Take Out

Chapter 2

Todd lay in bed in just a tank top and boxers, sweat oozing from his pores. His sheets were soaked.

He trembled and curled into the fetal position. Then straight again. He tried - and failed - to get comfortable.

"So hot...so cold...just want to sleep."

Todd rolled over, grabbed a pillow, and put it over his glistening head. His stomach rumbled.

He closed his eyes.

*****

His eyes snapped open, as though he'd been awakened by a loud noise.

Darkness.

He looked around his room: his desk, chair, laptop, books, clothes, door, closet.

He was alone. It was quiet.

He exhaled.

His stomach grumbled. "I gotta stop eating that food," he said.

He slid out of bed, leaving a sweaty stain.

He put on his robe.

*****

He turned on the bathroom light - too bright. He shielded his eyes with his hand.

He hung his robe on a hook on the back of the bathroom door, turned on the faucet, and splashed cold water on his face and hair.

He grabbed a towel and dried his head.

He let the water run and looked at himself in the mirror: pale skin, sweaty hair. He stuck out his tongue: dry. He looked at his eyes: bloodshot.

"I look like crap."

He gagged, heaved, and threw up into the sink.

He groaned and held the sides of the sink, trying not to faint. He wiped the spittle from his mouth, and looked in the mirror.

His eyes went wide. He dropped his towel on the floor.

Between his open lips hung a black worm.

"What...the...fuck?"

The worm moved.

Todd gasped.

The worm struggled and appeared to get smaller. Then he realized: Oh my God. It's not getting smaller. It's trying to crawl back in.

Todd grabbed the worm, but his fingers couldn't get a grip on its slippery body. He felt the worm wriggling on the roof of his mouth, thrashing back and forth between his molars.

The worm was almost back into his mouth when he finally got a grip on it. Todd pulled it, hard, which immediately made him gag. He almost let the worm go, but managed to hold tight.

You're not getting away that easy.

He pulled again, slower this time. He felt the wet worm slide past the tired muscles at the back of his throat and across his dry tongue. Its slick body squirmed over his gag reflex, and it took everything he had not to give in and retch.

He pulled and pulled. The worm kept coming.

How much is there? he thought, and, as though the worm had heard him, the last bit rubbed against his top front teeth and fell, plunk!, into the water in the basin.

Todd stared in disbelief at the nine-inch black worm swimming in his sink.

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

Todd lunged towards the worm with a closed fist, but the worm was too fast. It swam down the swirling water and into the drain.

"Mother freaker," he said to the empty bathroom.

Todd turned off the water and looked at himself in the mirror again. He opened his mouth wide and looked inside.

Nothing else there, he thought. No more worms.

His stomach made a loud, wet churning noise.

Oh God. I gotta shit.

Todd pulled down his shorts and moved as quickly as he could to the toilet. He made it just in time.

One painful minute later, his body was empty. He wiped, pulled up his shorts, and turned around to flush.

He froze.

The toilet was full of black worms, swimming in the clear water. At least a hundred, maybe more.

Todd screamed.

He flushed the toilet, but the worms didn't get sucked into the swirling water. Instead, they crawled out over the seat and dribbled on the floor.

They crawled onto his bare feet. He felt tiny pinches as they moved, like being stuck with a ball of sewing needles. Each pinch produced a red mark the size of the head of a tack, and that's when he realized that the worms were biting him.

And he lost it.

Todd swiped at the worms, but they wouldn't come off. He grabbed them, one at a time, stretching each like a wet rubber band until it snapped.

More poured out of the toilet. He stomped on them, feeling the satisfying squish under his bare heel and between his toes.

Dozens of worms leapt off of the toilet seat and onto his chest. He grabbed them by the handful, pulling them off and squishing them in his fists. Bloody black worm carcasses and light brown goo oozed from his hands and dribbled on the floor, adding to the growing pile. The tan and black mound reminded Todd of the time at summer camp when he was nine and accidentally spilled his applesauce snack in a pile of mulch. That struck Todd as very funny, and he started to laugh.

And then he slipped on it.

He fell backwards against the wall, sliding down the cool smooth tile and on to his butt. He was eye-to-eye with the toilet seat.

A large, fat worm breached the top of the toilet seat and appeared to look at him. Todd screamed.

It leapt at his face and he passed out.