The Heart Worm

By Mel Vil

Looking for a gripping read that will keep you on the edge of your seat? Look no further than "The Heart Worm," a passionate tale of one man's journey to redemption in the midst of a civil war.

Sal is an over-privileged rugby player who has always relied on his good looks and athletic prowess to get by. But when a career-ending injury leaves him adrift and alone, he finds himself grasping at straws in an attempt to find meaning and purpose in his life. His first glimmer of hope comes in the form of a beautiful Latin woman, but when she disappears from his life, he finds himself even more lost and desperate than before.

Determined to find his way, Sal sets off on a perilous journey into the heart of a brutal civil war, hoping to find the answers he so desperately seeks. Over the course of seven intense days, he meets two individuals who challenge his worldview and present him with an opportunity to change his life for the better. But as Sal soon learns, breaking free from a lifetime of bad habits and poor decisions is easier said than done.

Along the way, Sal is confronted with the harsh realities of life in a war zone, including violence, corruption, and desperation. He soon finds himself in the company of Françoise, a Parisian journalist who is also hiding from her own demons. Despite the danger that surrounds them, Sal and Françoise are drawn to one another, sharing a connection that may be the key to their survival. But as their relationship deepens, Sal finds himself struggling with an unhealthy dependence on Françoise that threatens to derail his efforts to rebuild his life.

As Sal navigates the complex and treacherous terrain of the civil war, he begins to understand the true meaning of courage, loyalty, and self-sacrifice. Will he be able to overcome his own limitations and embrace the change that he so desperately needs, or will he fall victim to the same destructive patterns that have plagued him his entire life? With its fast-paced action, complex characters, and thrilling plot twists, "The Heart Worm" is a must-read for anyone who loves a great adventure.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Villemel
• Release date: Jan 26, 2015
• ISBN: 9791094007099

Mel Vil

Meet the captivating Mel Vil - a poet, free-thinker, and novelist with a passion for exploring the depths of the human experience. Born in 1979, Mel's journey has taken them from the rolling hills of the UK to the colorful streets of Latin America, and ultimately to the cultured corners of Western Europe.Despite their varied travels, Mel's belief system is firmly rooted in Eastern ideas, infusing their writing with a powerful spiritual essence that will leave you breathless. With a voice that echoes with raw emotion and an unflinching honesty, Mel's work speaks to the very heart of what it means to be human.Through their latest novel, Mel invites you to join them on a journey of self-discovery, where the only limits are those you set for yourself. With each turn of the page, you'll find yourself drawn deeper into a world of vivid characters, intense emotions, and transformative insights.So come, step into the world of Mel Vil and experience the power of their writing for yourself. Order your copy today and discover why they are quickly becoming one of the most exciting voices in contemporary literature.

Book preview

THE HEART WORM

Mel Vil

Copyright © 2023 Mel Vil

Cover illustration: Dall・e

All rights reserved.

ISBN:9791094007099

Voici mon secret. Il est très simple: on ne voit bien qu’avec le coeur. L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.

Aimer, ce n’est pas se regarder l’un l’autre. C’est regarder ensemble dans la même direction.

(Antoine de Saint Exupéry, 1900-1944)

PART ONE

APRIL

I slipped into the mud with clumsy apprehension. I held my breath. I was face down. I held my breath and waited for what I knew was coming. I held my breath and waited for what I hoped would never come. With the futile courage of a soldier fallen in the desert sand, I waited. This would be the end of my career. But that never crossed my mind. It was so far buried in the recesses that even my sinking fingers couldn’t reach it. All I knew was that I’d ended up at the bottom again.

My arms did little to help, just straining and burning, then slipping in the mud. The pressure on my legs and lower spine grew unbearable. There was no way up or out. The seething white pain had to be endured. The weight of the scrum would eventually put an end to my suffering.

One small pop and those braver soldiers called a cease-fire. The white cloud in my eyes burst into a red flash. As if a warning flare had been released into the night sky. They all new what had happened. They all knew the sound. They all heard it, even above the call of the crowd.

I hadn’t considered myself at war, and there was certainly no blindfolded execution awaiting me in the dressing room. But I did require a stretcher and that did make me feel like a deserter. Yet away from the noise, imagining I didn’t care, they told me the ball never made into to touch.

October

Once I could walk again, but amongst feelings of brokenness, my real life resurfaced. It had been stuck in the sand for a lot longer than I’d thought. My body only responded to the physical aspects of rehabilitation. I could deal with having lost the beastly training sessions, the early mornings, and even being out of the game. What I couldn’t do was take it like a man and hide on the side-line.

Instead, I let my mind wander more freely, time and time again. I found that I could always transport my mind back to the same place. Although that meant life leaving me there, alone, peering at the world over the lip of a desert trench.

So that was what I did. I spent a lot of time just lying down, staring into the space. It would have been nice to have had something to go back to but there was nothing.

The next red flare was the girl—Angelica—, a scarlet siren with emerald eyes. Meeting her jogged my memory. My attention switched on. She was blocking my path. She had been pushed or shoved by the anonymous oaf of the crowd. The arch-lever file she’d been carrying had burst open and it was there, amongst the avalanche of paper, I found the girl—Angelica.

I had been heading home, limping south over London Bridge, swapping the grey angles of the City for the green leafiness of Dulwich Village. The job interview had been set up by an old school chum of mine. So there I was dressed to the nines and I come across her during the worst moment of her life. A wave of empathy struck me. Shame on you, Sal. Look at the grace with which she can accept these moments, myself told I.

But I wasn’t listening, he was distracting my attention towards the effortless fashion in which she could slide individual sheets back to the folder despite the bedlam around her. Even when her hair fell from behind her ear, she didn’t miss a beat but tucked it swiftly back in a motion reminiscent of humming bird. This was the moment of metamorphosis.

What characterised this moment of change so markedly was the decreasingly familiar sensation of voluntary paralysis, nuanced by the rise of a feeling that any future attempts to muster resistive powers would fail miserably. It was like being tucked under the scrum but not. It was like being brainwashed into climbing out of the trench and into no-man’s land but also not. I let fate deal me its blow.

I crouched down to help her. The disdain of the multitude surged into a storm of sighing and tutting, but we both knew underneath they revelled in the chance to hack away at yet another perpetrator of pedestrian incivility.

I flashed. In the snap of a hypnotic finger I was gone. I climbed out of my desert trench, barefoot on to the golden sands, believing I would find this perfect creature lurking amongst the vastness.

I sailed past crimson sand dunes, ignored the sphinx’s persuasive indications of contrived constellations and headed for the two pea green oases. Both were equally inviting, drawing on a hitherto hidden, yet suddenly overwhelming thirst. In a moment’s indecision, I fell. Tumbling through the warm sands, I splashed into the warm emerald waters, only to awaken to cold grey boring London.

Ironically, it was colour that was first to return, a London bus, a navy blue, pin-striped suit, a green leather handbag. As the rest of my vision recovered, I managed to return my focus to the task into which I had so precipitously engaged myself. I saw the last sheet of paper being returned to the folder. We looked from my empty hands to hers then to each other’s eyes. Continuing the synchrony, we stood up together. Not breaking eye contact. She smiled. A flashing red reflection darted across her eyes. My language centres failed.

Then it was the turn of my logic centres, I tried to put my finger on the inconsistency. Something was ruining a real moment. I turned around to see what it was.

Imagine three hundred and sixty degrees of London Bridge and not a single person noticing her, this girl, this fine shell carving, the girl—Angelica.

The moment was likely scheduled to stop there. Had any plan been associated with this momentary coincidence, it would have had as its goal just another representation of impalpable beauty to add to my collection. Of this I’m sure. I’m sure because in the time it had taken me to physically revolve, she’d will-o-the-whisp’d it.

I saw the bouncing, jet-black arrow of hair amongst the horde. I gave chase, taking my revenge and disrupting innocent bystanders from their thoughts of accountable hours and spreadsheet macros. It didn’t take me long, and she rewarded my efforts with an operatic flourish when I put my hand on her shoulder. It was similarly spectacular when she opened her mouth to speak.

I switched instinctively to another language to understand. She couldn’t understand the how or why, but it didn’t matter. I spoke Spanish, it made her smile and we became friends. There was nothing more to it, she was much more responsive in her own tongue but once we were better acquainted we spoke in English. It was more evident, given that we were in an English-speaking country.

Angelica, however, in either language, never let any conclusion be reached concerning the red flash. Perhaps I should never have told her, because the more I quizzed her on it, the more she seemed to gain from it. One night, she revealed that she knew magic tricks. But it turned out she was highly reserved when it came to performing them. From then on, the whole subject became a stalemate.

It didn’t, however, stop me from continuing my own musings. They brought little conclusion either, as I didn’t want to believe it was a physical manifestation. It wasn’t the red of traffic lights, road rage or a dirty double decker. There hadn’t been anything red on the bridge that day, no post or phone-boxes. Besides, it was more like the red you would find flapping above eastern capitals. The red of something special. La red de Angelica.

December

The next thing to break was my cluster of friends. We hadn’t pre-empted disaster, but the result was self destruction. I guess I had already been drifting away since breaking my cruciate ligament. But just as my leg muscles were compensating for the sudden absence of key knee infrastructure, Caitlyn, my girlfriend, was the one who held the group together, increasingly thanks to the support of my former team’s captain, Lloyd.

The free radical was Royce, and it was his maniacal behaviour that tore through our bonds and unleashed the latent energy therein. The irony was that we had always needed his quirky contribution. When we had no outside lives, whilst we were just jocks and swags, his jocular blags were the only source of fresh input. Put simply he was the court jester. But just as he let his paranoia lead him to believe that government’s lies were reciprocal reflections of society, he let his rising prominence on the stage that was our circle of trust lead him to believe that it was a reciprocal reflection of his rising status.

He abused the limelight to express how he thought, not only did certain States sponsor terrorism, but they were not even worried enough about it to cover up the evidence, especially as they were trying to justify yet another overseas war.

But Royce was about to get a lesson in red flares, but not from Angelica, who, I see now in hindsight, would have probably defended him. One night he went on for too long on about in a diatribe against the war on terrorism. It was team-mate Dylan who flared up. Dylan was the type to flare up. Royce knew that. What he had never know, was that Dylan’s father, like mine, had been an Irish Guard in the British Army. Dylan Senior—unlike my father—, however, had died in an IRA bomb attack.

"You can be a real ignor-anus at times, Royce! Sarah was the first to shut him down, I don’t know how you can even say that?"

Sarah was Caitlyn’s lieutenant, well, living emulation would probably describe her better. They were even physically similar. And it’s that that made the scene so vivid. Two artificially tanned, stick-thin girls crammed into a booth in a London pub by two rugby players and Royce, who was not so much of a mesomorph as he was skinny and anaemic. And we were on low numbers that night.

The years of thirty of us, drunk, sliding around on the floors of student union bars were over, and we were forced to resort to new methods of causing off-pitch career-jeopardising injuries.

Royce was the pin, and Dylan was the rugby-ball-shaped beer grenade.

Go on then! he erupted. If you’re gonna be such a ginger twat, at least give us a full explanation. What kind of government pays to have its cities and people blown up?

I had seen it coming, having recently become obsessed in learning all that could be learned about Colombia, and particularly interested in the political divisions. So had the twiglet sisters—their nickname, not mine. They were sat at the back of the booth, facing each other, and already having been using their watchful eyes far too much. They sat silently but with their mouths open, shocked seemingly not by Royce or his ideas, but by his having chosen to express them with only a small table for protection.

I was sat next to Royce, and I could feel him begin to squirm. Sarah comforted Dylan’s forearm only to have hers pushed away. Dylan took a few deep breaths, like we all did, and sat back like an eagle recovering alongside freshly blinded prey. Royce composed himself but, for an unknown reason, decided to carry on.

It’s modern governments that have lost their firm grip of control after progressing to a democratic system. If a country’s population are ‘mentally free’, they don’t notice when their real freedoms are being attacked. I don’t even know if they actually know they are doing it on purpose. Brain washing seems to be the new primary aim of most people getting in to office in powerful states, perhaps it is finally backfiring.

Before my injury, I had generally been in charge of interrupting, interfering had been left to the girls. What was unusual about this situation—and therefore reflective of the general shift of the constellation—was that we all remained awfully quiet, nor was Royce blindly marching on. He was being uncharacteristically malevolent, playing feline next to his own fresh game, lingering in the hope of fresh movement.

Imagine a love-fear bipolar spectrum of control. If a government doesn’t dictate then the people will not fear it. If it does nothing but tax them to service its foreign-policy-fuelled debt, how will they ever love or respect it? Globalisation has created complications for national sovereignty, and if a government is no long sovereign, how can its peoples ever be free. Aren’t we just waiting to be liberated? So instead, they cycle through the creation and abolition of havoc, and that creates ever-diverging patriotism and xenophobia. With a thus divided nation, you can get away with pretty much anything you like. Why do you think Americans never go abroad? Their freedom is being taxed.

There was silence. Then someone spoke. But you don’t honestly believe they are killing people on buses and in banks. What is wrong with jails, unemployment and direct taxes? No one was sure who had said it, but someone had. It may even have come from another table.

Royce had sat back, knowing anymore ranting would result in Dylan taking him outside and leaving him there. Dylan, ever the gentleman, ate his grief and left, leaving Royce with a lap full of table and lager. Lloyd went dutifully to the bar to buy what would be the last round we would drink together. We then collectively absorbed the accumulated misery and sat shocked.

After we drank up, Caitlyn dragged me and our already straining relationship into the night. We had been in relatively high spirits arriving at the bar, by the time we left we had slunk back into the ever declining state of desynchronisation. In fact, our only common emotion was that provoked by the hackneyed London drizzle and a pitiful sense of mutual self-loathing.

Then she made me run to catch a bus. I watched through the window at the oily south London streets and the reflected glare of traffic, corner shops and takeaways. We salvaged the rest of the night but all memories became abridged scenes of Elephant and Castle’s pubs, bars, clubs and their respective toilets. We cabbed it home managed to perform our rituals thanks to the many rounds of pain-killing cocktail.

June

Since my childhood I had been grounded in rugby. The only additions to my post-15-year-old life had been Caitlyn and her mischievous inclination towards drinking spirits. Now I was a little older and injuries, Royce, Angelica, pharmaceuticals and more alcohol than any man can bear had begun stripping away the layers of innocence, or perhaps I should say ignorance. It’s sad to admit, but I was cast off.

I built the habit of taking refuge in my desert trench from which I contemplated further retreat. It was all I had to fall back on. Other than having learnt two languages—only one of which being a living language—, my only other academic achievement was being the source of the clandestine maxim of my alma mater, ‘expand your horizons or face sliding down slippery poles’.

It was immediately destined to remain motto, what could be more fitting for a boarding school, and who could be more fitting as its mascot? But that’s the price of being prodigious at anything. Secrets escape the teacher’s lounge with suspicious ease. It’s alright if you excel in maths or chemistry, but if it’s sports, you’re no more protected than a corrupt politician.

The sting in the tail was when the circle had completed, and my tutor, the progenitor of the phrase, auspiciously took leave via his own slippery path. But it had been too late for me. I wasn’t destined to expand my horizons before reaching adulthood. My lack of attention to detail combined with my presence on the pitch meant I was fast-tracked through education, nor was I ever again to be hindered by the caprice of a member of the teaching staff.

Post-injury, I resent all of this. The longest lasting lesson was of the correlation between the