Its shapeless, fingerless arms were attached to its body by folded fanlike lengths of membrane. They were touching each other in grotesque imitation of clasped hands.
“Getting worse, proem! I am so sorry to hear you speak this way of us.” Its tiny mouth widened in a toothless smile.
“I’ll never be one of you,” said Evan, glaring at the thing, willing himself not to be weak, not to look away again. “I might look like you, but I won’t go with you. I won’t live like you in the sewers. I’m going to stay with my mother. She’ll take care of me.” Evan flexed his fingers, feeling how they still separated, still pushed against and stretched the membrane.
“The sewers are only temporary, proem, only temporary,” it said, rubbing its stumps together. “We’ll live like kings soon, in the other dark places.” The thing seemed unconcerned that Evan refused to ever go with it. Each time Evan made this statement, the thing would ignore him and talk of how much better the future would be. And it seemed like the more it talked, the more it stank.
“There are places you would never go as a boy, proem, places you have never dreamed about. We’ll go there together, you and I and our brothers.”
Evan had heard it all before. A paradise underground, made for things like the worm in front of him. A place where Evan would forget he had ever been human, forget he had a mother, maybe even forget his own name. This thing did not remember its own, Evan was sure of it.
“I’m still a boy,” said Evan, glaring straight at it. “I’ll always be a boy, even if I have a worm’s body. You’re just a man with a disease, even if you don’t know it.”
The thing widened its mouth, rubbed its nub arms harder. “Boys play outside, proem,” it rasped. “Boys go to school. Boys spend their time with other boys. They prepare to be men. But you do not prepare. You wait.”
“I may not go outside or go to school,” said Evan a little louder, “but I will be a man someday. I’ll be strange and disgusting and I’ll never see anyone but my mother, but I’ll still be a man!”
The membranes surrounding the thing’s body rippled a little as it leaned forward over Evan’s bed. Its stink got even worse as it moved closer. “Proem, proem,” it rasped. “You are healthy, you are healthy!” Before Evan could stop it, the creature had pushed the blankets back with its nub arm, revealing Evan’s membraned fingers. The thing pointed its sunken white eyes toward Evan’s face.
Evan twitched his nose under the thing’s gaze, and the membranes flapped lightly. They not only covered Evan’s nose, but they also hung down from his eyebrows and seeped onto his cheeks. Evan knew what “proem” meant. He had asked the thing the first time he had seen it. It meant larva. That was what Evan was to them.
It seemed so long ago that the thing had first come, explained to Evan what none of the doctors could, what was really wrong with him. Evan had been scared but strangely relieved to have an answer at last. When Evan had asked how he’d caught it, the creature had laughed. A loud, gravelly, hearty laugh filled with malice.
“How did he catch it, he wants to know!” it had chortled. “He thinks he has a disease! Something he catches, something he cures. Oh no, proem, you are not sick.”
“I’m not sick? How can I not be sick?” Evan had screamed at it. The membranes had already been growing fast.
“You do not remember,” said the thing. And then it had told him. It had laughed as it told, showing its sharp fangs, pursing its shriveled lips in satisfaction.
“You must have a cure! Give it to me!” Evan had begged.
“Oh no, proem,” the thing had said. “You came to us. You have us in you, and we can no more stop this than your mother could stop you from growing in her womb.”
Evan had asked Dr. Allen, was it possible to catch something like this? Could he not be dying at all but be turning into something else, like a caterpillar turns into a butterfly? Only the other way around, Evan had thought. “Oh no,” said Dr. Allen. There were no diseases that did that. It wasn’t possible. You couldn’t turn into a completely different creature. Evan had been grateful that the old man hadn’t laughed at him but had pursed his thin lips seriously before he answered.
As he remembered the past, the impossible future stared up at him, smiling with its shriveled hole.
“Get away from me!” said Evan loudly, pushing the thing backward with one hand. It stumbled for a second but then regained its composure and its nasty smirk.
“For now, proem, for now,” it said. “I will check up on you again.” Still smirking, it shuffled back into the bathroom. Using both nubs, it pulled the door closed behind it. Its stink did not leave with it, and Evan knew it would fill the room for hours.
He slept fitfully that night, like he always did after a visit from his future kin.
Buy the Book
Visit www.hmhbooks.com or your favorite retailer to purchase the book in its entirety.
About the Author
MARY G. THOMPSON was born and raised in Cottage Grove and Eugene, Oregon. She was a practicing attorney for more than seven years, including almost five years in the U.S. Navy, before she moved to New York City to write full time. Visit her at www.marygthompson.com.
Escape from the Pipe Men! Page 21
