(1)
Leelie Park was a seven acre recreation zone built around the time Martin was born. It was used by parents, joggers, and the elderly, and by night, an increasing number of addicts and high-schoolers, who Martin did his best to avoid when getting back home from campus. It was an addict who Martin thought he was looking at. Several dozen steps in front of him—scarcely illuminated by the park lights—was a figure—maybe five and a half feet tall or so—walking.
It moved awkwardly, shambling as though the limbs were independent of each other. The joints of their legs weakly holding the rest of their body up, causing them to bend at weird angles. The figure’s head looked downcast. They were making their way from one of the off-shooting paved paths connecting to the main one Martin was on, slowly moving towards him.
Weirdo. That was all Martin could muster as he stared at this figure. His mind jumped between cutting through the grass to go around the shambler, leaving a wide enough berth should he need to run, or turning back and going around the park.
It would add another twenty minutes to his walk home, but the idea of walking past this shambling man was making Martin’s hands clammy. The figure was now on the main path, still a dozen steps in front of him, but seemed to be walking farther into the park, rather than towards him. He was about to turn around and out of the Leelie Park, when the shambler got closer to one of the park’s lights.
As the shambler’s head became gradually visible, Martin went slack-jawed. He had been seeing the figure wrong. They had been walking backwards, not looking at the ground, but with their head thrown up so that they were facing up at the sky. Its palms faced up and were held out slightly away from its body as if in reverence.
Martin was about to mutter Screw this and walk out of the park, texting his mom to let her know that he would be home a little later than expected when the shambler slowly crept closer towards the park light’s illuminating cone.
Martin froze. He felt that he recognized this figure, now more clearly a male, but most importantly, wearing a brown cardigan—one with a crocheted flower attached to the shoulder. That flower was a recent addition, but the cardigan itself he must’ve seen thousands of times since childhood. He’d seen it countless times when he was babysat—as many kids in his building had been—by Old Man Jim.
Martin’s feet moved forward before he could form a conscious thought. He was increasingly sure he was looking at a man he had visited, spoken to, even played backgammon with at the small park behind the complex. Grey hair and a patchy beard, check, and a small figure making his clothing hang loosely on his body, check. But as Martin approached, closing the distance so he could get a better look, he saw that Jim looked disheveled. His grey hair and patchy beard were unkempt, as though he was forcibly pulled out of bed and onto the street. His eyes were half-lidded and glossy. Martin saw that the sleeves of Jim’s cardigan were rolled up to his elbows revealing oddly coloured forearms.
Jim continued shambling, legs shaking as though on the verge of giving out, but never quite.
Oh god, Martin thought.
He had seen something similar before in homeless addicts on the street near Clermont Station, no awareness of the cold despite having no jacket, convulsing, and leaking vomit from their mouth.
He noted Jim’s grey-ish skin tone. Thin red lines across his forearms and around his neck that looked like vigorous scratch marks from Jim’s own nails. In some places, dried blood staining skin. And now, listening a little more closely, a soft groaning.
“Jim?” Martin called out.
Nothing.
Martin walked closer, his eyes locked onto the man’s shredded forearms—now seeing under the clawing marks signs of smaller, more gentle scratches hidden below, and tiny red dots. Jim’s elbows popping upward, stiff, extending his arms as far as they could be.
Martin reached his hand out to place it on Jim’s shoulder, hoping the contact would do something, prompt some sort of response from the old man. As his hand drew closer to Jim’s shoulder, he began to feel an itchy squirming on the palm of his hand—it was an odd sensation he had never felt before—and slowly, instinctively, he retracted his hand. He let out a breath he did not realize he was holding in, and took a tiny step away. Then, faster than Martin could blink, Jim’s arm—the one he had been reaching for—began to flail, sharply waving around while the rest of his body stayed—searching for something to grip onto. Martin jumped back, watching the arm flail like a reed for a few more seconds, whipping through the air before deciding there was nothing and returning back to an orans position.
He was delaying what needed to be done. Stepping back and pulling out his phone he called nine-one-one. The phone dialled and then was picked up. A voice came from the other end asking what the emergency was. Martin explained, and watching Jim continue his hacky-sack movements, begged for them to hurry.
Minutes later Martin could hear sirens blaring around him, echoing in the open space of the park. Then it stopped and he could count the seconds it took until two figures—male and female—jogged towards them pushing a stretcher and carrying a bag of supplies. Seeing Jim shambling, the two tried to subdue him. Moving past Martin and as he watched as the paramedic’s gloved hands grab onto Jim’s arms, holding him still and guiding him towards a laying position.
Jim did not resist, letting himself be placed on the ground, before doing some preliminary checks of Jim’s condition—flashing a light onto what Martin could now see were very dilated eyes, speaking rapidly to each other, and on occasion to Martin to ask questions, as they reached into the medical bag, they administered something up his nose, and afterwards put a mask over Jim’s face.
He tried to think back to Clermont Station, if the paramedics had done something similar, but he caught so little of it, him—along with some others slipping out to the station to avoid bothering the EMTs. At least that’s what he told himself.
As they carefully lifted Jim onto the stretcher, strapping him in, Martin noticed how Jim’s arm began to move, fighting against the strap, but refusing to bend to pull itself out, making it so only his hands and fingers were mobile.
As the male EMT moved around the stretcher close to Jim’s hand, Martin could see Jim’s fingers reaching out, grabbing at the air until he was holding fast to the EMT’s hand. The EMT jumped a little, letting out a quiet gasp before pulling his hand away. His partner asked if he was alright, to which he said yes, and mumbled something about cold flesh. Martin noticed small red dots on the exposed skin of Jim’s palm—along with something white briefly poking out. Then it was gone.
Martin wanted to ask if Jim would be alright, the thought of the old and frail man dying flicking in the back of his mind, but decided he would rather not put it out into the world. Martin was not Jim’s kin, so was told he would not be able to go with him, but they told him they would be taking Jim to ClearWater General. Martin decided he would visit him tomorrow.
Martin made his way through the main route of the park. Occasionally turning back to see the paramedics guiding Jim in the opposite direction and out of Leelie Park.
(2)
They were finally able to get the man into the ambulance. Bryan kept his eyes out for any more hand movement or fighting against the restraints but there was none. They were now on route to the hospital, Laura in the front giving an update over the radio.
Bryan did not know how to feel about being in the back with this man, who was still emitting a soft groaning and trying to lift his head up, making it look as though he were trying to peek out from the windshield. Bryan knew there was nothing to look at but road and woods on either side of them for another several minutes. In that time he had a job to do; wrap the man’s arm so he could check his vitals.
Bryan reached over for the cuff of the sphygmomanometer, preparing to wrap it around the old man’s arm. He would first need to pull the sleeve of the brown sweater up higher to get access to the bicep. Reaching for it, his eyes caught the many lesions running up the old man’s arms, surprised that this much damage could have been done by the man’s trimmed nails—he must have been digging, Bryan thought. Pulling up the sleeve, he felt again how cold the man was and now staring at unscratched skin, seeing how grey and rigid it was, as if he were holding onto a rotting tree branch rather than a human arm.
Turning to examine the old man’s eyes, Bryan thought he saw a glint, something white flashing—swimming through it. Then he returned to what he needed to do, wrapping the band around the frail bicep of the man and waiting for the machine to read something out. The machine showed results that were inconclusive and Bryan could feel his brows furrowing as he stared at the screen. What, he thought, grabbing onto the band and readjusting it, being a little more rough with Jim’s arm as he did so.
The groaning stopped.
Then there was a gargling, and Jim’s upturned head began to heave as though the man were about to throw up. Bryan instinctively reached for a vomit bag within one of the ambulance’s shelves and held it up close to Jim—all thoughts about the man forgotten, training kicking back in. He thought that the restraints holding his chest might have been too tight, pressing on his chest, so undid them, planning to tie them back as soon as Jim finished heaving. Standing over the old man Bryan looked down his open mouth, waiting for anything; to see something coming up that he would need to dislodge, or for the heaving to end and for brownish-green liquid to shoot out.
“Is everything alright back there?”
“Yeah” Bryan said, “He’s just vomiting.”
One moment passed. Then another. Bryan’s eyes squinted as he waited for anything to happen. Then, from the back of man’s gaping mouth, close to the uvula he could see something white squirming. Then two, then five, ten and growing in number. Eventually hundreds of thin, long worms wriggled their way out of the man’s mouth. Bryan screamed, loud and continuously, causing Laura to swerve.
“What the FUCK.”
Bryan’s voice was high-pitched and he continued to scream as he jumped away from Jim, “STOP THE FUCKING CAR.”
Bryan stood by the doors, as far away from Jim as he could. He could see that out of every orifice, his mouth, his ears, his nose—Bryan imagined from his anus and penis too—tiny white worms poured out, covering inch after inch of skin and clothing. As they moved out, Jim’s body flailed, as though being gently pushed in every direction, his skin sinking in slightly, appendages and head now falling limply off the sides of the stretcher. Bryan could see small ripples on the forearms, something crawling underneath, then pushing from the thinned, scratch-out layers of skin, until there was nothing of the old man that could be seen. They were all writhing on Jim, like Bryan stumbled on the heart of some nest of white slivering worms.
As the ambulance pulled to the side and stopped, Laura could hear the back doors popping open and a quick set of footsteps had come to the side door. She opened it and was met with Bryan, eyes wide and panicked, voice high-pitched and whiny.
“GET OVER HERE, NOW!”
Laura was stunned for a moment, getting out of the driver’s seat to stand in front of Bryan on the street, “What’s wrong?”
He opened his mouth, beginning to speak when a thump hit the pavement. Bryan slowly crept along the side of the ambulance to take a peek, but Laura flung herself towards the backdoor to stop this clearly sick man from hurting himself. She stopped when she saw him.
He—It, had fallen over, not being able to balance itself as it dropped from the back of the ambulance. In front of them now, a heap of limbs forced into weird positions like mangled roadkill, bones out of place. It was surrounded by piles of white worms writhing on the concrete, inching back towards the body—the nest—from all sides and crawling through whatever openings the clothing offered, forcing their way through exposed skin or holes. The body animated, tried lifting itself up. Now Bryan and Laura could see the broken right arm, pushed past a full extension so it was bent in the wrong way, but there was no bleeding. Its pants were ripped exposing deep lesions on the thing’s knees and shins—but where there should have been the budding of red and pink—the stuff of life, there was white. White, and writhing, and digging, and crawling and burrowing.
Then it began its shamble. The steps were slow and laboured. Leaving behind a thin trail of worms. As the corpse moved it assumed the pose they found him in, moving backward. Its arms were positioned to the side and upwards, the right one now bent so that from the forearm it was pointed toward the ground. Its head was thrown back. But now, from the orifices, from all its old and new openings, came out tiny, long, writhing white worms.
The two stood together and witnessed the figure’s continued shamble, off the road and onto the grass, through the knee-high foliage before disappearing among the trees.
(3)
At home Martin was preparing for his shower. Taking off his clothing and standing in front of the mirror in the nude, he thought of several things. He would need to visit Old Man Jim. He would not be able to tomorrow, he was taking Lindsey out to dinner and then they would finish the night at hers. His mind drifted, silently thanking God her parents were gone for the weekend. Then he thought about his size, worried that he was too small.
All while gently scratching at the small red dots littering the palm of his hand.
[Image Credit : Photo by Remedios Remón on Unsplash]
by 
Alisher Kulzhabayev
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- Old Man Jim - July 8, 2026
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