The Wyrms of &alon

Somehow, the second half of my drive home was even worse than the first. It was a sobering experience, like none I’d ever known; grimness and portent, served at 200 proof.

Alien sensations crawled beneath my skin. The foreboding that filled me was defining in its silence. My hands shook as if I had tardive dyskinesia, constantly at risk of slipping on the sweat that slicked the rubber steering wheel. Everything seemed off-kilter. Even traffic flowed oddly. The barren stretch of the Expressway slammed into a marsh of wheels, chrome, and honking horns as it merged with Seacrest Avenue. It seemed to sink into the ground from the weight of all the vehicles held up by a light that had yet to turn.

Who am I kidding?

There was no “somehow” about it. My miseries were as clear as day. Before, I was just dead. Now, I was dead and I felt like a jerk. Andalon’s plaintive cries might as well have been tattooed on my eyeballs’ insides. That would have probably hurt less, too.

Everyone had a red line—that boundary we promised ourselves we’d never cross; a trigger that had to be met with some kind of retaliation. Mine was the thought of children pained and suffering.

I hated it. I hated it all the more when people’s callousness and indifference were to blame, and worst of all, when the guilt fell to me. If, as the legend went, the Angel had designed us in his image, down to the finest detail, what would that say about our stubbornness? How could anyone look at a work like man and call it “good” when it often took something on the order of the loss of a child to teach a man to acknowledge the truths that he would otherwise prefer to overlook?

Look at me, tormenting a child. I grit my teeth in anger. I could have done something, I just sat there, because I was afraid, and because I wanted it to be over, and because I’d hoped it could be undone.

Night’s dark wings climbed high over the horizon by the time I turned down Angeltoe Street. Our street-lamps were lit and bright. From atop their metal posts, the luminous orbs cast their amber glow across autumnal flowers and manicured lawns.

I stared warily through the big window on our living room rotunda as I drove up to the Howle residence. The curtains had been fully drawn out of the way of the curving bay windows. Light from the living room streamed out from it like a lighthouse’s beacon. The TV was on, turned to the news. I could have stayed there, parked across the street, watching the TV from outdoors, without ever finishing my voyage home. But I didn’t, because I didn’t want to be a fool.

Not again.

As I pulled into the driveway, two figures on the sofa rose from their disdainful poses and passed by the window. The curtains drew themselves closed as my wife and daughter sashayed out through the front door. Pel held her purse by its strap, dangling pendulously at her side as she walked toward me.

Preparing myself for the worst—leaving the engine still running—I stepped out of the car to greet them, only to be struck by an all-too-familiar wave of lightheadedness. It was like I was stepping into a shadow. For a moment, everything dimmed, leaving me dizzy and woozy. Paresthesias dancing up and down my forearms. Even standing was difficult. I had to lean with my arm pushing against the car just to keep myself standing.

I turned to my wife and made an attempt to smile. An attempt.

“Honey, “ I said, “would you mind taking the wheel?” Groaning softly, I clutched my head with my free arm. “I have a headache.”

Pel furrowed her brow. “I knew it. Something’s wrong.”

She passed the skill-check with flying colors. She probably even rolled a natural 20.

I was trapped. There was no way out.

In my opinion as a medical and mental health professional, if ever there were a reason not to go attend my son’s play, having an almost-certainly contagious affliction that made me feel like I was dead and gave me extraordinary audio-visual hallucinations had to be it. At the same time, there was also a significant chance that if I did not attend Rayph’s play, my wife and oldest child would never speak to me again, and would leave me to die alone—and for real, not just in my now-diseased mind. And if I told them the truth, there was a strong possibility we’d all be dead from a “mysterious accident” before the night was through.

What was I supposed to do? What could I have told them?

So, I lied. “No,” I said, shaking my head, “I’m just tired.”

“Assuming you weren’t lying then and aren’t lying now,” Jules said, “you said you passed out, right? Are you sure we should be going out tonight with you not feeling good enough to drive?”

I would have hugged my girl right then and there, but that would have been admitting defeat.

Pel pursed her lips. “Go ahead and paint me unsympathetic if you want to, Gen, but there’s no way this side of Paradise that this family is going to miss out on Rayph’s performance.” She cleared her throat and nodded sternly. “I’ll be glad to drive.” She handed her purse to Jules.

Making my way to the other side of the car, I threw open the door and slunk into the front passenger seat, groaning quietly as I tugged the door closed behind me. Pel settled into the driver’s seat with perfect grace, though she did grimace when her white-gloved hands slipped on the sweat-slicked steering wheel. Jules sat in the middle of the back-row, decked in caustic contrasts: her glum expression against the sparkle of her elegant white dress.

Both of them had completely redone their fingernails—paint, polish, and all.

Pel drove us out toward the boulevard. For the first minute or two, the only sounds I could hear were the engine’s hum and the tires thrumming against the road. On any other day, being driven in my L85 would have been relaxing bliss, but this was no ordinary day, and I was anything but relaxed.

Now that I finally didn’t have to worry about getting myself into a car accident, for the first time, I was able to focus on each and every detail of the deadness clambering through my body. The deadness had spread even further, having now branched out from my spine. Closing my eyes made the sensations even more potent. Even now, it marched onward, conquering my mortal coil. It was almost skeletal, as if I was being rewired from the inside.

And then it clicked.

This wasn’t just a neurovirulent condition—it wasn’t just causing disease within the nervous system—it was neurotropic, actively spreading through the nervous system, using it the way cars used highways. It was propagating along my nerves, and was affecting the peripheral nervous system—that was why I felt like I was dead—as well as the central nervous system—that was why I had the overpowering conviction that I was dead.

Was I not, you know, dying and hallucinating and being a failure of a husband and father, I might have been proud of that insight.

At that moment, my wife spoke up, unaware of the tumult within me.

“Genneth…” She let the word hang in the air. “It’s hard for me to express just how… disappointed I am.” She shook her head, and then adjusted the rear-view mirror. “We’re late as late can be, and that’s not right. It’s wronging us, and wronging our son. We promised Rayph we’d be there right on time—we promised him together.” She glanced at me. There was pain in her eyes. “I know how important your word is to you. It’s important to me, too. I’d rather make no promises at all, if only to ensure that when I did give my word, the world could trust that it meant something.” Pel clicked her tongue. “That’s why I can’t wrap my head around this.” She wrapped her hand on the top of the steering wheel. “You knew about this. You—”

“—Sweetheart, please…” I rubbed my eyes. “There was traffic I couldn’t have anticipated. You know how much this means to me.”

As we skirted down the winding hillside boulevard, the city and the bay came into view. Night-life had begun to stir and gleam.

“But that’s exactly why you were supposed to leave early,” Pel said.

Dangnabbit!

I felt like screaming. I felt like curling up and puking my guts out the window. Fudge!

Sharply, I drew in breath, hissing it through my teeth.

“You know how important my family is to me,” I said. “You’re my everything. You know what I’ve lost in my life.” I whimpered. “I tried so hard! I made sure to do everything right. I modified my schedule and everything—everything was set up for me to leave early, and with plenty of time to spare.”

“To be clear,” Jules interjected, crossing her arms, “I’m against this whole thing, on principle.”

“Julette, please,” I said, “not now.”

“If you went to all that trouble,” Pel asked me, “why were you late?”

“Bec—” but I stopped myself. I was about to say because Merritt Elbock is now a zombie with the power to move stuff with her mind.

I swallowed hard. I was starting to cry.

“—Things fell apart,” I said. “I lost track of time. It was an emergency.”

We zoomed onto the Expressway. The car passed over the maglev road like clouds over the bay. And the deadness kept creeping. Its march was unrelenting.

Brain, spinal column, lungs, breath…

Was it going down the autonomic pathways? But, then—if it was—why hadn’t it yet reached my heart?

And then, as if on cue, it did.

Cardiac muscles are the most important muscles in the human body, and were unique in both form and physiology—and, given their function, they had to be. They were always on the job. Ba-thump. Ba-thump. Ba-thump. That sound was the tick of the seconds-hand on the clocks of our lives, and, most of the time, it was surprisingly easy to ignore.

Only now, it wasn’t.

I was aware of every beat; every shudder. Intimately aware. A ba-thump in my chest that ba-thump wouldn’t stop. Dead, ba-thump, but still moving; a ba-thumping hammer pumping ba-thumping fluid all over my corpse, fraying my ba-thumped thoughts.

Ba-thump. Ba-thump.

I sunk deeper into the chair, cowering in my seat. My hands quivered. They itched to cover my ears, but giving in to that urge would only raise more questions.

Pel rolled her eyes and scoffed. “There you go again! Everything is an emergency to you, Gen!”

She must have seen the way I was staring at her through the rear-view mirror, because a second later, she softened her tone. I knew it was her way of trying to apologize for getting mad at me when she clearly believed I was trying, but none of that mattered right now.

I wish I had been brave enough to tell her. And I wished there might have been a chance that she might have actually believed me.

“You really do give everything your all,” Pel said. “That’s part of why I fell in love with you. You paid attention to details that most people wouldn’t have even noticed.” She sighed. “That’s why this is so hard for me. You’re…” she sighed. “You’ve been neglectful,” she said. “It hurts me to have to say it, but that’s how I feel.”

“Neglectful?” I said, hurt. “I work myself to the bone!”

“But you don’t need to,” Pel insisted. “The money Daddy left us is right there, sitting in the bank account. I don’t think we could spend it all even if we tried!”

“Please, both of you,” Jules said, “stop it. There’s no point in rehashing this. It’s just going to make things worse. The money is cursed, and it ruins everything.”

Pel glowered at our daughter via the rear-view mirror. “Stay out of this, Jules. And yet,” she said, returning to our argument in progress, “you only seem to be concerned with keeping your distance from us.” She paused. “You know how important this night is to our son. It was important enough to you when Rale was the one set to be on-stage.”

And just like that, my dead heartbeat became the least of my worries.

“Don’t say that,” I said. “Don’t do that. Don’t you…” my voice cracked, “don’t you dare suggest that my love for our children isn’t enough.”

The accusation was as specious as it was cruel. I’d loved Rale to death. Literally. Not a day went by where I didn’t think of him, or of my culpability for his passing. Even from my earliest days, I’d known that hate kills, but never in all my life could I have prepared myself to learn that love could kill. Love, blinded or twisted, was as deadly as the deadliest hate. Perhaps even deadlier.

“Gen,” Pel said, “when I look at you, I still see the man who wasn’t afraid of being messy, the one who swept me off my feet, away from my pedicured life. But now? Now everything is glass and apprehension. I don’t want to think ill of you; I don’t want to think the worst. But you’re not leaving me with any other option. If nearly every time your family needs you to be there, you aren’t, what else am I supposed to say? You have to be with the people that love you, even when it hurts.”

“I know you blame me…” I said, “for Rale. I do, too.”

The ochre light from the street-lamps whisking by lit up the tears flowing down my wife’s cheeks.

“How many times do I have to say it, Genneth? It wasn’t your fault.”

“You can say that, but—”

“—Both of you are loons!” Jules snapped. She snarled. “I can’t believe the two of you think you can pull a mulligan over your son, as if Rale was something that you could just do over, and everyone would smile and nod like it was all peachy. It’s fucking sick!”

Looking over my shoulder, I locked eyes with my daughter in penetrating glare. “Julette Howle,” I huffed, “you don’t talk to your parents that way! You’re better than that!”

Jules flicked her hands through her hair.

“Why should I care about what bothers you two when neither of you seem to give a damn about what bothers me?” She crossed her arms.

“So… you don’t want to attend?” I asked, completely serious. All things considered—like me being a living corpse!—I think I was doing a pretty good job of “normal dad stuff”. If only my normal dad stuff wasn’t so piteously subpar.

With a snort, Jules clutched at her chin. She stared off into the distance with her eyes so narrowed—so nearly totally closed—you’d have thought the air was filled with pepper spray. “You guys really haven’t been hearing a word I’ve been saying, have you?” she said. “How many times do I have to say it? Hell. No. I don’t want to go. I’d rather stay in my room and weep.”

“What are we supposed to tell your brother, Jules?” her mother asked.

“My brother is dead!”

“Rale loved being up on stage,” I said, “and so does Rayph. By doing this together, we’re honoring their memories, both the ones we’ve already made, the ones that wait for us up ahead.”

“There’s the man I love,” Pel said, with a sad smile, though it did not do much to hide the way her tears had fouled up the makeup on her cheeks. “I’d like to see him more often,” she muttered.

My wife tightened her grip on the steering wheel and focused on the road ahead. The advertisements that played on the underside of the Expressway’s roof twitched and buzzed in my eyesight. Some even seemed to crawl. The light hit my eyes like a sledgehammer to my skull.

“Please,” I said, groaning, “can we just have quiet for the rest of the trip? I don’t want Rayph to worry about us embarrassing him again, not when he’s already trying to keep from embarrassing himself.”

“I’m…” Jules waved her hand, slowly settling down. “I’m fine with that,” she muttered. “Actually…” She pursed her lips.

Before any of us could act, Jules lunged forward in between our seats and flicked the switch on the dashboard console to put up the divider between the front and back seats. Up went the glass, sealing with a shwoomp. Darkness spread across it like plumes of smoke. Now sealed off, the rear half of the car would be cradled in a near total silence. The only sound you could hear would be the white noise from the fan as it pulled in air through the filter.

Up front, things were just as quiet. Pel only spoke up when we were within sight of the school. Prescott Noctis™ Elementary School looked better at night than in the day. With the elegantly placed lighting, the wavy, blue-plated metal sheets of the school’s abstract façade glistened like sea beneath the sun.

“I worry about her,” she said, softly.

“I bet I worry more than you do.” I almost chuckled.

She started to respond, but ended up staying mum.

Pelbrum tapped the divider icon on the console as we pulled up to the curb. The divider sank, revealing Julette Howle in full dour, though I’d like to think she’d mellowed out at least a little bit.

“Alright,” Pel said, “Jules, you go with your father to the auditorium. I’ll park the car.”

It was an excellent idea, and it remained excellent right up to when I rose from my seat.

This was a mistake.

I stopped cold in my tracks, struck by a feeling like that of blood rushing to your head after getting up too quickly, only this feeling washed over every inch of my body, head to toe. Something settled, and, in an instant, I knew my transfiguration was finally complete.

I was dead, through and through. It was the full package, and I felt it like nothing I’d ever felt before. It brought to mind a story Dana had read to me when I was little about a man whose skeleton had gained a life of its own, possessed by the vengeful ghost of his identical twin. It was only after hearing that story that I ever seriously stopped to think about the grinning, fleshless double that dwelt inside me, walking along with my every step—the one true memento mori. But, like with the feeling of a heady blood-rush, experience was turned inside out. Now, I was the ghost, haunting my own body, trapped where I didn’t belong.

“Genneth?” Pel asked.

I needed to buy time.

I leaned against the car. “Actually… why don’t you let me park the car?”

“What?”

“I could use the longer walk… to wake me up,” I said, nodding. “You two go on ahead.”

Slowly, Pel stepped out of the car. She eyed me carefully as I lumbered around the back to the driver’s side.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“I think I can manage,” I said. I didn’t know if it was true, though I desperately hoped it was.

“Genneth… if something is going on, please… you can tell me.”

“You’ll be the first to know,” I said.

I grabbed hold of the wheel as she walked away. I pushed an unsteady foot onto the accelerator, rolling the car out toward the parking lot.

But I was wrong, and on both counts.

Count one: Pel wasn’t the first to know.

Count two: my transformation had only just begun.