Sheet Worms

Once there was a little boy named Naming. He didn't much like to make his bed. Obvious--why bother? You know what will happen again at night. Was he to waste his first motions of the day on something that would never be complete? Something ritually undone? Was not an unmade bed the natural state of bed?



For things like this there must be a point, and Naming's guardians soon came to address this point to the belligerently obstinate little fool. Why, why make your bed? Because.



Because sheet worms germinate.



Because sheet worms germinate and are borne into the world.




Because sheet worms germinate and are borne into the world through the wrinkles of your unmade bedsheets.



Because sheet worms germinate and are borne into the world through the wrinkles of your unmade bedsheets, like flies borne out of rotting meat.



Their origins lay in wait, needing just the right circumstances to be initiated: the wrinkles and folds of bedclothes, exposed at length in daylight, and a tender tummy to make the transfer to blood and life.



Yes, it works like this little Naming--If you do not make your bed and you leave your sheets and comforters and quilts and shams and throws and animals and threads and pillows all a-jumble (and maybe you even left your t-shirt, socks, underwear in there too [even worse, now they surely have your scent!]), well, it piles up the cloth into unstraight cloth mounts, into disorder, into rich-thick-fluffy-cloth-mulch, the first condition necessary for the genesis of the worm. And then, we know you, you'll never have your blinds drawn, day-night-midday-anytime, and so if there is sunshine then there is sunshine on your sheets, sunenergy being another basis of life, a vicious, parasitic life which your sloth will call forth. Lastly, a point of contact will be needed, a transfer, a spark, and we know how soft you are, and--you don't, do you? you sleep on your stomach? of course you do--and that is their desired nest, the only place to live really, to have any real kind of life. They want in your gut.



Hogwash. Bullfunk. Adultspeak. Eat-your-beans. Total lies. Spanking jerks. Tell-me-what-to-do. Santa Claus. Life after death. Dodos and the tooth fairy. Who'd believe it?



It was true.



They came in his stomach, and grew in his chest.

The End.