Stand out Debut: Read This Excerpt from Tapeworm by author A.P. Thayer

Read this chilling excerpt from TapeWorm below—then purchase your own copy of the book to keep reading! 

Why can’t we stop fighting?

I smell that same dusty sunlight again now and look for her, a reflexive betrayal. She’s not there, though. I’m still at the street corner, the sticky sheets wrapped around me. It’s gray, so it must be early morning. The marine layer hasn’t burned off yet. It’s chilly, but I don’t actually feel the chill. I just have the knowledge of it being chilly. Like I’ve been told what the weather is.

The streets disappear behind towering walls of mist in every direction, like the swirling clouds of it above the hot tub, blocking my view of the familiar neighborhood, turning it menacing. Beneath the fog, there’s a golden light to everything, very LA, but all I can think of is Carcosa and its twin suns. Yellow mist all around, like a maddening curtain about to rise before the cursed play, and I’ve forgotten my lines. The forbidden name of Hastur being whispered in the audience by desiccated ghouls with their mouths sewn shut. They’re out there. Waiting for me to stumble.

The driveway, the one that scraped the bottom of our cars every time we pulled out of it, shifts beneath my feet. There’s a metal grate right in the middle of the ramp. There isn’t one at our actual building—that’s how I know this is a dream—but there is now. It reminds me of something. Somewhere recently, I’ve seen its like. The metal grid is at an angle, the same angle as the steep driveway, facing away from me. If I were to move to the bottom of the driveway, I would be able to see inside the grate, but I can’t imagine anything I want to do less than walk to the bottom of that ravine and stare up into that yawning grate.

Yet that is where I find myself.

There is a weight in the air that petrifies me. It presses on my shoulders, cementing me to the ground. It fills my throat, trapping air in my lungs. I cannot make a sound, and I know, in that moment, that’s for the best. Like I know making a sound is exactly the opposite of what I should do. Like sound will attract things from within those walls of yellow mist. Don’t make waves, don’t complain, don’t change. Just endure. Survive.

As I’m standing there, frozen, not even breathing, the sound of rushing water grows loud. It rushes and froths, rising to the level of the grate, but it does not flow out, despite its angle. Something keeps it pressed against the grate, like a gurgling meniscus. An impossibility. There’s a squelching sound and the water spits violently, but it is still held back, flowing past the grate like some great subterranean flood that can’t break free. A forty-five-degree-angled torrent running beneath the ground, at the bottom of this steep driveway (was it always this steep?), this ravine, spitting and hissing like some trapped creature trying to get out.

The sound of rushing water is familiar, and I am reminded once more I am in a dream. That’s when I feel the other presence. Is it Trish? The yellow mist presses in, the water gurgles, and something draws closer.

In the way dreams are, everything shifts. I’m standing over a coffee table now, wearing only a white T-shirt. I feel naked in the way only a dream can make you feel. Naked and inadequate. The table is an ottoman now. Now a bed. It shimmers between forms, but always it’s large enough for the person laying on top of it to fit comfortably, their legs spread apart and on either side of me. I can’t make out a face, but there’s an erect cock bobbing next to mine. I grab it and pull it aside roughly as I try to penetrate them, but I keep missing the hole. They laugh and it turns cruel. Sounds like Trish. Her face is down there now; she’s making my thick head miss the hole, teasing me by rubbing her thumb against the base of the head. She licks the shaved and bleached asshole, her saliva leaving a string that stretches from her mouth to the pulsing hole, and the mystery person groans, moaning out Trish’s name.

“Come on. Fuck them. What are you waiting for?” Trish holds the person’s sack up and out of the way, and I finally hilt inside of the person whose face I can’t see. It feels like I tear something. Someone bends me over, and I feel the heat of their meat pushing against my own asshole. They kiss my shoulder, my neck. They slip into me, spreading me, and there’s a sharp pain, but it feels so good. As I build up a rhythm, the person behind me does, too.

“Good boy,” they whisper, and teeth sink into my shoulder, all while the sound of rushing water builds to a crescendo. 

The lock on the door of the convenience store is heavy. When the bolt slides home, the creature shivers at another novel sound. The human—male, young, prey—bounces metal keys in his palm, and the creature delights in that, too. The man whistles as he strolls behind the counter, like he is performing a well-practiced ritual for an audience of none. The odor of his self-loathing and despair is intoxicating. The creature does not need to be inside him to sense it, only wants to be. His loneliness and welling unsatisfaction with his life ooze from the cracks in the façade of overconfidence he wears. A broken boy. A man trapped by his choices. A prisoner. 

The creature sympathizes.

There is a click as the young man turns the cameras off. Now, he can play out the rest of his nightly fantasy. He likes to think he is the master of his domain, a little king of supplies and snacks, blessing visitors with their needs. He is lord of the aisles and commander of the drinks. But his dreams extend so short a distance. To rule a tiny shop? Sad. He dreams no more of leaving the valley.

That dream is dead and rotting.

The nightly pantomime always devolves into drinking, anyways, and with the drinking, the anger and loneliness overwhelm him. Trapped by his choices and unable to make new ones. He can’t stop himself from ending up in the same place every night.

Alone. Drunk. Angry.

In the dark store, however, with the power to cut himself off temporarily from prying eyes and consequences, he can be the master of his own life, if only for a few moments. This is the only chance he gets to pretend.

Unfortunately, he is not alone. The creature is there, as are its newborn young. But there is something else, as well. A new camera he knows nothing of, hidden in the ceiling to watch not the customers but to watch him. The owner, the true king of this tiny kingdom, is tired of the complaints, the missing cash, and the stolen stock. The creature sends forth some of its progeny. They fling themselves against the plastic—something new and disgusting—and metal of the recently installed system. It takes not long at all for the components to be devoured. Not to protect the young man’s indiscretions, of course, but because the creature is not ready for witnesses.

The young man opens one of the glass doors and cold air spills out across the linoleum floor. The creature’s tendrils wriggle free from between the tiles, tasting the chill. It reminds the creature of its ancient home among the stars before it was brought low. Before it was imprisoned here. This new generation of young is already starting to die out, and the creature is tired. It is free, but it is starved. It is old.

It needs to feed.

A hummingbird smashes into the glass of the front door, and the young man drops the six-pack he was pulling free.

Glass shatters in every direction, some of it cutting into his bare feet and ankles. Very dramatic. He bounces on one foot, swears. Blood wells from the cuts and drips onto the floor, mixing with the foamy beer. The creature sips the admixture. Cold. Refreshing. Poisoned but nourishing. Some of its young drink heavily from it, desperate to survive. They shrivel and die.

But the bright red streaks dripping down the man’s foot, smearing across the floor as he hobbles to a closet to grab a mop, are clean. They are delicious.

“What the fuck?”

He sees the babies now, swarming his bloody footprints, glutting themselves on his spilled life force. He tries to squash them with the mop, but more bubble up to the surface from below, drawn by the promise of food. There are so many in this generation, and though they do not live long, they do not have to. Some of the young wrap around the mop and yank it free from the young man’s hands.

He grabs a hatchet next, but the crescent blade does little against so many. His only chance would have been to run. The creature is glad he didn’t.

It spills forth from a hole in the refrigerator and unfolds itself in the young man’s direction. He’s screaming as its children start feasting on his flesh, digging beneath his skin to devour his muscle fibers and tendons. He’s surrounded and struggles to stay standing. The only thing keeping him up is the rising tide of young holding him in place. The creature takes shape behind him.

A teenage girl in a baggy sweatshirt.

He whirls to face her, sensing the looming danger, eyes wide, and recognizes her. They went to high school together. She had asked him to prom. He had said no. That he didn’t date beaners. She hasn’t aged a day since. The creature smiles, and the girl takes a step closer.

“We can skip prom,” she says. “I know somewhere we can go.”

“No, I’m . . .”

The woman’s face tears in half at the jaw. The top flap peels away to reveal a spinning cylinder of teeth.

The young man—Kyle, apparently—is brave enough to bury the axe into the maw but dooms himself in the process. The creature snaps shut its mouth around the axe and hand, trapping him. The woman’s face spreads up his arm, the skin tearing and reforming while it envelops his elbow, wraps over his shoulder. She—It—pulls Kyle close. He tastes of solitude and regret. Terror and pain. The creature’s young continue to feast on the body, boring holes through his legs and into bone. The man screams and screams until . . . Ah, there it is.

Until he tastes of gratitude.

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