The World of Myth Magazine

In the early hours Max's swollen distended belly began to wriggle, the pale vanilla skin began to twitch and ripple from the pressure within. Max awoke in agony, clutching his stomach, and just in time, for the skin on both sides of his navel split open. He screamed and frantically tried to hold the two pieces together, clutching the lardy skin flaps and howling.

"Fuck - what's happening? Help me!" He reached out one hand wildly, hitting the bedside light switch and illuminating the horrific scene playing out below his chest. He closed his eyes in terror, then forced himself to open them again.

A long white worm was wriggling out from the inside his belly. It was eyeless, smooth-skinned and the most obscene thing Max had ever seen. It kept on coming, uncoiling more of its albino body, whilst thrusting its blind head upwards, and then as if hearing Max's breathing, it turned towards him and slithered over his hairless chest, up between his nipples, to his triple chins, where it hovered, swaying above his face.

Max screamed. One note of pure terror. For a split-second worm and man faced each other, then the worm suddenly dived towards the floor. It measured around a foot in length, and it was heading for the air conditioning vent. Max couldn't move. The pain in his stomach was reducing, to his surprise, now that the creature had been expelled, but he still wore a gaping tear in his midriff, from which oddly, no blood was seeping. From the vast luxurious drifts of duvet, Max watched the worm, his worm, climbing up the wall and disappear inside the vent.

At which point Max passed out - cold.

It was dawn when Max cracked an eye open again. Memories flooded back and he whimpered as he touched his belly. To his surprise, the skin was taut, even smooth and there was no gaping tear. He sat up, gazed down at himself, and realised that not only had the rip vanished, but so too had his humongous belly. He had a flat torso, slim thighs, and he could see the floor for the first time in years.

Max leapt from bed, did a few star jumps, and lunges, (another first) and gazed in awe at his reflection in the mirror. His six-foot frame could now be generously called 'lanky,' and he had chiselled cheekbones, rows of ribs were revealed and a pair of bony shoulder blades.

Ma, it's like I'm eleven-years-old again, before …' He swallowed. Before my shit of a Dad topped himself and I started binge eating.

He had a sudden urge to visit his Mum, which he'd not done in – he did a quick calculation – jeez it must be nearly eighteen months. Surely not that long?

His phone began to buzz. He grabbed it, then noticed he'd a hundred or so missed calls and messages. Then he clocked the date. "No, it can't be?" According to the phone's calendar he'd been in bed two days, and listening to the increasingly frantic messages, he'd missed all the pre-recording rehearsals, two interview gigs, a charity spot and a book signing in Whitby.

Tonight, was the show's recording. Miss that and he knew, as per the terms of his red hot negotiated contract, he would be fired. Then he'd be blacklisted by every TV studio and talent management outfit in the UK and probably the USA too.

Next up, he'd lose his apartment, his income, his life – everything. He always spent what he earned and lived like there was no tomorrow.

Now tomorrow had come knocking.

His skinny reflection gazed back at him in the mirror. Max moaned at the realisation that he couldn't turn up at the TV studios that evening looking like this. He was the mighty comic mountain, Max Llewellyn, not the mini-mouse version. He'd lose his job.

All worries about the foot long white worm had vanished from Max's head, or any concerns as to where it had gone to? What it was? Or even, would it come back? The priority was his job and his future.

He logged onto the internet and placed several orders – to be delivered that day. He spent the rest of the day examining his new lithe body, twisting, and turning like a Prima Donna ballerina at her début.

The P.A. shook her dyed pink hair and rubbed her eyes. She could smell a sacking a mile off. Heads were turning, voices were muttering and growing in volume, as gradually a figure rolled into view of the director, the cameraman and the P.A.

It was Max. Or a version of Max they'd never seen before.

"What the fuck?" The director gazed in amazement at the show's audience magnet, the comedian adored by millions.

Michelle snickered, then covered her face.

"I'm here everyone, er er Millie and er – Edmund …" Max waved his arms around him, then appeared to wobble and nearly fall over.

"Weebles wobble, but they don't fall down," sang a chirpy voice from high above their heads. No one else in the production team said a word.

The director walked up to the star and poked him in his stomach. Everyone gasped at this breach in etiquette. "Is that padding? And what's that inside your mouth?"

Max beamed manically back. It was hard to speak. He prayed the foam face pads would stay in place. He'd nearly choked trying to get them into position. He'd had the make-up girl pile on the tan foundation and rouge. The 'fat suit' he was strapped into gave him the illusion, from a distance, of size and bulk, but clearly close up it didn't stand up to inspection. Also, it was tricky keeping your balance with all the weighty padding.

"Let's get the show started," Max said or rather slurred.

"We can't do close ups. You know that don't you?" The director glared at him. He was caught between a rock and a hard place. Recording started in less than an hour and the audience was filing in. "Can you even move, let alone dance?" He prodded Max's chest this time.

"Piss off!"

The director shrugged. "It's your funeral, mate. I still get paid, whatever. But someone else had better do the audience warm-up, cos you'll frighten the horses." He walked off, shaking his head.

Max, sweating profusely, returned to his dressing room, and waited for his call. Somehow, he got through the half hour recording. The audience in the first three rows looked shell-shocked at his appearance, and didn't utter a laugh, but further back the hyenas roared and his co-stars, all pros and aware of their contracts, provided the cues and canned laughter could be added later in post-edit. But Max knew he was finished. He was a drowning man waving madly at the shore, and no one was throwing him a life belt.

The firing the next day came via a Zoom conference call, with the TV company's team of lawyers, sitting shoulder to shoulder, along with an insincere plea that Max gets help for whatever 'issues' he had. Though what 'issues' could cause their star to lose 80% of his body weight in two days and turn up to work in a 'fat suit' - no one on the management team wanted to enquire too deeply into.

His P.R. team parted company with him the next day. "Skinny you're just not funny, darling. Plus, you look, well, kind of weird," Roz told him, not unkindly.

Max sat in his apartment ordering sushi, not answering the multiple phone calls for interviews, not washing, and trying to sleep away the shame, misery, and confusion he felt. He kept hearing a dog growling near his third-floor apartment door, but he was too unhappy to go and complain. He wanted nothing more to do with humanity, either as friends or as a food supply. He became so desperate he started to hope the worm might return through the vent and in some magical way make him fat again.

Two weeks into his self-imprisonment he got his wish. The white worm returned.

Max was lying on his bed, smoking (a new habit, since he felt he'd nothing left to lose), when he heard a rustling in the vent above his bed. A blind slimy head peeked out, followed by a sinuous, albino body. It kept coming, through the slats, past one foot in length, then more of its muscly body appeared, until it was all exposed. Its length had doubled since Max had expelled it from his stomach.

Max froze. He was horrified, but also hopeful.

"Hiya," he whispered, as if to a pet. The worm's head turned towards his voice and slid across the thick pile of off-white carpet towards the bed. It crept up the fine Egyptian cotton sheets, now stained with sweat and despair, and hovered above Max's head, as though waiting.

"Whatcha waiting for fella?" Max hoped this was a suitably chummy tone to adopt. He didn't want to antagonise the creature, which might be his ticket back to fat, fame, and fortune.

The worm reared up, reminding Max of a boa constrictor. He felt his hopes crumble to fear. Perhaps this creature was hostile? Or had a different agenda?

Max tried to shift away, but the worm mirrored his movements. Max gazed at his phone, with its flat battery and therefore of no help to man nor worm.

The worm reared up to its full height, its head nearly touching the ceiling. There was a moment when Max thought he'd be able to leap to the side and flee but, as he hesitated, the worm struck.

It plunged, aiming directly for Max's open screaming mouth, where it burrowed deep into his gullet. Max's mouth ripped at the sides, his lips cracked open, blood spattered the white bedsheets, and he began to choke and gag. His eyes bulged as did the veins in his forehead. Still the worm kept burrowing, heading for the intestines of its latest host, seeking to set up home and nest.

Only a couple of inches remained dangling from Max's lips, at the moment when the comedian finally expired. That tell-tale evidence disappeared within a minute leaving Max's corpse, silent, and still, on the vast acres of bed.

Which is how the building's caretaker and the police found him a few days later.

Max made the headlines one final time.

"Mighty Max expires.

A shadow of himself …"

"The last laugh for Max."

"Where did the rest of him go?"

"A Comedy Giant dies alone …" was one of the kinder epitaphs.

Max's body lay in the morgue encased in the metal coffin, waiting for the required 'unexplained death' post-mortem. Inside Max nestled his companion.

Waiting … breeding … hibernating … for the pathologist's first exploratory cut.

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