Bad Habits
Chapter Two: Three Legs


Several years prior to anything of importance, King Annelida of the Worm People became ruler of the demon world, and though the Worm People were known to be shrewd and aggressive, exactly how their king came to power-a feat he accomplished in just two days- would not be a proud moment for their history books. King Annelida was a brilliant military leader, but no soldiers marched on the Demon City; and he might have been a charismatic diplomat, but he never spoke a word. King Annelida was unforgivably ugly, even for one of his kind, and it sometimes made one physically ill just to glance at him. Those unlucky who became sick quickly found out how he had claimed his throne.

The only parts of King Annelida that didn’t appear to be made of worms were his legs, which were muscular and human. No one was sure how he’d gotten them, but rumour was he’d tried to turn himself into a human but had only gotten the legs right.

And he hadn’t even gotten the legs right. He couldn’t get rid of the middle one: his awful, mottled worm leg, not even a leg, just a floppy bulbous protrusion. And when King Annelida marched through the palace doors of Lorish, fully intending to be courteous and affable, those damn politicians, all wolves and all callow, they vomited at the sight of him and were overcome with either fright or laughter. He didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t attack them like a barbarian. He had no weapon, besides, and no natural capacity for fighting. He was shaking with exasperation, their shameless, relentless faces. So he raped them all, with his third leg. Let them mock his disgusting, slimy, primitive body. And let them waddle out of his way with sore rear ends when they were done, because he’d make a much better leader than they could ever be.

It became a joke across the Desert: the indurate King became a manic rapist if you crossed him over even petty things like beauty. It stung a little bit, since in certain paroxysms of fury, it was all King Annelida could think to do, but at the end of the day he tended to get what he wanted, and he was a very good king.

Today the third leg would be used for punishment. The King had sent the least able of his agents, a one-eyed, peg-legged goat woman by the name of Chimeara Tastic to take care of a human who’d been nettling him a touch longer than he was willing to take. It was a simple enough job, “busy” work for most. The target was a hotshot blonde human with a reputation for infrequent but poignant shootings-completely overrated, the King thought, as he ascended his tower, only Chimeara Tastic could fail.

She lie on the bed in his private chamber, already naked and with her hands tied above her head, just as King Annelida had demanded. The spike that served as Chimeara Tastic’s right leg had been removed for the meeting. She was staring at the ceiling, perhaps indignantly, but the King couldn’t tell. His scant loincloth was dropped to his ankles, followed by an awkward moment of untangling himself from the fabric, and King Annelida was on top of her.

“I can bear your incompetence no longer,” His tentacles entwined around Chimeara’s brown, bald head- so unattractive in mammals, baldness- around her horns, her neck. “I wish I didn’t have to put you in such a compromising position.”

He went at it with considerably more vigor than usual. He thrust his vestigial leg as far as it would o into whichever orifice he’d entered, and further, trying to tear her in half with his size. He’d done it before to an employee, but those were accidents. Hard and harder and his grip on her head tightened, cracking her horns, she probably couldn’t breathe. He was screaming now, and spitting all over the place, and he couldn’t control it. Chimeara didn’t make a sound, she wasn’t supposed to. Exhausted from anger, misery, shame, he collapsed, his entire weight squashing Chimeara, sobbing loudly, but not crying.

“You’re so damn useless...” For a while he remained there in silence, maybe suffocating the little goat with his chest, maybe crushing her bones to bits, hoping, at least. It didn’t matter; she wouldn’t die.

Finally, King Annelida rolled off the bed, dragging Chimeara Tastic by the wrists, and carried her across the chamber to the window, over looking the edge of Lorish. She flailed out the window, swayed in the slight drafted created by the Lorish Turtle, which walked so slowly the Desert seemed to be moving beneath it.

“So useless...” Only the King’s fingers, sewn from slippery worms kept Chimeara from falling miles and miles to the dirt. All he needed was to let go, and let go of his desperate obligation.

“I want it back,” she suddenly stirred, her voice was more a textural rasp than a sound.

“What?”

“You know what. If you think I’m useless, I want it back.” Never. This ends now.

As Chimeara Tastic fell, the King wondered if, in any other world, she’d die in the air, or upon hitting the ground. His heart raced as he watched her rapidly shrinking frail form, and for a moment, the moment she hit the ground, it stopped.
**
Every direction Roger turned the sun was setting. He was hopelessly lost, and a lost trajectory in God’s forsaken Land was the first step to madness. Roger had seen dozens of demon hunters in his day, raving and dying, who’d decided too late it was time to go Home, and who would never find the River. Only demons, and only the smart, dangerous demons could make sense and direction of the endless Desert, and Roger didn’t to deal with one of those- they tended to be unfriendly to his kind. But it was a necessary evil, he’d rather not go crazy. The only problem was finding a demon. Since the Demon City had been built, there had been a mad rush out of isolated villages, demons piled in droves onto Lorish, leaving only the stupid ones to spend their lives drifting through the desert.

Hungry, wandering about, bored, confused, hungry. When Roger still hunted, if he was hungry he’d just eat one of the demons he’d been sent to assassinate. But now, having quit that job, it would probably be immoral to kill demons for his own benefit, when he was such a foreigner her. So hungry.

A body lie in a broken heap in the distance- dinner. Killing another demon, he could never forgive himself, Roger thought as he barreled woozily towards it, but why waste fresh meat?