W O R M
G O D
****
Kholo forged westwards, ignoring the maddening squawk of the worm god. Having finally assembled a band of combatants and theologians to accompany him, Kholo was somewhat distressed to find himself journeying through the Amazonian heart of Anoka jungle - completely alone. Each party-member met their own gruesome, untimely end within the first 40 miles of the quest. It was this knowledge which gave credence to his current apprehensions.
Takak - hunter of game/defiler of taken women - perished at the hands of his own trade, attempting to de-tusk an African elephant before being subsequently trampled to death.
Kgosi - village surgeon/ priest - had his eyes pecked out by a vulture whilst praying that Takak’s mortal soul reach safe entry into paradise.
Abigail – murderer/thief/problem solver - was captured by native savages, communally raped and burned alive on a pyre.
Jehu - navigator/ map maker - fell fourteen feet into a trapping-pit lined with sharp, wooden spikes and inhaled his best smoking pipe in the process. This happened shortly after he and Takak killed a honey bear then ate its liver. Jehu complained of dizziness and nausea before a complete loss of muscular co-ordination saw him plunge to his death. Jehu’s corpse was also stolen by native savages (and again communally raped).
The others came to similar demise until it was just book collector, Kholo Katanga, left cursing the most damnable luck. Anoka jungle attacked his senses with bright colour and strange sounds; though the dense undergrowth was thinning a little at least. Why Kholo had made it this far he did not know, but the worm was known for its cruel games.
****
The worm god was a gloomy kind of god. He wriggled around on the greyest rain cloud, watching civilisation below, despising every one of its inhabitants for reasons never revealed. The blood of men, women and children coursed through its ribboned, tube-like abdomen and every semester went about ejaculating a freight of eggs into the Anoka. Unforgiving and brutal, the worm god also had the unique benefit of invisibility (no-one ever claimed to’ve actually seen it before, though there were plenty of cave drawings).
Often town warriors would declare war on the worm. This was, of course, a foolish decision - the kind of decision typical among the strong of arm and weak of mind. The worm’s attacks were random and seemingly motiveless. Kholo wanted to locate then destroy the larvae it birthed into the subterraneous depths of Anoka. Only then could the city be free of its parasitic reign.
****
A peal of thunder overhead made Kholo shelter himself under a Bakke leaf he found wilting in the tropical savannah heat. He drank water from his flask and continued on through the haze of trees. The coming of night brought a nightmarish edge to proceedings. Deeper into the abyss, Kholo relied on instinct alone to see him through the midnight hours for the nocturnal animals of Anoka were silent and lethal. This contributed to its nickname – “Jungle of the Dead”. There was no air of progress here, only stagnant things that refused to grow or evolve. Kholo kept moving, motivated by his desire to return a hero and banish once and for all the town hearsay that he spread his seed among taken women.
He tried to rest for a while beneath the gibbous moons lunar light, extracting leeches from every corner of his body. He pulled a cluster of red berries from a branch and shoved them in his mouth. He couldn’t remember which types of berry were safe to eat, but hunger ruled over reason. The next morning, Kholo speared some fish heading upstream and ate them on the bone.
****
It had been three days and Kholo began to doubt the larvae’s existence entirely. Weighed down by his sack of supplies and the giant machete he carried at his side, Kholo was hours away from dropping dead in the middle of nowhere, dehydrated and utterly hopeless - until he came to a clearing. The absence of forest gave distinct path to a darkened temple ahead. Rejuvenated by this discovery, Kholo ambled forth.
Beneath his feet, Kholo felt a change in terrain. The insect infested lowland soil and course weeds began to smooth out. He sensed this was significant somehow. Kholo felt the presence of the unholy mutated grub festering nearby. He was so excited by this new success that he barely gave second thought to his empty water flask. Kholo was just a collector of rare books on forbidden subjects, not a natural adventurer. So he was perhaps entitled to let his guard down for the sake of a little pride.
The air grew increasingly humid the closer to the temple Kholo got - more so than in the tropical centre of Anoka. Vines climbed to the apex. He cut through a tapestry of vegetation all the while trying to maintain his optimism. Kholo was dry and thirsty, he couldn’t deny this knowledge. He felt his eye lids scratch together when he blinked and his lips become cracked. On top of all this, Kholo felt his stomach grate which he began to assume were the effects of the berries he’d consumed a few nights earlier. Instinctively, he reached for the flask which he forgot was void of sustenance. The onset of complete exhaustion forced Kholo to rest a moment.
- Bastards son. He cursed.
The water in Anoka was supposedly undrinkable, polluted by the worm’s amniotic fluid. So Kholo was already preparing himself for the possibility he may need to drink his own urine. Kholo heard trees falling in the distance.
He peered back into the labyrinthine webs of the jungle and felt a return to relief – HE, Kholo Katanga, had made it through the jungle of the dead unscathed! He had quashed the common belief people held that the jungles remorseless nature sought only to give rise to stronger, colder blooded forms of life.
****
Soon enough, lethargy overwhelmed his pride and Kholo dozed off atop a rock pile. His dreams were full of terrible images of the worm god and the clutch of hideous children it would soon mother. He felt the dead energy of the worm’s omnipresence. He felt its eye upon him, in sleep as well as wakefulness.
Kholo woke up drenched in his own sweat. He noticed the waning daylight and fretted. The poisoned berries finally made their way back out of his body, heaved onto the grass in a pool of bloody vomit. His feverish nightmares seemed almost real in this place, the delirium of Anoka’s intense heat began to show cracks in Kholo’s mind. He needed water.
Unlike Anoka, the dark temples structure seemed in constant flux. It beckoned him, whispered his name and promised him nourishment. Before Kholo had time to think rationally, his legs had already pulled his body from the rock pile and started carrying him into the black passageway. The moans of the ruin ceased to call his name, leaving lethal silence.
A patchwork of hanging fronds grazed over Kholo’s bald scalp as he entered, but his brain was on auto-pilot. He was blissfully unaware of his environment as he passed through it. However, when tiny motes of light began to freckle the dark passageway, Kholo felt horror rise up in him once again. Lined along either side of the temple were sundered human heads impaled on large pikes.
- Bastards son… He heard himself whisper on reflex.
Kholo was beginning to see the darkened temple as a much more symbolic location – not just the Worm’s womb or the larvae’s nest, but a closed-city of malign monsters where simple men and women should never trespass.
****
Something wriggled and writhed in its own slime noisily. Most of the passageway remained submerged in a veil of shadow but the noises were vivid and Kholo had no desire for its source to be exposed. He’d read once that the substance the larvae secrete during gestation helped in both snaring prey and to lubricate its body to move quickly through narrow tunnels. The vague stench of moist stone filled his nostrils. Then they were full of a smell more foul - the quintessence of evil. A series of moss-grown catacombs faced Kholo.
The crescent moon shone brightly through the crumbling slabs of the temple ceiling as if alive with a new force. The speared heads were now illuminated, showing the most awful, agonised expressions in clear light. This could only be the work of the worm. Natives were brutal but even this wasn’t their style. He clutched the hilt of his machete like grim death.
Kholo chose the middle tunnel but there was no logic or reason behind his decision. The mushy sounds drew closer further down the tunnel. Kholo wondered why he was even here. Something was pulling him deeper and deeper into the temples heart. He knew he ought to turn back but, against his better judgement, was compelled to venture lower into the larvae’s lair. Even with the familiar drip of fountain water and the chance to quench his thirst, Kholo’s morbid curiosity could not be pricked.
A tortured scream sounded that chilled him to the marrow. His step quickened in the face of this potential danger, again Kholo could not explain the reason why. Light began to ebb through the darkness and Kholo’s stride became more paced. He pushed his back against the stony corner and peered round. Kholo saw a group of bear breasted women standing diligently by a red tarp, clutching wooden bowls of glimmering slime. The women then began dipping their hands in, slapping themselves all over with it. Kholo was beguiled by their beauty. Women often had a distracting effect on him. The women’s bosoms glistened while the yolks of their nipples puckered with retained milk. A native man was chanting and held a machete aloft - the spine of which was tipped with blood. Two natives wearing a long worm suit (one at the front, the other at the back) were then lacquered up with the bowls contents. The chanting stopped and the native holding the machete declared
- The first stage of labour begins…
This prompted furious wriggling around from the men in suit until eventually they burst free and everyone screamed with joy. Kholo’s reflection skittered across the glossy worm suit as he turned to leave.
- STOP! He heard one of natives cry. Instinctively, Kholo started running back through the dark passageway. While most people feared and loathed the worm god, Kholo had read about races who worshipped it. Feet padded after him not far behind. He had no idea where he was going, blindly fingering his way along the stone walls and wild vegetation. The worm worshipers were still pursuing him. Kholo knew he’d gone full circle when the heads on pikes made their faces as he hurried past. To his relief, he could see the passageway exit. Behind him the sound of tracking feet seemed to stop. Kholo allowed a moment to rest and catch a clean breath before throwing himself from the temples passageway and into the moonlit jungle clearing.
****
Sweat seared down Kholo’s face as he tried to process what he’d just seen. Anoka was alive with noise again. His body ached for water and the evident lack of any nearby was driving him insane. Kholo decided to continue on past the dark temple and into last stretch of Anoka.
By now, he knew he was as good as dead. Although he’d made it this far into the jungle, he could never make it back out the way he came. Kholo would push deeper into the core until the clearing ended and the ominous forest returned. Guided by celestial light, he was certain he knew which direction to take. But when Kholo turned to face the temple, it was gone. He searched frantically around him, but it had completely vanished. Kholo’s dismay became enflamed further when he realised the clearing was now full of giant exotic trees and vines – much like that of Anoka. He was back in the overgrown jungle, with all its denseness and horror. The vegetation seemed greater now, somehow more congested. There was an evident progress here which was absent before. The music of the night was different too. Before, Kholo could’ve identified a small majority of the Anoka wildlife’s grunts and growls, but now they were more varied, more obscure. Hideous beasts lurked beneath every shadow, no longer hiding places of mere insect or amphibian. Kholo was fenced in with these beasts by the immense vines and weeds which swelled around him. He shook off a cramp that travelled down the course of his left arm.
- Damn berries!
A sudden numbness filled Kholo’s mouth. He tried to produce saliva but was unable. He tried to scream but the tongue was dead in its cave. Panicked by his loss of feeling, Kholo began sticking Bakke leaves into his mouth in the hope that the mild poison from their fleshy roots would help to return some glimmer of sensation. But the more Bakke he filled himself with, the more he seemed to be incapable of tasting it. Kholo was struck with as much regret as he was fear. He should never have eaten those berries. Now, they would be the death of him. Kholo wanted to come to Anoka to prove a point or die like a hero trying. Instead, he’d collapse – dead, forgotten, neck bloated from poison, with his tongue lolling out onto the undergrowth. There was no honour in that.
As Kholo fell to his knees, the sound of trickling water sparked life into him. He got to his feet, drool now dangling from his numbed lips. He parted a tall thicket of reeds and saw the murky jungle pond in all its glory. Kholo felt dizzy but ecstatic all at once. His only urge was to bathe and drink from the water and he was a slave to these urges. He stripped off and dipped his toe into the layer of green scum which sheeted the ponds surface. The rest of Kholo Katanga followed.
Thigh deep in the water, he waded forward until it became less shallow, at which point he immersed his head. The worm’s amniotic fluid seemed harmless enough. Kholo could even admit to feeling its benefits as he lapped up handfuls into his mouth. While he couldn’t taste the water, he nevertheless felt replenished by it. Eyes watched him with interest.
Kholo noticed ripples in the water where the spinal column of a croc weaved in and out. Every part of Anoka despised the smell of human males and sought to eliminate it from its pores in any way necessary.
Carefully, he got back out trying not to disturb the water surface. The crocodile seemed oblivious and didn’t swim anywhere near him. When Kholo turned back the croc had resurfaced onto the mud bank on the opposite side of the lake. It sat on its hindquarters staring back at Kholo. He looked at its face, at its long mandible packed with razor sharp triangles, its smooth belly, and saw in its dead eyes – the presence of the worm god. Kholo suspected he would be struck down at any time, so moved further west.
****
The worm god was conspiring against Kholo, he knew it - the way he’d seen it manipulate Anoka to swallow intruders. Perhaps the worm’s worshippers had the right idea. They appeared immune to its wrath. As Kholo considered this, the suns orb grew fiery red and he felt its heat burn and peel the skin from his bare back. Rays shone down onto the Anoka, melting leaves to pulp and slowing down jungle predators in their tracks. Kholo felt every animal in the jungle watching him undercover. Just as it seemed the night would never leave Anoka, the sun fires into brilliant, searing life with a vengeance. At least Kholo had been nourished which could keep him on his feet at least a little while longer.
The jungle went on forever, the vines and plants blossomed into huge, intimidating organisms and Kholo’s hope began to die once more. He was hungry. He had to hunt down, catch and kill something. Back in his town the dominant males brought home the food so this was an entirely new challenge for Kholo to conquer. He’d read enough to have a vague idea what was required of him.
Kholo used his tribal initiative to fashion some rudimentary spears, shaving shreds of wood from tree bark and tying a sharpened stone to the tip with sinew. He used Bakke sap to poison the edge and he was ready.
****
Fumbling its way through the forest was an eight legged insect with a body fat from insatiable greed. Behind a shrub of leaves, Kholo stalked his prey. The hideous insect moved in such a way that suggested its skinny legs struggled to carry the sheer weight of its body. It didn’t travel more than ten yards at a time without stopping to rest and gobble up more of the jungles defenceless basin dwelling critters. Kholo saw his moment and tossed the spear. To his obvious disappointment, it struck the large insect on the leg and broke apart. The insect moved through the leaves, blissfully unaware that something was hunting it. He had failed and night was preparing to fall heavy.
****
Kholo sat on the dirt and looked at the blistering sun and the awful lunar body of the moon lying dormant behind it. In a fit of madness, triggered by exhaustion and malnourishment, he began chewing at his own hand. The poisoned berries had made his flesh supple and his bones brittle so he had no trouble biting off and grinding large quantities of himself. Kholo felt no pain for his nerves were dead with poison and his mouth numb with the same reaction. The mental shock was muted by the onset of hallucination. Although Kholo had begun self-cannibalising his own body, to his drug saturated eyes, he believed he was making love to three of the nude females from the darkened temple. He kissed them hard on their mouths and cupped the global mounds of their breasts and slid his fingers between their thighs and smelled the fresh absence of human sex on their flesh and hair. Kholo felt his groin tingle with life and the sense of old habits returning. The worm grew fatter in his breechcloth. On the mud bank the croc watched with cruel relish. The worm god got him…
-
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