[ WP ] You live on a world full of immortal beings . For the first time in the history of the world 's existence , somebody has died .

They took my mother from our house, though I cried and begged them not to. The doctors were confused. This was an illness they had never seen before. 
 
 My mother did not move or speak or even draw a breath, no matter what they did to her. Her skin was pale and cold; her eyes, when they drew the eyelids up, were still and did not respond to light or movement. She had begun to smell, too, a harsh reeking scent that lingered in her sickbed long after she had been taken from it. 
 
 At the hospital, they treated her poorly. The room they gave her was small and poorly lit, tucked away in a corner of the building. The nurses brought her neither food and water to make her stay more comfortable nor medicine to hasten her recovery. Each day I sat by her side and waited for the healing that was inevitable and yet seemed so far off. Their treatment of my mother made me angrier and angrier and angrier, until at last, one bright morning, I pulled her limp form the bed, sure that I could care for her just as well at home as these fools could here. 
 
 I wish I had not. 
 
 When I touched her, her flesh was loose and ripe and sagging. The stench was overwhelming, and only grew stronger as I tried to wrap my arms around her. And- and when- 
 
 It pains me to form the words. I can not talk about what I saw that day without seeing it once again in my mind. But you deserve to know. 
 
 When I pulled my mother from the bed, the skin of her face, her eyes, her lips- it split. And within her were worms, white and squirming, making a meal of her flesh. 
 
 I remember little beyond that; it is all bits of memory and flashes of emotion, blurred together in my mind. I know I screamed and brought the doctors running, and then fought them until they were forced to sedate me. I know that when I was brought to, my mother... no. Not my mother. What was left of my mother, the thing that sat in the hospital bed- it was gone. They had taken it, to where I do not know. 
 
 They told me not to speak of what had happened to anyone, on pain of a thousand years' imprisonment. But I must tell you, so that when the time comes you will not be so terrified as I was. 
 
 I can feel it. There is a heaviness pressing down on me, a stiff sour coldness in my limbs that I have never felt before. When I saw what had happened to my mother- what had become of her- something changed within me. 
 
 The worm are inside me, too. I can feel them when I sleep, their tiny bodies burrowing phantom holes all through me. I know not how long it will take- days or months or decades- but somebody I will become like my mother, gone somewhere far away with nothing but meat and worms left where I once was. 
 
 When that time comes, do not wait by my bedside. I do not want you to see what will become of me. I do not want the worms to burrow their way into you.
