Smoking Silkworms

An unyielding need made him stop at the gas station. He parked his car, stretched a little after climbing out and then walked in through the automatic doors. It was nice and cool inside with the air conditioning unit humming and aside from that and the rubber soles of his shoes making noises on the floor tiles it was quiet.
“A pack of Silkworms,” he said to the youth at the counter.
“$2.59,” the clerk replied, showing braces. By some sheer luck he had exact change, and the single cent coin with the picture of a tiny bug stamped on it fell at the top of the pile he poured on the counter – the counter, and not on the waiting hand of the clerk.
“Exact change, how about that?”
The clerk offered no response, simply counted the coins, spent a long time fiddling with the machine and ultimately handed him the receipt and the pack of smokes with its inviting blue colours. Ever since he was a child he’d looked at packages of Silkworms with envious eyes, he’d picked them up outside, discarded and bent, and he’d collected them and guarded them jealously. Now the packages were trash to him once emptied, but the contents had proven more precious by far than he’d ever imagined in his younger days.
Calling them smokes was merely a convention, a convenience, a contrivance, a con-job by any other name. There was no tobacco in them. No carcinogens of any kind, really. There was a silk paper that would burn into ash, yes, but that didn’t make it past the filter to harm your lungs or irritate your throat. What you got from a Silkworm was way different.
He opened the pack. No plastic wrap on it, for environmentalist reasons if he recalled right. On the blue cardboard there was a picture of an indigo worm, soft in shape and form, in dress so formal he wondered if anyone ever really dressed that way. The worm’s sides were covered in eyes that seemed to be looking every which way but somehow always followed his gaze. He took out a single smoke and sniffed it. A light scent, delicate, like a cloth that had been used to wrap a scented candle, rewarded his efforts.
They say scent is the sense most tightly tied to our memories and thus most powerfully able to elicit recollections. He’d read that someplace and it made sense to him, something to do with evolutionary biology and how scents were so important for organic life. Every time he smelled it he was taken back to his first Silkworm.

It had been after school, in the spring. The days were warm and rain had left behind that other beautiful smell, the smell of wet asphalt, and the newer pitch roads were so dark and inviting they had gone riding their bikes with no goal in mind and that had been one perfectly fine way to spend an afternoon to all of them, and then they’d made the effort to go all the way to the lake even though none of them thought it was warm enough to swim yet.
They rolled downhill with reckless abandon, enjoying the wind pressing against them at that great velocity, none giving thought to the eventual grind of climbing back uphill, and there they were, jumping off their bikes at the sandy beach, the piers covered in seagulls, ducks and bird poop washed into a thin white paste and none of them had any desire to go near the piers, they didn’t really know what they were doing there in the first place but it felt like the place to be, and as they ran around the beach and in a thicket where the tree line began they found evidence of something interesting having happened.
Professional trackers they were not, but one or more had been a scout, and thus found evidence of someone having bedded down in the brush, two someones no less, one human and one other. The other they surmised had been or a size in excess of that of a normal human, heavy and tall and upon close inspection of the dirt hoofed as well.
“A Minotaur!” one exclaimed.
“Probably just a Holstaur,” another played it down. There were some marks in the bark of a nearby tree that indicated horns had rubbed against it, but they could make no sense of which kind of horn it had been.
And then they found the pack of Silkworm. Not Silkworms in plural, no, just the one smoke was inside it, but what a treasure, what a bounty, for the lads who could not legally purchase even that single one! They rejoiced, they hollered and hooted and looked about in a paranoid turning of the heads in fear that at any moment an adult might reveal themselves from behind a tree to snatch from them that which they had found.
None appeared, and they returned to their bikes and adjourned to a more secluded, less open area, there to light a match – scouts were always prepared, so of course they had matchbooks – and with that match to light up the Silkworm and explore the wonders of worms, the wonders thus far denied them by the unfair discrimination that adults practiced against children and against which eternal rebellion was waged by each generation in turn.
Their new act of rebellion began by a pond, less than three minutes by bike from the beach. There they sat on rocks and with giddy excitement watched the trembling hands that tried to strike the match, followed the flame as it lit the Silkworm and then… who would take the first huff?
He was the only answer. Who else could it be? It had to be him, because he was the one who had for so long yearned after that elusive, enticing, erotic and enchanting creature. And by that right he claimed the first huff, with sweaty palms and a palpating heart, and then he took it and was filled with a billowy haze that tasted pink, and somehow he knew it tasted pink though no taste had ever had a colour before. Maybe it was more of a feeling, a pink feeling that made him blush a little and then he giggled as he let out the smoke and everyone was looking at him funny.
“You okay?” he’d been asked, and glances of a worried nature had been exchanged. He’d inhaled again and felt even better. He’d passed the Silkworm to the person who was nearest and told him to see for himself. And that’s how it was. They passed it in a ring, each taking a huff, letting it out, experiencing an immediate mellowing out and a sense of unearthly comfort, then passing the ever shortening smoke to the next person until it was down to just the filter.
Each of them got a piece of heaven that day, a piece of Wonderland. They laughed at nothing and all shared in the mirth of the others, and the scent of what they’d smoked wafted in the air around them long after they had nothing left to smoke.

The trip down memory lane finished, he finally put the Silkworm to his lips, lit it up and inhaled. As the soft pink haze filled his mind he felt he was going to visit someone dear, felt that he was standing at the door to a house he was always welcome in, and that door was opening. He slowly blew through his nose and the smoke formed into a small cloud before his eyes, then dissipated into the air.
He closed his eyes. The door opened and he stepped in. Inside the eyes of the worm were upon him and her she blew a heart-shape of smoke to greet him.
“You coming home soon?” she asked.
“Got four more hours of work, I’m on my break,” he said.
“Skip work. Come home.”
“You always say that.”
“I always miss you.”
“I miss you too.”
“You know you’re not supposed to smoke at work.”
“I’m not. I said I’m on my break.”
“You smuggled in a pack?”
“Nah, I bought one at the gas station.”
She giggled. The giggle made her jiggle. So she jiggled. He smirked at that.
“Isn’t it weird to buy something you have at home?”
“But I needed it.”
“So come home.”
“Yeah.”
Yeah. He should go home. What’s half a day’s pay?
“I’ll be there,” he added and looked around the room that was different here than it was in the real world. It was a room in his house, but it was upstairs and you couldn’t get there by stepping in through the front door.
“Hurry,” his wife whispered and blew a third heart out, this one also settling inside the previous just as before.
“Yeah.”
“Drive safe.”