Worm

Crawling through the damp, cold earth. Inching its way over decayed leaves and dead branches until it dug deep into the black soil. It crawled through the loose, rich earth for some time until finding the mother load.

Rancid, rotting flesh enticed the creature to crawl to it. A mouth ringed with thousands of tiny, jagged teeth hooked into the eyes of the corps. The worm sank into the jelly of the eye, slurping up every decaying morsel. Nature requested this being to return to the earth.
As the worm ate the precious jelly, a flash of memory passed through its simple mind. It remembered hatching, crawling into the soil, consuming and defecating, returning debris to the rich soil. Before that, there was only darkness. The darkness grew deeper and warmer. Then cold, hard light.

Before he was born to crawl, he walked. He had arms and legs and stood upright. He was in a distant land. They sold children on the street here; they were his to consume. Part of his collection. He was the monster that returned them to the earth; no one cared to look for them. Consuming youth and returning it to the earth, the children were his to slaughter.

Holding a child’s cold dead hand, admiring his work, his collection. Startled by shouting in a foreign tongue, and the door swinging open. The light hurt his eyes. Gunfire roared through the darkness—blood, and bits of flesh scattering against the earth and the soil. Coldness and ringing faded away to silence and black.

The next memory was breaking through a thin shell into the warm earth. No limbs, no sight, only smell towards the delicious rot of its former host.