A Leitner that is all eaten by worms but if you freeze the book in a sealed bag on your fridge you can pluck the frozen worms with tweezers and read the bits that have no holes and found that is a rather dull read.
Also this is a real book that my uncle left in the fridge when I was 12. I wanted Ice-cream but all I got was a frozen, wormed, old book.
Yes, I agree. One could say that my statement would begin with a “there’s a book with worms on my fridge…”
hi! what the hell?
I wrote up a statement about it. Couldn’t help it. (It’s in the next paragraph, if you’re looking at this from the “n notes” thing on the post.) TW canon-typical Corruption, grossness, eating worms
Statement of dani-r, regarding a worm-infested book in their fridge. Original statement given July 15, 2021. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.
I was twelve when I first encountered the Crawling Rot. I pity my younger self: alone, naïve. They didn’t know of the love they would get and the unconditional acceptance and the feeling of being needed. I was young then. I did not know the happiness I would receive that day and forever.
I was alone one day and wanted ice cream. Being a child of my own whimsy, prone to simply doing, I got up from the couch and walked into the kitchen, opening the freezer. When I opened it, among the frozen dinners and peas and the icebox, I saw a book. It was old, the side of the pages brown. I took it out, curious but not altogether surprised.
Well, I was surprised it was in the freezer, but not surprised to see an old book in my house. My family included a lot of dealers in old books, and I myself had a few antique tomes in my bedroom. And antique tome was certainly what this book was. It was heavy and large, the cover thick and green. It was sealed in a bag, which I opened up. As I opened the book itself, I realized that it was full of holes.
This was not an uncommon sight for me. ‘Bookworms’, or, really, larvae of moths or beetles, will often burrow into and eat the pulp of old books. But I realized, fanning the pages to look through it, that the worms were still in there. I must have shuddered in disgust. I didn’t particularly like worms—not then, anyway.
I wanted to read the book, though—I might as well—so I got a pair of tweezers and pulled them all out. They were frozen stiff, cold but slightly slimy.
I left them on the kitchen counter and started to read the book. Piecing together the bits where there were no holes, I found it a rather dull read. I think something about a monk who found a giant, empty cocoon and got inside, emerging as a moth. It was grotesque, and it could have been truly scary, but it wasn’t. It was far too dry to scare me.
The garage opened, signaling my parents’ return. I had the sudden urge to put the worms back into the book, so I did. Dumping them in, I closed the book on them and ran to my room, hiding it. I don’t know why I did that, but that was just the beginning.
As the worms unfroze in the book, now sitting on my bookshelf warm and dry, they grew and burrowed and made their pale, pulsing path through the paper. They nestled, shriveled, into tiny balls at the ends of their tunnels. They had a place and a job and a purpose. They belonged in that book. And I wanted to belong too.
They called to me, inviting me to belong as well. If only I…what? I would stare at that book for hours, listening to its enthralling call. I took out one of the worms with tweezers again, and it crawled over my desk. It was pale and warm when I touched it, warm and slimy like a tongue. They smelled of rot. Of course, they smelled of rot. The pages were rotting under the worms’ warm waste, growing mold. That book was molding green and brown and yellow, sickly colors spreading from each hole the worms made. The smell was hot and heavy, cloying and clinging to the nose. It filled my nose with the unquenchable stink I have grown to love. I inhaled deeply the fumes of that book.
Of course, people wondered why I stank. I didn’t care. I didn’t have time for them, for anyone, not even my parents. They didn’t love me like the worms did. The only real attention I would give to other kids was to show them the book, smiling widely while I asked them to guess what I found in my fridge and repulsing them with the rancid, rotting book with its white, writhing worms. It filled me with a sort of glee, that I could make people afraid. But that was not my main concern.
For days I tried in vain to join those worms. They did not burrow into me like they did the book. I even slept with it in my arms, lovingly lulling it into letting its worms corkscrew into my soft skin. It didn’t work. Nothing worked. It was like they weren’t interested in me, like they didn’t want me.
No, they did, the worms reassured me. They always did and always would.
Then, how? I wondered. How could I give myself to them? I didn’t go to school anymore. I didn’t leave my room; all the meals my parents gave me were molding. A thin green fuzz grew over that hamburger; out of that plum spilled ants by the hundred. Only when they were black and blue with decay and disuse and death did I eat them, savoring the filth. I smelled wonderful—just like the worms. The glorious and gross larvae I so loved. But they still would not take me. They would not take me! What had I to do?
I tried to consume them so that they would have no choice but to eat me from inside, but they wriggled out of my grasp every time they got close to my mouth. I tried to lure them by putting pages on my skin, sleeping covered in hole-ridden, thin paper, but they never took the bait, only eating the pages. I was almost angry at this point, angry at the worms. They would not take me? Then I would have to take them. All of them.
I picked it up, the peach fuzz of mold and the slimy skin of larvae caressing my fingers, the smell of rot filling my nostrils like the mountain air. And I took a bite.
My teeth easily bit through the worn cover and the onion-skin paper, tearing off a chunk of wood. It tasted sour from the molded pages, the fuzz stroking my tongue, and a bit earthy, like mushrooms. I bit again, and again, and again, the smell of disease and putrefaction wrapping me in a layer of sickness, even getting under my fingernails like tar.
I bit into worms a few times, too. They offered a slight resistance to being bitten, like a tapioca ball the moment before you pop it, and the insides were a bit like Jell-O, if Jell-O were pulsing and twisting and alive. They were slimy on my tongue, wet and warm like a dog’s tongue on your hand. And they tasted of death and decay, the horrid, fetid stink filling me with a sweet joy.
It took me hours to eat the whole thing, but when I was done, I felt such happiness. It was glorious; I had done it. I finally belonged. I was finally needed. And when they didn’t need me anymore, when they had eaten me wholly, I would be long dead. And I would be glad to die for the worms. I am a home.
There was a book in my freezer. It soothed the longing in my soul.
