door . . . That was an unfortunate turn of phrase.

  What are you talking about? I’ve never put the salami in your wife.

  “I saw you—your last host—leave the house a few weeks ago.”

  That? You thought he banged your wife?

  “Yeah, what else was he doing?”

  She hired him for a legit massage. Now get this straight, kid, I sometimes take on the bugaboos of my host and vice versa, but for the most part I find human copulation to be revolting. It’s like watching a monkey trying to stab a raw oyster to death with a polish sausage.

  “Disgustingly accurate.”

  The only part of the human body that doesn’t give me the heebee jeebees is their . . .

  “Ears,” I finished.

  Right. Unfortunately, my last host was into all kinds of other things that I’d managed to suppress until he saw your wife’s substantial curves under that towel. He tried to play hide the pinkie on your wife, but she flopped over and slapped him twice before he could even react. She was threatening to call the cops when you saw him bolting outside.

  “So she didn’t cheat on me?”

  I don’t know about that, but certainly not with me.

  It was a lot to consider. Only a few days prior I was in almost constant agonizing pain and now suddenly I felt rejuvenated, energized. Hell, I was practically post-coitally blissful. It was like listening to Johnny Cash stoically singing Hurt, only to be interrupted by impossibly chipper Katrina and the Waves as they belted out Walking on Sunshine.

  And that was just my body.

  Except for the Ear Worm, my mind was sharper than it had been in years. Decades. A sponge-like child brain that had not yet begun to bear the damage of stress and alcohol abuse or a rare disease.

  But if I accepted the sudden transformation and considered it as more than just a last gasp before the promised impending death then I also had to
accept the Ear Worm. Didn’t I?

  Bingo Buster.

  Pineapple.

  It wouldn’t be the first time that someone in the last stages of cancer or some other debilitating illness suddenly bucked the odds and recovered quicker than a divine shove from Benny Hinn. It could be that Bogart was just a psychotic delusion caused by the stressful realization of imminent death and that a visit with Dr. Chod could send him packing.

  Or it might have been caused by a parasitic spider-roach that crawled into my ear and merged with my brain. The thought of a parasitic spider-roach reminded me of a disgusting video I’d seen a few months ago after it had gone viral via the typical click bait channels. I think I saw a link when I was investigating which 80’s sitcom child stars had died of drug overdoses. The video was titled: WTF IS THIS!?! I immediately knew it was serious because of the all caps and double exclamation marks. In it, a man sprayed a spider with a can of Raid and no sooner had it died than an impossibly large worm quickly slithered out of its corpse.

  I felt a phantom itching in my left ear as I recalled this. My mind flashed on slithering worms and squirming lamprey eels and unspeakable horrors. I pulled out my iPhone and against my better judgement I watched the video again.

  It was nauseating. A slender, squirming, frothy mass that uncoiled from the abdomen of its dead host. The caption below read: “alien worm!!” It wasn’t an alien though—a Harvard University entomologist clarified matters in an accompanying article. The alien worm was actually an unusually large parasitic nematode that is more commonly known as a roundworm. He went on to explain that every human is infested with thousands of tiny nematodes.

  You’ve got them in you right now. Everyone does.

  Mainly they are fairly benign and most of us aren’t even aware of their presence except in the rare cases where they grow large enough to cause diseases such as trichinosis.

  However, sometimes they aren’t so benign and cause their hosts to do strange behaviors that are far more sinisterly calculated than you might believe. The entomologist pointed out that there are nematodes that initially prey on ants. They will take control of the ant and make it climb a tree and wave its butt in the air until the motion catches the eye of a bird and the ant is eaten. The nematode then escapes from the ant’s abdomen and infects the new higher-level host—the bird.

  And mammals aren’t immune to its mind control abilities either. The entomologist proclaimed that his favorite nematode is known as Toxoplasma gondii, a protozoan that infects cats. Apparently that creature is the reason that pregnant women shouldn’t be around cats.

  Initially, that particular nematode first infests rats and constructs a way to get into its favorite host—the aforementioned cats. Rats are highly evolved and among the smartest creatures on the planet. Anyone who has grown up watching The Secret of Nimh can attest to their intelligence; however, this parasite has no trouble manipulating them. More specifically, the parasite forces the rats to act against their own interests. First, the primal and pragmatic fear that rats have towards cats is completely removed. As if that is not enough, the rats are then imbued with the irresistible desire to drink cat urine. They crave it like little furry junkies. In the end, they are caught and eaten, and the parasite is united with its host of choice.

  The situation I found myself in is that I had an advanced kind of self-serving nematode nestled in my brain and I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe it was just opportunistically waiting for a chance to upgrade toward a superior host. I was just a rat being slowly indoctrinated toward wanting to drink cat urine.

  I waited for an internal voice to say, Bingo Buster, but it didn’t.

  We had to break up,

  But I can’t get you to feel the break.

  Call this what you will,

  Just don’t call it a mistake.

  Call it addiction.

  Say that we were not in love.

  I don’t really care now,

  When you’re all I’m thinking of.

  Yeah you’re all I’m thinking of.

  So put your hands where you want to.

  Start screaming across the city.

  I’m making it pretty,

  But I know I mean nothing.

  I’m just drugs to you.

  Still I’m jonesing like a fiend.

  So line me up that dopamine.

  —Third Eye Blind

  10.

  Truth or Dare

  I stepped outside as I wrapped my mind around the new reality: my wife was no longer an adulteress. Maybe I wasn’t losing it as badly as I thought. Maybe Bogart wasn’t even . . .

  Wrong, kid. I’m real.

  I felt an uncomfortable itch just inside my ear canal and wondered if he was wriggling around to verify his existence. Maybe it was a threat. Maybe both.

  I glanced at the swimming pool, it had turned green and a frothy, sludgy buildup had formed at the surface like curdled milk. It was still at least 90 degrees and so humid that it was like walking through curtains of heat, but I felt so young and alive and obnoxiously vibrant that it didn’t bother me a bit.

  I walked past the infamous back door and grinned and then strolled up the driveway to a wraparound front porch adorned with several ornate columns that evoked Roman pretension. I stood in front of a wrought iron door that probably cost more than I make in a year.

  Despite my newfound surge of optimism, I was nervous. I’d convinced myself that the dinner was a make or break moment. I needed to somehow convince Dare that I was stable and trustworthy, yet unpredictable and fun. Sadly, I didn’t embody any of those qualities and instead was buried somewhere within the spectrum of boring and morose.

  Jesus Christ, kid, I’m currently producing enough Dopamine in your body to make a manic depressive think they’ve just become a contestant on The Price Is Right and you are still managing to bum me out.

  “Producing dopamine? How are you doing that?”

  Your brain is capable of producing any natural chemical at any time. Small child trapped under a car? Now you’ve got a super surge of adrenaline and suddenly Hulk-like strength to lift it. You’d have to snort a gram of cocaine and smoke two packs of unfiltered cigarettes to get what I’m giving you naturally. Or, to be more precise, what I’m helping you give yourself.

  I had to admit, I did feel pretty damn good. Not exactly a young Robert Downey Jr. giving blowjobs for his next fix good. No, that’s not an Iron Man reference, it’s a scene from Less Than Zero. Anyway, I was smelling what Bogart was cooking and it was damn good.

  I reached out and banged a large brass door knocker that was shaped like a honeybee. Half a second later the mausoleum door cracked open and a high-pitched voice shrieked, “Daddy!”

  I scooped Shadow up into my arms. She wrapped her arms around my neck and pressed her nose against mine vigorously rubbing it back and forth. She had recently adopted Eskimo kisses as a way of giving me affection because she claimed that my face scratched her, even if I had just shaved. She smelled like baby powder and, as I closed my eyes, could almost imagine she was a newborn. She was still as light as a feather. I gently sat her down on the marble floor and asked: “Where’s your mom, sweetheart?”

  Shadow pressed her soft lips against my ear and whispered, “Last night I had the weirdest dream. Gollum was riding on the back of a tiger, which was awesome, except . . . ”

  “Yeah?”

  “I had to kill him.” I pulled her back and studied her face. Her expression was deadly serious—scrunched forehead above large, soft, chestnut eyes. It was the only facial feature she’d gotten from me as she had her mother’s pale skin, red hair, and constellation of freckles. She’d also developed my vivid imagination. She stared back at me and in an instant her stern expression melted and she burst into intense laughter. The ability to instantly shift moods was another product of her mother’s genetics.

  “How have you been doing, sweetie?”

  Shadow shrugged and said, “Okay. Are you still grounded?”
<
br />   I smiled uncomfortably and said, “I’m not grounded, honey. Your mom and I are just . . . Yeah, I’m still grounded.”

  Pathetic. That time the voice in my head was familiar, but it didn’t belong to Bogart.

  Shadow leaned in again and whispered, “It’s kind of boring now. Mommy doesn’t like to play video games and she doesn’t think Overwatch is appropriate for me.”

  “Why does she think it’s inappropriate?”

  Shadow giggled. “Reaper screams ‘death’ over and over when he does his special, and Roadhog shoots people in the face. Junkrat bombs and blows people up—”

  “I told you to play Mercy and heal people.” I kissed Shadow on the forehead and sat her back on the ground.

  “Dad,” Shadow squealed with exasperation. “Healing isn’t fun. I like to kill.”

  And just as my six-year-old daughter was proudly shouting this, my wife stepped into the foyer. Her emerald eyes flashed with judgment as she shook her head and said, “What are you teaching her now?”

  “I didn’t . . . ” I began, but Dare raised a dismissive hand and cut me off.

  That’s the woman you are so desperate to win back? Bogart asked.

  It was a good point but Dare had reason to treat me with contempt. Too many reasons to count and thankfully most of them were lost in a drunken haze. At least my recollection of them. Dare remembered them all and could list and categorize them. She was wearing a gray pair of slacks that were tight against her butt. She had always had problems finding clothes that didn’t accentuate her ample curves. The Young the Giant t-shirt wasn’t fairing any better and even though she was wearing a bra to hold back her DD’s, I had seen her naked so many times that I could read her nipples like braille. I knew what she smelled like after a morning run or right after a shower—her shampoo was lavender. I considered the feel of her narrow hips and how they hourglassed up and below—both destinations inviting and . . .

  “Ripley.” Dare had turned bright red. She gestured at my waist and put her hands over Shadow’s eyes.

  My cheeks flushed as I realized I had gone into an erotic daydream and let myself get worked up. More specifically, my slacks had formed a tent that could house the entire Alabama-Coushatta Indian reservation. I’m a grower, not a shower, but I had fully grown and I was showing everything. I turned to adjust my erection and tried to picture dead puppies, but my mind found Rip Taylor. That did the trick. “Sorry,” I mumbled. “I’ve been cooped up too long.”