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Squirm
A Guest Quarters story
by
Doug Goodman

Everybody should have a thirtieth birthday like Kyle Williams.  Morning sex, nooner, and an afternoon spent picking up his new WaveRunner.  It was everything he had hoped for and more.  Then there were exclusive dinner reservations downtown.  He told his wife it was the perfect birthday. 

"Are you sure there is nothing else you want for your birthday?"  Serie asked.  Serie had a German accent.  She was from Ramstein.

"Well," Kyle confessed, "There is that thing that you do with your tongue..."

She giggled and professed that if he drove her home quickly she would show it to him.  Another significant birthday present was the lack of a speeding ticket since he cannonballed home at 20 miles over the limit.

The picture in Kyle's mind showed a young, thin homeless man cringing at the side of a white stucco wall.  He had long hair and a scruffy piebald beard matted with tears and blood.  His shorts and shirt were rags.  Blood slid down the backside of his leg. 
"I'm okay," he said.  "Just get the hell away from me, Kyle.  Get away from me!"

Hot and sweating, Kyle woke at midnight.  He carefully maneuvered out from under his wife, crawled into a pair of silk briefs, and poured himself a glass of lemonade.  He brought the shoebox of old photos out to the back deck, placed them on the patio table, and began sorting through them.  Two little boys sitting in the seat of a tractor.  One boy lifting a brown puppy, the other a white one.  Two boys playing on a swing.  Swimming in a community pool.  Sharing birthday cake.

He picked up the picture of them eating cake and kissed the one boy.  "Happy Thirtieth." 

Kyle wondered where Garrison was and what he was doing on his birthday.  He hoped Garrison was alive and someplace dry and safe.  He hoped he had not gotten "rolled" for cash; hoped he was not breaking the law to satisfy a high.  Damn, sometimes just thinking about Garrison is hard.  The worst was the hoping.  You had to find a way to hope without hoping. 

Kyle wiped a tear and felt angry at himself.  How many tears had he wasted on Garrison?  He looked out in his yard.

Somebody was walking up the alleyway.  Nobody did that sort of thing - not in this neighborhood.  Kyle tried to see him better, but the porch light only adumbrated a dark phantom. 

"Hey, you," the voice called out.  "You Kyle Williams?"

"Can I help you?" Kyle said.  He grabbed the only weapon within reach, a small stainless steel hand cultivator lying in a nearby flowerpot.

"I'm here to help.  I have a proposition for you."

"I'm armed.  Take one step inside this yard, and I'm gonna tear you from limb to limb.  My wife's calling the cops."

But the man was already inside the gate.  He was short and built, but not muscular.  His wire-rim glasses reflected in the light.

"I'm warning you.  I'll call for my pit bull."

"In this neighborhood?  Nobody owns a dog like that.  I want to talk to you about Garrison."

"Come into the light where I can see you," Kyle said.  The man complied.  Standing in the middle of his yard, he appeared harmless.  Button-down shirt, pressed slacks, leather loafers.  Manila folder tucked under his arm like he was stopping at a neighbor's house before a late-night run to the office.  He could have been any number of Kyle's neighbors.  Kyle motioned to the swivel rocker opposite him.  The black man sat down.

"What do you know of Garrison?  Is he still in Lubbock?  Has he gotten a girl pregnant?  Is he dead?"  These were the nightmares that plagued his dreams.

"My name is Daryl.  My daughter is Dakota.  She is a good girl.  Has her whole life in front of her.  About a year ago she got involved with some nasty people, the kind you pray your kids don't get involved with.  I tried to stop her, tried to get her back to church and away from that lifestyle, but there was nothing I could do.  Children can be obstinate that way."

Daryl stopped.  Considered something internally.  When he continued his story, he chose his words carefully and with great pause.

"She dated this guy who was dealing.  Small-time.  Then he got her pregnant.  My baby had twins.  She had to drop out of college.  She was going to be a doctor.  Now she's working the graveyard shift at Denny's.  I want to change her life.  That's what I need you for."

"What can I do to help?"

"Your brother.  Your twin.  Garrison.  If you had the chance, if you could change him so that he wasn't on drugs - would you?"

To the side of the backyard lay the WaveRunner on its trailer.  Kyle pointed to the WaveRunner and said, "My brother always talked about buying one of those.  Used to, I didn't care one way or the other, but ever since...it's like I'm making up for his life, like I'm living for two."  Kyle wrapped his fingers around the back of his neck, exhaled, then confessed.  "Not a day goes by I don't miss Garrison.  I regret never trying to help him.  All of this means nothing without him."

"What if I told you I can make your birthday wish come true?  That you could go back in time and stop him from getting hooked on drugs?"

Kyle's mouth formed a rictus of confusion.  To answer, Daryl opened up the manila folder.  Inside lay a thin computer, like a Gameboy, but longer and with a full keyboard and side buttons.  "What is that?" Kyle asked.

"This is a time machine.  It's called the nexus computer.  I have programmed it to take you back ten years in time to Lubbock, to just before your brother got hooked on drugs."

"What are you talking about?  This is crazy."

Daryl raised the computer to Kyle's view.

"Listen to me.  You have to pay attention to the screen.  It gives you the nexus points.  Those are moments where the timeline will be changed irreversibly.  Time's not as unstable as you think.  You can go back to the Age of Dinosaurs and traipse through the jungles all you want.  But if you don't pay attention and step on a particular flower at a particular time - hell, you could wipe out every pine tree in the modern world.  Or worse.  So you have to pay attention to the nexus points in red.  It's usually people.  Best don't contact them and don't let them see you or it could have drastic consequences.  Now, this blip - this one in green.  That's Alfonzo Torres.  The fiend who hooked your brother on drugs and convinced my daughter's boyfriend to start dealing."

"What am I supposed to do?  Talk him out of selling my brother drugs?"

"Lord, no.  Alfonzo Torres isn't human.  They call him Cucuy, which is the Spanish equivalent for boogey man, and he is every bit a monster.  Both merciless dealer and cutthroat, his business encompasses several of the world's most ruthless and best-paid biker gangs, if you ask the Feds.  So you can't bribe him, and you can't talk him out of something.  There is only one method for stopping something so wrong."

When he was a student at Texas, Kyle remembered a night when the power went out in the city, and the giant monolithic dorm he lived in fell dark.  There were no backup generators or emergency lights.  There was only the blackest darkness he had ever encountered.  It was so dark, he could not see his hand in front of his face.  Yet, years later, Daryl placed on the table a stygian gun of that same caliber of blackness.  Kyle didn't know what kind of gun it was, only that it was like a black hole that sucked the light from his outdoor lights.  Daryl loaded the chamber, released the safety, and put the gun back down.  It sounded heavy when it clunked on the table.

"Kill Alfonzo Torres and save your brother."

"I'm no killer."

"He is Herod.  Goliath.  Think of all the lives he's destroyed.  My daughter.  Your brother.  Dozens more.  Every life Alfonzo Torres touches is burned to ashes.  You can end this, Kyle."

Kyle stared at the black gun and the nexus computer for a long time, long after he agreed to kill Alfonzo Torres. 

***

Kyle changed into his best relaxed-fit jeans and favorite UT shirt before returning to 1995 Lubbock.  He had directed the computer to dump him into a downtown alley.  He had no idea where Alfonzo Torres lived, but Kyle thought he would more likely find him in the older, less "country" side of town. 

Why did he expect Lubbock to look different, like he was Marty McFly stepping into 1955?  Ten years is not fifty.  The downtown area looked the same.  Sure, the fashion had changed, but men and women dressed more or less like they did in his future. 

As he walked onto Broadway, Kyle glanced at the nexus computer, then realized he had exited the alleyway almost in front of a nexus point.  Crap!  He ducked into a clothing store and reviewed the nexus points.  This was going to be harder than he thought.  One step forward, two steps back. 

That's when he heard chortling.  Two kids stood at a clothing rack not far from him.  They were green, so he didn't have to tear out of the store.  The two teenagers were dressed in typical grunge - cut-off sweats and plaid flannels.  Kyle ignored them.

"What's up with your shirt, man?"  The one in a hoodie asked. 

His fashionista partner blurted out, "Texas - 2005 National Champions?  In your dreams.  Nebraska rules."

"Things change," Kyle said.

"Yeah, and some things stay the same forever!" hoodie shouted out as Kyle spelunked deeper into the store.

Kyle cursed his stupidity.  He had inadvertently drawn attention to himself.  He grabbed a nearby plain-colored shirt and paid for it at the register.

"Card didn't work," the Hispanic woman behind the register said.

Of course not, Kyle suddenly realized.  I didn't sign up for it for another three years!  He handed her some cash (thankfully still in the "old" currency), then changed shirts on the way out.  But he tucked his shirt in his pants.  No way was he leaving it behind.

Before leaving the store, he checked the nexus computer.  Green blips on this street.  But there was a red blip a few blocks down.  His heart dropped to his guts as he saw his brother's name in red.  The last time Kyle saw Garrison, he was doing time in the County lock-up for Burglary of a Habitation.  He had tried to steal some pawn-able items out of a garage.  The goal was to pawn the items and blow the money on more crack. 

Unfortunately, a neighbor saw him snooping around and called the cops. 

"But everything is fine," Garrison had told Kyle from the opposite side of a tiny window - the only way they could talk was through phones.

A young, thin man cringing at the side of a white stucco wall...stained with tears and blood...clothes were rags...blood slipping down the back of his leg...and Garrison saying "I'm okay.  Just get the hell away from me, Kyle.  Get away from me!"

Why the hell was everything always fine with Garrison?  No matter how deep he sunk in the shit, everything was rose-scented and under control.  "I've met some of the right people in here, so don't worry about me.  I'm protected.  And they say I may get out early.  I'll go to a halfway house for addicts."

"Good, good," Kyle responded perfunctorily.  He was learning to detect bullshit.

"You have no idea how hard it is for me.  How tough my life is," Garrison said.  A part of Kyle hoped he never would.  The other part wanted to know it all, especially how it started.  One day Garrison was living in his own apartment and making his own money.  Kyle was away at college.  When he returned, his brother was a crackhead.  A crackhead he hadn't seen since that afternoon with the blood and the pleading.

Kyle didn't give a damn if he was a red blip on the screen.  He had to see him.  Catching up was difficult.  He wanted to come at an angle from behind to remain unseen.  That meant venturing three blocks off course to avoid other red blips, then backtracking through an alley.

Walking around the street corner, Kyle saw Garrison.  His back turned, he was talking to some kids on the street.  That was the thing about Garrison.  He had a natural ease with children.  It was a wasted talent, though, since nobody in their right mind would let Garrison around their kids.

Christ, Kyle thought.  I forgot how muscular he was.  This version of Garrison was a man not long removed from being a varsity cornerback.  The man crumpled on the ground had been a diehard crackhead for years.  His body ravaged by addiction.  He had dropped lots of weight and almost all his muscle mass.  Kyle realized that his memory of Garrison was a ghost of the man he once was.

Garrison turned around, and Kyle dived behind a Ford Ranger, hoping his brother did not see him.  Luckily, Kyle was alone on this side of the street.  His face and shirt were now covered in good Lubbock grit, though, and spit it out.  That was something he had not wished to get reacquainted with. 

Kyle peeked over the truck's hood.  Garrison was back at the opposite corner, but now talking to a bedraggled stranger.  Despondent, Kyle wondered (not for the first time) if this endeavor was completely fruitless.  Was Garrison destined to be a dreg of society? 
The roar of choppers thundered down the street, reminding Kyle of what Daryl had said about the motorcycle gangs.  Like the undead rampaging through a small town, the bikers had cold, reptilian eyes and dead, sarcophagus smiles.  The bikers turned away from Garrison and sped down another road.  From a distance, Kyle followed them.  Two of them were blips, but as long as he kept his distance, he would be okay.  Two blocks down, the red blips turned green, and Kyle marveled at the intricacies of time.  He wondered what about the past few blocks made those riders red, but turned them green now?  Likely he would never know.

The cruise ended at an old dilapidated warehouse.  Opposite it stood an abandoned office building.  While the bikers parked, Kyle scouted out a room with a good view of the warehouse, then watched the bikers party at the warehouse.  A young Hispanic man covered in tattoos came out and shook hands with the bikers.  The screen told Kyle that this was the infamous Alfonzo Torres, but Kyle called it hope.

Hope looked like the boogey man.  His face was deep-fried in fat keloid scars that, along the neck, became entwined in the most vulgar graffiti.  He was tall and imposing, and he had a wide McFarlane smile.  If the bikers were the undead, Cucuy was their lich.

While waiting, Kyle discovered a drop-down menu next to Alfonzo's name.  After selecting "Neg Chart," a new screen popped up.  It depicted a dendriform that branched out from Alfonzo to all the lives he touched.  Like a virus, he infected everyone:  turned this person into a dealer, made this one a thief, impregnated this woman and left her.  Murder.  Theft.  Rape.  The chart stretched through over a hundred lives that he had impacted.  In the middle resided Garrison Williams.  Just another kid Alfonzo Torres hooked on crack.  Clicking on Garrison opened up another chart filled with theft and lies.  It stopped at 2006, not that much older than Kyle's present.  Kyle searched through the nexus computer to find out what happened to Garrison in 2006, but he found nothing to answer his question.  Very well, then, he thought.  It's an eye for an eye...

The party started.  It undulated through the night on the waves of scurrilous music.  Always a new recruit stood sentry in the back-alley and watched over the bikes.  Half-way through the night, Kyle noticed the red-and-blues pause at the end of the alley.  The most recent guard (they changed out every hour or two) took a few steps forward and inconspicuously pulled a gun.  The patrol car moved on, and Kyle wondered aloud, "If this place is so nasty a cop won't get near it, what the hell am I getting myself into?" 

The party raved inside.  Kyle saw little because the windows were painted over, but somebody opened a few windows to let out smoke.  He saw half-naked and completely naked women slithering through crowds of men.  From time to time Kyle discovered Alfonzo escorting individuals up a stairwell.  Returned a few minutes later, a sick pallor to their face.

The plan, as Daryl had outlined to Kyle, was simple.  Once Alfonzo was executed (the word bloomed in his head like a mushroom cloud), Kyle would travel to 2080 and bury the gun in a previously selected field.  That way there would never be any traceability back to Kyle.

After four a.m., the last rusty bike backfired, then gunned away from the warehouse.  From the office building, Kyle planned his escape route.  Once Alfonzo was dead, Kyle would crawl through a good-sized rectangular window in the back of the warehouse.  The bikers would probably be too stoned and hung over to do anything to stop his escape.  As soon as he was out of sight, then he would punch the return button and go home to a better life.

Kyle checked the nexus computer.  No red blips means no problems.

Carefully, Kyle crept past several sleeping bikers, including the lone sentry, and slipped undetected into the warehouse.  Alfonzo slept in an old duct-taped Barcalounger throne.  He was completely alone.  Kyle double-checked the back room just to be sure, but it was empty.  Next to the back room, the stairs lifted to the second floor.  He had to be sure they were alone.

The stairs ended at a small clean corridor.  A red carpet led to the door at the end of the hallway.  Above the door was spray painted in flailing letters "ars longa vita brevis."

His gut told him to turn around, walk away.  Forget he'd ever been this deep into the pits of hell.  Yet his brain told him this was Garrison's world, and so a part of Kyle's life that had been severed and lost.  His eyes had to know what was behind that door.  He pushed it open.

Some things disturb a person, like your favorite team losing or a check not clearing.  These things pass.  But other things disturb you for life, like a stain in your memory.  Kyle knew the stains in this room could not be washed out.

The Gallery was designed to showcase gruesome sculptures that made Body Worlds seem like Kindergarten stuff.  Instead of showing humans playing chess or riding skinless horses, this art showed foul images of mutilated corpses.  Each piece was labeled, as if part of a gallery of high art.  "Spider hands."  "Gunhead."  "Eyes on You."  "Bloody Sunday."  Kyle felt dizzy, sickened.  Dropped to the floor next to one of several "Donation Buckets," each half-filled with vomit.  Kyle added to the donation, then crawled back to the wall and pulled himself up.  He felt weak all over. 

One piece disgusted him in particular.  She looked fresher than the others.  "Squirm," the label read.  The naked woman's eyes and mouth stitched shut, her hands sewn into her hips.  Live earthworms, glued to her mouth, hung out like Nyarlarthotep's writhing beard.
Kyle watched his hand reach out to her face.  Just as he was about to touch her, she shrieked through her stitched jaw and wiggled on her pedestal.  Kyle backed away, and she yelled louder.  He whispered to her to be quiet, but she wouldn't stop squirming.  He retreated from the gallery.

The Latin saying loomed over him.  Ars longa vita brevis.  "Art is long, life is short," Kyle said before walking downstairs and back into the empty warehouse.

Kyle stood over Alfonzo Torres.  He placed the gun barrel on the man's forehead and clicked off the safety.  Two white eyes shot up at him from down the barrel of the weapon.  The man said nothing.  Just waited. Sweat dappled Kyle's face.  He frowned in frustration and pushed the barrel of the gun into Alfonzo's forehead.

"If you're gonna kill me, pull the trigger," Alfonzo said.  Kyle's face bent into a visage of turmoil and shadow.  His hands shook.  A single rivulet of sweat waterfalled from his hairline.  He saw his brother, destroyed and crumpled.  But he couldn't.  Just couldn't.  "I have AIDS.  Nobody can stop the bugs inside me.  Kill me."

When he didn't pull the trigger, Alfonzo grabbed the black gun from Kyle.  Kyle fell back a few steps.  He started to cry.

"Oh, c'mon, whiteboy, don't cry.  It's not so bad.  What'd I do to you?  I don't even know you."  He looked at Kyle's face carefully. 

Caustic words sprayed from Kyle's mouth.  "You hooked my brother on drugs."

"Hey, ese, not my problem.  That's your problem.  Course, you being here makes it my problem now, know what I mean?"

Alfonzo looked back at the stairs.  "You see my gallery?"

Kyle said nothing.

"Good."

Alfonzo picked up some duct tape from a nearby table and tossed it to Kyle.  "Sit."  He pointed to a strong metal chair.  Kyle, in tears, sat.

"Tie yourself up."

"I've got a wife."

"And a BMW and a nice house and probably a big screen TV, but I don't give a damn.  Now tie yourself up or I will put a bullet through your brain basin, pendejo."

Kyle wrapped his left wrist in duct tape.  Then Alfonzo finished binding him down.
He threw the gun into a corner.  "Listen.  I can't have you, whoever the fuck you are, coming after me.  And I'm not ready to add a piece to my gallery.  But Cucuy wouldn't be Cucuy if he didn't teach you a lesson."

Alfonzo stared at a wheeled table full of needles, bags, old Tupperware, and doctor's supplies.  His eyes brightened.  "You need an autograph."

He pulled the wheeled table next to Kyle and grabbed the hypodermic.

Kyle said, "What are you going to do?  Are you going to make me overdose?"

"You kidding?  It's your lucky day.  I'm giving you a Cucuy special."

Alfonzo took the needle and stuck it in the back of Kyle's wrist.  It stung briefly, then his wrist went numb.

"Do you know what a Lubbock Tattoo is?  I didn't think so.  You don't look like the kind of person who'd know about a Lubbock Tattoo.  I learned about them the hard way."

Alfonzo held up his wrist.  His tattoo sleeves ended shy of his wrists, showing two scars.  A small puncture wound and a long mark across his wrist, like he had tried to commit suicide in the wrong direction and the wrong part of his arm.  "Mark of the Cyclops."
Alfonzo took out a scalpel.  Kyle struggled in the chair. 

"Keep struggling and your future will be an oblong box."  Then he flashed his very toothy grin at Kyle.  He made a small but deep incision towards the bottom of Kyle's wrist, where the hand meets the forearm. 

"Oh, God..." Kyle moaned.

"The arm is a curious thing.  I can cut into it without cutting into your meat and bone.  The guy who gave me my Lubbock Tattoo taught me that.  See?" 

Alfonzo demonstrated by folding back part of Kyle's skin.  Kyle's eyes rolled back and again he almost fainted.  Alfonzo slapped him.

"Don't you faint, faggot.  You have to stay awake.  This next part is the kicker." 

Alfonzo inserted a clamp into Kyle's arm to keep the hole open.  Then he opened one of the Tupperware boxes.  He held the box up so that Kyle could see its contents.

"You know what they used to call Mexicans back in the day?  Cucarachas."

The box was full of cotton balls and dead cockroaches. 

"They aren't dead.  I keep them drugged and sleepy.  Makes them docile, easier to work with."

With a pair of tongs Alfonzo removed a roach and placed it at the end of the puncture.  The roach stretched its spiny legs through a drugged haze.  Kyle watched in horror as Alfonzo slowly nursed the catatonic roach under Kyle's skin.  Kyle couldn't feel any pain, but that didn't stop him from moaning.  He felt its cold glabulous body brush against his hand as Alfonzo pushed it into his arm cavity.

"Shh, shh," Alfonzo whispered.  He worked as meticulous as a surgeon to push the roach into Kyle's arm.  "This is the tricky part.  If you squirm, you might kill him, and then we have to start over.  And you'll probably have pieces of roach stuck in your body forever.  Can you imagine what kind of infection a roach would give you?  They carry, like, billions of germs."

Finally, the last leg of the roach disappeared into his arm.  A bulge protruded from his wrist.

"Oh, God.  Oh, hell."

Alfonzo smiled.  "Look - no slime.  That means it's still alive.  That wasn't so bad, was it?"

Kyle vomited on the side of the chair.  Again.  Alfonzo laughed.  "That happens every fuckin time!  And only after the roach is in you!  Why is that?"

Kyle looked up at Alfonzo through pallid, watery eyes. 

"Now comes the easy part," Alfonzo said.  He shuffled through the table until he found some superglue.  "Good as stitches."

Alfonzo splurged the glue all over the incision.  In a falsely orotund voice, he ordered Kyle to "keep the wrist immobile, and don't forget to drink plenty of liquids."  He started laughing and walked away.  He came back with a bottle of whiskey and took a swallow. 

"See, you have two choices.  Everything is two choices.  I have AIDS.  I could kill myself, choice one, but I couldn't do it.  So choice two, I live like the dead man I am and do everything possible - the most inhuman acts - to get somebody to kill me.  I thought that somebody would be you."  Alfonzo leaned in close to Kyle, so close that Kyle could smell the awful putrescence spilling from his mouth.  "In a couple of hours, after the shit wears off, you'll start to get that tingly sensation.  About the same time, the roach is going to come to, but you'll ignore it.  You're going to tell yourself it's not real.  Trust me.  I know.  I went through this too, remember, cabrón?  You're going to tell yourself that's the anesthesia wearing off that's causing your arm to turn to pins and needles.  But it ain't.  It's the fuckin roach.  See, roaches can live up to ten days without air, and they love moist, dark places.  Get my drift?  It's going to start crawling in that little piece of heaven in your arm, and you're going to feel every motion.  You're even going to feel those antennae probing you as the cucaracha looks for its next meal.  The sensation will drive you crazy.  First you'll shake your arm, but that's only going to make the roach run around more.  Then you're going to try to scratch your arm cause it itches so damn much, but getting anywhere near the roach hurts like hell.  You're going to think about bashing your arm against something, but let's be honest.  You're in too much pain.  And when that roach takes its first bite of whiteboy pie, you are going to squeal.  If you're lucky, she'll make for the glue.  Sometimes that happens.  They want out since there is no air.  It will eat at your arm until, many painful hours later, that little brown head pokes out of your wrist like a prairie dog in summer.  But that's assuming it hasn't driven you crazy.  And you, whiteboy, it'll drive you crazy."

Alfonzo showed Kyle his arm and the second cut.  A raw cut.  Jagged.  The cut of a desperate man.  "See, that roach ain't just eating at your arm, it's eating at your brain.  You get scared and paranoid.  You wonder how much permanent damage it's doing.  You wonder if it's shitting in your arm and you think about all those bacteria and germs and viruses, and the damn feelers probing you from the inside.  That's when a knife starts to sound real good.  A simple cut and the roach could escape."

Alfonzo pulled a switchblade out of his backpocket.  "My gift to you."  He slipped it into Kyle's shirt pocket, then unstrapped him.  With Alfonzo's help, Kyle stood.  The world whirled around Kyle.  Nothing went right.  Alfonzo helped him to the front door.  He said as he kicked him to the corner:  "Art is shit you can get away with.  And if you come back again, culero, it'll be more than my autograph you get.  I'll make you a permanent part of my collection!"

***

Kyle sat glowering on the sidewalk, his surgically altered wrist on one knee, the nexus computer in the other.  His left eye twitched. 

He had met him to say good-bye.  He and Serie were moving to Houston.  He knew he would most likely never see Garrison again, but he needed to see him one last time.  Tell him to stay safe and try to quit the drugs.  Kyle picked him up - Garrison's body sunk in emaciation, like a refugee from some third-world country.  They ate at a diner and took a walk.  Kyle tried to say goodbye, but Garrison had other intentions.  Kyle refused to give him any money, though, and suddenly Garrison came at him.

Kyle knocked him down and started pummeling him over and over again.  His brother grabbed a board and hit him on the side of the head with it.  Kyle took it from him and beat him some more, cutting a gash on his leg.  His brother yelped, and Kyle stopped.  He threw the board over the wall.  Garrison curled up at the side of the white stucco wall and started to cry. 

"I'm okay," he said.  "I'll be fine, no thanks to you.  You just sit on your high perch and judge me.  Go away.  I'm okay.  Just get the hell away from me, Kyle.  Get away from me!"

This time, however, Kyle remembered the image clearly.  On Garrison's wrist, two scars, a slit and a puncture.  Mark of the Cyclops.  And there was nothing he could do to prevent it.

Kyle looked up at the white stucco wall where he had fought Garrison years ago.  His brother had a life Kyle could never accept or change, but in the end, it was his twin's life alone to live.  Suddenly, he missed his wife.  He missed the sound of her voice and the touch of her fingers clasped in his hand.  Kyle had a responsibility to his family, and Garrison was no longer part of that family.  Maybe if one day Garrison got clean...but that would be Garrison's decision, not Kyle's.  Some people you just have to dig out and live with the scar or spend the rest of your life squirming. 

Kyle thought of the woman in the art room.  Maybe there was something he could do.  Not for Garrison, but for the others - all the branches on the dendriform list.  Then the lump in his arm moved.  Kyle's eyes widened.

***

The highway was shrouded in darkness.  The Mercedes sat to the side of the road.  The Indian woman stood in the ditch in her black lehnga.  A stuffed bunny rabbit and flowers adorned the rise on the opposite side of the ditch. 

Kyle stepped out of his Roadster and approached the woman. 

"Who are you?" she asked.

"I'm here to make your wish come true.  If you could do anything to save your daughter, would you?"

"I would give anything to have her.  She was killed when some men on motorcycles ran her off the road."

"I know who did it.  And I know the man they were going to see.  I will help you."

The woman covered her face, wet with tears.  Kyle wrapped his arms around her to comfort her, his fresh Lubbock Tattoo covering his wrist.  One puncture mark, and one jagged slash.

END

Doug Goodman was raised in Lubbock, but now lives off the Texas Gulf Coast.  His publications include contributions to Tales of the Talisman, Space Westerns, and A Fly in Amber.  The idea for "Squirm" came to him when his story in the anthology Horrors Beyond was described as "the most squirm-inducing story."  Well, that had to be topped.  More information on his writing can be found at www.freewebs.com/douggoodman.

Story by Doug Goodman, Copyright 2008
Image by Rory Clark, Stopped Motion Photography, Copyright 2008