The Cult of Worms

Walking from my car to the school in the rain today, I noticed something very grim.

The worms.

It dawned on me that they are more than just little tubes with a digestive tract the length of their segmented body.

There's more to their being than naturally aerating the ground with their tiny mouths as they sniff out living and dead organic matter.

They are in a cult.

They are a member of the Animalia, like us, so it makes perfect sense that these brownish organisms can belong to such an organization.

As I walked with my head down, hood up in the rain this morning, the worms lay about the wet concrete, writhing and wriggling around.

They were not taking some communal shower.

They were committing mass suicide.

Later in the day, what lay about the track and sidewalk? Sad worm carasses, all dried up. One of the unfortunate souls, that one over there, twitched on the track, its little wormy body too weak to use its tiny mouth to find its way back to the soil.

It didn't perish quickly like the rest of his cult. Instead, it waited for the sole of a middle school runner to end its life.

Other than similar instances, like the Heaven's Gate cult, I don't believe there are any other species that have committed mass suicides like worms. They come out, practically drown themselves, and then they don't move back to the soil. Instead, they wait for the rain to stop so they can dry out in the sun and get stepped on.

It isn't just a one-time thing with worms, either. The rain must hold some kind of power over them, like Hale-Bopp, and it draws them out of the confines of the soil.

Studies have shown that the wet allows for the worms to travel, but I know the truth.

They don't want to move. They're in a cult, and when it rains, they commit mass suicide.