Red Carpet

Find all the episodes and the prologue here, or check out this short recap*.

Splat! The fat fly was crushed under the object’s weight, his guts spewed every direction. The force of impact ejected the other travelers from the table top. A mosquito, two earwigs, a couple silverfish, and a pair of worms flew over the edge and out of control.

Norman watched as his companions drifted from the table top like falling leaves. He fell with them, floating through the musty living room air. A mosquito, a couple earwigs, two silverfish, his friend Norm, and the terrible gooey bits of a flattened fly surrounded him. The moldy mushroom he ate earlier was working its poisons through his central nervous system. His pupils dilated time, stretching it wide for a pleasant and slow free fall.

“Oh god… oh god,” echoed cries from somewhere nearby. All alone, Norm picked himself up and peered into a forest of gray wool pylons. The soft pillars sprouted from the ground more densely than grass and towered overhead. Panic gripped him, then he heard the woeful cries.

The painful wailing of Nergus was a good locator. Norm pushed a final wool pillar out his way and came upon her. She had forced open a small clearing in the carpet. The wool posts surrounding her were soaked bright red. Four of six legs crushed and a split in her abdomen, she sat in a vibrant and growing pool of blood.

“We have to stop the bleeding!” shouted Norm.

“Yes, the bleeding. S-s-stop the bleeding,” Nergus quivered.

Norm took an instant to survey the surroundings for some answer to their problem. Nergus was growing pale and her gaze distant, but her painful cries continued. With little else to do, he dove toward her, wrapping himself around her gut and pulling tight. He transformed himself into a wormy tourniquet.

“What happened, wha-what happened?” murmured Nergus. She looked down at her broken body and crushed limbs. The bleeding had slowed under Norm’s grip. “Is this real?”

Norm strained to reply, “something big, from above, from somewhere. It squashed Donny, stupid fat fly. It killed him. It got you too.”

“All this blood. This is my blood?” continued Nergus. It was a rhetorical question, or so Norm thought. He left it unanswered and squeezed harder. A beat passed. “Where are the others?” she wheezed.

Norman was in a conversation with the universe when the earwigs found him. Sitting in a loose coil, he stared at the severed head of Donny just a few spaces before him. Donny’s eyes we’re wide open, frozen in surprise at his meeting with death.

At first, Norman swore he heard Donny speaking to him. He spoke back, unaware of the horror. A voice replied, but not to him. The voice appeared to come from somewhere else, another place that was entirely real yet out of reach. Norman searched his surroundings for its source. Massive wooly pillars clawed at him from all sides. Their wiry bodies shifted in white and gray spirals, their edges blurring into their neighbors. Turning back to the head, Norman heard the voice again. There, he found it. Large black pupils sparkled with the absence of light. Deep inside those empty black holes he stared, listening for an alien voice to call out again.

The earwigs paused to understand the shocking scene before them. Hearing Norman speak out to the head, they shivered. “I thought we we’re the c-c-crazy ones” — “crazy worm,” they whispered. “Best be cautious with him” — “scary.”

The earwigs crashed Nergus’s bloody scene shortly after Norm became a tourniquet. With them they brought Norman, led by leash, and one remaining silverfish. The other silverfish was missing.

“Oh, thank god!” exclaimed Nergus.

“Norman, you’re alive! You’re ok!” called Norm, still squeezing the bloody abdomen.

The earwigs moved to examine Nergus. “Oh my” — “my oh my.” Without speaking they loosed Norm from his hold and applied a proper tourniquet fashioned from the remaining leash. Norm stretched out and moved toward his best friend in embrace. He hugged him tight without noticing his spacey gaze. Norman looked on the bloody scene with wide, fizzy eyes.

Seeing his worm companion was in one piece, Norm turned his attention back to Nergus. “You’re pale Nergus, very pale. You’ve lost a lot of blood. Too much blood.”

“I’ll be ok. I’m going to be ok,” she replied, then repeated and repeated and repeated it again to herself. At this, the earwigs took a few steps back and whispered between themselves. Then, they called Norm over.

“We can’t stay here,” started one earwig. “Here no good, can’t stay,” continued the other. “We need to go” — “Must leave her.”

Norm was appalled at the direction. “What? Why can’t we stay? Camp here for a bit. She needs some time, then we move.”

“No, no time.” — “Time no good,” the earwigs continued. “She’s done” — “Done for.”

“She’s your leader, she’s your friend! Isn’t she?” Norm cried.

“We know the way” — “Yes, yes, the way. You follow us.” — “Sun” — “Sunshine,” the earwigs pushed on.

Norm had enough. He turned away from the earwigs and back to Nergus. She was conscious, but distant. She was still pale and getting worse. “That’s right Nergus, you’re gonna be ok. The bleeding has stopped, see.” He cast his gaze to her abdomen.

“Bleeding stopped, yes. Bleeding, yes. Blood. Blood,” Nergus paused. “I need to eat. I need blood,” she sighed.

“Right, of course! But where? How?” Norm stopped.

Even before he finished speaking, Norm knew exactly how, and he grew queasy at the thought. What little blood he had to give was doing all it could to keep pumping at the moment. Nergus had gained his trust and his respect, even his admiration but in this dire moment his hesitation felt just. He was chilled to the core at the thought of Nergus’s sharp extremity piercing his skin and plumbing around in his body.

“Please. Please,” she responded, knowing an explanation was unnecessary. The worms were the only warm blood sacs available. Nergus looked up at Norm, eyes wide and vacant, hoping for a savior.

Norm retreated within, looking for the courage to agree. It took a moment, but he found it. The words slowly made their way from his gut, to his heart, and to his throat, but just before the ‘ok’ left his lips, he heard Norman cry out from the other side of the clearing, “Use me!”

“Thank you Norman, thank you. I promise not to take too much. Just what I need. Just a bit,” Nergus exhaled then prompted him to come close. Norm felt a tension rise up in him, a sadness at his failure to speak up, but the moment had passed.

Norman barely recognized his own voice when he called out ‘use me!’. On one level of consciousness, he was consumed with waves of sound, swirls of color, and dancing light. On another, he was engaged in an out of body experience, deftly understanding the needs of this emergency situation. He slid over to Nergus to rest beside her.

The mosquito raised her proboscis and gently stroked Norman from top to bottom, looking for the best point of insertion. Then, just below his midsection and rather bluntly, she broke skin. She pushed her straw in deeper, closed her eyes, and began to extract the fluid inside. The blood entered her stomach and quickly filled her veins. The color in her face came back. She opened her eyes to see the two worms and two earwigs begin to transform. Their tones grew exceptionally vivid, and their skin swirled and danced. Exhausted, she closed her heavy eyelids over her rapidly growing pupils.

Come back up with the next episode!