A sharp intake of breath launches a glob of saliva to the back of your throat and makes you gag. You have to cough thrice to clear it. The reason for your gasp, a thin, off-white worm the length of a healthy thumbnail, squirms on top of the kitchen counter. For the first time, the difference between wiggling and wriggling is clear to you. 

You turn to the rest of the apartment, searching for something to validate the intrusion.

Empty, still. No one to witness this, witness you witnessing this. 

You’re still getting used to being alone and everything being a first: first Saturday without me, first time going to the farmers market without me, first time making a salad without me, first time finding a larva in your lettuce from a Saturday trip to the farmers market without me. 

Gabe would’ve known what to do, you tell yourself. You imagine that, without missing a beat, I would’ve scooped it up with a paper towel, or flattened it with a cookbook, or expertly swiped it into the drain. Instead, you watch it. You lean in really close to examine the thing. It has a body made up of slimy rings like a bald caterpillar that’s crawled through lube. At its tip, there’s a brown bit you assume is its face, but there’s also antennae or arms or feelers reaching out from there. It’s starting to look like those inflatable tubes that welcome you to a used car lot. If people in the neighboring building peeked into the kitchen window, you might remind them of a kid holding up a magnifying glass to an ant.

Under your stare, the worm travels from the lip of the sink up to the base of the faucet. Once your fascination wanes, you knock it into the metal basin. Water runs and runs over it. You imagine it getting carried from the kitchen plumbing down the three stories of the building, cascading into the sewer—maybe it’s riding a discarded cilantro leaf now—surfing all the way to a treatment facility where it makes its way past the eight steps of filtration out to the St. Lawrence River and lands safely on a shore somewhere to turn into a… You stop the water to Google what little cream-colored worms turn into, but your research is inconclusive.

From what you gather, it could’ve been the precursor to a moth, a beetle, a fly, and various other things that make your skin feel like it’s floating an inch off the rest of your body.

Your market haul no longer shimmers of luxury. All you can hear is the wet squelch of roiling worms.

The shower’s water pressure is never as strong as you want it to be, but it does the trick. You could let the stream beat down your neck for hours, loosening up the built-up tension. There, behind the curtain, your loneliness doesn’t feel so oppressive. You’re shielded from the eye of judgment—mine, your own, and everyone else’s. 

You didn’t realize how much life was made for pairs until you weren’t in one. Rent is twice as expensive. It’s very difficult to shop for solo groceries without overbuying and things going to waste. A two-for-one deal is really sad when you insist you only need one, but the person at the coffee stand says there’s only one way to apply the promotion, so you can’t get half off on just one, even though that makes sense mathematically, and so you pay full price for your coffee because you don’t need two, but they accidentally put cow’s milk in it instead of oat and your allergy is bad enough that you can’t drink it, but you already made a scene for the half price thing so you just leave a full six-dollar latte on the bar.

In the shower, you scrape at the uneasy feeling the worm left on your body with my leftover loofah. Suds slither down your body and remind you that you’re still tethered to one. It is there, you are here, we exist, it tells you.

The water travels your every curve, swirling hair and skin, finding moles, ingrown bumps, and scars along the way. The squelch of the worms is rising to the surface again. It’s almost like you can really hear it, though that may be water in your ear.

Reaching for shampoo in the shower caddy, your body jerks back at the sight of another worm. It’s resting on the bottle of conditioner, gripping the lid with its full length.

You feel so naked—you’re not even sure it has eyes, but it’s violating nonetheless. With a swift hand, you flick it onto the shower floor and watch it fight for a foothold until it disappears into the drain. It takes a good fifteen minutes for your goosebumps to subside, and only then do you turn off the shower. 

It couldn’t be the same worm, you tell yourself. You’re sure the pipes are all connected somehow, but this one didn’t have the same energy as the one from the kitchen. You felt its stare and hated it.

Toweling yourself off, you think of the Ninja Turtles. Weird creatures navigating the sewers, popping up all over town. It’s definitely possible, but not likely.

From the medicine cabinet, you scoop up a big dollop of thick cream and lather your body with it. The need to feel your skin takes over. With every stroke of your hand on your arm, the warm tissue starts to feel like yours again.

You close the mirrored door, and something catches in your peripheral. Another worm is slowly making its way from inside the overflow drain. It moves in a side-to-side crawling motion, stopping every few steps to feel around with its face. This one you trap in a mason jar. If this is still the same larva, you’re determined to find out. 

“Yeah, it smells weird in here,” the super says, walking into the kitchen. He came by within an hour of you texting him. Apparently, the downstairs neighbors are having their faulty washing machine traded out today, which is something you make a mental note of in case you ever need the same.

“I found the first one in here. I thought it came from my lettuce, but then I found two in the bathroom, and then a few more on the ground in the hallway.” You tell him you washed them all down the drain and don’t mention the one you’re keeping in a jar in the bedroom.

He peers into the sink. “There must be something stuck in there. Let me text my plumbing guy.”

As he pulls out his phone to text, you notice his forearms. Toned, tanned, tattooed. You can’t quite tell if he’s handsome or rough looking or the intoxicating combination of the two.

Suddenly, you’re very aware of a warm body’s presence in the apartment. 

He snaps you out of it when he says, “The plumber says he can be here on Tuesday.”

“Oh, wow. Great, thank you!”

He’s packing up his toolbox. You don’t remember him walking in with it, but you were on high alert, intent on keeping him out of the bedroom. A tenant keeping a larva as a pet is not a great look. For a moment you feel like he’s lingering, and it starts to feel like the beginning of a porno. You’re not sure what to say. This is one of those situations where you’ll think of something really good to say in an hour, or you’ll say something and spend the next hour regretting it. I’ve only left you alone for a week, yet you’ve already lost what little social capacities you had.

“By the way, I live here alone now.” It’s not a great start; it still feels pornographic. “I mean,

Gabe won’t be around anymore. So, you can just text me, not him.”

If this fazes him in any way, he doesn’t let on. He just says, “Okay.” And then he gives you a laundry list of things to try before the plumber comes. Drain cleaners, clog dissolvers, grime eradicators.

“Great, I’ll go buy these now, thanks!” you tell him as he leaves.

You return to the apartment without any of the products he suggested. One step in, you stop and listen. You’re waiting for the squelch of the worms, but it doesn’t come. Things are as you left them. 

There are only three worms waiting for you in the kitchen—sink, floor, table. You were expecting more. Quickly, you scoop them into the sink and run the water. An old habit now, no longer shocking. How quickly we get used to things. 

You wonder if more of them are hiding, but you don’t mind it so much anymore. Weirdly, their presence is comforting. While they keep showing up, you’re not as lonely and you have something to focus on.

The plasticky plants in the aquarium you’re carrying scrape the sides of the enclosure as you set it down. Halfway to the hardware store, you decided you needed to find out what the worms will turn into, so you went to a pet store instead.

To your horror, the jarred one you left in the bedroom is dead. You were sure you made a hole in the lid, but it seems you didn’t. Nascent worms need air, another mental note. Though the captive one was your favorite, you’ll settle for another. 

You find two more crawling on the bedroom floor. A pair, of course. Why you hadn’t thought of giving the worm a worm friend, you’re not sure. You know firsthand what being alone in this apartment can feel like. The silence of walls, the ghostly creak of the floors; it’s suffocating when you think about it too much.

One of the new worms is feisty and it bangs on the glass of the aquarium as if trying to break through. The other is docile, seemingly content to be scooted left and right as you arrange their new home for them.

Your research told you that no matter the kind of larvae they are, they will want moist areas, dry areas, and heat. You put down an old wrung-out rag that already smells, a large rock from outside nestled between the faux-greenery, and handfuls of compost. Instead of regular bulbs, you bought the kind for reptile basking lights. Within a week or two, your worms will have gone through the cocooning phase and hatched into their final form. 

When you step back and take in your work, you quietly hope they aren’t flies. Since you’ve been finding them near drains, flies are the likely conclusion. But all of this would be a lot of work for pet flies.

You order takeout for dinner. While you’ve gotten used to the worms being around, you don’t want to accidentally eat one. Food from outside is safe, you tell yourself.

You eat the salad you’ve been craving since the farmer’s market this morning while watching the sun set. You placed the aquarium in the living room, so you watch them too. As evening falls, no new worms appear. It’s like they’ve all tucked in for the night.

Your pre-bed routine goes by quickly as you try to figure out names for the worms. A famous couple would be ideal: Sonny and Cher, Ross and Rachel, Brad and Angelina. The list goes on, but nothing feels quite right to you.

The apartment is not as empty now with the soft orange glow of the basking light. It’s not exactly quiet either. The squelch of worms crawling over each other is back and louder than before. From afar, it could be mistaken for someone stirring a thick soup, but you know what it is. It’s not coming from the aquarium, or the sink, or the bathroom.

I watch you enter the bedroom, acting as if the wet and sloppy splat sounds aren’t louder in here. You lie down on your side of the bed, comforted still by the shape of my cold dead body next to yours. From the gash in my gray skull and my open mouth, worms are fighting their way out and spilling onto the floor. 

It’s like a white noise machine, you think as sleep tugs your eyes shut.