BLESS THE WORMS AND THE MADMEN

by

Jason H. Hall

It's beginning to rain.

The screams will begin soon.

People run for shelter from the rain and the white sidewalk becomes dark gray, spot by spot as I stare from my perch on the park bench. There is a flash of lightning, but I don't hear the thunder. I don't hear anything anymore, except the screams.

The first of them begin to leave their burrows as the water saturates the ground. They aren't alarmed yet. They don't know that they're in any danger.

Then the first of them blindly wanders out onto the pavement. It takes a little while for them to realize that they're drowning. The first sounds are weak, apprehensive wails as confusion sets in. As the gravity of the situation sinks in, the wails become desperate screams.

I don't see the woman running down the sidewalk until one of the screams is cut off by the heel of her shoe. I don't look up. The worm’s tail writhes madly as parts of the crushed remains are carried away by the weak current of acrid water. The rest of its body is ground into the ridges of the sidewalk, adding a touch of morbid color to the monolithic gray.

I could save them, I suppose, and I want to. I really do. But people don't like it. My parents once caught me pulling them off the sidewalk and throwing them in the grass. They didn't like it, and they hurt me. From then on, the only things I could hear were the screams of the earthworms. I couldn't even hear my parents' screams when I spread their organs across the house and painted the walls with their insides.

The rain finally stops, but this is when it's the worst. Now those that somehow escaped drowning are slowly scorched to death by the sun. I want them to get away, but all I can do is hope and pray for them. Their screams become deafening.

Polished shoes appear, pointing at me accusingly. I glance upward. It is a police officer. His mouth is moving, but no sound comes out. He probably wants me to leave. They always do. I look back down at the sidewalk. One of the worms is trapped under his shoe, and is screaming shrilly. I stand up. My clothes are heavy, waterlogged. I walk away from the policeman, trying not to step on the dying worms.

The hammer of the pistol is digging into my ribs. I walk down toward the mall. Soon the worms will not be screaming alone.

When I was very young and could still hear the singing of the birds, my mother told me that rain was the angels crying. I have since realized that they aren't crying for us. They're pissing on us.