I’ve mentioned the awesomeness that is the Drabblecast before on this blog. Well, I harassed Norm Sherman and his drabblecasters until they broke down and read one of my stories on their podcast.
The story that Norm Sherman accepted is called "Eggs." It’s a story about an apartment filled with thousands of tiny, parasitic worm eggs that get closer and closer to falling into someone’s mouth.
I had given up on trying to get this one published, even though impartial witnesses frequently referred to it as the most persistently disturbing story I’ve written. I put "Eggs" on the ‘dead’ column of my submission spreadsheet, and I even commissioned my friend Ms. Kim Hill to make an illustration so I could vanity publish the story.
After you listen to the story that image will totally make sense.
I think that "Eggs" is less a science fiction story than it is a chronicle of a personal freakout. Before on this blog I’ve mentioned my checkered history with leeches, but I haven’t yet told the story of how back in 2003, when I was just beginning to discover the tools of writing, I went to clean out the litter box and I discovered a pile of cat turds filled with flecks of white rice. Only the rice was pointing and waving around like spaghetti.
So I freaked out. I spent two weeks in the library researching parasitic worms, which was absolutely the worst way to find out about the common cat tapeworm and the chances of human contamination (basically you have to eat a flea that grew up eating infected poop). The books at the library were either all medical textbooks showing the worst case photos of exotic parasite infections (there’s a roundworm that grows to six feet long and lives in the cavity where your left kidney used to be) or they were dire warnings written by people having a similar worm freakout (apparently you should not eat any fresh vegetables, especially foreign ones).
After I hit a saturation point of worm knowledge, I channeled my freakout into a series of three stories about parasites. "Eggs" is just the first and the most personal.
And for the folks on the Drabblecast message boards, I assure you, Gloria got what was coming to her.
