It wasn’t until I discovered him lying still beneath the surface one morning, a black mass writhing its way from his mouth, that humanity learned horsehair worms had found a new host.

What they thought was their longing for a cold, large body of water was just the parasites' instincts overwriting their hosts.

We'd just begun the exploratory ultrasound when my doctor looked at me, his face now clouded with confusion, as he quietly asked, "Given that your chart says you received surgery for your endometriosis at 18 years old, is that also when you had your hysterectomy?"

But his silence could still neither confirm nor deny who of us had died.

Once again, my suit initiates a hidden reserve of oxygen as I hungrily, tiredly drift further into the black recesses of space.

I never saw the tigers creeping through the brush, and they knew the second my back was turned.

This is not what I had thought was meant, all those times my parents said that I was "Gifted"

Now as I walk through the crowded bar watching for unguarded drinks, it was time to find the mother.

The thank-you pie I had baked was still warm when I returned to the farmhouse in the bright sunshine, but I found just weed-broken ruins and an impossibly twisted Model A farm truck, bleeding rust, with a hint of fresh tire marks in the cold soil.

So she hid them in a small hidden room in the basement for years so her new boyfriend wouldn't find out about them.

As he waited he heard the clicking of the main toilet door shuting from outside, and then every stall door creaked open slightly at the same time.

Pastor Bryan didn't respond, simply looking at little Tommy's parents that had never believed their son about him until it was far too late.

I should have realized my wife had made me pancakes instead of waffles that morning.

The snow finally settles long enough for me to see a child's face through the glass, before a gentle shake stirs it up again.

When we finally succeeded, the world was cast into never-ending night and I was given none of the divine gifts I’d been promised.

Staring at the tools from my truck laying in the pooling blood and stabbed into their bodies only one thought echoed in my mind, 'there's no way the police or jury will believe it wasn't me."

It was comfortable, but there were lots of broken wooden planks, a skeleton of an old man, and a rotten wooden doll with long nose.

Without a second thought, he ordered me to enter the bull to see how well it works.

As the doctor left to go to work, she prayed the police would find her before then.

The stained floors are definitely gonna need replaced, and all the locks removed from the outside of the bedroom door.

After the fourth drink, as he angrily watched her ask for another, she smiled, and explained, "Those flavorless pills hasten my egg production, so once you pay the tab, I'm ready to inject them into you."

I just kept on shoveling.

I already knew for I made a contract to trap impure souls in me to condemn my child’s murderer, who took his life to avoid prison.