A worm gnaws at the root of the world, the Moloch of every soul and every name…
by Julian Norton
Gabrielle Sejana is walking to the King Street Market for lunch when she first sees the woman.
A tall blonde in a tailored suit, ice-blue eyes and vivid red lips; the woman catches and holds attention. But Gabrielle is busy, and a little hungry, and certainly isn’t impolite enough to stare. By all rights, the stranger should simply have been an attractive woman she notices for a moment, considers briefly as she eats her burger at the market, and then has forgotten by the time she leaves work that evening.
But as she passes her on the sidewalk, the woman looks at her and says, “Gabrielle Sejana.”
The way she says the name makes it clear that the stranger knows her, so clear that Gabrielle can’t question it. On this woman’s lips her name is an old friend; when she utters it, Gabrielle has to find out how this woman knows her so completely.
“Follow me, Gabrielle Sejana,” says the woman, and turns on her heel. Gabrielle follows. She could hardly do otherwise.
She’s led to another office tower, a block or two away: the guard at the lobby barely looks up as they cross to the elevators together. The woman hits the button for the fifth basement level with one long, manicured finger.
“What’s going on?” asks Gabrielle, confused.
The woman smiles. “Don’t be afraid. It won’t make a difference, and you’ll be happier if you’re not afraid, so don’t be.”
“What?” says Gabrielle. The woman’s smile grows wider, more malicious; Gabrielle is suddenly terrified. The confined space fills with the cloying sweetness of decay. Several options occur to her—the emergency button, the emergency line. The woman is between her and the panel and she cannot bring herself to attempt either.
The doors open to a whitewashed concrete hall, the same sort of half-industrial bareness that underpins most of the buildings in the city. The woman strides out of the elevator. Gabrielle slams the ground floor button. “Follow me, Gabrielle Sejana,” says the woman without even glancing back, and Gabrielle follows. The elevator departs behind them with a little ping.
The woman opens an undistinguished gray metal door that leads into an empty concrete room. There is a dry metal drain in one corner and a naked light bulb hanging above: it looks like a garage that has been cleaned out, part of some underground parking complex snipped off as a separate room for… something else. Panic is rising fast in Gabrielle.
“Be bound, Gabrielle Sejana,” says the woman with a gesture. Shackles of green light spring into being around her wrists and ankles, pulling her spread-eagled where she stands.
“What—what?” whimpers Gabrielle.
“I’ve been studying you,” the woman says, smiling. “I have need of someone with your skills and your connections, and when I found you I studied you and examined you until I learned your True Name, Gabrielle Sejana.”
The name is a blow, the name is a lash, the name is a knife flaying Gabrielle open before this monstrous attention.
“Please, I’ll do anything,” begs Gabrielle. Tears stream down her cheeks.
“You probably would,” agrees the woman. “Things you never would have imagined doing ten minutes ago. But, also, you might not. I didn’t get where I am by trusting others to do the right thing, Gabrielle Sejana.”
Gabrielle screams at the name and tries to flinch away. She can turn her head, but her limbs are as good as useless.
“No,” the woman continues, ignoring Gabrielle’s reaction, “what we need, if this little partnership is to work out, is a whole lot more of me and a whole lot less of you.”
“Please—” says Gabrielle again.
The woman reaches into her own mouth. And then keeps reaching. Her hand goes in, past the wrist, halfway up the forearm, her face slack and her jaw distending with soft cartilaginous pops. Gabrielle cries out and gags. The woman pulls her arm back out, and in her slim, elegant fingers there is a spiny, teardrop-shaped slate-blue worm, squirming and thrashing. Gabrielle screams again.
This time it earns the woman’s attention, or at least her irritation. “Silence, Gabrielle Sejana.” Gabrielle can no longer make noise. The woman gestures and the glowing bindings pull Gabrielle flat on her back, suspending her a meter off the ground. “I want you,” purrs the woman, stepping closer. Gabrielle’s eyes are riveted to the worm in her hand. “I want everything you are. Your memories, your personality, your talents, your life. I want to use you, to wring you dry and throw you away. I want you and I am going to have you. But Gabrielle Sejana is in my way.”
Even under the agonizing horror of the name, Gabrielle still cannot move or speak or react in any way. There is nothing in her universe but the woman, and the worm, and the fear.
“I know your True Name. But I’d rather not have to keep spending my time dragging you around. So I’m going to put this little piece of myself—” She licks the worm like it is a lover’s throat, and the worm wriggles happily between her long red nails. “—inside of you, and I’m going to eat your name. And then, when you’re nothing but an empty shell, I can use you the way I want to, without any effort at all. Won’t that be lovely?”
Gabrielle can’t respond.
The woman gently untucks Gabrielle’s blouse from her belt and pulls it up to reveal her belly. She holds the worm lazily suspended over Gabrielle’s navel. “Any last words before I replace you with more of myself? Thank me, Gabrielle Sejana.”
“Thank you for destroying me,” Gabrielle rasps.
The woman smiles beneficently and lets go of the worm. It lies cold and prickly on her for a second, and then squirms into her navel, the skin and fat of her belly twisting to allow it passage. Then it is in her, in a place that isn’t simply her abdominal cavity or even nestled among her intestines but much deeper inside, and after a moment it begins to eat.
⁂ ⁂ ⁂
The thing was once a person, and almost still is: but there is nothing inside it now, nothing but an aching, unfillable void where Gabrielle Sejana once was and where a slate-blue worm now lurks.
It sits up from where it fell, the bindings of Gabrielle Sejana extinguished along with Gabrielle’s personhood. The one that owns it is already leaving the room, with no need to speak to or even acknowledge the creature. The nameless thing straightens the clothes it wears, carefully checks its makeup to ensure there is no sign of the ordeal Gabrielle suffered, and then leaves as well.
An observer would see Gabrielle walk out of the office tower, smiling and a little lost in thought, just as she walked down the street barely a half-hour before. The nameless thing smiles its empty, meaningless smile, and sets off.
It exists now, after all, to enact Cecilie Kristiansen’s will alone.