Worms - Part Seven

Time had run out.

He had done the research. Bought the weapon, the car, the food. It was an opportunity he could not afford to miss.

He left as soon as he knew he could. Told no one. Left most of his belongings in the apartment. Brushed his finger against the windowsill.

The pages he had written were ready and primed. He had spent so long on them. He hadn't been able to finish reading a book since middle school, but he had somehow managed to piece these together. They were an art piece, really, even if they were shitty art. They didn’t need to exist for any reason other than his own peace of mind. For his family, for Bella.

So he left. The adrenaline lasted only about an hour. The trip was long, longer than anything he’d ever done before. He was persistent, though. Focused. He barely slept. Not once did he question himself.

He arrived blood-eyed and foul smelling, but focused, clear-headed. Checked into the cheapest hotel. Waited.

The shot heard around the world was not the first shot in the War, but it was the loudest. The conquerors were not invincible. Their blood flowed into the gutters just like the conquered, and now everyone knew.

The CEO of the largest American oil corporation was reduced to a finely dressed corpse sprawled on the floor of a New York City Michelin-Star restaurant. An old, white man in a suit. A symbolic execution. A public decapitation.

Symbolic, because this singular death accomplished nothing in a vacuum. The War was not won. But Theo did not live in a vacuum; on the contrary. The War for the Earth, his twenty-four page manifesto was set to be sent out to thousands of journalists’ emails in about an hour.

From their bodies we will cultivate a paradise.

Vengeance did not explain it entirely, Theo thought. He was exerting his power. Doing what he had to. He had no choice, no freedom to refuse the jihad he had been thrown into.

But it was vengeance, also. There was rage in that bullet. “GIVE ME BACK MY LIFE!” It screamed as it spattered frontal cortex into a bowl of shiitake extract and goose liver soup.

In a blur of rough hands and screeching wheels, Theo was apprehended. There had been many prisoners captured in the War already. Generations of them, toiling till death in the bowels of Leviathan. He was not shot, not even injured by the police. Was the bloodstained carpet of the upper class restaurant somehow not suitable for their ritual violence? It made him laugh as they shoved his head down into the police car. Pigs apparently do not like to defile their masters’ graves.

They took him to a room with a mirror. One-way, he assumed. The other way would have observers, like the crime TV shows and movies he used to watch. He stared at the mirror, ignoring the invisible faces on the other side.

They were asking him something. The pigs across the table from him. His co-stars in the play for the invisible audience. He wanted to stand and bow to his fans behind the mirror. Roses would fly from the rafters and the spotlight would shine on him. He would laugh with them and drink with them and have sex with them after the show ended.

They were asking him why. Why? What a funny joke. He had told them why. The journalists would know by now. He hadn’t sent it to the police, he supposed. So they didn’t know why. Well, let them wait, like he had waited. They’ll know eventually. He was looking at the mirror still, at his face. His beautiful face. He was sculpted like a statue from marble. So handsome, so idyllic. He wanted to undress to admire himself in all his glory. Never had he seen his body so well before. His scars wrapped him like an intricate and comfortable quilt, a silkworm dress that flattered his curves like no other.

His vagus nerve felt as if it were firing continuously, a warm buzz that electrified his body like a constant orgasm. He laughed at the thought.

“What’s so funny?” The detective asked.

Theo looked at the pig’s face: so confused, so lost, as if he had forgotten his lines.

THE END

2022