by Joel Arnold
“Whoa.” Portman leaned back, waving off the tequila in surrender. “No fucking mas.”
Juan laughed. “C’mon. The last one. I promise you.”
Portman exhaled a watery sigh. He wasn’t sure how he’d make it back to his motel room, let alone the flight of steps that led from the tavern to the street below. They’d probably find him the next morning passed out in the zócalo covered with vomit and bird shit.
“Okay.” He picked up the tiny glass. “This is it.” He tilted back his head and swallowed, well past the point of feeling the burn. He decided he better get back to China.
Juan leaned forward in his chair. “I’ll help you down the steps.”
“I can make it.”
Portman started to get up but felt a hand squeeze his shoulder. He squirmed around and saw a pockmarked face staring at Juan.
“I brought the gringo a drink.”
“Leave him alone, Benito.”
Benito’s glazed eyes were crisscrossed with tiny red veins that looked like snakes hungering after his pitch-black pupils. Portman could smell the alcohol on him even over his own potent breath. Benito produced a pint-sized mason jar from a paper sack he held.
“Homemade,” he said. He lifted the jar up so that the golden tavern light shined through it. It was full of a cloudy, amber liquid. “I call it leachaté.”
Juan started to get up. “Leave him alone.”
Benito ignored him. When he tried to smile, his face twisted up into a grimace. “Tequila,” he said.
Portman looked at Juan. Juan shook his head gravely. Portman felt Benito’s fingers burrow deep into his shoulder blade.
“Just a sip,” Benito said.
Portman didn’t want to be the cause of a fight, particularly if he was going to be in the middle of it. “I think I can handle a sip.” He held his hand out for the jar.
Benito pulled it away from Portman’s grasp. “Only if it’s okay with Juan here.”
Juan’s eyes smoldered. “Just a sip,” he said finally. “A small sip.” He sat back down.
Benito swirled the tequila. Something stirred in the bottom of the jar. He grinned at Portman. “Wanna swallow the worm? Can’t say you’ve been to Mexico if you haven’t swallowed the worm.”
“Just a sip,” Juan said once more. “No worm.”
Portman tried to focus on the jar. The residual swirl of the tequila made the worm dance. It was pale white, the size of Portman’s index finger. “I didn’t think they got so big,” he said.
Benito laughed. The small crowd gathering around the table laughed. Juan did not laugh.
And just for a second, as the candlelight glowed through the glass, it glowed through the body of the worm. A trick of the light, of the occlusions in the tequila, perhaps, but it appeared as if a small heart beat in the middle of the worm. Appeared as if the worm had a dozen tiny legs grasping helplessly at its own chest.
“Just a sip,” Juan warned.
“Drink,” the crowd began to chant in Spanish. “Drink. Drink. Drink.”
Drink.
Portman lifted the mason jar to his lips and took a sip. It went down like water. Not bad at all.
“Drink. Drink. Drink.”
The chant was verbal adrenaline. It gave Portman a feeling of power, made him want to show them that even though he was a foreigner — worse, a tourist — that he could join them for a moment. Become one of them.
He ignored Juan’s pleas to stop. He tipped his head back, relaxed the muscles of his throat. The homemade concoction rushed in, flooding his mouth, a few drops spilling out of the corners. But he got it down.
And then there was the worm. Bleached from the tequila. Portman looked down his nose at it as it left the glass. He saw its mouth open just before it entered his own mouth. He gagged as it slid down his throat. Gagged at the feel of it grabbing at his esophagus, trying to latch on, trying to climb its way back out. Portman gritted his teeth and forced it down.
The crowd cheered.
Juan helped Portman back to his motel room. Only two blocks away, but he never would’ve made it without Juan’s help.
Along the way, Juan whispered urgently into his ear, “On your way home, don’t drive at night. You understand? Listen to me. Don’t drive at night. That’s when they come out.”
“Right.” Portman had heard this many times from friends back home. “Federalés. Banditos.”
“No.” Juan squeezed Portman’s wrist painfully so that he felt it. “Listen to me. Do not drive in the countryside at night.”
“Banditos,” Portman murmured.
Juan let Portman drop onto the motel bed unconscious.
“I have to pee,” China said. “I really have to pee.
Portman couldn’t look at her. He could barely wave the gun anymore. “You can’t.”
“What do you mean I can’t? What the hell do you mean I can’t?” She was losing it. Had lost it long ago.
“I’m sorry.” Portman’s breath came out in quick wheezes. “You’re going to have to hold it or just let it go.”
China was already out of tears, but their trails remained, thick and pink. “In my pants? You want me to go in my pants?”
Portman didn’t answer.
China began to hyperventilate. She hunched her neck, her shoulders, her face contorted into a tight knot. Then she relaxed. Her whole body relaxed, except for the tear trails that grew a darker shade of red. The stench of urine filled the truck.
He dreamed of the worm. Of its mouth and the tiny rictus of teeth, pointed and sharp. He dreamed of it crawling inside his belly, eating its way through his guts. And all the while, there was the vibration, the feel of the ground rumbling, of things large and lumbering sliding wet across the earth.
Portman was jolted awake as the truck bounced along the shoulder of the lonely Mexican highway. The smell of stale urine was almost gone. He struggled to sit up. His gut was on fire.
“I can’t stay awake.” China’s voice was hoarse. Defeated. “I can’t do this.”
“You have to,” Portman said.
China slammed her fist against the dashboard. “I almost drove us off a fucking cliff! I can’t do this anymore.”
“I have to get to a doctor. It’s killing me.”
“I can’t stay awake.”
Portman felt the truck slow down, the gravel at the side of the road popping beneath the tires. He lifted the gun up and pointed it at China. “Don’t.”
She stared straight ahead and ignored him. They rolled to a stop. This wasn’t right. Portman had the gun. He had the gun. How could she stop?
“Don’t,” Portman said again, but she already had. And he knew, had known it all along, that he couldn’t shoot her. He couldn’t shoot anybody. He set the gun down gently next to him. He was going to have to drive.
China opened her door and got out. She stood with her back to the side of the truck, leaning over, her hands on her knees, taking in deep breaths of air.
After a short struggle, Portman managed to open the pickup’s gate. He slid out of the truck’s bed, his stomach feeling like a knife thrower’s convention. When his feet touched the ground, his legs buckled, and he collapsed onto his butt. The world swam, the stars above, so many of them, all bright, glaring, dug into his eyeballs. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to fight away the dizziness that swept over him. The cacophony of crickets was everywhere.
Then stopped dead.
The silence fell upon them like a plastic bag pulled down tight over the head.
Portman looked up. He could hear China sniffling. Could hear the sound of her joints crackling when she straightened up. She too sensed the silence, complete and desperate.
Then the hum started.
At first it sounded like an airplane in the distance, and Portman tried to focus on the sky, trying to see the moving lights of the airplane against the thousands of bright pinpoints already there.
But the sound grew. Portman looked down at himself. It felt like his heart
was beating in his abdomen. When he touched the skin on his stomach, he could feel it moving. He realized the hum was coming from inside him.
China loped over to him. “Why are you making that noise?”
Portman couldn’t answer, his mouth too dry, his jaw too rigid. Instead, he shook his head, his eyes wide, sweat pouring from his face. When China saw his stomach move — a shape beneath the skin — she screamed.
The hum intensified. The movement in Portman’s stomach increased. The shape of tiny legs, at least a dozen of them, pressed at his stomach lining from inside. Then a mouth. It looked like a child pressing his face against a sheet of pale rubber. Portman couldn’t look away.
China grabbed his arm. “Get back in the truck,” she said.
Portman shook his head. They began to hear them. A low throbbing sound in answer. A vibration. More than one. From all directions.
“I think I can drive now.” China tugged frantically at Portman’s arm. “I know I can.”
“I can’t stand up.” The ring of tiny sharp teeth pressed against his skin. A few of the teeth poked out, then retreated, as if the worm inside of him was testing the temperature of the air. Small specks of blood remained in their wake.
“You have to get up.” China pulled on Portman’s arm, leaning back with all of her strength. But Portman did nothing to help, his body dead weight.
“You go,” he said. “Leave me.”
They could feel the ground rumbling. As if something heavy was sliding across the earth.
China let go of Portman’s arm. His face was the color of bleached flour. Sweat soaked the collar of his shirt.
“Go,” Portman pleaded.
China turned and sprinted to the pickup’s cab.
“I’ll send help,” she called before shutting the truck door. The engine rumbled to life. Portman felt the breath of an exhaust pipe on his back. He was unable to hold himself upright as the support of the truck squealed forward.
On his back, the stars wavered in the night sky. They danced, suspended in the liquid blackness. He closed his eyes.
He wanted his mother. He wanted her homemade chicken soup, wanted her to place a cool, damp washcloth across his feverish forehead. He wanted the safety of her closeness, the reassuring sound of her voice. As he felt the vibrations grow within him, emanating from the creature inside, as he felt his bones knock a rhythm into the barren dirt road, he suddenly understood what was happening. The creature inside him was frightened, also. Alone. And it was calling out for its own mother. It’s own family.
It began to emit a high pitched wail, the sound piercing and urgent. Portman knew they must be close, knew the thing inside him could sense their nearness.
In the distance he heard the screech of brakes, the squeal of tires over a slick surface, the abrupt crunch of metal. He heard the plants and trees on each side of the road crackling beneath a tremendous weight. The pungent smell of freshly turned earth invaded his nostrils. He opened his eyes, not knowing what he’d see, only that they were already there, surrounding him.
He counted five of them and wondered briefly how something so large could be so quiet. They swayed slightly as if sniffing the air, giant replicas of the thing inside him, eight feet high and twenty feet long. He could barely see the stars shine through their pale, moist skin as they hovered over him.
It was touching, really. He understood their need, their love for the thing held captive in his guts. One of the giant creatures slowly loomed up directly over Portman, its slippery skin dripping silver mucus. It wavered back and forth as if in contemplation. Portman could feel the love it emanated, the sense of satisfaction at finding one of its own. A smile crept over Portman’s pale face. It was so beautiful. An eternal love.
A soft, reassuring hum rose from the creature. Portman looked up into the velvet translucence of its gaping mouth. The muted light of a thousand stars blinked at him sleepily through the creature’s skin. Everything was going to be all right.
Everything was going to be all right.
The creature hovered only a second longer. Once it fell upon Portman, there was nothing but eternal darkness and pain.
Fetal Position
“ Tell me why.”
The doctor wore no nametag. He stood over Rudy Teague, shaking a handful of sunflower seeds in his left hand, occasionally popping a few into his mouth.
“I need to lay on my side,” Rudy said. “Please.”
The doctor, younger than the rest of them, shrugged. “Tell me why.”
“God, please. I just — my stomach itches and I can’t reach it this way. It’s driving me crazy.” A funny phrase to use, since Rudy’s hands were tethered to his sides, his legs slightly apart so his ankles fit in the strong canvas stirrups at the bed’s foot. A dark gray strap kept him from lifting his head.
“I think you’re lying,” the doctor said.
“No—”
“I don’t believe you.”
“What the fuck does it matter? Why can’t I lay on my goddamn side?” Tears, sweat, and snot sluiced down Rudy’s cheeks, painfully tickling his ears and adding to the stains on the yellowed bed sheets. His belly itched like a son of a bitch. He just wanted to lay on his side. That was all. They could truss him up like a hog if they were so afraid of him. He didn’t care. Just so he could lay on his goddamn side. He felt his navel grow red and swollen like a tiny puckered mouth waiting to suckle.
The doctor sighed. He tilted his head back and tossed in a few more sunflower seeds. He looked thoughtful as he chewed and swallowed them. Then his voice softened, his tone lowering an octave. “Don’t you want to see your son?”
All of Rudy’s muscles constricted as if he’d been hit with a jolt of electricity. He began to hyperventilate.
“Mother,” he hissed. “Mother…”
The doctor dragged a heavy wooden chair over to the bed and straddled it. He popped a few more seeds into his mouth and chewed. He placed the back of his right hand gently on Rudy’s cheek, leaned down to his ear, and whispered, “Tell me why.”
Rudy calmed slightly. “Because—” He spat out a bubble of snot that had collected between his lips. “Because it’s my goddamn birthday.”
* * *
Exactly one year before, Elaine was seven months pregnant as Rudy drove over the freshly plowed two-lane highway to his mother’s house. Snow piled high on the shoulders, and the sky was a harsh crystalline blue. The shadow of the minivan wavered alongside like a parasitic phantom.
Rudy almost reached over to push the long dark hair out of his wife’s eyes, but decided not to wake her. She looked so beautiful sitting there. He hoped it wasn’t a mistake bringing her along, but he no longer had any choice. The time had finally come.
Elaine shifted in her seat. “What’s bothering you,” she asked, startling Rudy. She rearranged the pillow behind her neck.
“Nothing. I thought you were sleeping.”
“Every time we go to see your mother, you’re like this. What’s the deal?”
“There is no deal.” He switched the radio on and fiddled with the tuner until an oldies station came in, the static making all the old crooners sound like they sang around mouthfuls of crushed glass.
When they pulled into Catherine’s driveway it was already dark, the maple trees lining the long driveway gaunt and brittle. Her house was a large old colonial, the porch lined with wicker chairs turned upside down. Even though it was early March, Christmas lights still hung from the gutters, the red blinking bulbs like tiny pinpricks in the light blue paint of the exterior. The forlorn silhouette of an artificial Christmas tree stood still and quiet in the living room window.
Rudy took a deep breath. “Ready?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”
Rudy knocked first, then opened the door. This was the house he grew up in, and it always felt a little strange going back, as if all the years he’d spent as an adult were an illusion. It was like time was a cord that had twisted back upon itself.
&nb
sp; Catherine hovered over the kitchen sink, her bony, wrinkled hands full of suds. She looked up from the dishes and cleared her throat. “Rudy. Elaine. I didn’t hear you come in.” She dried her hands on a dishtowel and hugged Elaine carefully around her protruding belly. “It’s so good to see the both of you.” She coughed lightly into her fist and frowned. “I have an apple pie in the oven,” she said, motioning them into the living room. “Make yourselves at home.”
Already, Rudy didn’t think he could handle this. Catherine kept the thermostat high and he felt he’d suffocate if he didn’t get some air. He jerked his thumb back toward the door. “I’ll get the bags.”
Outside, he leaned against the minivan and gasped, the air like cold nails hammered into his lungs. The urge to race back inside, grab Elaine and drag her the hell away from there nearly overwhelmed him. How could he tell her? Even while they said their vows less than a year ago, even as he leaned over to kiss his new bride, he knew this day would come. He’d have to tell her the truth about Catherine, about the secret he shared with his mother.
“You can do this,” he whispered, watching his words disappear into the raw night air like an apparition. “You can do this.”
He opened the van’s side door and grabbed hold of their luggage, yanking it out into the cold.
When he re-entered the warmth of the house, suitcases in tow, he felt better. Catherine kneeled in front of Elaine, patting her belly. She leaned forward and put her ear to it, her head bobbing with a slight tremor. “He’s coming along just fine.”
“He?” Elaine laughed hesitantly. “Is there something I don’t know about?”
“Oh. I thought—” Catherine looked up, her gaunt cheeks coloring slightly. “I’m just guessing, of course.” She rubbed Elaine’s belly in a soothing circle. “But everything is fine, yes?”
“So far, so good.”
Rudy watched his mother. Catherine glanced up at him and smiled. “It’s going to be fine,” she said, and Rudy knew she wasn’t talking about the child floating peacefully in Elaine’s womb.