Snug in wet dark belly-warm. Thup, thup. Heartbeat above like an auditory sun. This is the intimate work of the species without end, to find a way in, mouthwards, welcomed and chewed and swallowed and threshing invisible intelligent eggs in stomach. The tapeworm is minuscle in the beginning. Sloshes about in hydrochloric acid. Eyeless mindless breathless. Enzymes nipping at egg-ness. Thup thup, concussive booms of mystery-heart above it, who-what-when-where. How innocent it is in the beginning. Thoughtless of its location in the universe, the preferences and insecurities and grievances of the person it wakes within, female male, old or young or some age between. Scorched into hatching it passes stomach to upper intestine to lower, waves of peristaltic contractions kneading nutrient-rich mash zigzag from stomach to rectum. Halfway dark to dark the wormling catches. Grips and burrows. Through a faint tear in intestinal lining it slips into a beyond floating middle-world. 

Trial and error. Birth procreation death, repeat repeat. Inside and that much it knows. Algorithms of instinct driving very specific preordained decisions. Before the creature’s even alive it’s wormishness has been determined and its habits are unfolding. Eyes closed sitting on the edge of her bed, Jen imagines this very hypothetical specimen. Palm of left hand resting on belly, palm of right lying atop it. Both hands lightly pressed as if under spell of first motherhood and searching for feel of a kick or second heartbeat. Like people. A singular genetic marker for each but who thinks it? Each tapeworm grows hybrid through mature adulthood, representative of a long evolutionary history, one of a silent trillion, quintillion, but the first of a kind also. This particular creature. This scolex distinctly its own. These suckers. These proglotids. Quintillions prior this modest birth in a host body have bred and shed eggs and passed the secret forward, whispering one to the other, forever a step ahead of extinction. There. There, can picture it. Attached to supple intestinal flesh. Dangling. Noodlesque. From barbed bulb of scolex tail meandering doodle-like among other innocent neighboring organs. So this is her private perfect little monster, an inner dragon of sorts. Resembles a bit a Chinese dragon. But grubbier, uglier. Truly a whisper. One generation to another to another to another. Until this specific creature wakes inside this specific person sitting on the edge of her bed on a Sunday evening, nearly middle of North America, December. Only way it could survive the cold. Stealing indoors. Then feeding off it. 

Jen opens her eyes. Room bright around her. The lights are on. Electricity traveling through miles and wires to illuminate a bedroom. Carter her husband and Lucy her daughter downstairs sings something she can’t quite place, wordless, melody bouncy cheerful. The tapeworm no more. Just something imagined. Still, it was good metaphor. Codependency. Feeding a long mouth happy to eat whatever of herself she might offer.