October 22, 2025

Brainworm
by Salem Savage-Cutcher

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When I lay in the dirt, it’s like the earthworms can talk to me. They’re weird animals. Their slippery tentacles remind me of The Monster, but they’re too tiny to wield any power. Every morning, when I come out to dig, a few wriggle out of the ground, almost like they’re happy to see me. It almost makes me wish I could stick around longer, just to hang out with them. 
I never get that option, of course. By ten o’clock, The Monster always appears in the trees. His tentacles, coming out of his head like an axolotl’s fringe, always grab me by the hand and pull me back inside. 
Today is different. He’s wearing human skin. He slipped it over his face like a children’s mask for All Hallow’s Eve. I can see bleeding purple scales around his red snake eyes. It looks decently natural, thanks to his flat-ish face, but it does hide his tentacles, so he holds out hands covered by skin gloves. When I take it, I can feel his fake fingernails sitting just slightly off from where they would grow on a human. I’m sure his disguise has more defects I can’t see under an oversized sweater covering his abnormal anatomy. 
“Your finger, Madame?” he asks once inside. I held up my left ring finger, its hand knobled and callused from cuts and bite marks. I had to be able to dig with my right hand, after all. 
He opens his mouth. He doesn’t strip away the leathery human skin, so his disguise stretches, wrinkles, and tears slightly below his left eye. He unleashes his tongue, flinging ice blue saliva across my face. A drop gets in my eye, and I flinch, but the pain doesn’t necessarily feel bad. He sucks on my finger. The way he tenses his gums around me is relaxing. He nibbles around where my ring would be if we were married, but when he spits my finger out I don’t see many bite marks. 
“Thank you, Nolan,” The Monster growls. “I’ll go out and catch some lunch soon. Patrol the grounds while you wait, please.” 

                                                                     ***

A man so skinny he’s skeletal sits atop a horse who seemed to have a more fulfilling diet than his master. I patrol the grounds almost every day, but this is the first time in years I’ve actually come across a trespasser. 
“Are you lost?” I ask. I can’t imagine any other reason someone would find their way here. The Monster’s forest is so extensive that I would have to walk for hours to get to a clearing and even longer to approach a village. The Monster allows a few others to live under his domain, but they usually keep their distance. 
“That depends on what your name is,” the man responds. 
“I’m Nolan, I’m sure I’m not who you’re looking for. Maybe I can give you directions–”
“No, I’m looking for you. Your name is actually Cassandra, though.”
“I think I know my own name, Sir–”
“Listen to me. The Monster captured you a few months ago. You used to be Cassandra. He changed you until you were another person entirely. I’m here to help.”
“How do you know about The Monster?”
“Everyone knows about him. He’s not a secret. He makes you think he is. Why else would no one dare to travel here? It’s his saliva. It lets him control your mind.”
I roll my eyes. The Monster gave me a room and provides me with food in exchange for being his life force. He wouldn’t want a slave. Hard workers have to be willing. “Say this is true. Why would you care?”
“Because I used to be a Nolan. He gives that name to everyone he commands. And I recovered. You can too.” He hands me a flask from his pocket. “This will stop him from having an effect on you. I’ll come back tomorrow and see if you remember anything.”
I take the flask. His horse gallops away. I return to the dirt mount and set the flask by the worms. I pick up a shovel and continue digging my own grave. 

                                                                          ***

I hide the flask under a loose floorboard in my cottage when I go wash up for lunch. I don’t drink out of it. That man was spitting nonsense. 
I should have left it outside, or maybe even thrown it in the woods, but part of me didn’t want to part with it. It wasn’t like it would do anything. I could drink it just as the man said and my life would stay the same. There probably isn’t anything magic about it.
And even if there is, I’m Nolan. I’m not Cassandra.
If I drink it, and nothing happens, I’ll be sure of that fact. If I don’t, the question is still kind of up in the air, even if I know the man was either crazy or a trickster. But I don't need to drink it. There’s no point in questioning what I know to be reality. 
I’ll drink it. Just to be safe. Which is almost a betrayal to The Monster, so I can’t make myself yet. 
So I guess I’m bogged down in a secret, which isn’t much better. 
It’s not like The Monster would find the vial even if it was sitting out on my dresser. He had given me my tiny cottage to my name, within sight of his fort and my gravesite. He doesn’t need sleep, so he lives in his fort stocked with weapons and whatever oddities he keeps in the rooms I’m forbidden to enter. It’s not a place for a human. He doesn’t even have a bed. We constructed my little home together so I would have a more appropriate place to live. 
He has no reason to come by my cottage unless I give him a reason to. I’ve never done that, at least never willingly. One day about a year ago, I had caught some kind of illness and overslept, and the Monster had to come wake me up so I could attend to my tasks. 
He had been so worried about me when I didn’t arrive for my chores. That man from earlier doesn’t understand The Monster’s kindness. 
The man claimed I had only been The Monster’s servant for some months. How could that be possible when I remember getting sick? How could that be possible when I remember serving the monster for almost my whole life? 
I lift and press my water pump in the corner to fill my basin. I scrub the graveyard dirt off my hands and cheeks. I dump the muddy water out the door on my way to see The Monster. 

                                                                              ***

He must have kept his skin suit on while hunting, because it’s starting to look awful. There’s a huge smear of blood on his cheek. Most of his gloves had fallen off completely, revealing canine paws with human thumbs. His sweater had torn with patchy feathers falling out of the holes. 
“I got a few pigs”, he says. “I even dug up some carrots.”
“Thank you,” I say, sitting down by the firepit in The Monster’s main fort room. I shuffled around some burning logs and tied the smallest hog above the flame. I grabbed a carrot while The Monster ate the largest hog whole. “I do have a question, if you don’t mind,” I say.
The Monster nodded and his skin mask started to fall off. 
“There was a trespasser earlier. He was pretty obviously lost. He was looking for someone and confused me for her. Do you have any idea where he was trying to go? So I can give him directions if he comes back?”
“There’s no one for at least a few miles out,” The Monster says. “I’d say whoever gave him directions was playing a trick on him. They probably thought no one lived out here and wanted him to get stranded.”
I nod.
So there couldn’t be any way to get the man off my tracks when he comes back. I’ll just confirm I’m Nolan and hope he moves on. 
“It is odd you encountered someone,” The Monster says.
“I thought so too. I assumed he was lost before I even spoke with him, especially considering his condition. He looked bad.”
“He was ill?”
“Yes. I could count his bones. And he looked a little green.”
The Monster raises his fake eyebrow. “What was his name?”
“He didn’t say.” The closest thing he had told me to his name was that he had claimed to ‘be a Nolan’, but that doesn’t make any sense. There was no reason to bother The Monster with that information. 
Besides, if The Monster knew I could even imagine a world where he was untrustworthy, he would be disappointed in me. He wouldn’t let me test the man’s flask, either. 
“He didn’t reveal who he was himself, but claimed you were someone else. Fascinating.” The Monster smiles. “You know, I know I’m going to spend a fair amount of energy pondering this. Let me suck on your thumb a moment to make sure I have the stamina.” Blue saliva drips from his lips. 
I hold out my hand. Supposedly, this is how he controls me. That’s such a silly idea. 
The Monster licks my nail. He presses my thumbprint onto his teeth. I can’t help but close
my eyes and smile. I almost forget about the man. 
The Monster lets my thumb fall out of his mouth but leans in closer. I can smell the blood of the pig I just ate on his skinsuit. 
“Can I try something new?” He whispers. I nod. 
The Monster licks my cheek. It’s kind of sandpapery, but I never noticed that texture with his tongue in his mouth. 
He licks again. It’s like he’s wrapping me in a blanket in my warm bed. 
He touches his lips to my cheek. Then our lips meet. He thrusts his mouth as he spits into mine. 
I feel his saliva in my mouth and everything is different now. 

                                                                         ***

The Monster is good. The Monster is perfect. The Monster can do no wrong. 
“How do you feel?” he asks. 
“The best I ever…have.” I can barely string a sentence together. I answer him without thinking. I don’t have control over what I say. I don’t need to, because The Monster is good. The Monster is perfect. 
“Do you know what I did to you?”
“No…”
“You can’t resist me any longer. You’re the perfect servant now.”
I like the sound of that. 
“Your pork is cooked. Eat it,” The Monster says. I comply. 
“Were you telling me the entire truth earlier?”
“No.” I speak with my mouth full. 
“What did the man say?”
“That… I’m not really me. He used to… be me.”
The Monster grins. “I expected as much. Did he give you anything?”
“Some liquid.”
“Where is it?”
“In the cottage.” 
“Finish eating quickly, then. We don’t want to let him win, do we?”
“No…” Of course not. The Monster can do no wrong. 

                                                                         ***

The Monster escorts me to the cottage. I love his company. 
The door to my home is ajar. 
The Monster walks ahead of me, slamming the door open and ducking in. I follow. 
The man is here. 
“You can’t do this to her,” he says. 
“What I do now is none of your concern, Francis,” The Monster says. “It would have been much smarter of you to stay away. I guess I overestimated your intelligence.”
“You probably gave me brain damage.” Francis gestures to me. “What did you do, lobotomize her?”
Even if he did, it’s a good change. The Monster is perfect. 
“Like I said, none of your concern,” The Monster says. He lurches with his tentacles. His skin mask finally falls to the floor. 
Francis ducks and rolls under my bed. The Monster raises my bedframe up and slams it down again. 
Francis rolls out of the way. The bed knocks out the loose floorboard. The flask glimmers. 
Francis dives after the flask and grabs it. He darts out from under the bed. 
The Monster almost seizes him. Francis is so tiny he slips through The Monster’s arms. 
“Nolan!” The Monster shouts. “Run!”
I bolt from the cottage to the depth of the forest. Francis chases me. The Monster chases Francis. 
I don’t have to worry. The Monster will catch him. The Monster is perfect, after all. 
I hear shouts in the distance. I glance behind me. A herd of humans on horseback weave around the trees. Some of them have torches. 
I keep running. I haven’t been given the order to stop, and The Monster would want me to escape them. 
The Monster roars. I glance back around and he’s surrounded. 
Francis has to be getting weak from all this running. It’s not like he has any muscle on him. 
I turn at a clearing. I think I lose him. 
There's another crowd. I step back to turn the other way, but someone grabs my arm before I can escape. Someone else grabs my leg. I pull, but they just squeeze tighter. 
Once I’ve been detained, Francis appears, panting. 
Someone yanks my jaw open. Francis uncorks the flask. He pours the liquid down my throat before I can react. It’s bitter. A little fizzy. 
I shake my head. I start to feel dizzy. Not dizzy physically, like when I grave dig before I’ve eaten and the worms have to take care of me. I’m dizzy like my emotions are a whirlpool I’m drowning in. 
Suddenly The Monster isn’t perfect. 
It’s strange. I remember something that happened before I met him. The memory feels recent, but I know I had to be living with the monster by then. 
Everyone I knew mourned a man who had been kidnapped by The Monster. We thought the man would have surely been dead by the end of that week.
Who was the man? Where was I? Why were we afraid of The Monster? 
“Cassandra?” Francis whispers. 
That was what he had told me my name was. Before, it had been completely unfamiliar. Now, it feels right. It’s prettier than Nolan and fits me better. 
Maybe the old skeleton knows what he’s talking about. 
He offers his hand. I don’t take it. 
“Will you come back with us?” he asks. 
How could I leave The Monster after everything he had done for me? 
I could leave if it wasn’t real. Maybe some of it was real, or maybe my whole life had been The Monster’s imagination. 
“I can’t tell you yet,” I say. 
I take off the way I came. No one follows me. 
                                                                         
                                                                         ***

All of the trespassers who were alive retreated. I tried not to look at the bodies left behind, but the majority were survivors. I told The Monster that I wasn’t feeling well. I thanked him. I hugged him. 
Was it because I wanted to fly under the radar, or because I truly loved him?
He let me rest in bed. I napped until sunset, stared at the sky, and went back to bed until sunrise. I would have gone into a coma if I had the choice. But I’ve been laying down for so long, completely unable to close my eyes. I have to make a decision before it’s time for The Monster’s feeding. 
If I stay, he’s going to feed from me until I die. He’s going to take my life force until I have none left. That’s why I dig my grave. 
That’s probably why Francis is so fragile and skinny. If The Monster claims Nolan after Nolan, Francis must have been pretty close to death. He could be the man I remember mourning. 
Is there someone out there I don’t remember who mourned me? Were they in the crowd that came to rescue me? 
Did they die for me? 
There’s a chance someone did miss me. They don’t deserve to lose someone like that. They don’t deserve to lose themselves. If I leave, I could have a life. I wouldn’t eagerly count down the days until my death. 
But I’ve changed now. I’ve lived as Nolan. I don’t think that can ever go away. A part of me will always love The Monster. 
I grab a bag and throw in clothes. I pick up a month-old portrait of The Monster from my dresser. I tried so hard to develop the contrast between his scales and feathers and to make his tentacles look like they were truly in motion. I slip the portrait in my bag. 
I open the cottage door. I take my first steps to leave. 
I’ll always be homesick for the worms in my grave. ​

                                                                        💀💀💀

Salem Savage-Cutcher strives to spark whimsy in the world. They write experimental and just plain weird fantasy, horror, and magical realism. They have previously been published in the Iris Review. You can find them at [email protected].