Wormwood.
Wormwood
TW/ Suicide, body horror, gore, mental health.
Part 1
The bright fluorescent light buzzed over the small round table, papers scattered across it as Jeremy and his social worker stared at eachother with no words to speak.
Her hands fidgeted with the small ink pen she was writing with, her lips parted and her eyes unblinking.
Click
“Jeremy. How long are we going to do this?”
Click
He didn’t speak.
Click
“You’ve been in here what.. 3 months now? And we are yet to see any progress in your condition.”
Click
His hands began to sweat, his eyes looking down to his lap. The shame was too much.
Click
“Why don’t you just let me die.”
Her hand stopped clicking the top of the pen, and her heart sunk deep into her chest.
“Jeremy, we’ve been over this, life gets better. It only ends when you allow it to end, have you been doing the exercises we talked about?”
The silence was deafening, his mouth became dry and he looked up. “No.”
She exhaled and for the first time in the three months she had been with Jeremy, she was hopeless.
Jeremy walked out of the room and back into the lounge area, the large bright blue chairs sat in front of the box Tv that clearly hadn’t been upgraded since 2004. He plopped down into the cold hard chair and sunk. The local news played at a low volume, the newscaster talking about another recent tragedy to add to the list. Jeremy closed his eyes for a moment and exhaled.
“Long day?” Came a shrill and overly loud voice from the chair across from him. When he opened his eyes he was greeted with Beth, a 56 year old woman who clearly had seen better days. “I had a long day too, they didn’t serve the sandwich I wanted for lunch. I’ve told them I hate porkchops but they never listen to me!” She whined.
Jeremy had heard rumblings from the nurses about Beth. Some say she’s been here since she was 23. But a more realistic rumor was that she had been in here for two years. Two long years of sitting, watching tv and eating dissatisfying pork chops. It was a terrible way to live.
Jeremy gave a half hearted smile and looked back at the tv, this time they were talking about a meteor that astronomers were keeping a close eye on. The reporter stated that they expected nothing to come from it, but with the world’s luck it would probably destroy the Earth and as far as Jeremy was concerned, he couldn’t care less.
“They said I was going home this Christmas, my aunt is picking me up.” Beth said to a passing nurse, one she was all too familiar with. Little did Jeremy know she had been saying this every Christmas since she got here.
The dinner call came out over the speakers, and all the residents of the ward stumbled into the dining hall with their slippers and half open eyes. Jeremy sat down, being greeted by John. An average business man who was only here because his wife and him got into a heated argument that ended with a machete in his hand and a threat in his mouth. Beth and Daryl sat at the table across from them, Daryl was a 70 year old homeless man who was only here for the free dinner and warm bed. The nurses allowed it, it was the least they could do for a dying man.
Finally by herself was Sandra, her baggy eyes examining the food as her hand scratched on her patchy skin. The withdrawals were settling in, but her family didn’t care. They would rather leave her here to rot with it than see her on the streets.
Everyone dug into their cold meatloaf, and the nurses wrote away in their charts. Documenting everyone’s eating habits and doodling to pass the time.
8 PM was call time. Jeremy walked into the soundproof room, pictures of open fields and smiling people holding hands surrounding him. He picked up the phone and dialed.
“Hey Mom” his eyes fell to his feet and traced the lines of the tiled floor.
“Jeremy, what do you need?”
“I was just uh.. calling to see how you were doing.”
“Fine.” The coldness was enough to make his heart palpitate.
“Look mom, I’m sorry. I don’t want to be like this.”
“I know. But you can’t just threaten to harm yourself every time you don’t get your way.”
“But I-“ she cut him off.
“Until you get better Jeremy, I don’t want to hear from you. If you’re going to do it then save us all the trouble and do it soon.”
And with that the click of the phone rang in his ears with the same power as a door slamming.
Her words stung
Click
Was she wrong in saying that?
Click
Maybe she was right..
Click click
The line kicked back on, and a low hum of breathing filled his ear as someone was now on the line.
“Mom?” He asked thinking she came back to apologize. Nobody replied back. The fluorescent light above him began to flicker and a sense of intense dread filled Jeremy’s body from head to toe. His head began to pound like a war drum and his heart raced beating faster and faster like it would burst his chest open and he would drop dead then and there.
A mummer came onto the line, practically incomprehensible to his ear. But in his head came the visions of hanging bodies. They dangled one by one, swaying back and forth on a rope attached to nothing but an endless void. The mummering filled Jeremy’s every thought, more visions of corpses laying on the ground, their arms and legs twisted in unnatural positions. They were an abomination of contorting limbs in incorrect places. Some had their legs where their arms should be, and some had no appendages at all.
Jeremy found himself standing beside them, hearing the creaking of the rope continuing to sway in the nonexistent breeze above him. The bodies around him groaned and shifted, trying to stand or move but to no avail.
“Look.” A low voice filled his head, no words were spoken around him but he could hear it as if the entity was right next to him.
His eyes shifted from the bodies and to the black void before him.
With a flash of red light a large sphere appeared, spinning halos circled around it in an infinite loop with eyes spaced across it by a few inches. Small eyeballs covered the sphere, blinking and looking around. Fire and sulfur filled the air as the constantly spinning sphere burned in an endless flame. It reeked of rotten flesh, exposed hearts and organs beating and pumping in the spaces that weren’t occupied by eyes.
It was hell itself.
“Bow.”
Jeremy felt his legs give way, he wasn’t given a choice.
Words were unable to escape his lips, and his head was filled with agonizing screaming and a constant assault of words and mummers.
His head began to pound, pulsing over and over again. The beating of his brain, the constant noises and the intense pressure were beginning to prove too much for him to handle. He couldn’t handle it. This thing was going to kill him.
Pulses of energy began to push out of the sphere, shaking his body with every wave that passed over him.
Crack
He could feel his arm break in half.
Crack
Then his leg.
Crack
He could feel his skull start to splinter, the crunching filling his ears.
Crack
His ribs.
Crack
His eyes began to turn red, blood filling his head and lungs.
Click
Jeremy let out a shrill scream, sweat dripping down his face and his body jumping out of the chair. The phone fell to the ground, and the lights above him let off a steady hum. Nobody was on the line. His body was fine. And he had just seen hell.
End of part one.