The Water Barrel Where Innocence Drowns With Worms Radia Benmenni   © Copyright 2026 by Radia Benmenni

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Dusty alleyways smelled of mud after rain.. Sun bathed house walls in gold each morning.. I was a nine year old child. The world felt limitless.. Life lasted until my grandmother called, "Come, sweety.. lunch is ready."

Yet I wasn't that sweet.. I was no princess kind of girl.. I didn’t know fear.. I held dirt with my hands, chased butterflies and bees until breathless, and turned over stones for secrets.. ants carrying crumbs.. black beetles shining and digging for worms within earth.

Worms were just passing creatures in my world then.. They weren’t a source of terror, nor were they objects of interest.. they were just there, as there was air, as there was sun, as there was the sound of my granny singing in the kitchen.

Then that day came.. It was a rusty metal barrel, left in a corner of the neighborhood long ago. It was filled with rainwater, its surface a dark mirror reflecting the sky and the mulberry branches that hung over it.. Two other neighborhood friends, my cousins and I, passed by it every day without giving it a second thought.

But on that hot summer afternoon, one of us, I don’t remember exactly who, for my memory has erased his face, perhaps it was me or maybe because I don’t want to blame anyone in particular.. Whoever he was .. suggested that we gather worms from under the stones, throw them into the barrel, and watch them drown.

We didn’t ask: Why? It didn’t even occur to us to ask.. We were children, and the act itself was an adventure. There was something of power in it, the power to decide the fate of another being. There was something of excitement.. the excitement of watching something happen before your eyes, something you had caused. There was, and this I only realized many years later, a tiny seed of cruelty dormant deep within every human being, just waiting for the chance to awaken.

We ran to the neighboring field.. turning over stones with our small hands covered with mud.. We found worms.. There were so many.. They writhed as if they knew, as if they were pleading in a silence no one could understand.

I gathered them in my palm.. I remember the coolness of their touch against my skin, the slow, quiet movement of them, as if they trusted me.. as if they believed that this hand holding them would return them to their damp earth.

Then I threw them into the barrel.. I just did.. But what happened next is what has been etched into my mind forever..

The worms didn’t sink quickly.. as we thought.. They writhed on the water’s surface, trying.. struggling.. drawing circles.. Their small, pink bodies throbbed.. bent.. straightened.. bent again. And we laughed, yes.. we the little monsters, laughed loudly.. the sound oddly out of place, mingled with another feeling.. something darker and unfamiliar in our tiny hearts.

Then the worms began to sink.. One by one.. Slowly descending to the bottom of the barrel, where there was darkness.. where there was no sun.. no soil.. no hope ..no life.

And at that moment, and I swear it’s a moment I can still recall with terrifying clarity despite all these years.. I felt something shift in my chest.. As if an unseen hand had entered the chambers of my heart and rearranged everything.

I didn’t cry.. I didn’t scream.. I didn’t back down.. I forced a smile and laughed with the others.. Maybe because I was a child, and belonging to the group was more important than anything else.

Deep inside.. beyond what I could grasp or name, the sense of safety and innocence fractured.. replaced by an unfamiliar ache.

That same night, I saw them in my dream.. and every night after..

I saw the barrel full, overflowing.. and worms spilling out onto the floor, writhing toward me,.. worms were everywhere on the floor climbing my legs, entering under my clothes.. entering my nose.. my ears.

I woke up terrified, feeling my body with trembling fingers, making sure nothing was there.. I didn’t tell anyone.. Children don’t tell about their dreams because they don’t have the language to describe what happens inside there.

And from that night on, something changed in my relationship with the world.. I no longer turned over stones.. I no longer went near the damp earth. Instead, I started checking my bed before sleeping, lifting the covers and looking underneath with frightened eyes, as if the worms I had drowned had returned for revenge.

I grew up.. and my phobia grew with me.. in fact, it grew faster than I did.

As a teenager, I would almost faint at the sight of a worm in the garden.. In university, I refused to walk down the hallways after it rained because worms would come out onto the asphalt.. I couldn't eat many fruits and veggies because once upon a time I found a worm in or on them.. the thought of worms made my skin ash and was enough to keep me awake all night.

People.. my family and friends.. laugh.. every time I scream when I see a worm.. “Worms! are just worms!” they say.. Little do they know that what I see isn’t the worm, Not the tiny creature writhing on the ground, but that nine year old girl who stood laughing while living beings died by her hands.

Years have passed, and I’m still trying to understand.. Why worms in particular? Why this deep seated fear, this phobia that doesn’t respond to logic.. behavioral therapy.. or attempts at normalization?

Then, during one of my long, solitary reflections, I realized.. phobia isn’t a fear of worms.. Phobia is a form of guilt.. in a moment of disability.. It’s my subconscious mind’s way of punishing me for what I did in my childhood.. Every time I saw a worm, my mind would say, “I know what you did. Remember the barrel.. Remember the creatures that died in your hands while you laughed.”

At its core.. phobia was a small courtroom in my head.. where that cruel child sat in the dock and I, the grown-up.. conscious.. remorseful one.. was the judge, unable to deliver a verdict, content with a punishment suspended forever.

But the story doesn't end with my phobia.. As I grew older.. read more.. reflected, and lived, I realized that what the other children and I did that day was merely a microcosm of a much larger crime committed by humanity every day.. everywhere, on our earth.

We don't drown worms in barrels.. We drown entire oceans in oil.. We drain rivers.. cut down forests.. and pollute the air breathed by millions of species.. We turn over the earth's rocks in search of minerals, and dump everything we find into the barrels of factories.. incinerators.. and landfills.

And the worst part.. we laugh.. We laugh at news of another species disappearing.. saying, "nothing will change.." We laugh at melting ice.. saying, "It's far away.. it won't reach us.." We join the group.. valuing conformity over individual conscience.

The bee.. the frog.. the migratory bird.. the sea turtle.. the coral reef.. the butterfly.. even the humble worm in the field soil... all are writhing now in a great barrel called "modern civilization" all drawing their desperate circles on the surface of poisoned water, and we all stand on the edge.. laughing or watching silently, or mostly pretending not to see.

But nature has a longer memory than we do.. I know this well, because my memory is my witness. More than thirty years have passed since that day.. and I am still paying the price. I still cannot walk in a garden after the rain without my heart trembling.. I still dream in rare but cruel nightmares of those worms, and those stifled, childish laughs.

And humanity, too, is paying the price.. Every forest that burns returns to us in the form of a heatwave. Every polluted river returns to us in the form of illness in our children.. Every species that goes extinct leaves a gap in the ecological fabric.. a gap that widens every day until it swallows something of us as well. The bees we killed with our pesticides take their silent revenge.. there will not be enough pollination.. not enough food.. not enough future.

And the worms, those tiny creatures with whom my story began, are the very ones who create the soil that feeds us. Without them, there would be no fields.. no wheat.. no bread on our tables. The creature I drowned in my childhood, and which I still fear to this day.. is in fact one of the pillars of life on this planet.

What irony!.. I fear what feeds me.. I tremble before what keeps me alive.. Humanity too faces this paradox.. fearing the environment, harming it in turn, suffering and fearing again. This cycle of guilt.. denial.. and harm continues.

Over the years, I've tried to reconcile with that little nine year old princess of darkness.. I began to understand something different.. that mistakes aren't always conscious acts, and that awareness doesn't spring up at the very moment something happens.. sometimes it's delayed for years.

The reconciliation wasn't enough, but it was a start.. Because understanding, even if it comes late, reshapes memory.. even if it doesn't erase it.

And from this understanding came not the dramatic regrets that stories often depict.. but something quieter.. a new awareness of the world.. Of the little things that have always been there.. things we simply didn't see.. Of the soil that seems silent but is teeming with life we ​​know nothing about.. Of the subtle boundaries between play and impact, between spontaneity and consequence.

Therefore, the path to ecology and environmental toxicology wasn't a sudden decision, but rather an extension of that old question I didn't know existed within me.. A slow attempt to understand what happens when we treat the patience of nature as something that can be tested without result.

Today, I don't see what happened as a story to be justified.. nor as a guilt to be borne, but as the incomprehensible beginning of something much bigger than myself.. Something made me see the world differently.. not as a space we pass through, but as a delicate system of fragile life that doesn't cry out when it's hurt.. but it changes silently.

I don't claim to be able to fix what I didn't understand in my childhood.. But I do believe now that understanding itself can be a form of responsibility.. And that paying attention, when it becomes a habit can lessen the repetition of what shouldn't be repeated..

Perhaps what's lost can't be brought back.. But we can at least, learn to see what has always been there and we didn't see.. As for me, it isn't the end of the story… but the first time I understand why it began.

One morning, after a light rain, I went to the park alone.. I sat on the ground.. despite my fear.. despite my trembling hands. And I saw a worm writhing on the asphalt, far from the soil, under a sun that would dry it out and kill it in minutes.

I took a deep breath.. a very deep one.. and reached out.. Tears almost burst forth when I touched it.. It felt cold... familiar... as if years hadn't passed... as if I'd returned to that day in the neighborhood, but this time I was alone, without laughing companions.. without a barrel.. without a small demon inside waiting to awaken.

I carefully picked it up and placed it in damp soil under a tree.. It disappeared slowly, digging its way down to its familiar kingdom.

I didn't feel the phobia had gone away.. Perhaps it never will.. But I faced it somehow.. and felt, for the first time in years, that little courtroom in my head had softened a little.. I felt relieved, even if only slightly, of the weight of a condemnation I had carried alone all these years.