The Ennead Contest Entries

3- The Hook Reflected in Her Eye (Winner)

She turned the smooth cylinder between her fingers, pressing its cool metal into her palms until her skin had sucked all the cold out of it. It was a key. An old skeleton key. She'd watched the librarian lock the door in the back of the library with it after emerging from the room behind. She had it now. He'd missed his back pocket and it had fallen with a dull thud to the thin old carpet peeling up from the floorboards. Too quiet for the old man to hear. Too far away for her, as well, but she'd seen it happen when she slammed her textbook shut and leaned back.

She'd been frustrated by the itch and heat beneath her fingertips—too deep under the skin to scratch with the pencil she'd been taking notes with. Unable to focus, her mind had wandered to the syringe in her purse. The clear fluid in its small glass bottle. The bittersweet taste of dopamine at the back of her throat as liquid warmth filled her bloodstream. Lifted her high up, away from anxiety and failure.

Thinking of it again as she held the key in her hands made her lip quiver. The door probably led to a storage room or something. Somewhere private she could lock herself away for a few hours. She'd need that. Shooting up wasn't as simple as drinking or smoking; there was a process involved. She'd need time. But God, she needed it.

Tortured by the promise of ecstasy, her mind was made. She peered down the aisle between the shelves. No one was around. The librarian hadn't noticed his accident yet. She bit her lip, eyes locked on the aisle as she inserted the key into the hole and turned it. Her heart jumped at the clack of the lock, but no one came. Just paranoid. What had been with her lately?

She opened the door.

A gale thew her back as a flash of light blinded her. She raised her hands before her, opening her eyes again as a crash of thunder exploded overhead. A writhing black nimbus billowed forth from the threshold. It crept across the ceiling of the library, raining icy pellets over her exposed arms. The bookshelves at either side of the door tipped, spilling volumes into the aisles. The first row hit the second; the second tipped into the third—all crashing down in sequence. Pages tore loose and whipped through the air on the howling winds.

She propped herself on one elbow, sinking into the cold slush that blanketed the floor. Something was approaching now from the other side of the doorway. Some kind of giant worm—massive and bulging with fat. It dragged its body listlessly, crunching through the slush that poured from the threshold. It's form filled the doorway and squeezed through. It stood its front end up. Pointed its head her way. Bored a hole through her with its eyeless gaze. Its skin showed signs of various stages of frostbite. Blotches of it radiated red with rushing blood. But most had blued with darker and darker hues of hypothermia, until finally turning a dead black.

The front of its head began to morph. It stretched vertically, indigo flesh splitting apart—the surface cracking and the meat and tissue beneath tearing deeper and deeper inside the head. The worm turned up to the ceiling, swirling with clouds. The gap in its head stretched wider and wider until finally it stopped. Steam rolled up out of the fissure. A breath. Something of a sigh. It lowered its head to her again, dark blood streaming from its newly-formed mouth. The worm sucked the excess back in, leaving a stain to freeze over its lips and down its length to the floor.

A deep, guttural croak resounded in its throat. "A mouth's how you converse—is not this true?"

She lay silent. Frozen in place as if by the icy downpour. The worm ignored her lack of response. It dragged itself down the aisle—snaking between the bookshelves that still stood farther down.

"Your kind have always been a primal few."

It seemed less interested in conversation and more in speaking.

Her eyes shot toward the emergency exit nearby. The worm was crawling toward the front, its titanic body still pouring out from the doorway behind it. There was no way it would catch her if she dashed for the door. Not something so encumbered with its own mass.

She rolled onto her hands and knees. Attempted to stand. Stumbled. Her head was spinning and fuzzy. She tried again and managed to stay up through her dizziness. She put one foot forward and stumbled again to the side. Her shin struck the overturned shelf beside her as she caught herself. A mix of ice and fire surged through the bone, soon replaced with a warm, dull throbbing. The room spun around her. Spun so fast that the falling hail looked static while everything else slid around and around.

The floor beneath her feet shook as the worm spoke again. "Th'obsession with abundance you collect; the goal—consumption, wherewith you're obsess'd. At first with meat did wealthy humans gorge; your purses shrank whilst bellies grew so large."

She lurched forward, sick with disorientation, and vomited this morning's Corn Flakes onto the spines of shelved books. Milky stomach acid seeped between the covers and mixed with the slush. Her vision blackened for a second before she found herself on the floor again. She tilted her head back to look at the emergency doors. Watched through her stupor with a vague recollection of horror as the worm dragged itself across the doors and cut off her exit.

Having almost completed its round of the library, it continued to speak. "And second with the drink to wash it down; which caus'd ye sorrow's pain wherein you drown'd. The third your opiates to calm the nerves; another tool, it was, to make ye serve."

She closed her eyes. Still her head spun like the drum of a washing machine, but things were calmer behind her lids. In this darkness the icy hail and slush weren't so cold. Her throbbing shin didn't ache so much. The convulsions of her retching weren't so frequent. She lay still, listening to the distant winds. The crunching of slush under the worm.

Its bellowing voice.

"But now th'addictions are too great to count; so many ways to rot away abound. Which suits just fine the glutt'nous likes of me; humanity's allow'd my ring complete."

She lifted her heavy lids just enough to see the worm had circled its way back to the doorway, where its tail had finally emerged. It drew its head back, cracking its mouth wider. Its flesh snapped and split down its length, more blood streaming over what could now be considered its chin. Farther and farther down its length it split open until—finally—it lunged, engulfing its own tail between cracked and bloody lips.

It gorged itself now, swallowing its tail deeper and deeper down its throat—the ring growing smaller and smaller. Shelves crashed to the floor and collapsed beneath its weight. Tables and chairs snapped like pencils, their metal frames contorting under the pressure. Thunder roared louder overhead. Hail pelted her body harder with ice. The scattered pages flew about more frantically. And slowly all closed in on where she lay, in the centre of the ring.

***

They found her two days later when the librarian decided to call in a locksmith to unlock his records room. The papers later printed that the autopsy report had deemed cause of death to be overdose. But he knew it already, tears streaming down his face. The poor girl lay curled on the floor, another nameless statistic. Dried vomit trailed out from her mouth. A dog collar with an extra hole punched through it lay nearby. A metal spoon and a lighter too.

The needle was still in her arm.