Hello, this is Beatrix, and I’m a lowly worm.

Yes, the fact that I’m a worm means that I was able to evolve again. And yes, that means that I’m no longer a single-cell organism.

So why am I not wiggling in joy?

Well…I’m a worm. What else needs to be said? There’s just no way to fool myself or anyone else into thinking that I look anything but creepy and disgusting…

And also I’m pretty certain that I’ve suddenly developed a tolerance for eating …’waste’ products, and—

No, you know what. I don’t want to talk about it.

But the worse thing is that since I’m no longer a single-cell organism, I can no longer endlessly clone myself in two. Which means that the mighty Beatrix army is now truly dead and gone.

Can I go back? Can I get a refund on my evolution?

No? I’m stuck as a worm? Drat.

Ah, excuse me for a minute, my instincts are telling me to burrow.

I’m a bit surprised to be a worm actually, I kind of remember something about worms coming out during rain so that they don’t drown but…either that only applies to earth worms and there’s sea worms, or what I heard was clearly wrong.

Actually, aren’t worms used as fish bait? Doesn’t that mean fish know what worms are? Ignore my ramblings, I was never the brightest tool in the shed.

Wait, isn't it sharpest?

Hmm…seems the threat has passed.

I’m honestly not sure how my instincts work. The most I can tell you is that I’m very good at feeling the vibrations around me, and I even have a good idea of the size and location of things approaching me. But that doesn’t explain this nagging feeling I get oftentimes that basically screams at me to hide.

Not that I’m complaining, even as a worm I much prefer being a living worm than a dead one. I’ve already seen, or more like felt, quite a few of my worm brethren get taken for snacks by some hungry fish.

But still, I really don’t want to remain a worm. So right now I’m doing my best to consume as much food as I can so that I can evolve once more. Why? Because now that I’ve evolved two times, I’m starting to feel pretty certain about one assumption of mine. That being that in order to ‘evolve’ I need to gather enough food, or energy, to perform the process. As well as consuming a part of the animal I’m going to evolve into. I’m still not sure if that means that I can evolve into whatever I want if I have enough energy, or if I need to follow a certain path defined by the very unhelpful power I have.

So for now, despite how much it disgusts me, I’m consuming whatever I can without care about its source, so long as it's something that my worm-self can consume.

And yes, that does involve fish poop…

So that’s my life. Crawl around the sea/lake floor, find food to eat, and hide wherever I can when the metaphorical siren goes off in my head. It’s not much, but it’s honest worm work.

Oh, there goes the siren again.

*Burrow* *Burrow* *Burrow*

I’m actually not very good at burrowing in the soil. At least, not as good as I thought a worm would be. So my plan is basically to stay nearby where other worms are and react as fast as I can whenever I get the feeling that impending doom is upon me. Because you know what they say…

The early worm gets the…No, that’s not how it goes, is it?

Doesn’t matter. Point is, so long as I can hide faster than the fish or whatever else eats worms spots me, or at least, faster than my worm friends can hide, then I should be fine. After all, all I need to do is survive for a bit more, last for a bit longer. If I can do that, then I can evolve and escape from being a creepy, crawling, slimy worm.

Seems the coast is clear, should I pop out my head? Nope, I’m still getting that anxiety inducing feeling again, better stay hidden.

I know I haven’t talked about it, and I seem relatively okay after the whole fiasco, but I’m still not over the last time something tried to eat me. Even now that nothing has really chased after me, I still can’t stop my metaphorical stomach from hurting anytime that dreadful feeling that I’m being hunted hits me. And at times, a part of me just begs me to stay underground and never come out again.

Like, right now that I’m safely hidden—

Wait…why can I feel vibrations right on top of me? Please don’t tell me that there’s a—

The increase in the intensity of the vibrations confirmed my greatest fears. Someone knew I was here, and they were going to dig to get to me.

Oh god oh god oh god oh god, what do I do? Is this it? Is this the end of my second life? I guess the goddess had said that it was going to be a short one. But still…isn’t it a bit cruel to give me some hope in the form of this power that lets me evolve, just to have me die so soon?

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Ah, somethings taking a bite of my worm butt.

Right after that, my body was pulled out, and I suddenly found myself dangling from the mouth of what must have been a fish.

It seems I had pushed my luck too far, been a bit too eager to escape my life as a worm, too confident in my survival strategy, that I lost my chance to ever be something more. Lost my chance to ever regain my humanity.

Or my thumbs.

As I felt a good third of my body being chopped off, I realized one thing to my great horror. Worms do feel pain. A lot of pain. And right now, I was feeling the excruciating pain of having a part of myself bitten off of me.

It caused me to wiggle and spasm involuntarily, to struggle for survival and to do whatever my little thin body could to get away, to prove that in a world ruled by survival of the fittest, that I deserved to be among the survivors. But it was a hopeless struggle, for I never even got a chance to escape anywhere, floating in the ocean as I was. No, less than a second after I’d been reduced to two-thirds of my size, I felt the fish reach forward again, and this time bite onto me from my new midsection.

This was it. There was no way I was going to survive being split from the halfway point of what remained of me. Of course, being the pathetic worm that I was, I cried and begged and prayed in my head for a miracle that would save me. Heck, in my desperation, I even began praying to the very same goddess that had cursed me to this life. To the goddess that had deemed this to be my fate, deemed this to be my punishment for having had the gall to hide my evil intentions from her.

But to no surprise my prayers went unanswered, and no one came to my rescue. And a second later, I was split in twain again.

I was now barely a third of my original worm size, just a squirming head and torso that would soon find itself eaten along with the rest of the body. And yet, despite what the frantic movement of the remaining third of my body would make you think, I was strangely at peace as I floated down the ocean in what were surely the last few seconds of my life.

Because, what was I supposed to do now? What could I do now? The goddess had said that this new life of mine wouldn’t be a long one, just a bit of time where I could think about my actions and repent for them. So if it was preordained from the beginning that this life of mine would be transient, just a form of punishment for little old me, who was I to defy that fate?

No. That wasn’t right. It wasn't that I had accepted my end. Even now I was hoping with all my might that when I died I would end up once more in that marbled room, preferably with another god or goddess. Hoping with all my might that this wouldn’t be the end of the conscience that made up, well, me.

Yes, that’s right, it wasn’t that I had given up on life. It was just that I had given up on this life, and was now just deluding myself into hoping that even after I became nothing but fish food, that there would still be a ‘me’ somewhere else.

So, this is my goodbye to you. Or, more correctly, goodbye to me. To the me in my head who I've been speaking to all this time in my maddening loneliness. To you, my imaginary friend, it seems that I must apologize, for in my haste to end my existence as a worm, I have doomed us both. Next time around, if there is one, I’ll listen more to that feeling in my stomach telling me to hide forever. Or at least, I’ll be more conservative when it comes to taking risks. But for now, there’s nothing else to do, nothing left to do for this sad little life of mine. There will be no conquering the world. There will be no turning back into a human.

There will be no getting my thumbs again.

So until next time, yet again, I bid you, adieu.

May we meet again.

…

……

Wait a second, isn’t this lasting too long? Where’s the fish to finish me off? Not that I’m saying that I want to be eaten. It’s just that like I said before, I’m really bad with suspense and anxiety. And right now, my non-existent stomach was definitely making flips and somersaults and the whole shebang.

My answer came just a second after I unceremoniously landed on the seafloor, for following after me was what must have been chunks of the fish that had been eating me. And now that I was focusing on my surroundings again, I could feel the vibrations of something moving and shaking violently in the water atop of me. Most likely, another fish that had ended up praying on my predator.

I…was still alive. Barely, but still alive.

But what now? Was I just supposed to continue struggling despite being at death’s doorstep? To keep on fighting if all that was awaiting me was another episode like this, and most likely sooner rather than later if the goddess’s words were to be believed? Was it smarter to just relax and allow what was surely an inevitable death to come to me? Whether it was due to time or something else eating my remains?

I started crawling forward.

It really is hard to explain the existential fear that one feels when something is hunting them. It is a feeling that is unlike any that could be described. I doubt that even if you were to be chased by a murderer, even if you had your life threatened, that you would understand the instinctual horror of knowing you were not just going to die, but be turned into food.

I wasn’t sure if I could handle another like that, a situation where my life was so cruelly at the mercy of someone who wanted to feast on me. At least, not with my mental well-being intact. That’s why…

I used whatever energy I could still muster to move what remained of me forward.

Yes, I wanted to live. To continue existing. To not be turned into food for another animal.

Now that I thought about it, the goddess had never answered any of my questions about what happened after death. If everyone got an opportunity like the one I had been given to keep their conscience, their ‘sense of self’ intact in another life. Or if for most people it was a one and done deal. After all, how many people had I met in my time on earth? And how many of them gave a single sign that they were on their second round of life? None. And even if everyone did get another chance in another world, there was no guarantee that they would get more than one chance.

Which meant that there was a good chance this was it. That this would be the moment where either I entered a permanent afterlife, had my soul bleached and put into some cycle again, or where I was simply destroyed. And since I doubted that in the case of an afterlife I would find myself in any sort of paradise, it meant that if I wanted to have a chance to enjoy life, at least as ‘me’, then I couldn’t allow myself to die right now.

So I kept struggling. Kept crawling as much as I could with what remained of me, pushing my body as much as it would allow me to, all for the sake of reaching what remained of the being that had less than a minute ago tried to eat me.

I was slow, my movements inefficient as a result of my reduced size. But in the end, before my body could give out, before something else had set its sights on me and finished me off, I managed to reach the small chunk of what remained of my would-be killer. And without hesitation, I bit into it, consuming as much as I could even if I no longer knew if it was possible for me to digest it with how little remained of me. Until…

I felt a familiar energy wash over me, followed by a jingle that was quickly becoming my favorite sound ever.

And then, I was a worm no more.