"Brain Worms" by James McCann

Jo had been suffering from a dull ache behind her left eye most of the day, but driving home from work had made it considerably worse. Every sound seemed to be magnified to an excruciating level, whether it be road works or car horns or police sirens. Everything caused pain. Twice she pulled over because of the gnawing she felt in her brain, and the journey wasn't more than fifteen minutes. By the time she parked the car outside of her home, the dull ache had become a full-on pounding, as though war drums were being played inside her skull.

She sat in the car, eyes closed with her head on the steering wheel, and breathed trying to black out the outside world.

No avail.

That night brought no rest, no solace. Jo had taken a handful of painkillers and placed a damp cloth over her eyes, and laid down in a totally dark room. If anything, the lack of distraction just made the pain worse as it was all she could focus on.

Sitting up, she told herself that she was going to the doctor first thing in the morning and get this sorted out, whatever it was. Naturally, Jo thought of the absolute worst, that it might be a tumour of some sort. But she pushed those thoughts away as soon as they came, or at least tried to.

Jo was up and moving about, albeit very slowly, as soon as the sun was, due largely to having been awake all night. She showered, got dressed, finished off the painkillers that she had despite them not making any difference, and headed out. Deciding driving probably wasn't the best idea, she took a taxi, only hoping that the driver didn't want to have a conversation with her because talking was certainly not an option.

Luckily Jo was able to walk right in to see the doctor as the 9 am appointment hadn't shown up. The doctor was a slender man with a complete lack of people skills, but he knew his profession well. He asked perfunctory questions:

Have you taken any medication?
Yes.

What?

Painkillers?

How many?

All of them.

As he began his examination. He stuck a light in Jo's ears. He pulled her lids down and shone a light in her eyes.

”I can't find anything wrong with you,” the doctor said, scribbling notes.

”Well there is,” Jo protested, the anguish clear on her face.

”I believe you,” the doctor replied, putting his pen down. “I'm going to send you for a-”

Jo screamed out in terrible pain; it was a howl of agony. Her hands clawed at her skull, the nails causing rivulets of blood to trickle down her face. Her eyes were clenched tightly closed, feeling as though they were going to explode from their sockets.

The left eye was slowly pried open from the inside, revealing a small yellow worm crawling, wiggling, thrashing about in the open air. Jo's eyelids sprang apart, revealing the worm had drilled its way dead-centre through the pupil.

The front of her head exploded then, revealing several longer, bigger yellow worms crawling over each other in a lazy orgy. Blood poured from the open wound, as it did, revealing tiny white-yellow buds. The doctor immediately knew these were unborn babies.

Jo stood there, her mouth hung open like a stupid, wide cavern. Her eyes were wide open, the one still in-tact glassy like a marble and slicked in blood. She twitched once, then fell to the floor, dead. The worms continued to spill out from the head wound.

The doctor stood back, watching on in horror-induced numbness. He carefully stepped around the twitching, fresh corpse with the worms slithering over each other, now bathed in blood, and exited the office. 

The waiting room was filled with people holding their heads in pain.

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​James has been writing for the past 20 years. His professional writing career includes feature-length and short screenplays, novels, short stories, and lyrics. Away from writing, he owns and runs a successful self-defence club, Reality Based Urban Defence (rbud.co.uk), is a director of the production company Happy Buzz Entertainment Ltd, and is currently studying for his degree in Marketing.

He considers Stephen King a personal idol.

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