Glow Worms
by Chris Morton
The woman was wearing a green summer
dress and under the moonlight she was swaying in the sea breeze –
in her hand was a plastic cup filled with red wine and there was
music.
“Your name?” said one of the
young men. Like the others his skin was richly tanned, his eyes dark
– the woman looked back and smiled and said something about it
being very forward to ask a lady such things. “Where I come from …”
she shouted over the sound of waves and music, and the man feigned
apology, all the time moving closer. He took her hand and
complimented her over the softness of her flesh. His friends laughed,
like him they were fishermen. They were stocky and rugged. Worn, but
full of energy.
“Your eyes,” the young man said.
He smelt of dry sweat and sea water. “What colour is that?” He
was squinting.
A splashing of the waves and a
seagull flew down. There was a barbecue going, scraps of fish and
bread.
The
man too was swaying to the music. His body was broad, crouching. He
was a little dwarf and the woman squeezed his hand.
“You’re
very sweet.”
“What?”
he was shouting. “You say what?”
“You’re
very sweet,” the woman mouthed over the sound of what she took to
be some sort of techno beat. People often found it strange, how
little she knew about music. “Why not?” they’d say. “You
should,” they’d say.
Dancing,
the woman drank what was left of her plastic cup. She continued
holding the man’s hand and he began to follow her rhythm while his
friends, the stocky fishermen, cheered them on.
“I’ll
get you another. You want another?”
“Sure.”
The
man pulled her fairly hard and through the small crowd they stumbled.
There were bottles of red wine – the man grabbed one and held it
high over her cup, pouring it out like an expert barman, grinning. A
number of his teeth were gold and they sparkled in the light from a
fire further along. Around this fire there were dancers and clouds of
smoke.
“You’re
not from around here, are you?”
“Oh,
no. Very much no,” said the woman, hand on her hip, in her other
hand the plastic cup now full of red wine and she raised it to her
lips.
The
man’s eyes were searching her.
“There’s
something about you.”
“Oh,
yes?”
The
pink of her lipstick, the blush of her skin. The eyes, so green.
“Are
they real?”
“You
mean my eyes?”
“Yes,
they seem …”
“Ahh,”
the woman answered, uncomfortable for a moment. “Though how would
you know?”
“A
sister,” said the man. He grinned. “The village, they had a
pool.”
“A
pool?”
The
man laughed. With his right foot he was drawing curves in the sand.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “A pool is when they gather together money
for someone. My sister lost an eye because a firework hit her in the
face. Like this,” he said, and the woman squinted, looking away.
“Her ear too. Though for that, she’s still waiting.”
“I’m
sorry.”
“No,
no, it’s nothing. The things they can do now.” The man’s eyes
brightened. “The doctors – the ear they will grow on the back of
a mouse.” He laughed, saying, “They will cut it and attach it
here.” Pointing to behind his ear, he then told the woman of a
cousin who had lost a finger. “A shark bit it clean off,” he
said. “But now he has all five again. A miracle!” the man
grinned, then seemed to sober in spirit. He looked at the woman, at
her eyes and said, “If you don’t want to talk about it, I
understand. There are many strangers who come to this town, they all
have stories. Your eyes, yes I guess finally. Because of my sister. I
have seen them before. The colouring and the slow movement of the
iris. You lost both of them …” the man trailed off.
The
thud of music continued to beat around them.
Then
there was sudden laughter and they turned to see a group of men, the
short men, the fishermen were putting on some sort of balancing act.
There were whoops of applause.
“Come
on,” said the woman. “Let’s go for a walk.”
“Somewhere
quieter?” asked the man. He seemed excited.
“It
says in the records that there are caves along this coast. How far
along are they?”
The
man laughed. “Caves,” he said. “They are dirty, nothing. I take
you to my home, it’s near. You see the sunrise from where I live
and it’s beautiful. A sight to behold,” he said.
But
she was staring far away, over his shoulder to the distance. “It
says there are glow worms, in the caves,” she said. “And I’ve
always wanted to see one. What are they like?”
“What
are they like, she says.” The man was laughing. “So take out your
pad and watch a vid-feed,” he scoffed. “I show you at my home. I
have a very big screen. My brother, he install –”
“Oh,
come on,” pleaded the woman, swaying towards him. She threw down
her cup and grabbed both his hands. “Since I was a little girl,”
she began, slowly moving against him. “I’ve been fascinated by
glow worms. You’ve no idea how I imagined them. All fat and tiny
and full of bursting luminosity.”
The
woman leaned in close to the man and gave him a kiss on the nose.
“Okay,
okay,” he said pulling away from her. “Okay, I take you to your
glow worms. If that’s what you want …” He finished his drink
then did a little bow. “I am your guide,” he said.
He
took her hand and they walked through the dancing bodies, past the
crackling fire.
“Hey,
Steffen!”
“Hey,
Steffen, where you going?”
They
continued on.
“Is
that your name?”
“It
is,” the man replied as they walked on through the thinning crowd.
“But I think you still haven’t told me yours, or where you are
from.”
“Clara,”
the woman answered simply. “And I’m from the domes, as you most
likely call them. Though for us they are just cities.”
“Ah,
Clara. Now you reveal. Now it is no problem.”
The
woman laughed.
“And
tell me more.” The man flapped his free hand in gestation. “I
want to know everything about these cities,” he said, and then he
squeezed her backside. “I hear there is no need for money? All is
provided!”
“It’s
true,” smiled the woman, elaborating no further.
“And
how you come to be here?” The man was excited again. Rambling. “Are
you alone? Are you alone here?”
A
cheer from behind them and more shouts of, “Steffen, Steffen wait
for us! Why you not take us with you?”
“Please
excuse my friends.”
“No
problem,” said the woman moving his hand away from her behind.
Then: “Come on,” she said. “Down there,” she said, pointing
to closer to the sea.
She
began to run.
And
he followed her into the darkness, scampering across the sand. “Hey,
wait.” He was losing sight of her. She was a blur of green dress.
“The caves, they are that way!”
“Come
on,” he heard from distance. “The water is warm.”
She
watched him approach tentatively for she was already naked, her dress
and undergarments slung on the sand where he was now standing.
“Come
in and join me.”
She
was unashamed in her nudity. It was something she had never
understood. And as he stripped down she remembered the first time she
had seen her husband. So raw and tender. So embarrassed.
Finally
her husband had asked her: after the first time he had requested that
they be together with the lights out. He’d been uncomfortable with
the way she looked at him, the way she’d taken in every detail.
The
small man in front of her seemed similarly awkward. He was puffing
out his chest, making the effort to appear confident in his natural
form but now unclothed he was quick to rush at the water.
He
dived in with a splash.
Up
above the stars were so clear, the moon so bright. In the distance
the fire from the party burned, it was a blip of life, the musical
beat a dull thudding and the loud voices and laughter had become the
soft chatter of distant excitement.
A
hand grabbed her foot. The man was pulling her under.
“Stop
it,” she wailed. She kicked out, careful not to kick too hard. She
felt his shoulder under her foot, then he slipped away and rose to
the surface next to her, splashing and satisfied. “You are a
surprise,” he shouted.
“Oh,
really?”
“Yes,”
he said, breathing heavily. Under the water he made to touch her but
she pushed him away. Instead she swam in circles around this man, and
he dived under again, playful, surprising her by resurfacing ten
metres or so further along. His head bobbed in the moonlight. His
golden teeth glistened.
“The
caves, they are that way,” he said.
She
swam towards him slowly. “And our clothes?”
The
man laughed. “You are a surprise,” he said again. “You have the
body …” he sputtered under the waves, his sentence trailing off.
“Your heart … it has spirit,” he was saying. “Tell me more
about this Clara I meet tonight. This girl who swims before me who
asks me to take her to the glow worms. With the green synthetic eyes,
who watches me, who pushes me away then drags me closer.”
She
was upon him now and their lips locked together. Wet mouths and
bodies twisting tightly.
“Clara
from far away,” he mumbled. He was a fish. An animal. Sweat and sea
water. His blood was warm. Blood and skin and bones. She felt his
heart beating.
* * *
“You
still want to see the caves?” he asked her some time later. They
were lying on the beach, still naked and far from where they’d left
their clothes. “They are right behind us,” he said. “Not far.”
She
gazed over to where he was pointing. And she asked him what it was
like, living in paradise.
“Paradise?
You are kidding me?” he laughed. “I see the vid-feeds of your
cities. You have cars that drive themselves. You have houses that
from the inside can change the shape – the holos, I’ve seen them,
rooms in which you can go anywhere by only touching a button.”
“Those
rooms are just visual,” the woman dismissed. “There’s no smell,
no touch.” She ran her fingers through the sand. “Here, it is
real,” she said.
But
the man was hardly listening. I hear you can even make it rain, he
was saying. Then pointing at the moon, he said, “You know they’re
building cities up there now.”
The
woman followed his finger upwards. Then leaning forward she picked up
a clump of sand and allowed it to run through her fingers. She
watched the fine grain settle on her legs while the man began talking
at length: “One day, I will go there,” he was saying. “If I
have the chance. They’ll ask for volunteers and that’s what I’ll
do. They’ll need people of all kinds. That’s the way it works. A
few like you, a few like me, a few like others. And I know what
you’re thinking,” he said. “You’re thinking, why me, right?
Why me when there will be so many others? But I tell you, I have
ambition,” he said, showing her his golden teeth. “And because
when it comes down to it,” he laughed, “at the end of the day,
who in their right mind wants to live on the moon?”
The
woman closed her eyes, drawing back to another time. She was thinking
again of her husband.
“The
moon,” her husband had said after talking to her at length about
the proposed colonisation. He’d been informing her, as if she
didn’t know; as if she were completely unaware of everything that
was going on in the world. It was their first date and he’d asked
her, “The moon, how do you picture it?”
“Like
a ball of cheese in the sky,” she’d joked.
“And
cheese?” he’d asked after a moment’s consideration.
“Yellow
milk,” she’d replied.
“And
yellow?” he’d asked, growing in boldness, relaxed by the white
wine that was settling in his veins.
She’d
thought of honey and butter; the smell of daffodils and egg yolk.
Lemons, bananas, sweetcorn … even now they all had that strange
taste of yellow.
“Before
I could see,” she told the fisherman as they sat there naked on the
beach, “I’d imagine the sky as a mixture of frosting and water
that at night would suddenly change into black tea with sugar.” She
laughed. “But of course, you never see the sugar in tea, once it’s
stirred … I never knew that before …”
“You
were born blind?”
“Yes,”
she answered. She was playing with the sand still, letting it run
through her fingers. “Until two years ago when I had the operation,
I couldn’t see anything.”
“And
then it all changed,” the fisherman laughed. “And now you want to
see the world,” he grinned, unmoved by her revelation.
“You
know when I was a little girl my mother told me there were glow worms
above my bed,” the woman said. “In my room, on the ceiling and
I’d imagine them when I was lying there in that moment before you
fall asleep. Glow worms mothers and fathers and families and cousins.
A whole village. A whole community. To me, what they represented.
Light,”
she said. “Glow.
For one who cannot see, those words can seem magical.”
“So
come, then,” said the fisherman, rising to his feet. “Let us see
these magical glow worms of yours.”
He
took her hand and before she knew it he was leading her into the
underground. Sharp rocks under their bare feet and, “Shhh …” he
was saying, as if a single sound could disturb the tranquillity.
“Further,” he was mouthing. “This way, further, follow me …”
Each and every hair on his body had pricked up in the cool air.
Behind
him a whole new world was emerging in the darkness.
Chris Morton is the creator of this blog.
He has released two sci-fi novels,
one collection of short stories
and a few other scribblings.
You can find his amazon page here.
