Worm Gods

Worm God’s

by Ryan A. Rodriguez

The end.

We begin where the world opens itself gray and torn, like the hellish landscapes that haunted those who walked the ground of what was before. In the back of those skulls, the abyss was but a whisper. Only a little pest that echoes behind the loud music they jeer to their whole lives, swimming through the noise as it polluted the Earth. For such was hell’s paradise. Such was the Earth, not long before the trumpets erupted and the blare that had long been buried in Antarctic ice doomed all the air that sought to breathe. The before is a distant memory, a thing inexistent, a stark contrast to you—here—blinking and breathing in the graveyard of a sleeping city. Amidst the wreckage of the debris, you crawl your way through its weeds, forcing numb limbs to peer through the dark shades from the clouds you know have already turned to mud. As despite the blindness, the pungent musk exudes the rust in the sky, a metallic substance, like that of which has spored through your calves. You would have mourned for your toned artillery, had the sight before you not erupted the after-image of a comical mushroom you’ve only seen in your favorite games and comic books. Now, all you can do is mourn—for the death of a planet. Although, you would have never imagined yourself to be the type of person to stare blankly into the skeletons of the concrete mammoths you’ve once loathed. For you are witness to an event that’s earth-shattering. But enough about you, you’re only here to say goodbye after all. Soon enough, your lungs will know how your kind no longer belongs in this world. For as the buzzing creatures wailed for the lost souls that laid their bony statues onto the dirt, they too will soon plant its new specie of tree— white and made of chitin.

We now end, in the beginning. As the ball of fire breaks, the soil is dead and fertile for another teeming.