The Snail

As I watched the snail slowly cross the tiled floor, my mind reached back into the events of the past few days.

Julian had been an acquaintance for some time. We'd met after the first day of high school, and though we didn't become fast friends, convenience fostered a connection between us. He lived a few houses down the street, and though we shared few interests, the ability to travel back and forth on foot made the whole process easier.

I was a stocky child, but Julian had me beat when it came to size. He was thick, muscular, and tall… the kind of kid who intimidated adults on a regular basis, whether he was doing it on purpose or not.

He was bad, as well. To be quite honest, I was given to the occasional questionable activity, but for the most part I knew when not to cross the line.

Julian was a criminal, and I cast a blind eye on it because it was convenient.

"Here, I have some shit for you." Julian once shoved a box of game cartridges into my hands. "I don't have a Genesis, so you can have these."

"Wow!" My eyes darted across the large collection of titles. "Where'd you get these?"

"Don't worry about it."

I didn't worry about it. Not because I caught on to him, but because it was more convenient. Never look a gift horse in the mouth, and all that.

Julian was stoned when he first told me his big secret. We'd gone out into the woods, to an old abandoned shack, and there he began to light up.

"You want a hit?" He asked.

"No, I'm dumb enough already." I quipped… at least I thought it was a quip.

"You wanna see something cool?"

Julian drew a pocket knife and, joint clenched in his teeth, drew the blade across his forearm.

"Holy shit!" I shouted as blood spurted forth.

Julian just laughed. He covered the wound with his free hand, and I could see the red tendrils seeping out between his fingers.

Then, they retracted.

When Julian removed his hand, the cut was gone.

"I can't get hurt."

He took a long drag and held it as I stared, stupefied.

"You're like Logan, with a healing factor!"

"What?" He let out a puff, "Whoever the fuck that is!"

Julian got up from his improvised seat, a rough, bare counter built into the shack's wall, and turned away from me.

"C'mere." He mumbled.

As I joined Julian at the splintering counter, he jabbed the knife point into his thumb and squeezed out a droplet of blood. It hit the wood with a tiny splatter.

"Watch this shit. You'll lose your fucking mind."

Watch, I did. The droplet shivered, rippled, and drew itself into a tiny ball. That crimson sphere then twisted itself out into a small, delicate worm shape.

The worm began to blindly struggle as it made its way through the cracks and crevices of the dry wooden surface. The thing seemed completely lost and vulnerable.

Julian brought the knife handle down it with a sudden and violet crash.

"What'd you kill it for?!" I blurted out, ever empathetic toward even the oddest creatures.

"Fuck you." Julian snapped, "It was a part of me. I didn't kill it. I can't die."

He shot me a hooded glance, grinned wide, and studied my expression.

"I can't die." He repeated smugly.

I didn't see him much after that. It wasn't so much his oddball biology as his attitude toward it. There was something disturbing and cold about the way he treated his body, as if it were a sign of how he'd treat any living thing… friend or not.

I went back to my hum-drum life as it was before I'd bet Julian. I played a lot of video games, watched television, and ate junk food. That was about it. In this funk, there was a sense of safety that comforted me after what I'd seen.

Then came the night I had to retrieve something from the shed.

My parents had asked me to bring in some thing or another, and for the life of me I can't remember what it was. It seems really unimportant, looking back.

All that matters is that I wasn't alone when I walked into that shed.

Julian was there.

"Gah!" I shouted, startled by movement in the moon-cast shadows.

In the darkness, Julian laughed.

"What the fuck, man? What are you doing here?!"

"What do you think?" Julian chuckled again, "I'm taking your parents' shit. Did you guys even notice your spare keys were gone?"

I'd invited him over enough times to case everything several times over.

"No! No way!" I stood in the doorway, arms out at my sides as if I had any hope of blocking the brute.

"It's not a choice." Julian produced his knife, which caught the moonlight for only the slightest moment.

"What're you gonna do? Kill me?" My voice came out sarcastic, which was a surprise to me.

Julian crouched, turned the blade out in his fist, and rushed me. I ducked out of the doorway as the blade traced its vivid signature across my arm.

Stupidly, in a panic, I backed into the shed, away from Julian who was now adjusting his stance on the soil outside.

"Julian!" I screamed.

He rushed again. Frantic, I unhooked a hatchet from the shed wall and brandished it threateningly. Flinching at the sight of Julian's unfazed progress, I brought the tool down hard across his shoulder.

"Ahh!" He groaned, reeling back, "You motherfucker!"

The knife dropped from his hand, the shoulder above cleaved into a bloody mess.

Crimson worms began to spill forth. As if possessed of a sudden and horrible sense of being, they writhed and twisted out of Julian's exposed tissue and tumbled down his shirt.

The dirt at Julian's feet was soon alive with hundreds of thrashing, fleeing pieces of the whole.

Pained, but sure of himself, Julian reached for the knife with his good hand.

"Little bitch!" The words drooled out of his mouth amid the worms, "I'll skin your fucking corpse!"

Seized with mortal dread, driven to madness by the sight of the red, sprawling carpet, I brought the hatched down again with a solid THWAK.

Julian could only gurgle at that point. The blow met him at the cheek, nearly splitting head from jaw and all below.

As he fell to the ground, that separation completed itself in full.

Panting, sweating through my clothes, I gripped the hatchet with a certain wild-eyed terror that seemed to erase every pathetic thing I had been before that moment.

Finally, my white-knuckled grip loosened, and the hatchet fell amid the worms.

I watched for minutes on end as the tiny, squirming fiends struggled free from Julian's corpse and made their random, unseeing journeys out into the grass. Eventually, the body was left pale and withered.

Slowly, I regained some semblance of thought and logic. Cautiously, I made my way to the house. There, I would find garbage bags that would conceal my eerie friend until a more permanent solution could be found.

I was standing in the kitchen, bags in hand, when I saw the snail.

Pink, elongated, and covered in small bumps, the snail glided across the floor as its eyeless stalks twisted and turned.

Behind the snail, the former tongue, was Julian's head…. The upper part of it, anyway. His glassy, unfocused eyes seemed set in the most grim sort of shell.

I wondered what the rest of him was up to.

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