The Worm's Revenge

By Richard Davidson

Charlie was a worm. That is, until the sky opened up, and a pencil sold insurance to Johnny Lovely. That day, unlike most days, was longer than it takes to bake a cake out of yam grease and kidneys, but much shorter than seven thousand millenia, as you may have already guessed.

Charlie may have been a worm, but he was honest, and he had never been a lawyer. He was indicative of ovens, indicating an exhibition of indecesion with indirect precision. Anyone who has ever known worms will know what I am speaking of, except you, and you know who I am speaking of.

So anyway, Charlie was a worm, and still is, unless you know something I don't, and you don't, because you're not writing this; I am. If you doubt that just look down at your fingers right now. Are they moving? If they are, that is fine, but I seriously doubt that what you are reading onscreen is related to that in any way, so just stop it, unless you have a nervous condition, and can't help it, in which case, who am I to judge you, and frankly, who are any of us to judge anybody, and more importantly WHO THE HELL ARE YOU TO JUDGE ME???

I didn't think so. Are you going to keep interrupting me, or can I type out this fragile story about a fragile character who sent a package marked "fragile" to his fragile father in Fargo, which is farther than his fragrant father in Fresno, who painted a fresco. Or maybe he drank a Fresca. If he did, he probably consumed empty calories, but I don't see what that has to do with Charlie, who is only the MAIN CHARACTER of this story, but alas, not getting nearly enough screen time.

So, as I said, Charlie the worm was a good guy, as worms go, and had a job doing whatever it is that worms do when they get jobs, and he went to work mindlessly each day, and then did his best to do his best, all the while doing his best. And he did! So there, you see? He is a worm, or was, or still is, depending on who you ask, and if I were you, I wouldn't ask. He was and is or was and was a worm, and he was a working worm, who was working on a worm farm, as I have only had to tell you about THREE HUNDRED TIMES so far, before you lose interest. Perhaps you have a reading dysfunction, and simply find it hard to pay attention. Or perhaps you have a reading dysfunction, and simply find it hard to pay attention. I don't know, and I don't care, because that is hardly my problem, so I would almost be curious as to why you brought it up, if I could, but I can't, and I'd like to use this opportunity to just end that line of reasoning all together, or altogether, if you're a stickler for things like that, which you are, and I am patiently running out of whatever it was.

So Charlie the worm, as I have been TRYING to tell you, had a job at a turnip farm, selling turnips to farmers, who really don't need any, as they already grow them, and that was why he was in a funk.

So one day, Charlie drove down to the bus depot, surprising nearly everybody that he could even drive at all, and mostly himself, because he had never been tested, and when he got there, he tried to buy a ticket, and they asked him for ID. That's Identification for those of you who are having trouble comprehending simple things, such as what things are, or other things, and Charlie was amused, but detached, and somewhat perplexed and apoplectic, and maybe just a bit electric, but not a detective, and he asked, "why, oh why, oh person who is asking me for ID, which is Identification, would you ask me, a worm for ID which is Identification when you know, in fact, that I am, as you can plainly see, a worm, and that one of the most singular characteristics of wormery, if I may be so bold, is our lack of pockets, cameras and many of the other necessities necessary towards the concept of carrying an ID, which is Identification?"

"I'm sorry sir," said the person or persons who was given the duty or duties of asking worms for such things, "but that is an extremely vexing run-on sentence, and if I don't have you arrested for identity theft today, then I am almost certainly remiss in many of my duties, including the one that involves my work with the Grammar Police."

Charlie had never heard it put quite like that before, and, being reasonably sure he would never hear it put quite like that ever again, decided to ask the person responsible to please repeat it.

"I'm sorry sir," said the person or persons who was given the ditu pr duties of repeating such things for worms, "but that is an extremely vexing request you asking of me, regarding my repition of the sentence I previously uttered about the run-on sentence, and the fact that if I don't have you arrested for identity theft today, then I am remiss in many of my duties, including the one that involves my work with the Grammar Police."

Charlie was puzzled.

"That's not exactly what it sounded like before," he murmured into a snow-cone he had purchased six months earlier, "and I am finding my attention waxing and waning like a full moon over an ocean tide, or a sensible metaphor in the midst of all this noisy foot traffic."

He indicated all the passers-by who had just passed by.

Just then, the person or persons who had been engaged in engaging Charlie the worm was approached by the supervisory staff, or member of the PCB Strike Force for whom he had never been a real member himself, and was asked the most startlingly obvious question.

"Excuse me, Simpkins?" asked the startlingly obvious member of whatever I claimed erroneously in the last paragraph," are you aware you are speaking to a worm?"

and, without even capitalizing the first word in the sentence, Charlie sprang into action, cancelling the tickets of seventeen passengers, all the while remembering he had driven here today, much to his amazement, and to the amazement of the seven foot tall female reader from Albequerque who had earlier considered reading someone else's much more sensible fiction earlier, and threw himself under the first bus that would harmlessly pass over him, before setting out on a weekend bender of vodka and cheap floozies.

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