The Woman With Worms In Her Pockets
5th of September 2024
I feel I need to write some sort of disclaimer before letting you read this. As I said when I started this Substack I wanted this space to be for whatever arrives. So often I get trapped into thinking that my followers only want to see one sort of thing on my social media pages and actually I’m not too far wrong in that thought but here is somewhere I wanted to feel I could breathe and let my writing do whatever it likes. Having said that I’m not really sure what this is, some sort of fairy tale, I’m not sure. All I know is that every year when the seasons start to shift I get these strange stories, mainly about older ladies that evolve from a conversation I overhear stood in a queue or in a cafe. I have kept them hidden for many years but for a reason I am not yet sure of this one wants to be seen. There is some swearing if your sensitive to that, enjoy…
There was once a woman who wore a coat. It looked much like any other with buttons of padded leather, cracked and dry and a good collar for keeping out the winds. Picked up in a charity shop for change it really didn’t have much about it but then this story isn’t really about the coat.
This woman happened to spend a lot of time gardening though it is not too unfair of me to say the hours of work were not reflected in the gardens appearance. Grassy edges stood like trolls hair along ailing flower beds ‘Don’t you own a pair of secateurs?’ her son used to ask. He stopped asking after he bought her a pair for Christmas and they never made it out of their tightly zipped plastic shroud and had likely now been lost to the kitchen table beneath countryside magazines and coffee stained hospital letters. The spiderwebs in the garden not only caught flies but any unsuspecting human who passed through often resulting in a flurry of spluttering and face sweeps. The woman just trudged through seemingly unaware of the traps and pitfalls of her garden in fact she invited them in. Slugs were transplanted instead of poisoned, dandelions were a flower looked forward to instead of mown and the brambles, well they were saved by her neighbours shears as she gently enticed them back over her fence weaving them into the ones already in bloom.
People worried about her, the neighbours often caught a glimpse of her as they hung out the window for a cigarette. ‘Crazy old woman, what’s she up to now?!’ sniggering they closed the window as she continued to transplant weeds she had pulled up from the Asda car park. Her son worried about her the most calling his sister in Australia whilst he stared out the smudged window ‘You should see the place Sal it’s a tip! not like when we were growing up. She won’t listen to me though just makes a cup of tea and goes back out there in that fucking coat!’ They thought she didn’t know what they said, but she did, they thought she was stubborn which she was or loosing her marbles, which actually felt quite good to have a clear out but really she just didn’t give a shit and that seemed to infuriate people the most. Once she began mumbling to herself and shaking which she tried to hide by fumbling in her pockets that was the final straw and as her family decided what was to be done she continued like normal.
I went to visit one day and her son answered the door whilst pushing aside the cat litter tray ‘You like all that nature shit Luce, do you mind going out the back to see her? you might be able to talk some sense into her although I think she’s too far gone, worth a try though right?’
We talked for a while under the apple on a precarious chair who’s rust had managed to somehow tarnish the grass and the bottom squeaked in death throws whenever I moved. She stopped for a while deliberating something unseen, I noticed the shadow of her son move from the window and she turned to me as agile as a cat. ‘They kids think I’m nuts, over the hill and not too far from being under it, well thats probably true but I ain’t stupid’ I didn’t know what to say she clearly wasn’t so I simply smiled but got caught off guard by a gust of chilled September wind and I shuddered. ‘Tid’n no good not wearin any clothes maid, ere put me coat on’ Before I could politely object to the garment decorated in burrs and badly sewn pathwork it had met my shoulders with a thud. It smelt like rain and hot mulch but my god if it wasn’t the most comfortable thing I’d ever worn. My body reacted to it like the first sip of tea after a frost bitten walk. I reclined just as much as the chair would allow, feeding my hands into the pockets ‘what the!’ my hands retracted immediately having met something like cold dead fish in the dark recesses of those deep fabric folds. To my surprise she was belly laughing at my disgust and I felt slightly insulted by whatever trick she was playing on me, naturally I went to peek inside. ‘NO!’ she shouted ‘With your hands’ and gave me a single encouraging nod. With less trepidation then I thought I fed them back in and closed my eyes. I’m not sure how to explain what happened other than if you’ve seen a good movie flashback it kind of started a bit like that then suddenly the garden was alive. Birds called out like sirens, petals fell like billowing bed sheets and the grass grew above me so every patch of autumn sky was filtered through its blades. Everything felt so full and ripe like the point of an orgasm only in colour and sound. I could feel it now in my pockets the cool crumbling of earth sifting through my fingers to reveal the elastic movement of worms! I was seeing a world through the creatures in the pockets and it was far from a tip. Without thought I whispered ‘Wow, what a world’ Her voice came softly from next to me though it could have been a million miles away ‘ I ain’t the only one who mumbles then, mind you can’t really help it when you’m in their world. Sometimes you have to see what they see to understand things. Not that they’ve got eyes like you and me but then we humans are the only ones who ave to see to appreciate right whats in front of us’. She paused allowing the single tear to roll down my cheek ‘ See tid’n too bad avin worms in your pockets is it?’.
