Worms & Atrophy

It was a foggy November morning in Ohio that began like any other. The halo around the sun could just be seen peering over the sprawl of the city head beyond the Columbus horizon line. Acid rain, the tears of concrete angels, began to fall out of the open sky. They fell infinitely out of nowhere, like martians coming to colonize miniature worlds stacking on top of one another.

It was this morning that Elaina was coming home to her and Jareth's apartment, arms loaded from grocery shopping. She inserted her key and took a long pause before turning the doorknob. Something told her Jareth was up to no good. Of course, that wasn't unusual. Elaina got the same sinking feeling for the past several months everyday right before she opened the door. Today was even worse. Memories of Jareth's condition for the past few months flashed through her mind. She realized his black hair and eyes no longer radiated the sense of calm that used to comfort Elaina, and his typical sense of humor was notably absent. She sighed to herself and tried to think of who else could possibly help her deal with the stress of final exams.

"Jareth! There are groceries. Can you come help me? Please? Jareth?," Elaina called from the apartment's doorway.
After a few moments of silence, she made her way inside.

She passed the kitchen. The sink was still filled with dishes accumulating to toxic levels, and ants were filing in from a crack in the far corner . 'Disgusting,' she muttered to herself as she quickly made her way into the sleeping area.

Elaina shuttered as she imagined what might await her. The bed in their sleeping area consisted only of a mattress which was unmade and had been for weeks. Sectioned off of the sleeping area behind a hanging curtain was Jareth's study, which was jam packed with books on topics as diverse as chemistry to DIY home repair. She pulled back the curtain to his study, then stopped in her tracks and dropped her keys. Crumpled papers with scribbled out inscriptions were piled underneath a desk set at the far north wall. On top of the desk was a collection of items that were placed in a peculiar triskelion shape centered around a crude heptagram with an eye resting at the center. Anyone who took more than a passing glance at this strange assembly of bone pieces, crystals, and tree branches would see that it was arranged with some purpose in mind.

"What are you doing?," she blurted, "I burned your collection for a reason. This is serious! Can't you at least wash the dishes like I asked?"

Jareth was sitting beside his desk with a book open in front of him. "You didn't burn all of it. Some of it was still packed away in the pantry," he announced, gesturing back at the burgeoning shelves and the makeshift altar resting on top of his desk. "Besides...", he said, "I'm going about it exactly like a scientific experiment. I've followed the procedures to the letter ,and I am going to record the results for posterity."

"Do you want to end up on the street like those vagrants out on 7th? " Elaina went on. "Because that's exactly what's going to happen if you keep these crackpot shenanigans up! What the hell has gotten into you? This is completely irrational. I'm talking off the chain, looney tunes shit. Do you have any idea what this looks like? What do you think our landlord would say if he saw this? Your physics teacher? For real, Jareth. Christ, Will you just answer me?!"

A black circular design stretched over his study floor, a candle carefully placed at each ending point. Everyday, Jareth would arrange his candles in different shapes, and draw out geometric diagrams connecting them in a mandala-like fashion.

. "Don't you want to know what happens? Isn't this the kind of thing we always dreamed about? Making a real scientific discovery? They mocked Galileo, too. I'm trying to travel to other worlds, Elaina. Magic, Elaina. This is ancient cutting edge science, reinvented and brought to the present age just waiting for someone open-minded enough to give it a chance." He peered back over his book.
"You can't possibly think that this will get you anywhere."

Elaina stomped her foot. "It's against the laws of nature. What do you think will happen next? Machine elves and demons?"

"Maybe," he said without any hint of his usual sarcasm.

Their bickering intensified, but it was nothing new. Jareth had been at this for weeks. He would go on and on about dimensions and astral travel. He had stolen some book from the local library some five or six weeks earlier and ever since had been convinced he could use the spells it contained to 'astral project.' Ever since then, he had talked to Elaina ad nauseum about his plans to travel out of body. It was his belief that he could visit parallel worlds that existed in a mathematically provable multiverse.

"Jareth, I've always known you were suffered from mania," Elaina continued, "but thinks of the things you've accomplished up until now. Are you really satisfied with your 'work' knowing you've gone from getting straight As to failing half your classes?"

As soon as she said it, she realized she may well be talking to the wall. This time, Jareth barely acknowledged Elaina. Though his grades started slipping, he had never cared less. He would often talk to Elaina at night about how he had been manipulated by the school system. "I'm nothing but a pawn. A pawn in their game that I am forced to play but not even know the true purpose of. I should have dropped out years ago," he would say, twisting his hair and keeping her in and out of disturbed dreams.

Jareth methodically turned to a particular page with a written spell and began to wave a home-made wand around in a spiral while chanting aloud.
"Up & through, 
tried and true,
a sleeping
spiral stairwell of
fractured mirror-heads, 
madness fed...," he began.
"Jareth!" Elaina screamed.
"Writhing
coiling
lurching parasitic
blood stained sludge
of tomorrow's sprawling
factaform world
worn in stagnant pestilence
conjuring old gods..."
"You're really god dang scaring me now. What are you doing?"
"I'm practicing mindfulness, that's all."

"Do you really need all this? What are you trying to do, open a portal?"

Jareth smiled ,"Something like that."

"I have achieved spatial nirvana. My life's work is complete."

"Stop saying crazy stuff. You've been at this for days....Jareth, I'm worried about you. What about your classes?" Elaina now looked like she was to the point of tears.

"Those things don't mean anything to me anymore. They were all things that used to have meaning when I was attached to the physical world, but not anymore. I have found a way to escape the control matrix and enter a world of complete potentiality," He stated matter-of-factly.

"Jareth, are you on drugs?" Elaina spat.

"I have no need for such things."

"Then you've lost your freaking mind."

She turned and grabbed her keys, throwing back the curtain in a fury and ripping it off of its railing in the process.
"Wait...where are you going?"

"I'm moving out ,Jareth. You're lucky I don't call the police. "

As soon as he heard Elaina slamming the apartment door, he continued chanting without so much as a pause.

"Let the arms of the city embrace me
like a wall of dark mother.
Let me sink beneath concrete skin,
through layers of worms and atrophy."

He did exactly as the book said, quoting each line verbatim. He stared vacantly for hours as the lines on his diagram began to light up.
By the time he realized the spell was working ,he also realized that the current itself was alive. A jaunty, thousand-eyed wyrm appeared. Its energy began pouring in from the center of a widening vortex at the center of Jareth's diagram. His writhing , electric body was forming from the floor's inscription. It reared its head and stared into Jareth's eyes.

"Ss-surrpriszed?," it choked in a gravelly voice.

"You've been initiated into a cult. The Angels of Death; the most prolific of interdimensional gangsters. "

"Where the heck am I?"

"Oh, nowhere in particular," it said. "As a matter of fact, you've stopped breathing."

Its voice was rasping, creaking, slow, sure.

"And who are you?," Jareth snapped.

"Consider me your new supreme overlord!" the wyrm hissed. "All those spells you've doing from that grimoire of yours are actually rituals designed by our most honorable order. Each spell was carefully constructed by us specifically to guide the initiate the into the ranks of our exclusive brotherhood." A troop of shadow-like minions gathered behind him.
"I don't want this."          

"Aha ha..heh.." the wyrm croaked. Ink colored tar began to shoot from its nostrils.
Jareth stared, his eyes widening.

"Most don't," the wyrm continued. "I think, though, in time you'll come to like our eh..Should I say...work. Heh heh.."

He slammed the book down, wildly tearing pages and flinging them around the room.
"I don't believe it. I don't believe it's true." He slammed the floor with his fists.

"Believe it" it said, assimilating a pistol from a mass of hideous slime protruding from its backside. "All the seconds in between rumor's spreading throughout the city and junkie's preparing their fix, between the wee hours of the morning and deeds better left in the night, you were preparing for this moment. The time has come."

The shot fired once but the sound of it lingered for what seemed like eternity.
Everything faded into an explosion of technicolor fireworks, and Jareth realized he was falling through infinite darkness. After what seemed like hours and no end in sight, he began to talk to himself.

"This feeling like this has happened before a shock to the system so vital ,so necessary, so precious... It happens every second. Life! How could I have missed it.... Elaina! Elaina! I'm so sorry I've been ignoring you these past few months, but I've finally done it," He shouted. "If only you could see. If only I wasn't dead."

Jareth opened his eyes and realized that he was back in his Columbus apartment. He gazed over his study from an aerial point of view, then slammed onto the apartment floor. She had come back! There was Elaina with his friends John and Damien and Zoey from school.

Jareth shook his head and frantically began grabbing at his chest and arms, testing them to be certain that they were solid.
"My god I've done it! I've done it! I was clearly someplace else...in a holographic version of the room. I was in astral space and now I've returned. I read about this some place before. Once I'm dead in that particular realm, I shouldn't be able to return to it. I shouldn't have to worry about seeing that shadow demon freak ever again! But what an introduction to interdimensional travel, eh?! Elaina! You won't believe this!"

"Jareth. I've brought your friends over. I know you won't listen to me, but we care about you. There's help out there, Jareth. We shouldn't have to live like this. You shouldn't make -me- have to live like this. We can get you the help you need."
"Elaina!," he started, running towards her. "I've done it! I opened the portal! I know it took weeks and you were scared as hell, but by god, I've finally done it! I travelled to another world! It was like a virtual copy of this room superimposed on itself, but I swear it was someplace else. If only you could have seen it! It's really possible. Elaina?!"

He screamed and waved, but Elaina and his friends from school stared on. Elaina shrieked and clutched her chest, nearly toppling face first before Damien could grab her. Zoey and John gaped stupidly, like two five year old children that had just walked in on their parents copulating.

There on the floor laid Jareth's unmoving body.

"That must be some kind of trick," he said. "I bet that wyrm demon put it there. Of all the rotten hijinks," he spat. "Elaina, guys you've got to listen to me. I was in another world."

There was no response except Elaina's sobbing, which had now reached deafening levels.

"I guess we'll have to break the news. Whose going to call his parents?," John said, but no one else made a move. The apartment was filled with the sound of his friend's tears.

"This is a nightmare!" Jareth screamed. "Can't any of you see me? Can't any of you see me, damn it!? This is not supposed to be what death is like!"

Suddenly he was pulled up, back through the darkness and rainbow fireworks, still staring directly down the barrel of a loaded cosmic trigger.

The wyrm grinned ear to ear, the end creases of its smile impossibly contorting off the sides of its face.

Jareth blinked. After some moments of silence, he spoke.

"I ...I thought I had died."
The wyrm cackled and the shadowy minions joined in. Jareth's his eyes widened

"That's because you did!!," the wyrm sneered, slithering up to Jareth with an unnerving swagger. "You have fulfilled your final step of initiation. Welcome to The Angels of Death. Your job from now on will be to send the souls of mortals to their immaterial destinies. You will send them into realms of torture and bliss, each fitting the deeds accumulating while alive in the physical world. The time has now come to prove your loyalty."

"And if I don't?," Jareth asked.

"Ah yes," the wyrm sneered. "Then another member will do the job for you and you both will be tortured for all eternity. Being undead has certain perks, after all. Like immortality!" he cackled.

"Yes," Jareth said in a monotone voice, as if possessed. He realized now that there was no returning. "I am proud to be part of your order. Thank you for freeing me from my physical form, and I will do whatever it takes to show you my gratitude."

"Goooodd...," the wyrm proclaimed aloud, as he crawled up to Jareth and whispered in his ear.

That night, Elaina laid down on their mattress for the night, alone with her thoughts and the spiders.
Jareth found himself on the street by their complex. He drifted up to the window of his old apartment and swam through the glass. He floated over Elaina's sleeping body. Her tear-soaked face turned, and her body rising and falling steadily. She startled and cracked open an eye from underneath the covers.

"Welcome to The Angels of Death," he said. "Your job from now on will be to send the souls of the living to their immaterial destinies."

He pointed the gun at her head and pulled the trigger.