The Vessel

It started with a rhythmic clicking sound vibrating through the floor boards of the potting shed. Trent dragged the trowel he held into the earth that resembled fertilized dirt bought at a local hardware store to give the previous year’s soil a boost for the upcoming growing season; he mainly wanted to get outside for some healthy exercise to try and slim down some of the extra weight gained during the cold months of winter, which just passed only three weeks ago. But he didn’t feel the usual soft patch of earth that he was looking for. He didn’t have a clue that he found The Vessel, an experiment used by fisherman in the 1950s to grow the things that hid in the dirt to a larger size to be used for fishing. The only problem―the majority of the fisherman conducting the experiment were at that time already way past their prime and never witnessed the results of the experiment.

Something began to wiggle under his feet, barely braking the surface. It looked like a standard night crawler, but it was bloated to the thickness of a human finger! Its skin wasn’t wet; it was dry, stretched tight like parchment over something sharp. Along its segments, four translucent, indecent slits had begun to tear open. As Trent watched, a fluid the color of bruised plums leaked from the worm’s side, before fully snapping out of the dirt.

From the soft tissue of the annelid, four structures unfolded. They weren’t bird wings or even the delicate lace of a dragonfly. They were veined membranes of stiffened mucus, pulsating with a life all of their own. They looked more like umbrellas than actual wings.

Trent was more fascinated than afraid, being a man that enjoyed how dirt was magical in producing not only a life of various foods for human consumption, an assortment of trees, and strength in certain areas to hold buildings and other infrastructure, but a variety of life that lived underneath globally in this dark world. The worm didn’t struggle. It didn’t have eyes, but it turned its blunt, questing head toward the man close by it, as if sensory organs were in full effect. The wings began to beat, but not with a flutter, but with a heavy, sickening thrum, and seemed to be coming more from the back of the worm’s throat than from the wings.

The gravel beneath dilated.

Trent’s boots heaved.

Nearly twenty similar creatures emerged.

The air grew thick with the smell of stagnant rain and old copper, meaning these creatures had lived here for possibly centuries. The more they crawled out of the dirt, the more Trent realized they were not creatures of the sky; they were the intestines of the earth, finally deciding they were tired of being trodden upon. One rose tis long, muscular body out of the darkness into the light of day, its long muscular body sliding cautiously across the dirt. Seconds later it landed on Trent’s shoulder. He felt the cold, rhythmic contraction of the underside against the base of his neck, and then the sharp rasping pressure of what seemed to be a mouth designed for grinding dirt now testing the softness of his skin.

This particular garden didn’t belong to planting seeds anymore. It belonged to the things that had learned to fall upward.

The creatures needed Trent to escape. His heavy frame and large boots were enough to sink into the earth and offered them freedom from their dark prison; it was their size that made them want to escape, for nightcrawlers have always wanted to live underground.

Before long the twenty-plus worms crawled over Trent’s body, no longer nightcrawlers but day crawlers. They crawled with ease and not with aggression. To Trent the feeling was soothing. The large frame of his entire body disappeared. As they crawled, their so-called wings didn’t flap at all. They didn’t want to cause him harm; he was their master now, The One who freed them.

Their sensory organs turned all their heads to face him. And from what he could see on what a face must’ve been, they seemed to be smiling joyously at him.

Trent had many friends accumulated over the many years of his life. He has numerous pets; being a farm boy was natural to have pets. But he had no understanding as to why he has met so many strange and creepy-looking new friends, on this day that was just meant to be as a day to get out, exercise, and enjoy nature and nothing else. In the back of his mind he wanted to name each of them, but they looked too much alike and they would shop crawling all over his body to get a good look at each one individually. He decided to just smile and enjoy this once in a lifetime event.

But something strange began to happen. The crawlers on him from his kneecaps down to his boots latched onto his new pair of jeans tightly. They were squeezing tight enough his legs were becoming numb, which meant his blood was not circulating properly. The smile the crawlers had grew wider, and to Trent’s astonishment a seven-inch syringe type needle excreted out of the same area face like area of each one. Trent’s thoughts of the crawlers quickly changed from joy to horror. Especially since his legs were now so numb they became cold and felt as if they both would fall off his body at any time now and sent his large frame tumbling onto the dirt.

The crawlers stayed in this position for several minutes, but to Trent it seemed like an hour. Until the ones below his knees released their pressure, and all twenty-plus of them crawled back onto the dirt: their needle points didn’t even pierce his skin.

The crawlers did something strange again. The formed on the ground in a way you would instruct an army to get into formation. Then, the syringes still pointing out of what was a face, crawled around and under each other until the syringes made a shape that to Trent spelled: THANK YOU.

He was ecstatic with joy.

The crawlers disassembled on the dirt and crawled off into the distance, flapped their wings loud enough for tinkle Trent’s eardrums, and before long were out of sigh, to a place he had no idea where they were headed. Maybe to new pasture, perhaps? Trent thought to himself. He waved goodbye and hoped dearly to somehow see them again. He wanted to follow but his legs were still too numb to walk. Or, was this the purpose of the crawlers numbing his logs in the first place?