The Worms Within Us
Saturday, August 3, 1993
My hands ache in their own blood. They are disintegrating into fleshless, tendonless bone and I doubt their strength to continue this account: the circumstance behind what I've become, what all of Perol, West Virginia has become since last night.
Being the longest survivor (at least as far as can be rendered through my motel window at one end of Main Street), I am compelled to document these facts so that others may avoid, will avoid their own annihilation. And I pray that they do not find these before you.
Last evening began typically rural, typically Appalachian. The sun had dropped quickly below pine dense mountains and a cool gray wind preceded cloud banks of equal color, both stretching chords of rainbow dusk through Trenam Valley so thick one might easily lift a finger and pluck some heavenly note only angels understood. The smell had been invitingly wet for the valley had not known rain in many summer weeks. I, like my neighbors, had wandered outdoors to relish what would soon be relief, to feel nature's unrelenting heat washed from my skin.
I am not sure that I saw them first. The "oohs" and "ahhs" were so closely timed that my own exclamations seemed to echo from those who stood tens of yards away. They came after a fierce display of jagged lightning strokes, after an exploding thunder that pounded my body into the ground like a rail spike. They came after the first small drops of moisture fell from the darkening twilight.
I wish that I were from this town. I wish I knew the people who had stood on their concrete porches, driveways and sidewalks peering up at the western horizon waiting unknowingly for the blizzard of pain that swarmed their way. I could have cared about their deaths as friends and not just as people. I would have cried harder for the children, moaned louder for the mothers, and the fathers and I would have died, brothers-in-arms, against what could not be fought. But as a traveling salesman, all I did was watch. A community of flesh dissolved into the gutters and flowed to the open storm grates. And I watched.
Standing at my motel door, a stranger among strangers enjoying the blessed rain, I had marveled at the second cloud layer that had rolled in over the mountains under the storm from the western horizon. These clouds had had no form, no fluff, no marshmallow texture. They had spread like black paint from a toppled bucket. The starless blackness had drooled under the storm. It had engulfed it. It had erased it. Abruptly, the rain had stopped falling.
Mr. Duncan was the first to die...I think; the multitude of screams was such that I cannot be certain. Mr. Duncan had purchased several sets of encyclopedias and had promised future sales. If not for these purchases, I would not have had the money for this motel room, for food, and for the gas that would eventually take me to the next town. That grey-haired gentleman had saved me. I will never forget.
But I wish I could forget...or at least ignore...the pain and disgust of my body's deterioration. I feel them eating through each muscle, tendon, and blood cell. Worse, I sense their intelligence. Tiny whispers, a million rumors, encapsulate my mind and I think that I might go mad.
Insanity. I would welcome its cold fingers, its sterility, its way of cauterizing the body's pain. Oh, to relish in the fabled world of the madman. The unreality. The departure.
Pain. It explodes through my veins with each cursive stroke as the tiny aliens gnaw their way into my being. My hands are dissolving into the same chunky gelatin substance that dots Main Street in two foot heaps where its residents once stood. Tiny blisters spread up my arms in disgusting white-headed fortitude that make the acne of my youth seem sane and somehow realistic.
And fear. Not of dying, oh no. It is the fear that my mind will soon be theirs, that before the melting and dying is done they will control my soul. And my soul will remain theirs. It will never know peace. To starve of its just ending.
Whispers. I can hear them.
The wave of death had started at the far end of Main Street where the cracked asphalt angled right, past the ragged, two-story structure belonging to Ms. Adams, the town's Tarot Card psychic and renowned nutcase. From the corner of my eyes (those parts which were not in combat with Mr. Duncan's stare), I had seen it coming, although in that moment I had not labeled it worrisome. My mind's split-second told me it was oil; a sheet of man-made black waste that had assembled in the sky was now pummeling the land in a near solid curtain. The industry over the mountains had sent an accidental offering, I thought.
Ms. Adams' house disappeared, then Ms. Adams, then the next building, and a few more people, down Main Street it came washing out reality until my sight filled with an ever-burning picture: Mr. Duncan standing before that blackness with the west half of his home split into oblivion by the oil curtain and a half-dozen people darting about the street in the foreground.
I could not let him go. Even after Mr. Duncan disappeared, my penny-loafers remained nailed to the doorstep. And the curtain came.
Please. Understand. I wanted to rush into my room and slam the door. You might think the stupidity of curiosity kept me from self-salvation. You might liken me to the cinematic teenage girl who knows the murderer is behind the darkness but decides an untwisted coat hanger and her fragile determination will down the knife-wielding lunatic. But I did not stand there to fight. I believed, as you would have, that this black curtain was the remnants of industrial waste. A little sulfuric acid here, a bit of cyanide there and Whala! The perfect melting pot. Run for cover! you might have yelled, even if the motel could not have withstood the possible corrosive capabilities of the black rain.
Have you ever stared at something so long that every fiber of its matter became atoms of memory? If I could give you that mental snapshot of poor Mr. Duncan, you would understand.
It wasn't acid or oil or waste. The curtain was alive. They dropped by the thousands onto his face. In milliseconds, they squirmed their way into the pores of his wrinkling skin, through the creases in the sockets of his eyes. His gray hair fell from his chin, his scalp. Oh, God! I had thought. Mr Duncan, please run, PLEASE GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE!
That vision will forever haunt me, though my forever seems nearly over. Because I did not react in time, the black rain touched my arms. They dove through the pores of my skin before I could secure the motel door.
I feel them squirming, taking control.
Mr. Duncan was luckier than I. He went quickly, the pain immense but only for a brief moment. They had taken his body and mind, had used it and had departed. To where, I do not know. Into the earth or back to the heavens, your guess is as good as mine. But they are there, waiting, massing. Perol was one small town with only a few good souls.
I know of small towns. It is my business to know.
***END***
© 1994 by Peter Galarneau, Jr.
~ PLEASE POST A COMMENT IF YOU FEEL SO INCLINED ~
My hands ache in their own blood. They are disintegrating into fleshless, tendonless bone and I doubt their strength to continue this account: the circumstance behind what I've become, what all of Perol, West Virginia has become since last night.
Being the longest survivor (at least as far as can be rendered through my motel window at one end of Main Street), I am compelled to document these facts so that others may avoid, will avoid their own annihilation. And I pray that they do not find these before you.
Last evening began typically rural, typically Appalachian. The sun had dropped quickly below pine dense mountains and a cool gray wind preceded cloud banks of equal color, both stretching chords of rainbow dusk through Trenam Valley so thick one might easily lift a finger and pluck some heavenly note only angels understood. The smell had been invitingly wet for the valley had not known rain in many summer weeks. I, like my neighbors, had wandered outdoors to relish what would soon be relief, to feel nature's unrelenting heat washed from my skin.
I am not sure that I saw them first. The "oohs" and "ahhs" were so closely timed that my own exclamations seemed to echo from those who stood tens of yards away. They came after a fierce display of jagged lightning strokes, after an exploding thunder that pounded my body into the ground like a rail spike. They came after the first small drops of moisture fell from the darkening twilight.
I wish that I were from this town. I wish I knew the people who had stood on their concrete porches, driveways and sidewalks peering up at the western horizon waiting unknowingly for the blizzard of pain that swarmed their way. I could have cared about their deaths as friends and not just as people. I would have cried harder for the children, moaned louder for the mothers, and the fathers and I would have died, brothers-in-arms, against what could not be fought. But as a traveling salesman, all I did was watch. A community of flesh dissolved into the gutters and flowed to the open storm grates. And I watched.
Standing at my motel door, a stranger among strangers enjoying the blessed rain, I had marveled at the second cloud layer that had rolled in over the mountains under the storm from the western horizon. These clouds had had no form, no fluff, no marshmallow texture. They had spread like black paint from a toppled bucket. The starless blackness had drooled under the storm. It had engulfed it. It had erased it. Abruptly, the rain had stopped falling.
Mr. Duncan was the first to die...I think; the multitude of screams was such that I cannot be certain. Mr. Duncan had purchased several sets of encyclopedias and had promised future sales. If not for these purchases, I would not have had the money for this motel room, for food, and for the gas that would eventually take me to the next town. That grey-haired gentleman had saved me. I will never forget.
But I wish I could forget...or at least ignore...the pain and disgust of my body's deterioration. I feel them eating through each muscle, tendon, and blood cell. Worse, I sense their intelligence. Tiny whispers, a million rumors, encapsulate my mind and I think that I might go mad.
Insanity. I would welcome its cold fingers, its sterility, its way of cauterizing the body's pain. Oh, to relish in the fabled world of the madman. The unreality. The departure.
Pain. It explodes through my veins with each cursive stroke as the tiny aliens gnaw their way into my being. My hands are dissolving into the same chunky gelatin substance that dots Main Street in two foot heaps where its residents once stood. Tiny blisters spread up my arms in disgusting white-headed fortitude that make the acne of my youth seem sane and somehow realistic.
And fear. Not of dying, oh no. It is the fear that my mind will soon be theirs, that before the melting and dying is done they will control my soul. And my soul will remain theirs. It will never know peace. To starve of its just ending.
Whispers. I can hear them.
The wave of death had started at the far end of Main Street where the cracked asphalt angled right, past the ragged, two-story structure belonging to Ms. Adams, the town's Tarot Card psychic and renowned nutcase. From the corner of my eyes (those parts which were not in combat with Mr. Duncan's stare), I had seen it coming, although in that moment I had not labeled it worrisome. My mind's split-second told me it was oil; a sheet of man-made black waste that had assembled in the sky was now pummeling the land in a near solid curtain. The industry over the mountains had sent an accidental offering, I thought.
Ms. Adams' house disappeared, then Ms. Adams, then the next building, and a few more people, down Main Street it came washing out reality until my sight filled with an ever-burning picture: Mr. Duncan standing before that blackness with the west half of his home split into oblivion by the oil curtain and a half-dozen people darting about the street in the foreground.
I could not let him go. Even after Mr. Duncan disappeared, my penny-loafers remained nailed to the doorstep. And the curtain came.
Please. Understand. I wanted to rush into my room and slam the door. You might think the stupidity of curiosity kept me from self-salvation. You might liken me to the cinematic teenage girl who knows the murderer is behind the darkness but decides an untwisted coat hanger and her fragile determination will down the knife-wielding lunatic. But I did not stand there to fight. I believed, as you would have, that this black curtain was the remnants of industrial waste. A little sulfuric acid here, a bit of cyanide there and Whala! The perfect melting pot. Run for cover! you might have yelled, even if the motel could not have withstood the possible corrosive capabilities of the black rain.
Have you ever stared at something so long that every fiber of its matter became atoms of memory? If I could give you that mental snapshot of poor Mr. Duncan, you would understand.
It wasn't acid or oil or waste. The curtain was alive. They dropped by the thousands onto his face. In milliseconds, they squirmed their way into the pores of his wrinkling skin, through the creases in the sockets of his eyes. His gray hair fell from his chin, his scalp. Oh, God! I had thought. Mr Duncan, please run, PLEASE GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE!
That vision will forever haunt me, though my forever seems nearly over. Because I did not react in time, the black rain touched my arms. They dove through the pores of my skin before I could secure the motel door.
I feel them squirming, taking control.
Mr. Duncan was luckier than I. He went quickly, the pain immense but only for a brief moment. They had taken his body and mind, had used it and had departed. To where, I do not know. Into the earth or back to the heavens, your guess is as good as mine. But they are there, waiting, massing. Perol was one small town with only a few good souls.
I know of small towns. It is my business to know.
***END***
© 1994 by Peter Galarneau, Jr.
~ PLEASE POST A COMMENT IF YOU FEEL SO INCLINED ~
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