Queer Little Nightmares

by David Ly

We detassel late into the afternoon. Just the girls, along with Mrs. McEwan and Sister Mary Sharon. It’s humdrum work, pulling tassels from the female corn and throwing them on the ground.

I looked down between my legs and saw a pale-green cankerworm writhing on the dense grey fabric of the passenger seat. A sign of spring. I checked to make sure Ben wasn’t looking, then picked up the wriggling creature and tucked it into my mouth, savouring the squirming on my tongue before I swallowed it. It wasn’t an impulse, exactly—I knew what I would do as soon as I saw it. I couldn’t help myself. I had done it more than once over the past few days, in the park I walked through on the way to work, on a patio while I was waiting to give my drink order. I had no idea why. Maybe I didn’t want to know why.

There were worms, maggots, scattered around the floor of the cage. The smell of rot hung in the air. I shuddered all over. I remembered those worms from when I was a child. I had reached out impulsively, picked one up, and stared at it squirming between my fingertips, a round blob tapering to a tail, much like a tadpole. I’d put it in my mouth, gulped it down. I thought about the cankerworm in the car. What is wrong

He lowered his jaw—I could see a milky-white tube behind his teeth oozing a thick, snotty substance. As I watched, a fat white grub plopped out of the tube onto the base of his tongue. Then out came another. I pressed my face against the bars, my mouth open wide, and felt a gush of writhing, wriggling larvae course down my throat, my stomach, my insides, then burrow out into my arms, my legs, my extremities.

There is no such thing as loss: only the way we let go of things the way they let us go.

Why does intimacy come more easily when it’s anonymous? Are we so far removed from our outward identities that it’s painful to reconcile the two?