The Wormho(l)e

Even in the middle of the most exquisite fucking, Treece fantasized about her worms. Not because any of her regulars were bad fucks either. Quite the contrary. There was Kai, the only person who could make her squirt—endlessly, helplessly—all over the quilt that used to belong to her Bible-thumpin’ granny. Look at God. Treece begged for the exact latitude and longitude of that tongue, those fingers, but Kai would never tell. Divine mysteries. There was Blaque, who ate cunt like it was contraband—gobblegobbleguzzlegulpGOTDAMN! And then there was Tamira. That sporty femme wanted her so bad—anytime anywhere—that she practically shimmered with desperation, like a distant object in summer heat. It was hottttttt doin’ it with a hologram—with someone who vibrated with adoration—but Treece felt a little guilty that she couldn’t reciprocate. And attention from a human-sized Hitachi was great until you numbed out from all the intensity. Treece had broken it off for the femmemillionth time, because her heart tended to be less mercenary than her pussy.

A few weeks later, Treece had just finished up a long day of running errands in the city. Time for a twisty, turny trip past the suburbs, past the farms, then home. She just happened to drive by the ailing rec center that had been scheduled for demolition for years. Ill-maintained, always empty athletic fields bracketed the rec center. And there was her service top angel, just leaving basketball practice. The night roared with rain, but Tamira seemed oblivious to the fact that umbrellas, ponchos, hoodies, or hell, even folded newspapers existed. Treece rolled down her window. 

“Can I…do you need a ride?” 

 “Oh, yeah–thank you so much!” Tamira bounded up the passenger car door, with nary a whiff of performative hesitation. 

 Tamira’s heat signature filled the Kia. That made Treece increasingly damp, making her wish she had worn panties with her skirt—because her on-again, off-again hound dog lover would definitely be able to smell the Siren between her thighs. And didn’t they—well, Treece—keep swearing off sex because Tamira wanted more than a situationship? 

 “If I had known I was going to see you, I would have tidied up,” Treece said, gesturing vaguely to her bonnet and rumpled shirt.

“You know I don’t care bout nunna that,” Tamira’s voice, husky. “What, you tryna do something?”

Oh, shit, thought Treece. Divert, divert! She glanced outside the parked car. Nothing but darkness and pounding rain. The closest building was a quarter mile away and boarded up. But nobody would see them if they went for it right there and then.

“Well, there’s that.” She nodded at Tamira’s hands–specifically, her uncut fingernails. So Tamira hadn’t been sexing anyone else. Treece’s heart sank a little. 

 “Oh, these? Say less.” Tamira started gnawing off her fingernails one by one, Treece growing wetter all the while. No nail clippers, no problem.

“You wouldn’t happen to have lube, would you?” Tamira pffffft’d out nail bits like they were sunflower seeds. 

Treece reached between Tamira’s ankles—with fingers taking a short side-quest to linger between the basketball bae’s thighs—to retrieve her purse at the foot well. She rifled a bit through its compartments and then: got it. She smiled to herself, lube bottle now in hand. Being a whenever-wherever queer came in, well, handy.

Reader, Treece got fisted in the backseat that night, at the storm-swept corner of 13th and Here We Go Again.

***

Her mind drifted to the worm bins in her kitchen not due to a dearth of expert, enthusiastic lovers in her bed (or in her car). Even Seven, the least skilled of the cohort, was considerate and competent. It just took her a while to get there with Seven. Treece would lay back on the mattress, watching an orgasm slowly slowly slowly approach from far off. Like fires in the distance. If Treece kept her eyes trained on the whorizon, she would cum at some point. It just took a lot of focus–—and faith. But eventually sex with Seven, Tamira, Blaque, Kai—and the nameless numberless others—just wasn’t hitting. Extravaganzas of sensation were lovely—Treece had loved every preacher-unapproved minute of it. But nothing changed the fact that she was starting to feel paddocked inside one human body.

***

Cosplaying a human in a human-swarmed metropolis, surrounded by delightful yet decidedly human friends and lovers—that was why Treece packed up her apartment and left for the country a year ago. All of it? Too much. The psychic chatter, the traffic, the rising rents. She figured she would move onto family land, erect a yurt, and live out her fantasies as a homesteading hermit. All while making sure that the Washingtons didn’t lose the one piece of earth generations of them had bled-sweat-cried over. What Treece Washington didn’t figure: family patriarchs, matriarchs, and anybodyarchs protesting her role as steward. Although no one else could or wanted to move to Bumfuck Egypt to care for the land, Treece was too queer, too improperly gendered for the job.  

After too many family fights over Zoom—which were more fight than family—she left her dream behind to move into a sagging rental a county over. After pouring all of her savings into the Washington land, she had very little left. So a sorry-ass farmhouse it was. It was clear that Jim, the landlord, didn’t want to rent to Treece and her kind, but it was also clear that he had financial troubles of his own. He lived further out, in an even less populated area of the state, and came to this area only to pick up rent. (Jim didn’t trust the postal system. Too New World Order.) His favorite microaggression was to wear a faded THESE COLORS DON’T RUN t-shirt every time he dropped by. He also came out to sniff around the property to make sure Treece hadn’t done something Black to it since the last rent check pickup. What could she do to this place that time and entropy hadn’t? Maybe Jim feared she would steal the sad big house and the even sadder outbuildings. She remembered the brunches she used to enjoy with her friends in the city and started giggling at the thought of a cartoonishly big, truly bottomless mimosa that could hide a decaying farmhouse in its depths.

“Where’s your husband?” he asked, every month.

“Buried out back, behind the shed. Follow the smell,” she replied, every month.

This was Jim’s cue to chuckle nervously and call to his dog, who he spoke to kindly, so she knew he knew how to treat some creatures with respect, before climbing back into his pickup. He really needed that rent money. 

But he would have had a star-spangled aneurysm if he had known about the parade of niggas she had running through the house. Treece did her best to make it cozy and welcoming for her guests, especially since they drove so far to visit. She even told them to bring a spennanight bag. But first, a home cooked meal, some puff puff pass, and then some good good for old times’ sake. She did miss socializing, that was true. What was more true: she wanted to make it as a full-time worm farmer and out here in the sticks was her best bet. Her cramped kitchen in her city apartment could and did hold some worm bins, but outdoor vermiculture and vermicomposting were superior. 

Treece wasn’t sure when she got a wild hair to pursue worm farming. Maybe it began with Ife, the fine-ass leader of the polyamorous prepper group she used to belong to, who said: “Erebody needs a doomsday skill. And I do mean erebody.” And why not spend an increasingly complex apocalypse with uncomplicated red wigglers? Treece loved the way the worms wove waste into song. Life. Kitchen scraps resurrected into use, soil, sustenance. She wanted to be as simple and grounded and purpose-filled as the nightcrawlers. She, on the other hand, was forever strange, split between here and there and out of bounds, nowhere-homed; even her own blood—the Washington clan—had no place for her. If she boasted no dirt to grow her own roots, Treece reasoned, she would just help worms make good soil for others. 

As it turned out, Treece had a talent for breeding worms and producing high-quality worm manure for local and regional organic farmers. Ol’ Jim didn’t say nan about her expanding operation because she poured some of her profits into property upgrades. Yeah, it was a rental but Treece had to make her meantime more than a place to be endured.

She stayed up late to read about Eisenia fetida and about all of the worms squiggling and scrawling across the planet. When she learned that her worms tasted the world with their entire bodies, she brewed a cup of holy basil and stepped outside to look at the sky. Then for a long time she gazed upon what she called “The Village,” her rows of troughs full of happily eating and burrowing and fucking and excreting worms. This is it, she thought, this is what I have been missing.

The following week, Treece ordered a large stock tank. When it was delivered to the farmhouse, she filled it with bedding: straw, shredded paper, wood chips, and old leaves. Then she filled it with apple peels, zucchini skins, eggshells, tea bags, coffee grounds, any organic material that inspired her. She went to the closest Black barbershop she could find—the barbers gave her odd looks—and asked for the soft Black galaxies of hair on the shop floor.

When it was all done and ready, Treece stepped into the tank and settled into the bedding. Jim was right to be worried that she was going to do something Black to this land. She covered herself until she was completely submerged in darkness. She would stay here until her whole body was a tongue, tasting her way home.

@agentsubrosa

Almah LaVon (theyy/themme) is a gender-expansive writer, mixed media maker, and creature of myth. Theyy are at work on two speculative novellas.

SISTORIES PROMPT

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