Jormungandr’s Dance

by Hailey Piper

A fleeing crowd hit Kevin as he reached the bay bridge. He squeezed through, but their abandoned cars filled both lanes and made him clamber overtop. Someone moaned nearby, trapped or injured, but there wasn’t time to aid them.

The worms were already too close.

Against the glowing city skyline, black pillars of night interrupted the lights where enormous worms burst through buildings. They were only twisting silhouettes from this distance, but Kevin had seen them up-close.

One minute he’d been hanging out with Jonas, and then the neighborhood went to hell. Their apartment roof collapsed under a twenty-foot worm covered in stretched-out human faces and a dozen squirming arms. Its patchwork hide spanned the spectrum of skin tones.

A worm made of corpses.

He didn’t see what happened to Jonas, just ran fast as he could down their ravaged street, worms everywhere. Jonas was gone. Only Lamesha mattered now.

Kevin tried her cell. “Don’t shout,” he told himself, waiting as it rang. “Stay level-headed.”

“You’ve reached Lamesha’s voicemail!” her voice chirped. “Leave a message and have a magical day.”

Kevin squeezed his phone. “Answer your damn phone. Are you thick-headed? This is no time to go AWOL.” She was probably editing her ridiculous meditation videos while the world fell apart.

Meditation had started their last argument. “I think it’ll help manage your anger,” Lamesha had said.

“I manage it better without this junk frying my brain,” he’d said, pointing at her yoga mat and laptop.

“This ‘junk’ makes me happy. I speak my will into the universe that you’ll treat me like you love me.”

He’d stormed out her door then, shouting his love like another four-letter word. He could’ve handled it better, wanted to, but she’d pushed his buttons. Love went both ways. He’d been too furious afterward to notice warnings about monstrous worms.

Now their fight seemed pointless. Nothing like the end of the world to open his eyes. She was too much an airhead to take care of herself. He had to reach her and get them both somewhere safe.