Jim’s Big Worm in Three Parts

by Owen Matthews

I

This was the morning Jim brought the giant worm into class for show and tell and everyone freaked the fuck out. Jim wore the worm around his neck like a big wooly scarf. What I mean is he looped it around his neck several times. The worm was so big, Jim could wrap it around himself like that and one long end hung off each side of his neck down to his belt. So the worm was like a big scarf, except it pulsed like worms do, like wriggling. But it didn’t really go anywhere. The worm just hung off Jim’s neck, and it was so heavy that Jim sort of had to stoop, like sort of hunched over, like if you were wearing a heavy chain or something around your neck. That’s the way Jim hunched over to show us all the worm for show and tell.

Jim tells everyone that the worm probably has like fifty-thousand hearts. He says it in that way, like fifty-thousand hearts. Jim says even a normal sized worm has a couple, that even a fishing worm has, say, like, twenty-five hearts. Jim says the worm lives out back behind his house in a big compost pile that always has a banana peel on top of it and that steams when it rains. Jim says when it rains a bunch of steam wafts off the compost pile like in the movie Alien. The teacher tells us that the movie Alien is kind of adult, like not very appropriate, and says that maybe we won’t understand the reference. Jim says that regardless, when it rains, the compost pile that his worm lives in steams up, like in the scene from Empire where Luke fights Darth Vader. The teacher tells Jim that Empire is a very age-appropriate reference.

Jim says that his worm is so big that the compost pile breathes when it moves around. Like, when the worm is really cruising through the compost pile, the pile actually moves up and down. Jim says it’s like blowing up a balloon and then letting out the air and then blowing it up again. Jim says that sometimes bits of the worm are visible in the pile, on account of the fact that the worm is so abnormally large. He says that sometimes when bits of the worm are sticking out, big black crows land on it and peck at its gigantic body. And he says that the worm is so humongous,it doesn’t even care about the big black crows that eat little pieces of it for supper. Like, the bits that the crows eat are so insignificant to the gigantic worm that it really can’t be bothered. Like, the worm is so large and in charge that it would be more inconvenient to actually bury its whole body in the compost pile than to be slightly eaten by crows.

At this point in his presentation, Jim begins shuffling huge loops of slimy worm through his hands to try and find a section of worm that has little chunks taken out of it, because someone in the class is yelling about how Jim’s pants are absolutely on fire w.r.t. the crow details, and the teacher has completely lost control of the situation. Somebody is tugging at the teacher’s big sweater and saying excuse me, but I need to use the bathroom because this worm is so gigantic and grotesque that I must barf, and somebody else is yelling about how if the worm was not so happy about the big black crows pecking at its body, then Jim wouldn’t have a goddamn clue because the worm probably doesn’t exhibit pain responses in any sort of way that he could understand, and the word “anthropomorphize” is thrown harshly in Jim’s direction. Jim says that his accuser doesn’t know the first thing about his relationship to the worm and that he and the worm are, like, metaphorically conjoined at the hip and that if the student isn’t careful Jim is not above using the worm like nunchucks or a really heavy whip and clobbering them with its massive, undulating body.

The student says wow, you have so completely proven my point, and Jim says that we should all be thankful to have witnessed the worm in the first place and that even now the Guinness Book of World Records is processing his application for record of World’s Longest, Most Ridiculously Huge Worm, and that soon he will have a plaque on his wall and his picture next to the guy who smoked one-hundred and twenty-three cigarettes simultaneously in the latest edition of Guinness. The teacher says that no one could possibly smoke one-hundred and twenty-three cigarettes simultaneously and that Jim will understand why not when he’s older. And Jim says that oh yeah? How about you check Guinness ’73 vol. 2 before making a stupid remark like that. Jim says that he knows what mommies and daddies do at night and that we haven’t got a clue and the teacher says okay kids how about let’s do recess and we all climb over each other to get out the door and forget about Jim and his gigantic worm.

II

Except when the class comes back from recess it becomes apparent that someone didn’t forget about Jim’s gigantic worm, that either someone stayed behind or snuck back early, seeing as the worm has been hacked up into three separate just-pretty-big worm bits. Like, if each section of worm was on its own and presented to you, you would maybe raise one or possibly even two eyebrows, depending on your familiarity with oversized worms, and probably you would say gee, pretty big worm there, but you likely would scoff if whoever presented the worm to you said something like, yes, big worm, so big in fact that Guinness is considering it for the world record. That’s about how big each of the three sections of Jim’s hacked-up gigantic worm was.

When Jim comes back to the three bits of giant worm after recess, he starts totally screaming and doing all sorts of crazy things, because actually the three separate worm pieces are still alive on account of the fifty-thousand separate worm hearts, and each piece is madly coiling and uncoiling and trying to burrow through the linoleum floor of the reading circle, flinging bits of grey and black worm guts across nearby carpeting littered with abandoned art supplies—some flying so far as to splatter our cubbies and the backpacks within them—while wetly smacking the dappled tiling over and over.

The student who made the remark earlier about the big black crows and whether or not Jim could read worm movements or lack of worm movements for pain responses bends over him, smoothes her pleated skirt, and asks again and again if he thinks the worm pieces are in pain while Jim does his best impression of Medic-on-Omaha-Beach, screaming for water because apparently the hacked-up worm bits need to stay moist to survive. Somehow Jim gets ahold of neon colored duct tape (for wallet making) while pouring water over the worm pieces from the nostrils/spout of the classroom’s pig-shaped watering can and desperately attempts to perform restorative surgery on his worm. But every time Jim grabs a piece of worm to try and duct tape it to another piece of worm, he squeezes too hard and goopy worm entrails squirt out of the open worm wounds, and the worm pieces keep slipping out of Jim’s organ-coated hands, and he madly attempts to shovel the guts back into their worm bodies, which are essentially like sausages with broken casings, and the floor of the reading circle is completely flooded with grey, slimy, worm gut water, much of which has been absorbed by Jim’s jeans, which have long exceeded the critical fluid absorption point where the extra weight of the jeans + water have become a clear impediment to his dumbfounded crawling through the filthy puddle, causing him to slip and splash, smacking the ground over and over while hopelessly trying to corral and combine the severed worm sections.

The rest of us watch Jim do this for an astonishingly long time. At some point the teacher snaps out of it and says something about how whoever did this really owes Jim an apology. It was never clear to me who contacted them, but anyway, Jim’s parents showed up with a sack full of compost and tossed the still-living worm pieces in the sack and whisked Jim away after he changed into a fresh pair of pants. Later the bell rang, and we all went home. We didn’t see Jim in class for days and everyone found crusted-up worm gunk all over the place all the time and the classroom smelled like copper.

III

My big secret: I came back from recess early and hacked Jim’s ginormous worm up into three just-pretty-big pieces. I used a pair of bright orange scissors made for cutting wavy designs into the edges of colored paper-based art projects. I didn’t do it because I hated Jim, or because I hated Jim’s worm, or because I was grossed out or perturbed or disturbed or whatever. The teacher said a lot of things about me the day after Jim’s worm got hacked up. I didn’t do it because I was any of those things.

Jim came back to school a week after I chopped up his worm and said that whoever did it fucked up his whole life. Jim says that a representative from Guinness showed up at his door and his heart basically sank out his butt on the way to the back door and over to the banana peel-topped compost heap through which he had to shamefully rifle just to find one of his two minor worms. (Jim says that the middle piece of worm died in the compost sack on the way home from school, shriveled up. Too much trauma, I guess.) Jim says that the Guinness rep literally scoffed at the just-pretty-large worm he was presented. Apparently, Jim was lectured about resources and time and money and exaggeration. Apparently, Jim was told that his worm was certainly noteworthy, ribbon-winning at a county fair even, but that really if Jim expected a worm that could be carried off by even just one average-sized crow to grace the pages of a book of world records, pages filled with people and animals literally boggling the mind, literally beyond the purview of comprehension, then he was mistaken, and if he hadn’t thought as much, then he was being pretty malicious, if the Guinness rep could be frank. Jim says that he basically pissed himself, and that his parents hate each other and drink something called malt liquor that isn’t a shake. The teacher says that Jim should be thankful that we all got to see the worm, and that at least we carry the truth about how absolutely, absurdly large it was together, as a class that has totally, convincingly moved on. The teacher says as much with a broad smile and hands-spread-out-real-wide gesture. Jim mostly looks at the teacher with dead, angry eyes.

The thing is, I just thought Jim should be knocked down a few pegs. I didn’t say I was jealous. I don’t even dislike Jim. Actually, Jim and I get along just fine. Actually, Jim and I traded Lunchables desserts yesterday. I’ll never tell a soul. The thing about it was that I had absolutely nothing to bring in for show and tell. Honestly, I fell flat on my stupid face. I kept twiddling my thumbs, essentially hoping for lighting to strike, essentially not being struck by a single metaphorical bolt, until finally, no other options presenting themselves, I showed the class a goddamn collection of rocks that my dad dug around for in weird places like an absolute moron, and I told them how my dad is an absolute moron. They aren’t even shiny. My dad tells me that they’re bones and that a long time ago they were coated in muscles and part of really big animals that aren’t real anymore. Nobody gets that. I don’t get that. Nobody in class got that. All anybody got was how absolutely uninterested I was in my dad’s rocks. And how completely empty I was as a human being for having nothing to enthusiastically show and tell about to a class full of people with bunny rabbits and hamsters in wheels and deadly spiders and ugly, googly-eyed fish, and giant, stupid worms. I didn’t say I was jealous, I said I was empty.

Every day Jim comes to school with a long face. Jim says a crow of completely normal and unassuming size and stature carried off one of his two remaining worms. Jim’s face is probably like three miles long most days. Mostly I zap ants with a magnifying glass at recess and try to write my “e”s from the inside out instead of from the outside in, because the teacher says my handwriting is atrocious, and that my “e”s look like “c”s. I write about ten-thousand “e”s a day in a yellow legal pad full of squiggles. And Jim comes by and says things like wow you absolutely blasted that ant right off the face of the earth, and, shit, I think that this is your absolute best “e” yet. And basically, his face is as long as the distance from planet Earth to the sun, which I’m told is called one “AU”. Sometimes I draw pictures of moody animals that walk around at night and scare dogs, like raccoons and possums and skunks. Jim’s face is about one AU in length most days.

Once I invited Jim to dinner because I was feeling particularly moronic, and he came over and completely blew my parents out of the water despite being a mope of unbelievable proportions. Jim told my mom that the beef stew was delicious and asked my dad all the right questions about his dumb rocks and totally wowed everyone, even though I swear there was drool all over the carpet on account of Jim’s extraordinarily long face basically dragging around between and behind his legs and across the floor.

The point I’m trying to make is that absolutely no one could have predicted any of this. There is an entire life I lived from the moment when I was born to approximately ten to fifteen seconds after I picked out the orange pattern-cutting scissors, and basically, I can account for as much of it as anyone else in my shoes could have. And there is an entire life I live now, starting approximately fifteen to twenty seconds after I finished cutting up Jim’s worm. And in between there is a total blackness of gargantuan depth and proportion, a complete nothingness, and the truth about what happened. I wasn’t jealous, and if you want my opinion? Who can really say who did what anyway—I can’t remember a goddamn thing.  

***

Owen Matthews was born on the north shore of Massachusetts and grew up in and around Boston. He is 27 and currently lives in New York. His work has appeared previously in the Red Rock Review and is forthcoming from MORIA.