Food for Worms

Buffy eyed the porcine splice snoozing outside the entrance to Adam’s Organ, one of the seedier splice hangouts in the Underground. It sat on a large rock, a long knife resting across its knees. A thread of drool hung from its tusked lip.

She drew back the leather curtain and stepped into mouth of a small cavern. Wriggly red invertebrates crawled over the ceiling and walls, their rear ends flashing on and off simultaneously. A blinking staircase leading to an upper level was carved out of the cement wall to Buffy’s left, while a narrow tunnel went right. She followed the tunnel, brushing the occasional demonic glow worm off her shoulders.

The tunnel led into a wide, smoke-filled cavern. The flashing lights caught smoke particles and made them glow, obscuring the few, dark forms clustered around the tables.

Buffy didn’t see a pair of rutting splices until she nearly tripped over them. She stepped to the side, and the smoke completely concealed their bouncing forms. Thank God. Tentacle porn soooo wasn’t Buffy’s thing.

Not that anything that happened in Adam’s Organ was Buffy’s thing, not really. She couldn’t let her guard down long enough to escape for more than a few hours, and she could only do so in private. Buffy’s human scent and appearance were too jarring to make her anything but blatantly conspicuous to the splices. If she passed out, they’d do more than Sharpie her face.

Her eyes followed a slimy, phosphorescent trail to a dim corner where a rotund splice sat. Its oozing, leg-less lower body curled underneath the rolls of its flabby human torso. Its belly hung low enough to conceal its genitals, if it still had them. Wet, stringy black hair fell to its shoulders. It puffed on a roach – a large cockroach stuffed with marijuana and powder made from hallucinogenic mushrooms.

“So, the prodigal human returns.” The Sluggoth-splice – Buffy didn’t know its real name; it usually asked her to call it “cookie” or “pudding cup,” and Buffy never complied – blew a smoke ring in Buffy’s face. “It’s been awhile.”

“I’ve been busy. Also, totally repulsed by you.”

“But you like what I do to you, and thank goodness.” The creature’s black lips stretched across the width of its face. “There’s not too many who can offer so tasty a payment as Slayer blood.”

The splice was a leech. It traded its hallucinogenic slime for blood. Buffy’d done business with it before, but she wasn’t really feeling the barter system at the moment. Losing blood wouldn’t do her any good. Reaching out and taking what she wanted? Now, that was a plan a post-apocalyptic girl could get behind. “I could just kill you.”

“And lose me forever? Leave yourself to with nothing but hicha and the occasional hallucinogenic shroom? I dare you to try.”

“Is that so?” Using her good hand, she hauled the splice up by its stringy hair. Supporting its weight strained her ribs, but she’d stop feeling pain soon enough.

Sluggoth slime slicked her fingers. Within a few minutes, it would sink into her skin, and she’d be well on her way to a land of fluffy puppies. The kind she must have watched in pet shop windows as a kid, not the feral types that scavenged corpses aboveground.

“Ow!” The Sluggoth’s segmented body trembled like gelatin. “I don’t do freebies!”

Buffy used her bandaged hand to paw at a large, curved knife from her belt. With clumsy fingers, she pulled the knife from its sheath and pressed it against the Sluggoth’s neck. “Hey, worm. Meet hook.”

Buffy leaned down, running her tongue along the creature’s cheek. It tasted like something flies might lay eggs in. “Rules have changed, Slimer.” She hesitated. The Sluggoth was a disgusting leech, but more or less harmless, and she did occasionally trade a pint of blood for a few, blissful hours of rainbow-colored walls.

How was I supposed to know how far you’ve let yourself go?

Spike had looked at her like he knew her, like he expected things from her, and she wasn’t measuring up. How could she? She didn’t know who she was, much less who she had once been.

But she hadn’t been this. She couldn’t have been this.

Her stomach flipped, and not just because she’d just swallowed Sluggoth mucus. She was a Slayer, the Slayer, and she had failed. Instead of protecting the world, she’d watched it crack and sizzle like an egg on hot asphalt.

Buffy pressed the knife harder into the Sluggoth-splice’s neck. Slime coated her blade, and the worm made a strangled, liquid sound. As unbelievable as it now seemed, the splice had been human, once. She squinted at its monstrous face and tried to picture the person it used to be – a matronly woman, maybe, or a fresh-faced kid with freckles – but all she saw was worm.

Buffy knew the desperation, the unceasing, half-crazed panic, it took to give up everything that you were. Or, she could imagine it, anyway. She had given up her memory to survive. Only she couldn’t say that the person she had been – that heroic defender of humanity – had survived.

Buffy threw the splice to the floor. It choked and spluttered angrily. “Don’t think you won’t have to pay for that!” it shouted.

She stumbled back through the tunnel, her legs moving into a clumsy jog. Each step jarred her weak leg, but the pain was a distant thing. She rushed past the leather curtain and the still-snoozing splice, into the narrow alley through which she had come. She had to get the hell out.

She pushed past the few splices and ran into the gaping entrance of a tunnel. Spider webs brushed her face and arms. She stumbled over rocks and didn’t slow. She felt dizzy and ill, and the bandage on her arm was unraveling. But she couldn’t stop. Wouldn’t stop. Not ever.

She stopped two inches before hitting a wall.

The tunnel must have been abandoned mid-construction. It didn’t lead anywhere. It just ended.

Buffy stared at the wall, panting. There was no point in running; there was nowhere to run. No escape. Just this – dark tunnels and a damaged mind.

She laughed, and the sound was blue with shining green dots.

***