The streets are paved with the oozing worms of spring. Pushing their way through roadside mulch, can they see the shit they are squirming through?
Forced by some predetermined law and forgoing the comfort offered by the moist goop on the little strips of grass that litter our highways and byways, they strive forward. Ripping the fragile membrane they call a belly on the gritty tarmac in a futile bid for... what?
It is as if they are bravely sacrificing themselves in order to seek their destiny. And just what is a worm's idea of destiny? Meeting a nice lady worm and raising little wormlings together? Are there career worms? Perhaps they search for enlightenment and inner peace, or the cure for incurable diseases?
What ever the hopes and dreams of these rather unsightly creatures (I'm not even sure if one can go so far as to call them anything as substantial as a "creature"), it all seems depressingly futile.
Ultimately, after braving the outside world, they can expect any of the following:
- To be ripped apart like an uncooked, flaccid sausage by the beak of an evil bird. Yes, I said BIRD.
- To find themselves smeared unceremoniously across the pavement as the result of someones big, cheap boots crushing their delicate frame in to the tarmac. (The aforementioned person may well have been late for work and have little time to tip-toe in between the numerous, freedom-seeking worms that had sprawled themselves, like whores in a brothel, all over the pavements.)
- To blindly stumble into a puddle and drown before their insides blossom out from their own orifices into the murky water. (Do worms stumble?)
- To become the play-thing of a small, careless child.
- To be eaten by an infamously curious cat. Only to be vomited back up again. And then be eaten by a dog.
6. To wonder aimlessly for the rest of their short little lives in the barren wasteland created by mankind, wondering if they will ever see the sweet, green grass of home again.
