#wormspice

War would be waged at dawn. Regan marched into the clearing she had designated for Siobhan, a big tin jar in her hands, previously filled with coffee grounds, and now full of writhing worms. She didn’t think her newly-purchased worms truly desired anything – what an enviable, simple life in many ways – and they especially had no interest in fighting Siobhan’s worms. But this was a matter of pride. Siobhan assumed that Regan’s worms were undignified and meek, odorless and scrawny, and Regan was tired of bearing her insults. 

Her skin prickled as a long figure appeared across the clearing, the sun creeping up behind her and casting her face in shadow. She would have her own worms with her. And if they were as girthy as Siobhan claimed, why could Regan not see them from here? Not so impressive.

“Lá na bPéist,” Regan greeted her. It was the customary way. Day of the Worms. There was no ‘happy’ in front of it; it was only a simple and respectful declaration of the day. “My worms challenged you, and I picked the location, so I will be generous and allow you to set reasonable perimeters. Will this be down to the last worm standing – so to speak – or do you have something else in mind?”

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Violence was a necessity. Since the first forms of microscopic life, it seemed, violence was a language to claim dominance. Or so Siobhan assumed, banshee literature was often flirtatious with the truth. At least one book claimed that all life was born out of a big bone, contradicted by another book that claimed the big worm in the sky birthed them which was also contradicted by another book that was simply a picture of a skeleton shrugging. Science is an afterthought but violence, still, was an art. What Regan didn’t know, with her skinny worms, was that their little worm war didn’t start here. Their war began the moment Siobhan laid eyes on her unseasonable winter coat. In order for something to be strong, something else has to be weak: a rule of language that Siobhan knew intimately. She wouldn’t be weak. 

Her happy, healthy, girthy worms writhed in the box she brought them in. She was pained to rip them from their happy home inside her compost system, where they had lived for months, lovingly tended to, fertilizing the earth that she used for her garden. For Death to be appreciated, Life needed to be respected as well. But there was no doubt in Siobhan’s mind that this truth escaped Regan. She probably purchased her worms wholesale online. 

“Lá na bPéist,” Siobhan said, grinning the way an animal sometimes only seems to right before it lunges. “Last worm writhing, yes.” She snapped the locks open from her plastic box, upturning her girthy worms upon the ground. The worms, unlike malnourished counterpoints, flourished in Siobhan’s delicate compost. They were indeed larger and thicker, though the girth may have been slightly exaggerated. There was something…odd about them, however. A line from Wurmsten’s Pride and Wormjudice flashed in her mind: it was a truth universally acknowledged, that a single worm in possession of girth must be in want of a mate. 

Siobhan shook her head, surely their passionate wiggles were nothing more than an eagerness to shed worm blood. “Go on, leanbh, or does the sight of my thick worms make you envious?”

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The Jade sauce came too late. Regan had done her best with the worms given her tardy start (with preparations, not… to everything else Siobhan surpassed her in), but her worms still looked mangled and pencil-thin. They took only occasional interest in apple slices and they kept squiggling into the sides of the container like they had no sense of place or orientation. But she had come here to win. And Siobhan was a boastful creature, wasn’t she? Her worms couldn’t be so grand as she claimed. They were probably just as grey, just as aimless.

“I agree to your terms. May the best worms win, cailleach.” There were no prizes or trophies in these wars of worms, only bragging rights. Siobhan would like the extra pin in her lapel, and Regan needed something she could surpass Siobhan in. Had the course of her life run smoother, she would have believed that needing something was enough to make it happen, but if anything, it created obstructions at every turn. Right. Confidence. She had Jade in her corner, even if she wasn’t present now. That was enough, right? Regan held onto that as she unceremoniously dumped her worms from their tin home. They collected by her feet, and she shook a little so stragglers could roll off her boots and join the rest of the squadron. “I was advised to read to them. They’re engorged with–” She would not admit she had read them Tana French “– harsh tales of the moors.”

Any fleeting confidence she held deflated when Siobhan dumped her worms on the ground, too. They were at least twice as thick as Regan’s, colored like cherry red lividity, and they squirmed with such vigor in comparison. Were… were her worms depressed? She glanced over to the limp mass at her feet, disappointed. It was the look her 1st grade art teacher used to give her when she handed in a drawing of a dead cow for the tenth time. But Regan would not abandon them; if no one believed in them, all bets of winning were off. She would take a line from Siobhan’s book and lob a competitive insult. That would inspire her worms. “I’ve seen better worms,” Regan said, arms crossed, as her stomach cramped from the lie. “Your worms are too soft. You have coddled them. They may have girth, but they know nothing of resilience.” She clenched a fist, fingernails against scar tissue. “Mine have thrived even under suboptimal conditions.” Her gaze sharpened as she met Siobhan’s eyes. “It’s no surprise. You’ve grown soft in your time away, too, haven’t you?”

The worms were in motion. Kind of. They were slow, groping for each other through the dirt in blindness. Siobhan’s took off first, faster than worms ought to move, but Regan’s were sluggish. She decided they were using their resources to fortify themselves. But as Siobhan’s came closer, her worms began wriggling anxiously, inching closer. They knew who their opponent was now. Good. Good. They tangled into a slimy cluster, two tense banshees casting shadows over them.

There was no blood. Where was the blood? They were entwined, were they not? “Are they…” The worms were wrapping up in each other with bulging clitellae, which was surely just an effort at strangulation. They didn’t have teeth. It was their way. “See how clever mine are, drawing yours in with a false sense of security.” Yes. Her worms might not have been pretty, but they were clever, weren’t they? 

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It was the Austen that had done it. Why hadn’t Siobhan read to her worms about harsh moors? Why did she think Austen—and her worm counterpart, Wurmsten—would be good material for the worms? That was how they knew, that was why she was thinking of it; their girth made them in want of a mate. It seemed none of Austen’s—and Wurmsten, who claimed her novels were entirely unrelated to Austen—commentary on class and society were absorbed into their slimy bodies. That was why Siobhan read Austen—and Wurmsten, who might have only been known in one niche banshee community but made a healthy living of decaying flesh anyway—in fact: for the wit! The cunning! Certainly, nothing about the romance; it hardly occurred to her. The worms had taken the wrong message away. If only she had read them harsh tales of the moors.

Siobhan’s cheeks pinked like the worms’. “I was reading them The Art of War,” she lied through clenched teeth, swallowing back a bubble of acid. “This is simply what I’ve taught them: ‘a wise general makes a point of foraging on the enemy’. They are…foraging on the enemy.” Foraging could be one word for it, if the meaning was stretched enough, though the more obvious word burned on her tongue. The worms paired up, sealing wet, throbbing clittella to another’s body. Encasing themselves in mucus, Siobhan turned her head away as a particular white fluid bubbled out of the worms. Something was, in a way, being foraged. 

“There is nothing false about this.” Siobhan leveled her gaze on Regan, careful to keep her eyes away from the foraging worms; her face blazed red. “Our worms have—Our worms are…” If she didn’t give it a name, if she didn’t say it, could she deny the truth? In a way, with a stretched definition and artistic liberties, they were foraging on the enemy. “It’s a new technique of war,” she said, “you wouldn’t know it; it’s not in whatever books about moors you’re reading. It is obviously very complex. The girth on my worms is at least eighty percent knowledge. Perhaps I am not soft. Perhaps you are just…hard.” 

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The ground by Regan’s feet swelled with worms. Her worms, as sad and grey as they were (a few more weeks of Jade juice would have done the trick), had perked up to the presence of Siobhan’s vivacious worms, and were wiggling in response with more gusto than they had displayed in the entire time they had been with Regan. Not only did their swarming continue – it expanded – spreading over to Siobhan, a giant, pulsing mat of mucus and wriggling pink bodies. She had more or less abandoned the idea of this being worm cunning… attempting to believe something did not make it true, and all illusions in her life were undergoing a slow crumble as her departure neared.

Regan knew little about the secret mechanics of worm copulation, but that melding and fluid seemed reproductive in nature, and Siobhan, well… Regan didn’t know her cheeks could be that color. This was the woman who wore a turtleneck that was missing half its fabric. She had practically done a strip tease with a winter coat. She could blush? Regan studied the couplings, more certain by the second. “They’re… no, they’re definitely, uh…” She couldn’t quite say it either. But Siobhan was acting strange. For a banshee, hard was right. “Hm. I never thought I would hear you provide me with a compliment,” Regan said, raising a brow (she couldn’t look away from the worms, though; they were hypnotic). Unfortunately, it was not true – she was softer than Siobhan and in all the wrong ways. And it was the whole problem, the reason why she needed to go back. “Careful. You may convince me not to go with you, if I am hard. But then, your judgement is frail, isn’t it? You read your worms classic literature thinking it wouldn’t put… these notions in their small minds. Mine are only going along with it – they were poised for battle, then yours romanced mine.”

The ground sounded moist with worm love, like hands sliding into mayonnaise. And Worm Day was not the time for love. Regan’s fists clenched and she found her face growing hot, too. Fates, this really was happening. Was this really what was meant to occur? Her worms were fornicating with the enemy! What had gotten into them? Did that mean – was it actually love? It was beyond reason, like all love, as far as Regan could tell. Could it be, when they lacked the capacity for such emotion? That question made her belly ache (unclear why). 

“We can’t separate them.” Regan spoke with certainty, but her voice was thick with something. She wasn’t sure where it came from (or the sentiment of not separating lovers). Some worm mucus probably got in there. She finally tore her eyes from the worm orgy and they landed on a very red Siobhan. “Can we agree on this? They remain together.” Was it worth throwing in that she meant the worms also could not be physically separated? Because that also seemed true. They had melded together, holding fast. 

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“They are fucking.” Finally, Siobhan said it. “No,” Siobhan corrected herself, “they are making delicate, sensual worm love.” It was obvious to her, and her inability to look the worms directly in their anuses (they did not have eyes), that their passion extended beyond the realms of necessity; love was linking bodies together, stabbing each other with setae so the no new copulation could be committed, and then wiggling away to eat detritus. Worms knew love, of course they had felt a connection to the words of Jane Austen. “You are hard, maybe. Regan, you are very hard. You are erect with hardness. I cannot--I cannot deny the worms. Perhaps that makes me soft.” Siobahn turned around, shutting her eyes to the worms and the world. They possessed something she did not: love. And a slimy, pink, wiggling segmented body (but oh, how she wished for one). 

Where had she gone wrong? From the beginning, it seemed. From loving her worms. From wanting a garden at all, from creating her compost bin. For wanting a life that wasn’t allowed to her. For imagining she might be a worm, writhing with girthy freedom in the dirt free to make love to wormever she pleased and eating as much manure as she wanted. She was a banshee; banshees didn’t do what they pleased. It was all wrong, all along: the war, the worms, the Regan. It was wrong to make innocent creatures act out her fantasies of power. They were worms and worms will do as they want: they will wiggle, they will secrete mucus, they will eat more than their weight each day. They did not have eyes, or legs, or arms, or lungs, but they could make love (they probably did not understand “love” at all, but Siobhan would only realize this after crying about her worms in the privacy of her house). 

Siobhan turned around again, tears pooling around her brown eyes. “You’re right. You—child, baby, newborn infant with no knowledge—are right. We cannot separate these worms.” A war was defined by its binary nature; by winners and losers. The worms had won. Perhaps she had gone soft, perhaps the worms had changed her, perhaps it was the air and the occasion of worm day, but she didn’t care how emotional she came off. “If you love a worm…” She clutched at her slow-beating heart. “...let them go.” And she did, against her better judgment, love these worms. 

“You…” Siobhan furiously wiped her eyes. Sniffling, she pointed at the other banshee. “...Will say nothing of this during our plane trip—and you will be coming with me. You will. But we have let these worms go—we are accepting a truce on this day. Another Worm Day, and there will be another, we will fight our worms again.” Siobhan sighed. “May your worms be less aroused by my girthy worms next time.”