bookworm

Mr. Worm’s stardom, over the past two years, has flooded Apollo’s inbox with emails that have absolutely nothing to do with his career as a lawyer. Despite the disclaimer on his personal website that his official Wright Anything Agency email is to be used only for legal matters and potential clients, he finds that, every morning, he has to go in and delete anywhere between five and twenty emails asking about his pet worm. It’s become part of his morning routine now.

Wake up. Brush teeth. Shower. Coffee. Delete emails asking for the worm to be part of some random workplace’s 2029 calendar. Make breakfast for himself and Klavier. Feed vegetable peels to Mr. Worm and Fancy Feast to Mikeko.

He’s sitting at the little kitchen island, waking himself up with caffeine, when his hand hovers over the ‘delete’ button of an email that—if he’s honest—actually piques his curiosity.

< vmisham@gmail.com >

Hi Apollo!

I’m sorry for writing to you at your professional email address—don’t worry, I don’t need legal assistance! I suppose I’ll just get right to it.

We’re studying animals in my art therapy class and everyone is bringing in their pets to do some life drawing. I don’t have anything to bring in, but I thought it might be a nice outing for Mr. Worm if you wanted to bring him along? It’s art therapy, but it’s open to the public, and I got you and Klavier some tickets to the Saturday class this week if you’re interested? It’d be nice to see you again after all these years.

Hope you’re doing well!
Vera Misham

…

< apollojustice@waa.com >

Hi Vera!

Lovely to hear from you. I’m glad to hear that you’re doing well and in therapy. Klavier and I would love to come along—it sounds like a fun little date idea, and certainly beats a fifth rewatch of America’s Next Top Model, per his usual weekend suggestion.

If you just forward the address and time, I’ll see you there on Saturday. And yes, I’ll bring Mr. Worm.

Best,
Apollo Justice | Attorney-at-Law | Wright Anything Agency | He/Him/His

When Saturday rolls around, Apollo throws on an old t-shirt that he doesn’t mind getting messy with paint. Klavier, on the other hand, evidently doesn’t know that wearing his favourite leather pants and chains might not be the best idea for going to an art class, but Apollo learned long ago that his boyfriend’s fashion decisions are as inflexible as they are stupid—telling him to go and change would be pointless.

He puts Mr. Worm in his travel jar and the three of them set off to the apartment parking lot, where Apollo is as surprised as ever that nobody has attempted to steal Klavier’s flashy sports car. As usual, he buckles Mr. Worm into the backseat and sits next to him, leaving the front passenger seat empty for their bags.

“You know,” Klavier chuckles. “One day, I’ll get you to sit up front with me.”

“Hey, I do! Just… not when someone needs to hold Mr. Worm’s hand. Metaphorically, you know.”

The drive to the art therapy class doesn’t take very long, and they arrive just on time. Vera is waiting for them outside with a bright smile.

In the years that have passed since the last time both Apollo and Klavier saw her, she’s changed a lot; her hair is shorter now, cropped around her chin, and she’s ditched her denim overalls for a professional artist’s set. But, more than that, her smile is genuine, and she meets Apollo’s eyes almost instantly.

“You made it!” She says.

“And look who I brought,” Apollo replies.

“Ah, the little worm! Oh, he’s such a delight, Apollo.”

Apollo hands Mr. Worm’s jar to Vera, and she takes him with a careful gentleness. Studying him through the glass, she smiles softly and gently places her finger against the jar; Mr. Worm rises to touch his little head against the wall separating them.

“Aw, he likes you,” Klavier says.

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Apollo says. “He doesn’t normally like new people, but he’s taken a real shine to you.”

“I can’t wait to draw him… thank you for letting me.”

Vera shows Apollo and Klavier inside, and they take their seats at the edge of the room where they won’t be disturbed. The room is full of everybody and their pets—mostly cats and dogs, and the occasional hamster. Someone has even brought along a parrot that simply won’t stop blurting out random letters and numbers. Satisfied, though, to sit and draw his own beautiful worm, Apollo rests Mr. Worm (still in his enclosure) on top of the table that sits in the middle of their group of chairs. It’s just himself, Vera, and Klavier—thankfully, the group of people in art therapy with Vera must not be followers of the worm-craze that took the social media world by storm two years ago. It has died down a little, now, but Apollo still gets stopped in the street sometimes.

Still, he enjoys drawing the worm. He’s never had the art skills of a maestro, but worms aren’t all that hard to draw, and he fills his canvas with small sketches of Mr. Worm in various poses—sleeping, dancing, lying down (but not sleeping). There isn’t much versatility offered by something of such a shape, but he tries his hardest nevertheless to commit Mr. Worm’s ethereal beauty to a human medium. Klavier, on the other hand, has opted to entirely bastardise Mr. Worm’s image, drawing him with large cartoon eyes and taking up full real-estate of the page; and, as expected, Vera’s drawing is the perfect encapsulation of Mr. Worm, a photorealistic replica in the middle of the canvas.

It’s nice to see Vera in her element, and she’s noticeably less anxious and more comfortable around people than she was the last time Apollo saw her. When the session ends, she waves them off with a smile.

That night, Apollo spends a while drilling nails into the apartment wall to hang up their canvas paintings of Mr. Worm—all three of them, because Vera had gifted hers to them as a thank-you for bringing Mr. Worm along. They look perfect hanging over the living room sofa, and Apollo thinks that it would be a good idea to take Klavier and the worm for a professional photoshoot sometime, like the kind that new parents have with their first child.

As much as it was a nice little date, the canvases just become another part of the regular apartment decor, and Apollo doesn’t think much about the event as the months pass by. His life is filled with the usual chaos of working at the Wright Anything Agency and dating an international celebrity (Klavier), as well as being the father of one (the worm).

Until one day he gets another email from Vera.

< vmisham@gmail.com >

Apollo.

I’m so sorry. I’ve done something… bad. I really didn’t mean for things to get this out of hand, and I’m so, so sorry.

Basically, I got a job offer at an illustration company. It’s a huge deal, but they wanted me to come up with a pitch for a children’s book and I sort of… plagiarised Mr. Worm’s life story? I thought it’d just be a good thing to get me started on the company ladder, but it's kind of gone viral in literary circles. They want me to do interviews and Q&As, and… well, I don’t really know how to say this, but I sort of lied and told them that I knew Mr. Worm, and they want to get him in for a book signing. I’m so sorry Apollo! It just all got so out of hand and I don’t know how to get out of this without losing my job.

Is there any way you can help me out and bring Mr. Worm to the address I attached on Tuesday? I’ll pay you back!

Sorry, again,
Vera

…

< apollojustice@waa.com >

Hi Vera,

Mr. Worm was already a celebrity, so I guess this doesn’t come as much of a shock. I’m just glad that it’s you writing his biography, and not somebody I don’t trust. I’ll pick up a copy of your book on the way there.

In future, though, please consult me before making Mr. Worm any more famous than he already is. Sometimes it gets to him.

Best,
Apollo Justice | Attorney-at-Law | Wright Anything Agency | He/Him/His

After informing Klavier of the plans he’s been roped into, he has nothing else to do other than find a copy of Vera’s book somewhere, just to make sure that the descriptions of Mr. Worm are truthful and accurate. It doesn’t take him long at all to find one—it seems like every bookstore in the general area is stocked with copies, and apparently they fly off the shelves daily. As he reads it, he sees that Vera’s illustrations are as dynamic and beautiful as ever, and the story of Mr. Worm is pretty much exactly as it happened, only embellished a little for the sake of making for a more interesting read; even his own depiction as the worm’s adoptive father is kind, and Apollo wonders if people really see him as endearing.

The day of the book signing is as normal a day as ever, but Apollo is nervous on behalf of his worm’s mental health. He’s seen firsthand how the pressure of fame gets to Klavier sometimes, and he worries that he’s only forcing his son into the same all-eyes-on-me fate by agreeing; but, then again, it’s just one book signing, and he owes it to Vera after all she’s been through.

When he and Klavier arrive, with Mr. Worm safely tucked into Apollo’s satchel, a sizeable crowd has already gathered. Apollo doesn’t really know what he expected from fans of a book about a worm, but this is certainly a… cast of characters. Right at the front, there’s a man wearing a cardboard skeleton mask in bright green, with a t-shirt that has an evidently hand-drawn picture of a worm on it and text that says “#1 WORM FAN”. Behind him, there’s a group of people all together. The first of the group is a man dressed in an old-timey steampunk-style detective costume, with an equally period-inappropriate dressed woman next to him, her bright red hair pinned up in elaborate fashion. Next to them, there’s a person who is quite frankly committing crimes against fashion, wearing a t-shirt with a picture of a jalapeño on it that says “nacho papa”—Apollo makes a mental note to track down the t-shirt online; it seems to be right up Trucy’s street. There’s a third person in the group, and Apollo perceives them cross-referencing some mobile phone word game with a handwritten notebook, writing everything down by hand in the most convoluted way of solving a puzzle possible. And, finally, there’s what looks to be a couple—one blonde man dressed in something that Apollo can certainly describe as clothes, although his mismatched neon fashion is somehow overshadowed by the three foot long, bright yellow fabric worm that he’s carrying. He’s hanging on the arm of what Apollo presumes to be his wife, who is the most normal person of the whole lot, and whom Apollo—in another life—would approach and say “I feel your pain of being just some guy, buddy.”

Vera, standing at the edge of the store’s back room, looks visibly relieved when Apollo approaches. She shows him and Klavier to the table where she’ll be sitting when the signing begins in fifteen minutes. Apollo is cautious about setting Mr. Worm down onto the table, but Vera assures him that he can stand close by, and that she won’t let anything happen to the worm—besides, the bookstore has security guards. There’s a little ink-pad on the desk that she explains is skin-safe for both humans and worms alike, should Mr. Worm want to capitalise on his fame and sign some autographs.

Although Apollo expected Mr. Worm to just sit there, it seems like something has gotten into him, and he loves the limelight. Vera slowly opens the lid of his jar, and he wriggles right out of it faster than he ever has before; he writhes across the ink-pad and leaves marks on the books that the crowd bring forward for him to sign. Each of his signatures are unique, because he’s a worm with no concept of handwriting, and Apollo overhears people talking about how these books will be worth a fortune in the near future when Mr. Worm is dead.

Ha, Apollo thinks. They don’t know about Mr. Worm’s unique lifespan. While he and Klavier made a mutual decision not to follow up on that strange scientist who insisted on studying the worm, the information he provided checks out on Wikipedia at least, and there’s no doubt that Mr. Worm is a rare species with a long lifespan and, amongst other things, a beautiful yet uncanny predisposition for bioluminescence.

Once the book signing ends, the crowd disperses, and Vera thanks Apollo and Mr. Worm profusely. Satisfied with his celebrity status, Mr. Worm wriggles back into his jar, looking up at Apollo expectantly, doing his specific little dance that Apollo has learned means “Let’s go home now.”

While Vera leaves through the front door, Apollo cautiously takes the back exit. He doesn’t want any fans to still be hanging around—both he and the worm have had their fill of social interaction for the day, and now he’s just thinking about getting home, ordering takeout, and letting Klavier pick something worm-appropriate on Netflix to celebrate a good day of work.

As they enter the alleyway, however, something feels wrong. There’s only one street light illuminating the back of the bookstore, and the single glow makes Apollo feel apprehensive, like he’s in a bad opening scene from an even worse horror movie. Sensing his tension, Mr. Worm lights up a little, wriggling around in his best attempt at reassurance.

But then someone emerges from the shadows. Apollo has seen him before, but he can’t place where. Not that that’s relevant right now, though—because there’s the more pressing matter of the fact that this man is holding a knife.

“Hand over the Sholmesworm and don’t make me do something stupid,” the man says.

And suddenly, Apollo remembers exactly who he is. There’s nobody else who has ever mentioned Mr. Worm’s species before, and it never settled right with him that Halmin Thollowge simply accepted defeat.

“Never,” Apollo spits. “Threaten us all you want, but you’re not getting your hands on Mr. Worm.”

He hands Mr. Worm to Klavier and stands in front of his boyfriend and their worm-son, spreading his arms out as if to protect them both. As Halmin advances, Apollo finds confidence surging through his body—for fuck’s sake, this is his family at stake, and he’s never been more convinced that they’re worth putting his life on the line for. With a shout, he lurches forwards and uses the element of surprise to wrestle the weapon out of Halmin’s hands, throwing it far behind him and kicking his opponent to the ground. Evidently having heard the commotion, the bookstore security guards open the door and, upon seeing Halmin’s threatening expression, they immediately bundle him inside, saying something about calling the authorities, and then Apollo is left alone with his boyfriend and worm.

“Holy shit,” Klavier says. “Your balls must be bigger than your forehead for you to pull that stunt.”

“Well,” Apollo replies, noticing just how heavy his own breathing is. “I couldn’t let that loser threaten my family. I love you both so much.”

“I love you too,” Klavier kisses Apollo on the cheek and holds up Mr. Worm’s jar so that he can feel the love as well. “Let’s go home.”