Savoring the Taste — Belicia Rhea

A worm has chewed an exit through the body to your left’s eye. It slinks up the nose and out through the right nostril, tail only lost for a moment before its pink head reappears.

“What are you doing, worm?” you ask. 

Worm torments you, refuses to tell, still slithering in and out of bodies, looking for the perfect host. You observe, wondering dumbly why worm has not chosen you. Why worm only wants them. 

You survey the sea of dead surrounding you, searching for signs of life. There are no chests rising with breath. No insects buzzing on rotting skin. There is nothing. Only worm. 

Time passes. You aren’t sure how long. 

Here it is always blackness. Perpetual night. The only constant is worm. The footsteps and rattling of the grates above your head are a constant stormy weather. Everything from before is no longer. That world has forgotten you. You subsist on the copper taste of your own blood and the wet puddles of this dark place that taste faintly chemical. 

The world is war. The world is worm. And worm is still slithering after you, teasing. Worm does not stay for long, always retreating to the shadows. You cry, beg for mercy. Ask worm to take you. To choose you. Worm does not care. 

Have you upset worm? You don’t remember anything anymore. Worm remembers. Worm knows you like no one else, having seen you fighting to live and begging to die. But worm will not let you die. 

In a dizzying grief, you weep for the pathetic state of yourself. Tattered hair. Breath stinking. Teeth rotting out of your skull. Still, there is worm, always willing to love you when there is nothing left of you to love. When there is no one else. It takes a very long time, but eventually, you learn this. There are things one must come to accept.

It’ll always be: just you and worm. 

Again you stare at the pile of bodies, wondering about their flesh. It is not appetizing, the thought of eating raw, dead human. You stick a corpse’s finger in your mouth, shudder, then nearly puke, so you throw it far into the blackness before losing what little bile remains in your stomach.

Your hoarse voice shouts above your head at the grates. The footsteps ignore you or can’t hear. No one hears. Only worm. Though surely, you think to yourself, worm does not have ears.

Just a slick, ribbed body. A body fit for holding, for putting in your mouth. Getting your teeth around. For tasting. You cry at the thought, your hunger overtaking you. 

You chew at the edges of your fingernails, swallow the slivers. It is never enough. Your body is frail. Your body is weak. It is true that worm is your superior being. 

With shaking hands, sobbing now, you reach out to worm. Worm scrunches toward you, slowly, then creeps along your trembling fingertips. 

Is this real? You can hardly believe it. Finally, worm has come. At long last, worm considers you, slithering up to your shoulder. Worm whispers something in your ear. 

You smile. Overtaken with bliss, you realize you are being chosen. You could live like this forever, the two of you, you think. 

Worm slides into your ear, and it feels criminal, guilty-good. As worm moves through you, a warmth fills your body. Something awakens inside—worm is truly with you, at last. Worm knows what to do. Worm has always known. And with worm? You realize that anything is possible. 

Worm says it’s time to finish what you started. 

You pick up a severed hand and take a bite of the rotted wrist, savoring the taste of rancid bacteria, of coagulated blood, the slick of your tongue against bone.

AUTHOR BIO:

Belicia Rhea was born under a waning crescent moon in the Sonoran Desert. She writes horror, weird fiction, and poetry. You can find her at beliciarhea.com and read more of her work published in Nightmare Magazine, Ligeia Magazine, and various horror anthologies.