by Josh Shiben
***
“No foreign travel or anything?” the doctor had asked. Sitting in his hospital gown, looking down at his feet glumly, Evan could only shake his head “no.” He’d never even left the state. He didn’t have the money or the time away from work to go anywhere exotic. That was back when he still felt – the pain, the fear, the anger – it all bubbled up in him like a volcano. He was alive, then.
“Have you had any water that was maybe contaminated?” the doctor had tried. Again, he’d shaken his head. He only ever drank tap water – provided by the city, and purified by chlorine. The worms couldn’t live in chlorine, could they? Tap water was clean.
***
Evan wet his lips again, and his tongue felt like sandpaper rubbing over a cracked and dried riverbed. With a grunt, he hoisted himself up another rung on the ladder. Some part of him realized he was dying, but he couldn’t bring himself to be upset or bothered by the insight. The knowledge only gave him more motivation – better to receive this one last satisfaction than to die without it; a baptism to cleanse him, to wash away the wretchedness. It would bring relief. It had to.
“To hold me up,” he whined out deliriously, his hands only two rungs below the edge of the structure. He looked down to see the tiny town beneath him, and briefly considered just letting go. The fall would certainly kill him – end this struggle in a splatter of worm-infested meat. But then, he’d never get his satisfaction – he’d die, never knowing relief. That thought alone was enough to spur him upward, toward the salvation only a few rungs above him. He tried to swallow, but his throat was too dry – his tongue felt like a burned piece of leather in his mouth, and he had to hold on tightly to keep from retching.
He pulled himself up the last two rungs and then clambered up on top of the hot metal structure. His arms and legs were weak with thirst, but with some effort, he hauled himself into the center of the circle. There was a round door in the roof, with a spinning handle on it that reminded him of the door of a vault. It was held in place by a simple padlock, and with a satisfying click of the bolt cutters he had brought along for just such a complication, Evan was through. His hands trembled with anticipation as he took the heavy crowbar he had carried up all this way and used it to force the wheel to slowly turn, unsealing the door with a metallic groan. He eased the door open, and was almost knocked backwards by the scent of chlorine that assaulted him.
When he’d first found out the worms were living inside of him, Evan had researched parasites. Now, as he looked down at the dark body of water, he remembered the Horsehair Worm. It reproduced in large, freshwater lakes, but grew inside the carapace of crickets. Sometimes, it would grow to be nearly a foot long, coiled tightly inside the little body like a spring. The problem was that, in order to complete its life-cycle, the worm had to return to the water. The solution was simple – it would convince its host to hurl itself into a lake; the vessel apathetic to its own self-destruction.
Evan remembered reading about the Horsehair worm and wondering, how could something subvert an organism’s drive for self-preservation so effectively? What did a cricket feel, when poised at the edge of the lake? He wondered, now, if it felt anything at all. Perhaps, only thirst. The thought almost stirred anger inside Evan’s mind, but instead he gazed down through the open portal, and the feeling passed almost as quickly as it had started.
The water looked so calm and cool, and Evan was so thirsty. A soft drip from somewhere inside the water tower echoed through the door to Evan’s ears, and without any more hesitation, he threw himself into the black water, mouth open and eager. His stomach ruptured when he entered the liquid, and Evan felt the tightness in his gut relax, as thousands upon thousands of worms fled the confines of his body for the cool freedom of the water around him. They spilled out of him, like flies fleeing a rancid piece of road kill that’d been kicked, uncoiling from his belly like a disemboweled man’s intestines.
The water tower echoed with the splashing of the worms as they undulated through the drinking water. Salvation choked Evan, pressing in on him from every direction. But he didn’t thrash – he only opened his mouth as wide as he could. He’d finally found enough. He wasn’t thirsty anymore. He’d never be thirsty again.
