âIf you ainât going to come back then fucking
finish.
â He stamped and spat at the familiar, too afraid to touch but raging. âYou
fucker.
I canât stand this. Finish it for me you
fucker.
â The witch beat his fists against his naked holed sides. He reached into a space below his heart. He wailed with pain and his face spasmed, but he fingered the inside of his body. His wound did not bleed, but when he drew out his shaking hand it was wet and red where it had touched his innards. He cried out again and shook blood into the familiarâs face. âThat what you
want?
That do you? You fucker. Come
back
or make it
stop.
Do
something
to
finish.
â
From the familiarâs neck darted a web of threads, which fanned out and into the corona of insects that surrounded it. Each fibre snaked into a tiny body and retracted. Flies and wasps and fat bees, a crawling handful of chitin was reeled in to the base of the familiarâs throat, below its human jaw. The hair-thin tendrils scored through the tumour of living insects and took them over, used them, made them a tool. They hummed their wings loudly in time, clamped to the familiarâs skin.
The vibrations resonated through its boccal cavity. It moved its mouth as it had seen others do. The insectile voice box echoed through it and made sound, which it shaped with lips.
âSun,â it said. Its droning speech intrigued it. It pointed into the sky, over the nude and fading witchâs shoulder, up way beyond the old woman. It closed its eyes. It moved its mouth again and listened closely to its own quiet words. Rays bounced from car to battered car, and the familiar used them as tools to warm its skin.
ENTRY TAKEN FROM A MEDICAL ENCYCLOPAEDIA
NAME:
Buscardâs Murrain,
or
Wormword
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: Slovenia (probably).
FIRST KNOWN CASE: Primoz Jansa, a reader for a blind priest in the town of Bled in what is now northern Slovenia. In 1771 at the age of thirty-six Jansa left Bled for London. The first record of his presence there (and the first description of Buscardâs Murrain) is in a letter from Ignatius Sancho to Margaret Cocksedge dated 4th February 1774. 1
SYMPTOMS: The disease incubates for up to three years, during which time the infected patient suffers violent headaches. After this, full-blown Buscardâs Murrain is manifested in slowly failing mental faculties and severe mood swings between three conditions: near full lucidity; a feverish seeking out of the largest audience possible; and a state of loud, hysterical glossolalia. Samuel Buscard infamously denoted these states
torpid, prefatory
and
grandiloquent
respectively, thereby appearing to take the side of the disease.
After between three and twelve years, the patient enters the terminal phase of the disease. The so-far gradual mental collapse speeds up markedly, leaving him or her in a permanent vegetative state within months.
Those present during the nonsensical âgrandiloquenceâ of a murrain sufferer report that one particular wordâthe wormwordâis repeated often, followed by a pause as the sufferer waits for a response. If any of those listening repeats the word, the suffererâs satisfaction is obvious.
Later, it is from among these mimics that the next batch of the infected will be found.
HISTORY: At the insistence of the respected Dr. William Haygarth, all murrain sufferers were released into the care of Dr. Samuel Buscard in 1775. 2 During postmortem investigations on the brains of infected victims Buscard discovered what he thought were parasitic worms, which he named after himself. When a committee of aetiologists examined his evidence, they found that the vermiform specimens were made of cerebral matter itself. Buscard was denounced amid claims that he had made the âwormsâ himself by perforating the brains with a cheese-screw. The committee renamed the disease âgibbering fever,â and halfheartedly
finish.
â He stamped and spat at the familiar, too afraid to touch but raging. âYou
fucker.
I canât stand this. Finish it for me you
fucker.
â The witch beat his fists against his naked holed sides. He reached into a space below his heart. He wailed with pain and his face spasmed, but he fingered the inside of his body. His wound did not bleed, but when he drew out his shaking hand it was wet and red where it had touched his innards. He cried out again and shook blood into the familiarâs face. âThat what you
want?
That do you? You fucker. Come
back
or make it
stop.
Do
something
to
finish.
â
From the familiarâs neck darted a web of threads, which fanned out and into the corona of insects that surrounded it. Each fibre snaked into a tiny body and retracted. Flies and wasps and fat bees, a crawling handful of chitin was reeled in to the base of the familiarâs throat, below its human jaw. The hair-thin tendrils scored through the tumour of living insects and took them over, used them, made them a tool. They hummed their wings loudly in time, clamped to the familiarâs skin.
The vibrations resonated through its boccal cavity. It moved its mouth as it had seen others do. The insectile voice box echoed through it and made sound, which it shaped with lips.
âSun,â it said. Its droning speech intrigued it. It pointed into the sky, over the nude and fading witchâs shoulder, up way beyond the old woman. It closed its eyes. It moved its mouth again and listened closely to its own quiet words. Rays bounced from car to battered car, and the familiar used them as tools to warm its skin.
ENTRY TAKEN FROM A MEDICAL ENCYCLOPAEDIA
NAME:
Buscardâs Murrain,
or
Wormword
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: Slovenia (probably).
FIRST KNOWN CASE: Primoz Jansa, a reader for a blind priest in the town of Bled in what is now northern Slovenia. In 1771 at the age of thirty-six Jansa left Bled for London. The first record of his presence there (and the first description of Buscardâs Murrain) is in a letter from Ignatius Sancho to Margaret Cocksedge dated 4th February 1774. 1
SYMPTOMS: The disease incubates for up to three years, during which time the infected patient suffers violent headaches. After this, full-blown Buscardâs Murrain is manifested in slowly failing mental faculties and severe mood swings between three conditions: near full lucidity; a feverish seeking out of the largest audience possible; and a state of loud, hysterical glossolalia. Samuel Buscard infamously denoted these states
torpid, prefatory
and
grandiloquent
respectively, thereby appearing to take the side of the disease.
After between three and twelve years, the patient enters the terminal phase of the disease. The so-far gradual mental collapse speeds up markedly, leaving him or her in a permanent vegetative state within months.
Those present during the nonsensical âgrandiloquenceâ of a murrain sufferer report that one particular wordâthe wormwordâis repeated often, followed by a pause as the sufferer waits for a response. If any of those listening repeats the word, the suffererâs satisfaction is obvious.
Later, it is from among these mimics that the next batch of the infected will be found.
HISTORY: At the insistence of the respected Dr. William Haygarth, all murrain sufferers were released into the care of Dr. Samuel Buscard in 1775. 2 During postmortem investigations on the brains of infected victims Buscard discovered what he thought were parasitic worms, which he named after himself. When a committee of aetiologists examined his evidence, they found that the vermiform specimens were made of cerebral matter itself. Buscard was denounced amid claims that he had made the âwormsâ himself by perforating the brains with a cheese-screw. The committee renamed the disease âgibbering fever,â and halfheartedly
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