Not Quite Edelweiss

Clouded sunlight filtered into monochromatic foliage. The flowers, pale and unfamiliar, were blanketed in icy crystals. Roger didn’t pay them any mind. He always lost time when he looked at them.

His arms ached from the weight. A long, thick stretch of living flesh wrapped four times around his ribs, one end dangling to his thigh and the other sloping over his shoulder and down to the black dirt. It stretched out into the trail behind him, so long the other end was eaten by the fog. Roger dragged it step by aching step, now used to walking uncomfortably slow.

The creature in his arms stopped sleeping days ago. So had he. 

There was the snap of a cracking branch, and his arms finally gave out. 

The worm hit the dirt with a deep, sucking gasp. It looked smaller on the ground where mulch stuck to its pulsing skin. Roger knew that it was heavy. Too heavy to move on its own. If he were to pick it up, it would groan and cry with indignation before shutting down again. 

In his head, Roger could almost hear a bitter voice scoff, Are you just going to stand there? Did you want this to happen to me?

It had sounded more critical, since he realized it was watching. Maybe it saw the thought that had lodged itself into his gray matter, time and time again, until he left it. Maybe they watched it dissolve into the steaming sludge that seeped into every waking moment and evaporated in his lungs. The creature must have watched him breathe it in and out; a formless idea Roger barely understood, outside of the fact that it didn’t scare him anymore. Maybe it thought the idea should have scared him. 

Roger’s breath tasted bitter and his knees ached, overworked. He could hear his heart pounding sharply below his shoulders, and felt it reaching for the base of his throat. He swallowed down, attention pouring outwards. 

The worm’s body rolled lethargically onto one side, as if it could tell what was coming, and was smart enough to dread it. It used to be his family. Maybe it still was. But Roger didn't want to pick it up again. 

His heart beat in his ears, and a stone was in his hand. He couldn’t remember when he picked it up, but his muscles ached to accommodate it. It was as heavy as a vital organ, solid under his gloves. 

His mother’s gaze was transfixed on the rock, blown wide and watery like a wild animal.

She never liked having brown eyes. She didn’t always talk about appearances (she talked about her job, and how she wished she had another), but it came up on the holidays when she’d look in the mirror, or she’d fix his tie and tell him that she was sorry his eyes weren’t blue. Not that it mattered anymore, but he assumed, some years before all of that, he would’ve thought that she was beautiful. 

Now she was something strange and limbless on the ground, eyes bloodshot and empty looking. A smear across the spongy forest floor. The thing seemed to hear his thoughts and whispered in his mother’s voice,

Don’t pretend you ever loved me. 

The last time he ate– it must’ve been on a Tuesday. Roger remembered how oddly quiet it was, when usually his mother would practice piano with his brother. The notes– he can’t remember which– were pulled through his ear on a string, clinking together in a headache of a noise.

That’s why he fell to his knees, body shaking with exertion. The sound turned to a looping white noise of piano keys. Throbbing. Scattered. Mimicking raindrops or smashed glass. Sleep never lasted when he couldn’t feel time pass. His mother took piano lessons on Tuesdays, and she always sang with his brother. 

The worm’s eyes dilated and tethered themselves to his. It wheezed like a human, but its confession was a mumbling sigh. 

Roger peeled his gloves off and reached for the mammal’s head. It was soft. Warm. It pushed itself firmly into his palm, like it was trying to change his mind about the whole thing, and the skin rose between his fingers as he held it firmly to the ground. The shudder of his stomach could have been from the cold or from disgust. 

He looked away from the eyes that were always miserable. He told it, “Please lie still.”   

It opened its mouth and he struck it in the side. 

The body was softer than he thought it’d be. It jerked and coiled, breaking ice and mud with a shout. 

He hit it again. Again. The sound was padded and dull. Fleshy and strange. There was a shudder that engulfed the endless length of the spineless body. 

Roger’s stomach flipped at the sight of red foam, and when he hit it one more time with a yawning sense of dread– his hand was empty. 

Roger patted down his pockets for the rock. Where did he put it? He couldn’t remember the last thing he ate, and he was too scared to look if the body was still moving. 

If he failed to kill it– if he wanted to kill it– he wouldn’t be able to accept another stone. The one he had was his. 

His eyes burned. His throat hurt. He could only imagine his mother scoffing again, and that long, blank look she’d give the mirror. He’d open the door and head for the room she still had for him, and the notes from the piano would drag to a stop as he passed. He’d have to stand where he was, and then she was always going to tell him, for the rest of his life, “I know you think I’m better off dead.”

Roger didn’t. 

He didn’t think that. 

If he did, he didn’t believe it.  

It’s cold outside. 

When did he last eat? 

He was suddenly back on the ground, and the leaves above were all gray and dead. The flowers weren’t like anything he could name, but they sparkled with dew– or ice. Wet and leering like eyes. His body shuddered and he remembered it was freezing. Roger was never able to sleep in the cold. 

He blinked or blacked out, and there was only the sound of whispered, weeping sobs. Tears were soaking into his coat. Frost crawled along the wool. There was breathing by his head, and a weight on his chest, and the thing was back. 

It always wanted to look at him while it changed its face. She always wanted him to know exactly how much pain she was in and how stupid he was. Roger watched, but covered his ears. He did feel stupid. 

Its eyes bulged and the neck began to swell. Every notable piece of anatomy was sucked down into the rest of the length, face left as a fleshy, shapeless blob. The teeth went missing, mouth a limp flap of skin. Loose sockets and a tube of a mouth stared hauntingly blank at Roger, until a second skull rotated with the first, and the skin began to fill again. New eyes poked out with a pop. New teeth grew in with a soft, breathy sigh. Roger’s stomach churned when the hair grew out in a puff of black fuzz. 

It dropped on his chest, stuttering his lungs, and the skin contracted and wrinkled his clothes.

Ducky couldn’t speak anymore, but in the mornings, when his brother would shuffle up close– Roger would notice that his face still had dimpled cheeks and small, gappy teeth that whistled. He’d pop his spit bubbles on the front of Roger’s coat when they walked, and laugh when Roger would flick his forehead. All the while, Roger would imagine finding napkins in the woods– and being clean.

The sound of Ducky’s crying was hardly different from the time he broke his finger in the door hinge. Breath feeling all too thin, Roger held his brother’s skull in his palms, gently rocking back and forth. His fingers shook as he dragged them through his hair. 

The worm was dripping drool on Roger’s coat when it stopped crying.

Roger smiled up at his brother, cold and numb.

The creature was climbing up his leg, so he stood still and let it, though he didn’t remember getting to his feet. It slithered over a bruise it had given him on Tuesday– when the piano had been silent– but he didn’t remember getting that either. Then it wrapped its neck around Roger’s, and hung its head so it’s chin laid against his chest. Its belly breathed against his back, and blood dribbled from its neck onto his throat. 

The pressure was everywhere, pulse pushing into his skin. He gagged on saliva, but held still as his family lifted its head and nestled beneath his scarf. Skin briefly pressed flush to his neck, before the bulk settled further over his back. Warm expiration crawled into his hat, and turned stale in his hair. He closed his lips and looked up at the trees.

His fingers ached at the memory of the rock. His ears held onto the sound it had made. He was briefly terrified by the notion of tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, and the next day– the piano stopping when he would open the door, and empty skin stretched into a black, emotionless smile. 

But the trees, he realized belatedly, were moving towards him. His legs were pushing forward. 

The flowers looked like Edelweiss. 

Roger bundled his family more tightly in his arms, and imagined himself resting on the beaten leather couch in their parlor, back home. Ducky would be spitting bubbles, and their mother would be brewing coffee, and Roger was always going to hold their hands, and tell them, “You’ll be okay.”

It was hard to breathe.

It was very hard to breathe. 

Without the stone sitting in his pocket, he thought he’d float into the flowers.