Free Worm by Tim Curran

deflate.
    The worm had a hydrostatic skeleton pressurized by fluid. The tighter she gripped it, the more the fluid was drained into other segments. But that hardly meant it was going to submit without a fight. Its body began to whip in her hands with violent contractions, the segments oozing out a thick, gelid mucus until she could barely hang on to it. They flattened. They elongated. They swelled with fluid.
    It was like trying to hang on to a high-pressure hose.
    Ivy did not give in.
    Even though its bristles cut into her fingers like pins, she increased her hold, gripping different segments. The mucus made her hands slide from segment to segment as the muscles of the worm contracted and relaxed in fluidic waves.
    Its tail flailed wildly, knocking things off the counter and she was thrown this way and that by it. Its body curled around her with a crushing embrace, its thorny bristles digging into her skin. Then its head slid free and Geno, through dimming eyes, saw its pulsating length coiling around his wife, the segments fattening with hydrostatic pressure until there was the clear sound of things bursting inside her, ligaments popping and bones dislocating.
    A moaning sound in his throat, he reached out one flaccid hand in her direction.
    But by then, the worm had already torn off her right arm like a chicken wing with a gristly, grinding noise.

 
     
     
    17
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Tony stumbled up the steps of Stephani Kutak’s house, breathing hard and reaching for the doorbell. Doorbell? You’re really going to ring the fucking doorbell? The absurdity of that nearly made him laugh, but there was nothing very funny about it or anything else. Still, he knew he had no right to barge in without announcing himself, so he rapped his knuckles on the door a few times before letting himself in.
    “Steph?” he called out. “Stephani? It’s Tony from next door. Are you there?”
    Maybe she was hiding.
    Maybe she was freaked out.
    She was an attractive woman who lived alone and it would only make sense that she might be a little on edge. The whole damn neighborhood was on edge and with good reason. Tony stood there, dripping muck onto the carpet, wondering how Charise was faring downtown and how she would take the news of Stevie’s death.
    Stupid fucking dog. I never liked that dog…not much anyway.
    But he wasn’t going to think about Stevie. He refused to go through it all again. His real worry was what had gotten Stevie. There were things in the muck and he had a nasty feeling that the worm that had gotten his dog was not one of a kind.
    He stepped farther into the house.
    In his fantasies, he’d been invited into this house again and again, but it had never once been like this.
    “Steph?”
    There was only silence…heavy, brooding, and thick with something very much like menace. There was every possibility, of course, that she had escaped when the mud started filling the streets. Yet, for some reason, he just didn’t believe that.
    “Steph? Are you here?”
    He nearly shouted it and his voice echoed throughout the house, bouncing down hallways and through empty rooms before coming back at him with the tonal quality of a scream. Maybe it wasn’t that bad except in his imagination, but there was a quality to it he didn’t like, one that was quite nearly hysterical.
    He reached around on the wall until he found the light switch.
    Better. The shadows were swept away. He crossed the living room and turned on the hallway light and that’s when he saw the slimy, muddy trail that led across the floor into the kitchen. Something in him sunk at the sight of it. It didn’t necessarily mean there was a worm in the house. Maybe Steph went out into the muck and tracked it back in herself. Maybe.
    He stepped cautiously, very cautiously down the hallway with nothing to defend himself with but the softball bat. He was trying hard not to think about what had torn Stevie apart, how very deadly and relentless it was. How