The Harkin Worm
\nBy Will Parkinson
\n\u201cYes and my eternal gratitude\u2014ten thousand thank-you\u2019s, inlaid with gold leaf upon stationary scented with lilac, or perhaps lily-of-the-valley\u2026\u201d
\nThis will be my opening statement when I present the culmination of my feverous four years of research to the American Philo-Psychological Society, the boon of my career: The Harkin Worm. I had been lost in reverie during the entire flight, and I imagined myself descending a mountain, retreating from my isolation, with my new law etched in stone that I would present to the academy.
\nMy career, thus far, has been disgraceful. My work had been described as a \u201cliterary contribution to the science of psychology\u201d by the journal Modern Mental Forensics, polite society\u2019s way of lumping me in with the psychoanalytic crackpots. They always insult with compliments. Not that anyone should blindly accept compliments anyways\u2014they are always best treated with suspicion. No one selflessly doles them out, especially if they\u2019re true, except to the dead. They\u2019re too costly to one\u2019s pride. And it\u2019s also worth mentioning that my mind always carries further than my body, and I speak of this concerning both capabilities of action and movement in general. This is true of my career as well, that the mechanisms of psychology at present were themselves too wooden and stilted to carry the meaning and import of my work.
\nI had suffocated the woman in the seat next to me on the plane with my flabs of fat that spilled over the seat arms. I have been described as a portly, even a porcine man. Before the plane had even finished taxiing, she had stood up in agitation and was lunging with one knee in a vain attempt to get around my stomach. It also probably didn\u2019t help that I had stress-sweated through my already tight suit, so that my tits were exposed through my white shirt and I had this fungal odor with hints of the garlic glaze from the three meals I had ordered before we landed. I was meeting Walter Pfuser, the chair of philosophy at St. John the Evangelist\u2019s College, and I was nervous.<\/p>\n
I have always been terrified of sex. It disturbs me as unnatural and threatening, like the androgynous and skeletal figure of a withered cancer patient. I have a memory of middle school when I overheard one of the older boys bragging about a porn video he had gotten ahold of. I fought back tears for two hours and eventually broke down into sobs in my algebra class and was sent home. During the period of my master\u2019s program, I had rented an apartment near the campus of the fairly large university where I was studying at the time. One night, the young man in the apartment next to me brought a woman over. At first, I listened to them through the walls with morbid curiosity. But as the noises crescendoed, I was overcome with a deep and powerful fear and a sense of helplessness. I collapsed onto my bed, sobbing, flailing, tears, and snot streaming my face as I begged to God himself to make it end. I imagined them as fanged chimpanzees, pulling back their horrible and tight lips to expose their teeth, beating the walls to crack through the plaster and paint to shred me into strips of flesh and clothing. I could see their greenish-brown paws balled up into a fist at the end of muscular arm covered in black fur, smashing the wood paneling, tunneling through to my spartan living situation for blood. The next night, though she had left, I was so traumatized that I didn\u2019t sleep again, and I sat in a reclining chair my parents had given me staring at the walls, completely emotionally drained into a daze. The id\u00e9e fixe of my work up until now dealt with sex as a symptom of psychological disease. In my last paper, I even prescribed in vitro fertilization as the preferred method of reproduction in all people, a treatment to cure our species of the beast with two backs.
\nMy cabdriver was waiting for me at the bag check with a sign reading my name: McDaniel. I had only a small briefcase with me that would have fit in the overhead, but I had packed a cheap pistol, a knockoff of a Walther M2, in with my clothes and notebooks, and couldn\u2019t carry it through security. On one of the television sets above the baggage carousel, a scene was unfolding at one of the towers in the banking complex downtown. Police had blocked off the streets around the base of the building but stood alert on the concrete platform outside the entrance. They were refusing to enter.
\nIt was a three months ago that I had e-mailed Walter Pfuser. \u201cI believe I have made one of the most important discoveries in the history of psychology,\u201d I wrote, \u201cand I also believe, having familiarized myself with your body of work, you would take great interest.\u201d A man with the mind of a boy, I explained, that had, through psychic disturbance in his thought patterns, transformed himself into a new creature entirely. A human parasite, a psycho-biological organism, the first of its kind. Psychology differed from the so-called hard sciences in that it was a field composed entirely of questions\u2014and now I would bring it results. I linked him my recent works that had been published in the most prestigious journals I could manage, which didn\u2019t amount to much. Walter Pfuser was not only tenured, but one of the most highly respected philosophers in the world and had recently published a book in which he declared that everything was the same. He had broken into the mainstream, entertaining pop scientists, late night show and radio hosts alike. I tried to convince him the Harkin Worm was detrimental to his field and even affirmed many of the claims in his philosophy. The Worm would reenergize the seriousness that had built his popularity and fame in the first place.
\nIt took him two months to reply: \u201cDr. K. McDaniel, I\u2019m familiar with your work. (He had read my work!) I am interested in your Harkin Worm.\u201d He explained that he was doing a podcast show in the same city as the Worm a month out, and that he would use the philosophy department\u2019s treasury to pay for our flights and hotels. Better it goes to actual research, he wrote, otherwise, the funds would be looted by the undergraduate lesbian mafia for one of their little ethnic studies symposiums\u2014or something to that effect. \u201cHowever, I won\u2019t be driving to the airport to get you. I am not your taxi.\u201d
\nI pulled a sandwich I had prepared out of my briefcase in the back of the cab, which had now turned into a kind of panini. It had been squashed completely flat by my clothes and the gun, and the cheese slices had melted into the white bread. It smelled rancid, but I ate it anyways, wondering if this was the sandwich I had prepared before the flight, or one that may have been much older. I couldn\u2019t see much, as my glasses had completely fogged.
\n\u201cWhat do you think this is going on at the bank complex?\u201d the driver said.
\nI ignored him. I was trying to organize my thoughts before meeting Walter Pfuser and didn\u2019t feel like talking, especially to some cabdriving spic.
\n\u201cYou think someone is going to jump?\u201d
\n\u201cI think I\u2019d very much like it if you left me alone,\u201d I replied. \u201cI am a very busy man with a very long night.\u201d
\nHe turned the radio up. Apparently, the police had attempted to expand their blockade but were unsuccessful, as the media had already rushed the one they had erected. A news helicopter had flown to the eighteenth story but would be forced to land soon.<\/p>\n
The cloth in my shirt had dried enough to become greasy, and the stench turned ammoniac and acrid. I combed my sweat-drenched hair over with my hands as I approached the black rental suburban. I could see Walter Pfuser in the front seat. I slipped a ramekin of mayonnaise I had been fingering into my shirt pocket and opened the passenger seat door. I had to scoot in backwards and lift each one of my legs in individually, and finally haul my massive gut around, which I pulled inwards so that it\u2019d fit against the dash. I was flushed, hot, and entirely out-of-breath. Walter immediately began driving before we even spoke. With great effort, I stretched my right arm over my blubbery chest towards him.
\n\u201cDr. K. McDaniel. A pleasure. Although, I\u2019m sure Rebeca Earl has already told you plenty about me\u2026\u201d I said. He didn\u2019t acknowledge the handshake or respond. \u201cYou know, Rebeca Earl, from the sociolo\u2014\u201d
\n\u201cI know who Rebeca Earl is,\u201d he snapped. \u201cI just didn\u2019t know that slut was still breathing.\u201d That word sent a chill down my spine and I didn\u2019t want to know any more. We rode in silence for the next two minutes.
\n\u201cYou know, I find this all very validating,\u201d I finally said. \u201cUp until you replied to my email, I was anxious over this whole \u2018Harkin Worm\u2019 business. I didn\u2019t know if it was all just a gaseous interruption, wreaking havoc on my nervous system. I have a very delicate composition, even the smallest upset can turn the whole system on its back, so that I must recalibrate, and sometimes resulting in a whole malalignment in my work.\u201d
\nThe car was resting at a stoplight, but he immediately put the vehicle in park and turned on the hazard lights.
\n\u201cHave you ever done monkey water?\u201d He produced a spoon and a small pill.
\n\u201cOh, no thank you,\u201d I said.
\nHis sharp features were lit by the green of the changing traffic light, underneath his boyish brown hair. His expression was completely flat.
\n\u201cI\u2019ll be perfectly honest: you talk and think so slowly that I can\u2019t understand a single word that you\u2019re saying. This is Desoxyn. It will pep you up a little, put you on my level. You just open the time-release capsule, crush up the little balls. Mix it with the water and it should go easily up your nostril\u2026 and painlessly.\u201d
\nHe used a drop dispenser to wet the powder left by the little balls. A car behind us was honking now as I ripped the juice through one side of my nose and leaned back.
\n\u201cI think I ought to pepper myself a little bit as well,\u201d he said, bringing another dose to his face.
\nWe were moving again, talking over each other, maybe not even at each other, but I could understand everything coming out of his mouth and knew everything coming out of mine even before it had left. He talked about his recent book, a libertarian podcast he had appeared on, a talk-show panel in New York where he sat with a Hollywood actor and a political pundit\u2026 all in the last month. One of his speeches had been posted on PornHub as a joke and had made it to the front page. There was a cryptocurrency, the PfuserCoin, \u201cin the works\u201d though he\u2019d \u201cnever buy that shit,\u201d he just liked the idea. \u201cAnd where did you find your \u2018Harkin Worm\u2019?\u201d he asked.
\nI explained he was a patient at a clinic I had worked in during my doctorate. \u201cThere had been a spat with a therapist\u2014his last therapist. He wouldn\u2019t give the details, but there had been a legal settlement. The therapist had a court order dealing with something he had written on the internet. Mostly harmless, or at least harmless enough so that there wasn\u2019t a mess involving the police.\u201d They tasked me with the initial psychological evaluation.
\n\u201cWhat about the name?\u201d
\n\u201cIt\u2019s his name,\u201d I explained, \u201cthough I\u2019ll have to change it before publication. Patient confidentiality.\u201d
\n\u201cI thought to myself \u2018negative-Siddhartha.\u2019 The Buddha became enlightened when he looked upon another\u2019s suffering. The Worm, conversely, is a victim of a life of luxury. A man imbued with evil because he knows nothing else but comfort\u2014a new kind of trauma.\u201d<\/p>\n
I wasn\u2019t aware for how long, but my extremities had been numb for quite awhile now, and so my tongue flapped loosely around in my mouth making me completely unintelligible, words coming out in rolling, spitting moans punctuated by bouts of laughter. I finally tried to regain my composure enough to alert Pfuser that a huge turd was lurching through my intestines, and quickly. \u201cI don\u2019t know for how long it\u2019s been coming, but it\u2019s painful.\u201d I wasn\u2019t wearing adult diapers. He pulled over quickly.
\nI went into a corner store bathroom. As I pushed down with my muscles, it felt as if three wine bottles had been tied together and were being pulled slowly but aggressively by a rope. It hit my sphincter as if it was a brick wall. All my muscles were taut from the speed, so that even my stomach and calves were stuck in a tense state, and including the entirety of my digestive tract, which must have been the size of any collection of veins in my arms at that moment. My vision became completely red from the pushing\u2014and then faded immediately to black.
\nI began screaming. I was certain I had gone blind. I decided I had popped a blood vessel in my brain evacuating my bowels so aggressively. I must have looked terrifying, bawling out: \u201cI\u2019m blind, I\u2019m blind!\u201d with my piglet eyes turned completely black due to the drugs and the darkness. And then\u2014the lights came back on. A backup generator, so that the bulbs were glowing weakly for two or three seconds, and then total darkness again.
\nWhen I was finished, I had trouble walking. The muscles in my anus were shot as if I had Charlie horse in my rectum. A man, the owner, was whimpering behind the counter. Walter Pfuser stood over him with his belt off, apologizing. I learned later that my screams had sent Walter into a fit of paranoia. Believing this was some kind of trap, he had removed his belt and whipped the man on the back of the neck with the metal clasp. We exited out the front door. People were crowding into the streets in the darkness. The entire city was blacked out. There wasn\u2019t a single light, save for a helicopter in the near distance. It was loud enough so that it had to be some kind of police helicopter, and was equipped with a search light, which it waved up and down the side of an invisible structure in the distance, like some carefully controlled second sun.<\/p>\n
In the vehicle, I began rummaging in my briefcase a second time for anything to eat. They say uppers typically kill the appetite, though that wasn\u2019t my experience. I felt starved, and I even began turning over pens and picking at pieces of paper, thinking about eating them. I wondered what it would be like to unload my pistol and swallow one of the bullets. What would it taste like? How would I have to swallow to make sure that it went down my throat easily? Would I have to lubricate it? But then I remembered the cup of mayonnaise in my shirt pocket. I took the plastic lid off and began licking the ramekin ferociously, pursing my lips to suck the clumps off the side. I strained the muscle in my tongue so that I could guide it properly in the tiny plastic corners that rimmed the bottom and get any of the remaining sauce.
\n\u201cWhat kinds of people does the Worm associate with? What are its friends?\u201d
\nWalter Pfuser\u2019s voice brought me back, and I realized I had been snarling and unaware of it.
\n\u201cFriends\u2026? There was mention of a boy\u2026 some militant nihilist that ended up shooting himself, a disciple of Mainl\u00e4nder and highly suspicious of Jews. Then there was an Indian with a ketamine problem\u2026 he was distanced from the group after he started playing with himself at one of his own house parties\u2026\u201d
\n\u201cAnd his parents?\u201d
\n\u201cThe Worm told me his father was a \u2018fucking pussy,\u2019 his words\u2014I never met him. Again, I didn\u2019t see much of the Worm outside of the clinic\u2026 it was all a very controlled environment. Liabilities and such. He was some kind of a lawyer, maybe even a corporate lawyer. He had to work in business. They had money, and the mother never worked\u2014 I don\u2019t think she ever left her bed. Actually, I know she didn\u2019t\u2014the Worm said so.\u201d
\nWalter began talking about the job of a lawyer in relation to his book. Laws on the books were a primitive concept, he said, because hierarchies, necessitated by value systems, were largely arbitrary. \u201cIt largely comes down to this: think about terrorism\u2014so what? The building stands, it explodes. People suffer, or they don\u2019t. What\u2019s the axiom here? \u2018Suffering is bad?\u2019 And by the way, I don\u2019t think you\u2019d really want to make that claim. Isaac Newton apparently endured horrible neglect in his childhood. Van Gogh was tormented his entire life.\u201d He had this idiosyncrasy when he was philosophizing, or maybe it was speed, where, when he got revved up, his fingers would start dancing in the air as if he was delicately but quickly playing one of Chopin\u2019s etudes on an imaginary piano, raised just above and about a eight inches in front of his nose.
\nI realized Walter Pfuser\u2019s expression never changed. He reminded me of a childhood friend that had been locked up when, suddenly over the course of a few weeks, he began believing aliens were chasing him. He was institutionalized for two months, and when he was released he had a completely flat and disinterested face at all times. He even spoke as if he was incredibly bored but knew there was nothing else to do. The major difference was that this old acquaintance of mine would suddenly burp in the middle of other people\u2019s sentences, blow spit bubbles, and point out individual cars in traffic and ask if they were following him. Other than that, they had that same completely muted face.
\nThe streets and sky were completely black and silent like a country road. The headlights were the totality of my vision, save for the singular helicopter bright like Venus in early spring, occasionally disappearing behind the skyscraper that was still invisible in the night. The road would lead us directly to whatever was happening in the banking complex. The night was hot and humid, and my sticky shirt had begun to itch, especially around the collar. My stomach began to ache from a buildup of gas. I suddenly remembered how hungry I was. I felt as if I was going to starve. I opened the glove box to see if he was hiding food inside of it from me, and then the center console.
\n\u201cDr. Pfuser, where are we?\u201d My hotel was only four miles from the apartment complex in which the Worm was nesting.
\n\u201cI\u2019ve been lost this entire time. I actually can\u2019t see a single thing. I can\u2019t read any of the street signs.\u201d
\n\u201cI\u2019m starved,\u201d I moaned. I was lightheaded and weak. I looked at the clock on the dash. We had been driving in circles for 3 hours.
\n\u201cMaybe if I can find a main road I can figure out how far we are from the Worm. It shouldn\u2019t take long.\u201d
\nI couldn\u2019t wait, and I told him so. My appetite and nervous system were closely linked, and the former wasn\u2019t easily satisfied, so that my thoughts would become noisy, soured by dozens familiar voices that condescended me in correlation with the intensity of my hunger. Then, images of a sexual nature would begin to creep in. A man\u2019s ringed hand, running up a woman\u2019s milky thigh, slowly lifting a black satin cocktail dress in the chiaroscuro of an orange, warm car light against the leather seating of a limousine. The slightly stubbled jaw easing open a mouth painted dark red, the tongue playfully but slowly probing between the teeth, the hand pushing the underside of the breast underneath the dress. I was beginning to panic as the visions grew more lucid and more real\u2014my stomach turning and throat growing dry.
\n\u201cI think I\u2019d very much like it if you would pull over,\u201d I squeaked, in the most desperate and commanding voice I could muster, \u201cand so that I may get something to eat.\u201d
\nWe came upon a giant white grocery store that dimly glowed in the moonlight so that it only barely had the presence of a shadow. The parking lot was still one-fourth full despite the fact that the store, like the rest of the city, was devoid of light. The automatic doors were stuck in an open position. He parked the car and I entered alone.
\nThe inside was completely black. Figures were sliding around me in the dark, behind the shelves, and occasionally their brown flesh would catch remnants of light from the outside, so that they had the sheen of a beaver or otter\u2019s fur before vanishing into the opaque black. It would have been silent as well if not for the small and quiet noises of packaging being moved around, or the soft patter of feet. My hands were moving of their own accord and in separate patterns, waving on each side of me and striking at different objects like two snakes each with their own agenda. I was deep into a kind of frenzy. My left hand had torn open a cardboard box of chocolate snack cakes and fished one of them out, bringing it to my mouth still in its packaging. I hadn\u2019t even noticed, and so I chewed the cake while it was still entirely in its wrapper and sucked on the squishy plastic while my right hand delicately massaged the outer wrapping of a bag of potato chips. I could feel their hard edge against the soft and thin polymer, and I squeezed the outside to hear one crunch. I began lifting things into the handbasket as the wrapper in my mouth slowly came undone and a sweet and bready dampened lump eased out. I had become voracious, so that neck and mouth were beginning to take on a life of their own, so that I could have gnashed my teeth onto and through the sacks of food. I imagined myself as a rat, chewing my way into a hole, sliding my body into a bag filled with grains, eating my way to freedom as I swam upwards, inhaling my meals while my belly, thighs, and ankles swelled. I imagined my teeth juicing thick globs of macaroni, drinking warm mouthfuls of my own saliva and cheese sauce.
\nI felt safe in the dark, and even free. I could tell I was in a wider area because the sounds of movement seemed to come in a wider range, and I had more pronounced movement. I was swinging my arms as I confidently waddled into the new space. I drew some round object to my lips, though too quickly, so that I rubbed it against my cheek briefly before nibbling at it, making small licks at the object. Then, I crunched through more than half of it and swallowed this portion whole so that its size, along with the texture of the skin on the object, immediately irritated my throat on the way down, even choking me a bit. I used my finger to force down the remaining portion to push down the other half, swallowing deeply. My neck lunged off of my shoulders, pulling the bones and tendons, towards a mound made up of these small orbs and I inhaled one whole then smashed it with my jaw. A seed or a stem or a piece of a core bit back against my teeth, but my neck swung like a flailing arm deeper into the mound, sucking up more and gnashing them.
\nWatch me feed. I must have moved to where they kept the frozen meats, because I could feel the cool refrigeration. The cold air actually felt sharp against my sweat, and I realized my hair was completely damp. I was so excited, in fact, that my heart was squeezing and pumping ferociously, so that it even energized the inside of my ears. I wasn\u2019t certain what kind of meat was on that section of the aisle because whatever was inside the packages was raw and ground and mildly spiced\u2014perhaps Italian sausage from the taste of the first bite. I had clawed a little tear into the side of one of the plastic packages and was squeezing a bubble of the ground meat out of the side which I was snapping at with my lips. Then, I grabbed both ends of the cylindrical package and pushed hard, and ran my tongue flat against it so as not to let any drip out, and when I reached the opening I began lapping it up as I flattened both sides with my hands.<\/p>\n
Back outside, I could see Walter snorting another spoonful of the monkey water through the car window. As I sat back into my seat, my pockets crinkled, stuffed with aluminum packages of tarts and strudels.
\n\u201cYou know, this was almost approved by the Air Force,\u201d Walter said calmly, matter-of-factly. \u201cIt was tested on fighter pilots who would need to stay awake for long flights. It\u2019s perfectly fine\u2014it\u2019s harmless. They probably give it to children\u2014and if they don\u2019t, they will.\u201d He had been reorienting himself and the directions to figure out how we could get to the Worm fastest\u2014immediately through downtown. It was about ten minutes, even with congested traffic, because we were already directly outside the center. In fact, I could clearly make out the siding of the police helicopter that had been hovering at the bank complex skyscraper, the only light in the entire city. Now, though, a larger and second one had come up, and was circling the south and west sides of the building, while the smaller one alternated between the opposites. We were moving again into the black and solid night.
\nNow that my mind was clearing itself, the situation came to me in full force. Walter Pfuser! Imagine! In my own department I was the object of mockery, even though I was an associate professor I was relegated the introductory courses, often given to adjuncts and PhD students, and largely forbidden from discussing my work in class. And then? A joint publication with Walter Pfuser?
\nWalter Pfuser said: \u201cI\u2019ve heard Socrates\u2019 \u2018divine sign\u2019 described as auditory hallucinations. Hamlet was a victim of major depressive disorder, resulting in the hallucinations of his father. Reductive, a bit, but still.\u201d
\n\u201cSo?\u201d
\n\u201cDoes the Worm have a historical precedent?\u201d
\nThe intersections were suddenly filled with dozens of cars taking turns hesitantly on whether to go or stop at places where the streetlights usually managed the flow of traffic, honking, jerking their brakes as people darted into the street to cross.
\n\u201cNot that I know of, no.\u201d
\n\u201cNero?\u201d
\n\u201cThe Worm is soft; you misunderstand this fact. It\u2019s unfit for the gauntlet of politics. Nero had to have a spine, even as a ruthless lover of pleasure,\u201d I explained. \u201cThe Worm is new. We are examining where the exact line between the present and the future dissipate.\u201d
\nBut what if it spreads?
\n\u201cIs it genetic or environmental? Does the Worm breed?\u201d
\nI knew what he was pressing at and I didn\u2019t want to discuss the sex life of the Worm. Instead, I took the other angle. If the Worm was biological, it would have suffered in any other period, and immensely. It was not that the Harkin Worm was previously impossible to have existed, but rather that it certainly wouldn\u2019t have survived, or adapted psychically. The more I spoke, the more I began to ponder the allowance of the Worm. I became acutely aware of the gun in my briefcase. Why had I brought it, anyways? I suppose I often took a pistol with me, even to the University where it\u2019s discovery would have cost me my job. Just in case a situation with a student or a member of the faculty ever got too heated and needed to be taken care of.
\nShould I kill the Harkin Worm?
\nTraffic became sparse again but replaced by a magnificent crowd. Walter had completely let off the gas, so that the car moved at its default speed. We could only see them in the fan of light from the vehicle, so that they moved in and out of our artificial field of vision in a mass of faces and bodies. The crowd seemed to constantly ebb within two feet from the front bumper, as if we were slowly guiding a liquid wave of people away. Occasionally, a stray elbow or shoulder would press and patter against the windows on the left and right of Walter and I, which was the only audible sound save for the deafening blades of the two helicopters above. The entrance to the bank complex, being some seven or eight feet elevated from the sidewalk and street, was clearly visible. A man emerged from the large glass doors and lifted his hand with four fingers raised, mouthing (or saying): \u201cThere\u2019s four!\u201d
\nThe crowd immediately shifted and pressed harder in the direction of the complex. A female reporter awkwardly but quickly strutted with her backside and thighs pulled in towards her torso to maintain her balance in high heels. The beating of bodies against the side of the car intensified, and people cutting out in front of the car were forced to come upon it more closely, so that they balanced against the hood with their arms as they moved across.
\nThe larger of the two helicopters jerked its searchlight across the glass window sidings of the building, so that it refracted through the tinted windows with the power of a laser, breaking into a deep green from the panels it pierced. For just a moment, that sliver of green light cut across the crowd directly to my right, revealing them as ghoulish, expressionless, and lost, before the stoplight was quickly cut back towards the center of the building, immediately erasing the image.
\nWe moved back out into the ring of traffic, which then slowly fell away also into industrial blocks and apartments, often with wooden ground-level balconies littered with discarded furniture and rusted grills, ugly plastic yard toys like a duck slide covered in grime. After two minutes, Walter wheeled the suburban next to the sidewalk, put it in park, and turned off the headlights. We had arrived.
\nWhen the Worm opened the door, still latched, I immediately remembered those shameful eyes that he refused to lock with another. He had learned some trick, probably in another clinic, to look instead at the person\u2019s nose, but it was obvious enough to be noticeable and made it even creepier than the usual limp neck in people who lack confidence. In fact, he had a lack of sureness that reflected a total disengagement of the moment, as if all of reality was gossiping about him, including the trees, and he knew it\u2014but he was also far enough removed, and for so long, that it could no longer drive him mad. He shut the door, undid the latch, and let us in. Walter used the light on his phone to illuminate the room.
\nThe apartment looked like a homeless shelter had been burglarized. The inside smelled like marijuana, body odor, and some pungent and cheesy TV dinner had been recently cooked. There was a handprint of chocolate with streaming fingers that spread across the wall for four feet, leading to the light switch. The carpet crunched at my feet, due to these mysterious clear and dark brown balls of wax that had fused with the fibers. There was a disgusting beige and sea green sofa that had black clumps of what looked like tar stuck in the fabric and the back was leaking orange foam from a tear that went across the entire length of its back paneling. The coffee table was littered with different devices for smoking marijuana: a blowtorch, waterpipes with multiple compartments connecting to a single bowl, the water dirty wherever there was any.
\nWalter Pfuser gasped. He removed a small voice recording device I didn\u2019t even know he had and began speaking into it. \u201cI\u2019m with Professor of Psychology K. McDaniel. We\u2019ve arrived at the Worm\u2019s location. It\u2019s incredible.\u201d He looked like the first explorer to study an ice cavern. He was already moving through the apartment like he owned it, picking up discarded pill bottles off of the kitchen counter and reading them aloud: \u201cClonazepam. Take two daily for anxiety or as instructed by a doctor.\u201d Adderall. Something kind of muscle relaxer. Something for depression.
\n\u201cWell?\u201d I said from the inside of the refrigerator, \u201cThis is Dr. Pfuser himself\u2014 go on, tell him about your mother.\u201d I was blindly scavenging.
\nThe Worm was deeply bitter. \u201cIt\u2019s funny, watching you both strut around with this air of superiority, like your proud of yourselves\u2026 your privileges.\u201d Its words came out like a cautious twig prodding a swamp to find its depth.
\nWalter was so beside himself with ecstasy at the entire scene that he was riffing into the recording device. \u201cImagine,\u201d he said into it, \u201creality made manifest as a kind of rubber machine, or maybe each part composed of a fatty and fleshy material, ergonomically designed\u2014\u201d he paused, examining the worm to take a calculation, \u201c\u2014ergonomically designed for a man 6\u20191, 6\u20192. Each movement draws the worm in deeper itself a kind of blanket of warmth, relaxing its muscles even adapting itself to the worm\u2019s brain. The creature is suspended in a state of constantly wanting and constantly receiving.\u201d
\nThe Worm was scolding me now: \u201cYou couldn\u2019t even imagine. Suffering itself is a kind of blessing. I\u2019m the only man in the world with this curse\u2014the cursed with the blessing to have anything I could ever want. All I ever had was opportunity, all I ever had was safety and comfort. I\u2019ve been coaxed into my own trappings!\u201d
\n\u201cWhat about the body?\u201d Walter said.
\n\u201cTell him about the body,\u201d I told the Worm.
\n\u201cThe body is inseparable from pleasure\u2014\u201d the Worm said. It explained that pleasure was its body, as was its entitlement to good things, which it had not only grown accustomed to, but inseparable from. Because of this, it continued, everything outside of its own endless demands, and even the success of others, was physically harmful to its being. \u201cI am a modern victim of corporeal punishment,\u201d the worm said. \u201cEvery act of ascent in others is my own lashings. The nature of my suffering is that I have never suffered.\u201d
\nWalter repeated the line back into his device: \u201cThe nature of my suffering is that I have never suffered.\u201d He looked amazed, circling the Worm with a look of distrust like a crocodile handler, the skulking Worm defeated and collapsed in the center.<\/p>\n
When we had finished, I watched the traffic dispersing from whatever had happened at the banking complex. The excitement had ended, the helicopters had landed, and now the crowd had split up and poured over into side streets, slowly exiting and plainly visible from the landing where Walter and I stood. The power was still out citywide. A few frozen chicken nuggets I had claimed at the grocery store had melted in my back pocket, which was now damp.
\nWalter was calm and contemplative, and yet also beside himself, which was easy to see even in someone so unemotive. Seeing Walter so impressed was, in fact, the zenith of my career, unfolding right now, and even justified the toil and humiliation I had endured back at the academy. I considered myself a success, and even a budding legend. Not in the making, but in the moment. How many of my own colleagues had ever won the recognition of any academic that wasn\u2019t some blatant and self-aggrandizing stooge? What, for once, did their opinion matter? And to have the gall to demand that I, K. McDaniel, not speak about my publications\u2014when I\u2019d be read by their children, their children\u2019s children!
\nWhatever transpired downtown struck me as idiotic, especially since these people were so near a major event, even the most major in this early century at least, in psychology. Only a few blocks! Of course, like the light of a star, the biggest events in academia always take place years before they reach the ears and eyes of the public.
\nI imagined myself at the bank complex that night instead, pacing back and forth behind the large glass doors at the entrance, seeing the commotion and hysteria outside. I\u2019d step out into the video cameras, reporters firing thousands of questions over each other so that they melded into a deafening white noise, the spotlight of the helicopter illuminating my glasses, so that they shined bright like bulbs themselves in front of my piglet eyes.
\n\u201cI think I\u2019d very much like it if you\u2019d all please be quiet and direct your attention to me,\u201d I\u2019d say. \u201cMy name is Professor K. McDaniel, Doctor of Psychology\u2026\u201d
\nAnd who was that, next to this pale whale with the sticky bangs? Why, it\u2019s Walter Pfuser!
\nI\u2019d be glowing in the light, like a suited, pear-shaped angel engorged at the hips. I\u2019d tell them: \u201cLook at me, look at me! Ladies and gentlesirs, I would like to present to you the most important discovery in modern psychology: The Harkin Worm\u2026!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Harkin Worm By Will Parkinson \u201cYes and my eternal gratitude\u2014ten thousand thank-you\u2019s, inlaid with gold leaf upon stationary scented with lilac, or perhaps lily-of-the-valley\u2026\u201d This will be my opening statement when I present the culmination of my feverous four years of research to the American Philo-Psychological Society, the boon of my career: The Harkin … [DO NOT CLICK]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"entry","1":"post","2":"publish","3":"author-anonymous","4":"post-851","6":"format-standard","7":"category-slush"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lampbylit.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lampbylit.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lampbylit.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lampbylit.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lampbylit.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=851"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lampbylit.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":852,"href":"https:\/\/lampbylit.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851\/revisions\/852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lampbylit.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lampbylit.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lampbylit.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}