(Page 1 of 4) The Wrigglers by C.L. Fowler
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SUMMARY: i hate summaries. The pattern was exquisite. Waves of blues, yellows, greens radiated out from the center in smooth, contoured arcs. They were infinite, never ending. I imagined wheels within wheels, the biblical description of what might very well have been an alien spacecraft. I was lost in those shivers of color and thought.
But I was not alone and became suddenly aware of it.
"Guys, look at Rich! Check it out. Mwaaahahahuhuh!" That laughter... what species of alien did that come from? "He's gone, man! Mwaaahahahuhuh!"
I blinked. A ceiling fan? How long had I been staring at the ceiling fan?
Oh sweet momentary clarity, plague me not today. Please, let it be a hypnotizing device, just for one night.
And so I prayed to the imaginary gods of my world, begging for one night of complete desertion from reality. Begged and begged but try as I might their ears were closed to me. Those luscious bands of infinite color remained but so did the accursed ceiling fan.
I rolled over onto my side, facing the room that would inevitably be filled with people. It wasn't quite as bad as I had suspected. I counted four, five, six where I had expected to find at least ten or twelve. I rubbed my cheek against the carpet, feeling it squish and give way under my skin. That stuff would suck me in completely if I let my guard down.
They all stared at me, giggling. That sound echoed through every millimeter of the gray flesh in my skull. I saw it reverberating in there, bouncing through the curved sausage link segments. I would join them, this mass of cackling friends with faces like broken mirrors.
"What's up?" I said, sounding just as alien as the others. They laughed louder. One of them, disguising himself as my brother, Timothy, crawled my way and then sat cross-legged in front of me, leaning down so that his elbows rested on the floor and his face was less than a foot from mine. It seemed like that lean would take forever.
"Dude, are you ok?" he asked, with a smile that stretched wider than the confines of his face.
"Ooookaaay..." I sighed and spoke at the same time. It came out like the wind talking. "Yeah. Yeah I'm fine."
"All right..." He twisted himself back up to a sitting position. I stayed on the floor. "Come hang out with us. You're all... trapped in your own dimension and shit."
"I like it."
Timothy started to say something but a sound interrupted him. I was glad. Attempting an explanation of solitude at that point would take a life time of relearning English. It took a few seconds before I recognized the sound as the thump thump thump of someone knocking on the door. By the look on Timothy's face I assumed that his thought processes had taken a similar pause. An unexpected turn of events, I thought. I hoped it would be Zoroaster or Pythagoras. Someone interesting. Someone unreal.
Timothy made another twisty twist and faced the others in their clump on the opposite side of the room.
"Did you guys... invite anyone else over here?"
A chorus of nos.
Timothy got up and went to the door. I watched the carpet give under his feet too.
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