The Worm Within

My mom was always on my case about getting laid.

“Honey, if you don’t get yourself knocked up soon, you’ll be the end of the line!” she’d nag.

Eventually, this whole procreation thing started getting to me.

“Okay, look,” I told my boyfriend, Jake. “No matter how much I come onto you, you gotta promise not to give in, okay?”

Jake, all flustered, practically ran into the bathroom.

That’s when his phone buzzed with a message: “Don’t forget, 11 o’clock, me and the guys are gonna get a taste of that girlfriend of yours!”

I scrolled through the chat history and discovered Jake was drowning in gambling debts.

To pay them off, he’d been drugging me, planning to pimp me out to his creditors.

I just laughed, a cold, humorless sound, and walked into the bathroom.

Jake had no idea that my real form was that of a horsehair worm. Once I get it on with a guy, I release tons of worm eggs.

My little worm babies, they’d scramble to get into him, turning his body into a giant hatchery...

01

“Honey, you’re twenty-two! If you don't start having babies, that’s it for our family line!” My mom said on the phone, practically yelling, “I know you got a boyfriend, so get busy already!”

I hid out on the balcony, whispering, “Mom, I don’t want to. I’d rather have my babies die inside me than hurt somebody!”

See, I’m actually a horsehair worm.

Horsehair worms can reproduce asexually.

On my twenty-second birthday, my belly would start pumping out anywhere from 1.5 million to 6 million eggs.

The eggs are tiny and fragile, super easy to kill.

My ancestors came up with a great plan - get it on with a human.

When I did the deed, the eggs would launch themselves into their body.

Human bodies are juicy and safe, making them the perfect all-you-can-eat buffet for my babies.

The thing is... the host dies!

The worms will eat everything: skin, tissue, even their brain. Leaving behind nothing but a paper-thin husk and a pile of bones.

“Sweetie, if you don’t start breeding, the babies will eat you alive!” My mom screamed over the phone. “Are you seriously willing to die for some guy?!”

As the eggs grew, so did their need for food.

But I can’t provide enough.

The hungry eggs started to eat me.

For days, I felt this awful pain.

My babies are protesting! They want me to get busy, quick!

“Mom, don’t worry. I won’t let our family line die out, and I won’t die either.”

After hanging up, I curled up in a corner, feeling completely helpless.

What was I going to do?

Should I just do it like my mom wants and hook up with Jake?

No!

Absolutely not!

Jake is the best guy I’ve ever met.

When I came out of the mountains, I was a total clueless hick. Some human traffickers tried to snatch me up.

I wasn’t scared; I was kinda excited, actually. The babies would get their buffet without any effort!

But then Jake came and saved me from those creeps.

He brought me to the city, bought me clothes, took me out for burgers, we even went to Disneyland.

I had never been so hap...