The Worm King

  THE WORM King

  Steve Ryan

  Previously published as

  “Jesus Went to Griffith and Bought a Pie”

  * * *

  Ryan Publications

  Matamata, New Zealand

  Copyright © 2014 by Steve Ryan

  Contents

  Maps

  Australia

  Middle East

  Winston

  1: Button

  2: Spew

  3: Lord Brown

  4: Three Sisters

  5: Wobbles

  6: Lazing Around

  7: Photo Shoot

  8: Park

  9: Cruising

  10: Boom

  Night

  11: Servo

  12: Flying

  13: Mulloolaloo

  14: Dinosaurs

  15: More Boxies

  16: Clovis

  17: Getting Wood

  18: Narrandera

  19: Grange

  20: Dubbo

  21: Bad Bob

  22: Shank

  23: Battle of Kadesh

  24: Melanie

  25: A Drive in the Country

  26: Roofies

  The Worm King

  27: The Devil

  28: Hole

  29: Iron Age

  30: Fort

  31: The Captain

  32: Hand Crank

  33: Fractal Analysis

  34: The Great Steppey Schism

  35: Vodka

  36: Twins

  37: Tūhoe

  38: Stratagem

  39: Mrs Sheng

  40: Battle of Yass

  41: Watermelon

  42: God

  43: Ho Ho Ho

  44: Ruarangi Special

  45: Damn bad show

  46: Handrail

  47: Spoils

  Pink

  48: Growth

  .

  PROLOGUE

  Forsyth pointed at the shack.

  They were encircled, and it was night,

  as it had been.

  His wife was dead, burnt alive.

  ‘Maybe they have some extra blankets? Sir.’

  The Brigadier’s expression changed, darkening.

  ‘You’re a fool, Forsyth.’

  And they kept driving.

  .

  Winston

  Chapter One

  Button

  She looked at him in awe. They were sipping margaritas in the hotel bar. ‘So you’re in direct contact with those submarine captains all the time?’

  ‘That’s right. They give me the hydrophonic readings, and bingo, a few calculations later, anyone could forecast the weather. Simple trigonometry really.’

  ‘Always wondered how you guys did it,’ she purred. ‘Any chance I could go down on one?’

  He cocked his head, sceptical. ‘Security’s usually pretty tight.’

  ‘So what do those big dishy things do, that point up. I thought they were for forecasting the weather?’

  ‘Mostly for catching rain. How do you think they know how much rain falls each day?’ He laughed and it was loud, other people in the bar turning to stare. ‘People think they’re complicated, but really, a big tarpaulin would do the trick about as well.’ He winked, and smiled. ‘Don’t tell anyone though’.

  She drained her glass. ‘Can I have another drink? Not a margarita though; this one’s got gritty bits in the bottom.’

  ‘That’ll be the salt.’

  * * *

  Completely motionless. You’d think she were dead, but no, look carefully, right down at the base of the throat: a gentle pulse in and out, in and out, in and out . . . They watched him all the time. Everyone did. Now it was his turn to watch.

  One of those buttons, on her blouse, that’s what he’ll keep. There were five of them, silver, each indented with a lucky four leaf clover. It’s your lucky day lady! He grasped the middle button between his forefinger and thumb, and ripped it off with such fury the blouse only lifted slightly, popping and relinquishing the luck instantly. His fists clenched into cannonballs and every sinew in each wrist strained like fence-wire under stretched hide.

  He threw back his head and roared.

  When she was naked, he dragged the girl around full circle so her head lay at the foot of the bed, dangling over, jaws agape. Then he stood at the end of the bed and masturbated into her face. Afterwards he took a tissue from the bathroom and roughly wiped it away. She didn’t budge an inch.

  A momentary flash of cold, blue light forked beyond the window. Rain pattered against the glass and thunder crackled, rumbling ominously through the Blue Mountains.

  He put on his clothes then slunk outside to lurk in the darkness.

  Chapter Two

  Spew

  Winston woke believing someone must’ve shat in his mouth while he slept. A train clanked through his head. His eyelids felt gummed shut tighter than any Fort Knox vault, and even his ears hurt.

  The lobes for god’s sake! You never knew they were there till you felt them whack, whack, whack on the inside of your temple. Those bits weren’t even connected were they? Just trying to untangle the anatomy of that hurt. His hair: he could feel all that too. Like tiny, savage daggers drilling mercilessly into his scalp. You saw it in the mirror every day; combed the crap out of it; but it took beer to really feel it.

  Beer. Never again.

  Everything seemed to be working, more or less, although major body movements were still well outside the attainable range. Something crusty crackled on his shirt. Probably vomit. Or the remains of the cheeseburger which he vaguely remembered picking up from the chippie down the road before arriving home.

  Fingers clenched slowly, in then out. Eyelids parted reluctantly and fiery shafts of intense daylight speared painfully through tender, mushy eyeball jelly.

  Far below the stained sheets his thumb sank into a cold, sticky mass.

  Winston froze.

  Another tentative wriggle, still no clues. Could be anything from a gob of brains to a hunk of lung. Something must’ve fallen out in order to feel this bad? Did that ever really happen? They talk about spontaneous combustion every so often, so maybe it does:

  You could be walking along, minding your own business, next thing a bunch of your guts just slops out your arse and plonks on the pavement. ‘Excuse me sir, is that your duodenum you’ve left back there?’

  ‘Why thank you. Don’t suppose you’ve a sharp stick I could use to prod it back in again?’

  That didn’t help.

  The bed was damp and mushy around the mysterious globule. A fat bead of sweat trickled down his forehead then rolled into a hairy, greasy eyebrow. If that kind of sweat can get out, maybe other bigger stuff could too! Slowly, gently, gently he withdrew the hand.

  Tomato. That’d be the rest of the cheeseburger.

  Winston felt something stuck to his cheek and dislodged an almost complete onion ring. It fell onto the sheets but didn’t seem to untidy the room much so he let it be.

  It looked too heavy anyway.

  The time had finally come to get up.

  This time definitely.

  The room was stark white apart from a single tattered poster, opposite the bed. It was held at three corners by blu-tack, with the top right edge drooping over threatening to bring down the whole wall. The faded picture showed a tall, skinny guitarist with a shaved head leaping across a stage, snarling into a microphone and shaking his fist at the crowd. He wasn’t even touching the guitar; probably just carried it to hit people on the head with. That’d give them a headache.

  Like this one.

  Winston tried to draw energy from the guitarist, concentrating on feeling the way the musician must feel, in order to jump up on a stage and do that kind of . .
. music. Apparently the key was to let your thoughts clear, and drift away leaving a single strand of awareness focused solely on the artist’s energy.

  His mind did clear, but this just left a twirling, cheesy-smelling nausea. Was that another onion ring in his hair? He wondered how onions effected meditation, which threw the entire divine contemplation loop into a terminal nose-dive.

  Come to think of it, that technique had never worked.

  In few hours he had to go on telly, so it really was time to get up.

  John the Hat sat on the sofa in front of his keg.

  Infomercials blared from the television and a thick layer of cigarette smoke swirled below the yellowing ceiling. Azziz Ishmael sat in the big purple chair, reading an anatomy textbook and chain smoking.

  ‘She says it’ll clear your blemishes in seven days. Maybe that’ll fix you?’ suggested the Hat, tilting his near-empty glass at the screen.

  ‘Best idea is lots of drinking of water on the night of before,’ advised Dr. Azziz.

  ‘A fire-hose up the arse wouldn’t flush this one out,’ replied Winston.

  The Hat shifted in his chair, farted loudly then drained his glass. ‘More beer could be the answer.’ He leant forward to refill from the keg. ‘The saddle. You know you need it.’

  Winston slumped back, eyes closed. His feet drooped over the edge but didn’t even get close to the floor.

  ‘If we had bacon, we could have bacon and eggs if we had the eggs,’ said Azziz helpfully. On moving into the house eight months earlier he’d never once eaten pork. Now he existed almost solely on pig, in all its glorious forms.

  Azziz also drank beer. The Hat was extremely proud of this transformation. ‘Why don’t you tear down the shops and grab some?’ he said, pulling a twenty from his pocket and slapping it on the table beside the keg.

  Azziz jammed the cigarette into an empty Heineken can on the floor, dropped his book and scooped up the cash. He left the room smiling broadly, like a fat swarthy elf on his way to see Santa. A somewhat tall elf, with loads of back-hair and dark rings under his bloodshot eyes. Probably more troll-like, than elf-like. And as far as Winston knew, elves couldn’t do a beer-bong in four point six seconds then sit down to half a side of pig either.

  ‘You still heading to Katoomba?’ inquired the Hat.

  ‘Tonight.’

  ‘You think they’ll put you on?’

  ‘Shit, I hope not. But another guy in my class did the same thing a couple of months back and they made him read some of the report live.’

  ‘Maybe you should get changed first. Something with less spew down the front of it. Is that letter from them?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Winston passed the page across.

  Dear Winston

  Thank you for your request for work experience with the Channel Six weather team. We are pleased to offer you the opportunity to assist with the evening weather update on September 20th.

  The report will be conducted live from the Three Sisters lookout at Katoomba in the Blue Mountains. You will be working with our weatherman Dick Snow.

  Could you please aim to arrive on set at 8.00pm and bring any university documentation you may need signed.

  Yours sincerely

  Astrid Simpson

  (Producer, The Dick Snow Report)

  After reading the letter the Hat folded the page neatly into a small paper aeroplane and flew it back. The flimsy craft immediately banked dangerously to port and hit the side of the keg before plummeting to the floor. ‘When I did that paper, you had to get work experience from a couple of places. Doesn’t “experience” mean, ipso dipto, varied, or at least two of, by definition?’

  ‘I’ll stop and see Lord Brown on the way. If he’s there, get his signature too.’

  ‘Desperate. You know what they say. Desperate times call for desperate, something, something, when in Rome.’

  ‘Who say’s that?’

  ‘I do. Just now.’

  ‘I’m screwed,’ groaned Winston. A blowfly circled the keg table, reluctant to land.

  The kitchen door slammed. Azziz had returned. Ten minutes later the smell of frying bacon sifted through the house like a warm, buttery fog.

  Chapter Three

  Lord Brown

  Only the old man was drinking.

  They sat on a park bench beneath the canopy of an ancient Morton bay fig. Gentle spring sunlight tinkled through the branches drenching the ground with whirling silver figures which dashed here and there across the grass and asphalt.

  ‘Teach me Lord Brown, I need to learn.’

  ‘A great evil is coming Winston. Soon, you will be entombed in darkness. Forever. You’ll die, horribly, then float in this blackness; no God, nothing. A minute speck of thought, floating in inky . . . goo.’

  ‘Goo?’

  ‘That’s correct. It’ll be everywhere. But if I could save you from that, you’d jump at it, right?’

  Winston nodded.

  Lord Brown patted his tattered suitcase. The roller wheels were missing off one side. ‘In this case, I don’t have the answers, or even the questions. I have the bits in the middle.’

  That sounded confusing, rather than useful.

  He passed the old man a bacon and egg sandwich wrapped in cellophane. After a couple of bites, Lord Brown rewrapped it and slipped the remainder into his grubby pocket.

  Winston tried not to stare at the tangled hair, dirty, broken nails and overcoat that hadn’t seen a wash since Noah pulled up the plank. Once, they say, he was a distinguished scholar. An associate professor of mathematics or statistics (or it could have been languages) at the university and even made it in the newspapers with this new theory on how to add and subtract numbers, or something along those lines according to the Hat who’d met him on a pub crawl.

  The Hat had been attracted by the promise of cheap eternal salvation.

  ‘Well, sure it was cheap, but I’m not completely convinced I got the full salvation,’ he’d told them later that night. ‘Still feel pretty fucked up.

  ‘But says he’s still on the maths department payroll, and could do lectures, if he wanted. Sign off on stuff. Whatever. With a title like that! Sweet!’

  Lord Brown drank vast quantities of brown ale. He also wore brown most days, except today because he had one red sock on. Even the officers at Parramatta Station, where he spent the occasional night in the drunk-tank, listed him as “Lord Brown—No Fixed Abode”. Most of his days were spent in the park, a short stone’s throw from Winston’s house.

  ‘Last night,’ said the old man, ‘this Aborigine bloke, in the bed next to me, woke up screaming.’

  In the bed next to me!?

  ‘The Sallie Army hostel? You know, Fanshaw St?’ Winston felt relieved. ‘Didn’t drink, smoke. Come in from way out the other side of Alice, to visit some ancient brother-in-law. Started screaming round midnight; no one could get him to stop. Really old fellow, you know, big eyes like saucers. Took him away in the end.’

  ‘Sounds like his bits in the middle were gone.’

  Lord Brown gazed down at him. ‘Know that experience do you?’

  A warm flurry of wind scattered a handful of dried leaves across the path. Winston recalled kids at school and how they used to tease him, say he was all middle with stumpy arms and stumpy legs with this big head on top.

  Hey Stumpy! Snow White’s over here looking f’the team, whataya doin?

  ‘My middle bits never quite matched up with the rest,’ said Winston. ‘Anyway, if you had all the middles, wouldn’t that automatically take you to the end?’

  Lord Brown took a healthy gulp from his beer. He held up the bottle and barely a swallow remained so that went down the hatch too. ‘Oh yes indeed,’ he belched, then patted the suitcase. ‘I have to get back to work soon, so sorry, I—’

  ‘Can I watch?’

  ‘Well, I don’t—’

  ‘I’ll get you more beer?’

  ‘Ahhhh. Barley juice!’ Lord Brown sat back. ‘Elixir of the gods.�
� He rechecked the bottle to ensure it was truly empty. ‘Hordeum vulgae. They first domesticated barley in the foothills of the Zargos Mountains in western Iran in 9,800BC. It’s called the Hilly Flanks hypothesis. People started making beer with the barley pretty well straight away. Can’t be all bad, if it’s lasted this long, can it?’

  ‘You’ve run out,’ observed Winston.

  ‘More beer would be splendid then.’

  Lord Brown whistled, as people often do when they make ready for a job they truly love.

  First the soap chips: pine forest, especially formulated for top-loading machines.

  Next, a plastic shopping bag stuffed with hats. Mainly berets, but also a couple of baseball caps, a straw boating bloater and an old British army tin helmet. He selected a blue beret with a bar of war service ribbons pinned on its front.

  Finally a bundle of cardboard signs. Most appeared to be shoebox lids with the edges flattened out and the whole lot tied crossways with hemp string.

  ‘The double overhand reverse squirrel-gripper; there’s a knot to remember young Winston, if you’re in a bind,’ he muttered, struggling with the complicated tangle.

  Eventually he held up the first sign.

  The End is Nigh—Please Give! The neat handwriting stretched the full length of the cardboard. ‘Always a crowd favorite, but not for today.’ He put it to one side and picked up the next.

  Give Me Your Money!

  ‘Usually tops with the drunk crowd, late Friday and Saturday nights. They respond well to simple commands. The bother is, I’ll usually get a few people who throw the same line back at me.’ He touched a nearly-healed scab on his forehead and put the sign down.

  I Know God. Pay here. Big white letters on a black background. It must’ve taken ages to color it all in, with what looked like tight little squiggles of fine, black pen.

  ‘I’ve been trying this one out in Cathedral Square on Sundays and outside the Synagogue Saturdays. Increased the strike ratio eleven percent.’ However, he put that sign aside too, uncovering one with typed writing on a page that’d been sellotaped to the shoebox lid.

  Please Help, Raising Equity Capital To Fund A Leveraged Buyout Of This Company.