Out of one dark abyss, into another. The George household
bathed in blackness while Beth’s snoring rattled the walls. She didn’t even
wake up when Scott walked through the door. He never had to be light on his
toes when he entered the kitchen looking for a bite to eat. Through all of the
fury, tears, and insanity, Scott just now realized he had only eaten one meal
that day. His ribs were sore for more reasons than the constant use of his
diaphragm.
Every Tupperware meal in the refrigerator was crawling with
worms and maggots, at least in Scott’s mind. He shook his head to try and free
his mind of that image, but the little bastards slithered even more and grew as
big as snakes. He slammed the refrigerator door shoot and there was a slight
disturbance in his mother’s obtrusive snoring. And then the tiny motor in her
closed throat wailed once again. Scott breathed a sigh of relief and reopened
the fridge door.
Still they crawled with worms. Slime and shit covered the
mashed potatoes and gravy. The macaroni and cheese moved by itself, as if the
little pasta bites were necrovores themselves. The milk jug had more worms at
the bottom than a bottle of tequila. Scott knew this was just an illusion and
took a deep breath to calm himself. He closed his eyes and tried to remember
what Adrienne told him: replace the worms with something more pleasant.
Something delicious. Something that made eating enjoyable again.
With his eyelids still clamped shut, Scott pulled out a
Tupperware container of meatloaf and ate it cold. As he slowly chewed and
suppressed his gag reflex, he could feel something moving around between his
maulers. The thought of worms moving around wouldn’t be allowed to surface and
instead the little creatures were replaced with gummy worms. Meatloaf and gummy
worms: the dinner of champions. He took another bite. And another. His eating
speed became so rapid that he bit down on his tongue and suppressed a scream.
For the first time since having those Aloysius Striker
dreams, Scott finished a meal without getting the urge to vomit himself inside
out. He breathed heavily after taking the last bite of meatloaf, his appetite
satisfied only until he realized it was bedtime. The thought of going back into
his subconscious theater made Scott lightly bang his head against the fridge
door repeatedly. If biology was truly up to him, he’d drink Red Bull until the
end of time and never fall asleep again.
But reality was always worse than the dream world. Scott’s
day had been an exhausting one where he dealt with all sorts of jerk-off
characters: Aloysius Striker, Alan Young, Tom Simpson, Beth George, and an
undertaker and football jock who both went unnamed None of these people deserved names in
Scott’s mind; they were all just part of a community of worms.
But Adrienne was different from all of those conformists.
She was beautiful in more ways than just her physical appearance. She too was
hurting badly. She too loved creativity. She too resisted any attempts at
breaking her spirit and bending her to the will of the corporate overlords.
Those things made her the most beautiful woman on the planet. And yet, Scott
wondered what she even saw in a man like him anyways. It wasn’t as though he
had the dashing looks of a Hollywood actor or
the charisma of a rock star. He was just Scott George. Plain old Scott George.
Even his own name was boring to him.
All of these racing thoughts in his head blinded him to the
fact that his mother’s footsteps were pitter-pattering across the wooden floor.
He quickly closed the fridge door, dropped the meatloaf container in the sink,
and bolted upstairs to his bedroom. One stupid fight was one too many for
Scott, so he took the role of diplomat and tucked himself in bed, not even
bothering to change into more suitable sleepwear.
Scott’s ribs ached like a motherfucker. His head exploded
with pain and trauma. His blood was lukewarm. His eyes still burned hotly
enough to make closing them a painful experience. Scott didn’t stand a chance
when it came to fighting the forces of sleep. His eyelids burned like shooting
stars, but his lids were heavier than a grand piano. He could have used such a
gentle instrument to sooth his battered soul. Laziness took over to where he
didn’t want to press play on his stereo. One slip and down the rabbit hole he fell…
Just a few moments of uninterrupted darkness was what Scott
needed. His tortured mind rebuilt itself from a rock bottom foundation. His
pain was numbed to the very last nerve. He forgot that a world of a shit
existed outside of his aching brain. And it felt good. It felt more heavenly
than an hour-long chair massage. It felt more soothing than a harp concert
serenading his pounding ears. The nothing consumed every last bit of his body.
And then his temporary peace was shattered as he found
himself on a football field with lightning and grayness in the sky. The rain
poured down and smacked his skin like bamboo canes. Then the rain thickened
into dreaded fucking worms and Scott danced around shivering in disgust. Rows
of puppet cheerleaders, so flawless, yet so ugly by virtue of their perfection,
twirled and flipped in the air with worm infested pom-poms. Scott swore he
heard their chant somewhere before.
“Bring out the gimp! Bring out the gimp! Come on, everybody,
let’s bring out the gimp!”
Scott tried to shout back at them, but his mouth was
obstructed by a rubber object. He touched his face and scalp and sensed a
leather presence covering his Sideshow Bob hair. He also felt a heavy dog chain
digging deeply into his neck. He could panic, kick, and scream all he wanted, but
it didn’t change the fact that Aloysius Striker owned him and was dragging him
to the top of an Olympic-style platform. The puppets formed a semi-circle
around the enslaved Scott and listened intently to Mrs. Striker’s oratory.
“You see this, everyone?!” she shouted in her signature ham
voice. “This young man is an example of someone who doesn’t want to be part of
our community! He wants to go his own way and leave his neighbors to drown in
the worms! Well, if he must leave this community, it’s only fair that we give
him a going away present!”
Mrs. Striker lifted up her own dress and pulled out a
handful of the slimiest, nastiest worms she could, much to the cheerleaders’
giddy delights. The worms oozed with black oil, red blood, and white…whatever
the fuck it was. The teacher unzipped the mouth on Scott’s gimp hood and
prepared to shove the filthy fuckers down his throat.
“Stop!” shouted a female voice for a prolonged period of
time. The cheerleaders and teacher alike stared down the one member of their
“community” who dared defy them. The lone cheerleader threw down her pom-poms
and ripped off her own head to reveal she was Adrienne Simpson underneath. The
puppets and Mrs. Striker gasped in unison like good little conformists when Adrienne
sprouted metal angel wings that shot flames in either direction.
“Don’t just stand there, you dolts! Get her!” shouted Mrs.
Striker, to which the cheerleaders threw their pom-poms down and attempted to
cannibalize the metal angel with shark-like teeth. Adrienne was one step ahead
of them when she pointed the tips of her wings at her assailants and shot
streams of fire at them. The cheerleaders squealed in agony as their wooden,
worm-infested bodies warped and twisted into piles of ashes.
“What the…what have you done to my community? My poor, poor
community!” cried Mrs. Striker while holding her dimply cheeks. Scott used this
distraction to rip off his gimp hood and shove his “teacher” into the gigantic
football field fire, barbecuing the bitch nice and crispy. Her screams were
more music to his ears than anything he listened to on his MP3 player that day.
Adrienne flew over to Scott and scooped him up in her arms
before floating into the heavenly sunrise of a newly pink morning. The rain had
stopped, but the thunder remained, sending crashes of lightning onto the
burning field of dead puppets. Scott didn’t want to relish on this recent war
and instead relaxed in the arms of his beautiful angel. She sang to him lyrics
that were once familiar in his dead father’s music collection.
“I bless the wings that bring you back across the shore. If
I could touch you now, my darling, I’d love you just once more. If I could hold
you…hold you…hold you…I know you’d understand…I know you’d understand…”
Her soothing soprano tones would have made the Moody Blues
proud, but they made Scott relax even further in his girlfriend’s arms. She
leaned her face down and kissed his mouth, no taste of worms, no embarrassing
boner on Scott’s part, no awkwardness or disgust at all, just a moment of love
that would last longer than any haunting trauma. Too bad Scott had to
eventually wake up to go to school the next day. But if it meant Adrienne would
be there and walk him home again, it would be worth all the heartache.
What would she think of the You Tube video that Alan Young
posted in the graveyard? Would she see him as a weakling? Would she take pity
on him? Would she break up with him before their relationship even got started?
Scott tried not to think too hard about these circling questions and just
enjoyed a moment in the pink and orange sunshine with his angelic
girlfriend…while he still could.
