Worm

A story about a character who is always patient, even when frustrated.

The name in his passport was Harold Johnson, but he was known as Worm. The nickname was the most constant aspect of his job. Friday afternoon drinking sessions might end in laughter and name-calling, yet on Monday morning Fudge was once again Frederick from Accounting. Similarly, Jeremy from Marketing was Tank Man only during office football matches. But Worm was always Worm.

He was small and pale. His desk was in the corner, the furthest away from the coffee machine and the big potted plants. He kept his desk tidy and his head down and worked steadily through the stacks of paper in his in-tray. His reports were usually on time, mostly complete, generally factual and entirely dull. The others had framed photos of children on their desks, with novelty humidifiers and succulents. He had a stationery box containing three blue pens, some yellow post-it notes, and two dozen paperclips. He was Worm.

On Tuesday, Worm was the first person to arrive for the 9 am meeting. He always arrived early. This way, he could sit where he wanted. He knew from long experience that the best place was three chairs down from the boss, on his left side. Anywhere else and you were inevitably in charge of fetching coffee or trying to get the beamer working. He took out his notepad and pen and sat down, waiting. They strolled in at three minutes past nine. The boss was talking loudly to Frederick about golf. The others were drinking coffee and laughing at stupid jokes. It took a few more minutes of backslapping and guffawing until they actually got down to the agenda. Jeremy got a mild reprimand for using the wrong color blue in all their marketing material. Worm got an eye roll for not finishing the quarterly report that was due next month.

‘Get it done by the end of this week,’ said the boss.

‘But,’ said Worm. Then he closed his mouth and nodded.

The meeting went on for three hours, with discussions and loud jokes while Worm tried to write the report in his head. Suddenly everyone stood up and Worm scrambled to his feet. He caught Jeremy’s sleeve as they left the room.

‘Can I please have the numbers for February?’

‘I’ll send them over later, Worm.’

‘Oh. Right. Excuse me.’ He moved slightly to stand in front of Margaret from Logistics. ‘Please, I haven’t received anything from your department.’

‘Not now, Worm. Very busy.’ She pushed by him.

Carla from Human Resources looked away and started a conversation with Frederick. Then all of them were moving towards the lifts, with Worm trailing behind them. Something on the floor caught Worm’s eye and he bent to pick it up. It was a crumpled piece of paper, and he put it in his pocket.

‘Early lunch, I think,’ said the boss. ‘Let’s go outside.’

He shepherded them into the lift while Worm stood outside the meeting room. Just before the doors closed, Frederick said something that Worm didn’t hear. It must’ve been funny because everyone laughed. The number above the lift decreased from five to zero, and he imagined the group walking along the street in the weak spring sunshine until they found a nice little restaurant for their lunch. Worm ate his cheese sandwiches at his desk while he wrote seven emails, requesting numbers and figures and customer satisfaction reports. He proofread each email twice and worried about how to sign them. What was more professional, ‘best regards’, ‘kind regards’ or something else? What about ‘Worm’ itself? He chewed a fingernail, pressed ‘Send’ seven times, and started typing his report.

The others came back while he was considering his graphs for section three. He watched them take off their jackets, fetch coffee, chat with each other, and finally, finally, sit down at their desks and start typing things. He wrote a few paragraphs about his graphs, all the while waiting patiently for the little pop-up to inform him of emails. Nothing. He finished section three, well, as much as he could without the numbers from Accounting.

Worm stood up and headed for Frederick’s desk. There he waited to be noticed. Frederick was talking to one of the interns. He glanced at Worm but continued his conversation. After a few minutes, Worm cleared his throat carefully.

‘Worm,’ said Frederick with a sigh.

‘Excuse me. I wondered, please, did you see my email?’

A quick glance at the computer screen. ‘Yes, I saw your email.’

‘Well, I need a reply, quickly. For the quarterly report.’ Silence. ‘Please,’ he added.

‘Not now, Worm, I’m busy.’

‘Oh, yes. Of course. Sorry…’

Frederick rolled his eyes and turned back to the intern. ‘I know we haven’t won the Cup for, what, twelve years, but the team’s the strongest it’s been in decades — ’

Worm stopped by Jeremy’s desk.

‘Hello, Jeremy. Hi,’ he said, ‘I just wondered if you’d seen my email, and perhaps — ’

‘Sorry Worm, not now.’ Jeremy had turned off his computer and was putting on his coat. ‘I’m leaving early today, hockey match.’

‘Right. Oh. Good luck.’ Jeremy didn’t answer.

‘Perhaps you could reply first thing tomorrow?’ Worm called after him. But Jeremy was already gone.

Worm sat down behind his desk and stared at the open document on his computer screen. The cursor blinked, waiting for him to input his colleagues’ data. He blinked back. Then he dialed a number on his office phone.

Margaret picked up after the second ring. ‘Worm, is that you?’

‘Yes. Hello. I just wondered. Have you had a chance to read my email?’

‘I read it,’ she said. ‘And I’ll reply when I have time. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m expecting an important call.’

She hung up.

Section four should be mostly doable even without the latest information from Logistics. Worm wrote it as well as he could while the office emptied around him. Nobody said goodbye or even waved. The cleaning lady came and vacuumed around him while he awkwardly rolled his chair out of the way and lifted his feet a few inches off the ground.

‘Thank you,’ he said. She just hummed along tunelessly to whatever music she was listening to on her headphones. Perhaps it was time to leave. As he rummaged around for his car keys, his fingers touched the crumpled paper in his pocket. He smoothed it out. It was a messy list of numbers and groups of letters, some scratched out. Intriguingly, it was the boss’s handwriting. How odd. It didn’t look like a shopping list or a note-to-myself. And some of the letters seemed familiar. He turned his computer on again and opened the report. Yes, there it was. The letters were abbreviations of various projects, customers and companies. But the numbers made no sense. Worm stared at the paper for a while. Then he put it away in a drawer. But as he drove home, the numbers kept intruding on his thoughts.

The next day Worm received two spam emails promising him millions if he would only transfer a few hundred first. He deleted them and tried to write section five of his report. The white patches in the document were increasing in number. Each time he ventured forth from behind his desk he was sent scurrying back again. Jeremy ignored him. Frederick and Margaret took three long coffee breaks together and told him they were busy. Once again he was the last one to leave the office. He wrote politely phrased notes on post-its and walked around the office to stick them on computer screens. At Frederick’s desk, he stopped. The computer was still on.

Worm glanced around quickly. The office was empty. Perhaps, perhaps he could find last month’s account overview himself! With a tingle of foreboding, he sat down. If Frederick came back, he was in trouble. But Frederick wouldn’t come back, he told himself. He had pubs and football matches to go to, and he probably played squash twice a week. Worm quickly found the correct folder and opened a few files at random. They were a mess, very different from the polished overviews Frederick presented at meetings and occasionally deigned to send to Worm. And something was very wrong with the numbers. Before he knew what he was doing, Worm had taken out a USB drive and copied the entire folder onto it. Then he quickly turned Frederick’s computer off. An idea was beginning to take shape in his mind, one that required a closer examination of Frederick’s files and the crumpled note with the boss’s handwriting.

The Thursday morning traffic jam was longer than usual, and when Worm arrived at the office half an hour late, he found a number of crumpled post-it notes on the floor. He had received an email from Margaret. There was no attachment, just an icily polite request for the quarterly reports of the last three years which should have been put on the shared hard drive immediately. He decided to ignore it. The decision gave him a little thrill and he happily outlined section six of his report, inserting progressively ruder versions of ‘logistics numbers go here’ wherever needed.

‘Worm!’ Margaret’s sharp voice brought him back to reality. She rapped her knuckles on his desk. He jumped and quickly minimized the report window so she wouldn’t see the swearwords.

‘Hello, yes. Margaret. How are you?’

‘Worm, where are those reports I asked you about?’

‘Actually, I’m rather busy now but — ’

‘Get. It. Done.’

He quickly copied the documents to the shared hard drive.

‘Could you then perhaps give me — ’ he began. But she was gone.

No matter. If Frederick and the boss were involved, then Margaret probably was too. She had the brains. And the ruthlessness.

Worm waited until lunchtime to make the call. Once he said the company name, he was immediately put through to someone in charge. They had been suspicious for a while, they said. He emailed them copies of Frederick’s files and a photo of the boss’s note. Then he stared at the phone and the computer screen and the cheese sandwiches that he was too nervous to eat. Later that afternoon he lied through his teeth when the boss asked him about his report. He felt like a worm.

He wanted to be on time on Friday morning, to see it all unfold, but it had already started when he got there. Everyone was huddled by the coffee machine. Nobody was drinking coffee. They watched as their computers and files were loaded into plastic boxes that had the word ‘Evidence’ printed on the sides. The boxes were taped shut and stacked on one side of the room. A young constable was writing labels and cross-referencing everything.

‘Sir,’ said another constable. She showed Worm an impressive looking badge. ‘Which is your desk, sir?’

Worm pointed it out and signed a form. Then he sauntered over to the coffee machine.

‘Good morning everyone,’ he said breezily. He made himself a double espresso. Frederick was looking at his shoes. Margaret was paler than usual. On the other side of the office stood the boss. He was gesturing wildly while a senior officer looked on impassively. Worm sipped his coffee. Not bad at all. The Fraud Squad really was very efficient.

He felt like a worm. Worms didn’t just crawl and slither. They could dig deep. And they could grow scales. Each little insult, each barb, could be sharpened and honed until it was armor that sheltered you and allowed you to go unseen. Harold Johnson smirked. Worm. Dragon. Same thing.

Marte van der Linden is a nanoscientist and penguin-enthusiast who loves writing stories. She’s been writing since she could hold a pencil.

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