My girlfriend was a maggot. Or rather, she was made of maggots, millions of them. Squirming little white grains of rice that somehow developed a collective consciousness. They coalesced to form her skin, her hair, her eyes, her lips, her heart...

I am not using metaphor or any sort of figurative speech. There is no hidden meaning; I mean this quite literally.

She really was made of maggots. I wish I could tell you her name, but she never told me. I did not push the subject; it was nice to finally have a girlfriend, whatever her name.

It explained a lot when I found out what she was. Occasionally, a few maggots would fall out of place, and appear in their true form on her skin. The mouthfuls of maggots I got whenever we kissed were also quite mysterious indeed.

One day, I followed her to some kind of abandoned circus. Carcasses of canvas tents and wooden stands were strewn about. A giant, rusted Ferris wheel loomed overhead. Hearing some commotion in the only intact tent, I went to investigate. Peering through a crack in the sheet of canvas draped over the entrance, I saw a man standing in front of four women, one of whom was my girlfriend. He was not a man for long, however. The women pointed at him, shooting a bright blue light from their fingertips. Upon reception of the beams, the man instantly turned into a wooden log.

Suddenly, what appeared to be a small cartoon mouse emerged from the shadows within the tent. He was brown, wore a red shirt, and, of course, walked on two legs like a person. He favored Mighty Mouse over Mickey, but he did not quite look like either. He pushed the log over and rolled it to the side of the tent. Comically, he struggled to get the big log underneath the small space between the canvas and the dirt ground. Finally, the canvas ripped, and both he and the log tumbled outside. The poor mouse fell flat on his face, but got up quickly and kicked the log in frustration. This only hurt his foot, and he held it while hopping on the other for a few minutes. Then, he pulled out a lighter from somewhere, lit the log on fire, and ran away.

Like I said, I’m no poet in any sense. I’m just telling this as I saw it. I’m not the sort to make this up, mind you.

I decided the time had come to find out what my girl and her friends were up to. So I opened the entrance flap and said, "Hello, dear. Um…glad I found you. You dropped this in Biology class." I handed her the pen I took from her to use as an excuse for following her.

"Thank you," she said. "How thoughtful you are! That’s why you’re my boyfriend." She took the pen and scribbled something on a wrinkled piece of loose leaf. A few mystery maggots fell from her sleeve onto the paper, but I pretended not to notice. "I meant to give this to you today." It was her phone number, or at least I thought it was.

One of her friends asked what she was doing. She said that it was the number to their headquarters. "Once he calls," she said, "we track his number. We’ll have him then!" They all started laughing sinisterly for several minutes.

They did all of this right in front of me. "He’ll never suspect a thing!" she said, still laughing.

It occurred to me that perhaps they were only joking, but I decided it was better to be safe than sorry.

I’m not sure what made me think to grab the nearby garden hose. Perhaps it was the time I asked my girlfriend to shower with me, and she screamed for several hours. In retrospect, I’m quite relieved. I thought it was me.

I sprayed them full blast with the hose, and was rather shocked when they flew apart into a myriad of crawling larvae. I only expected to blind them a bit before running away, but this was even more proficient.

They filled the tent about halfway to the top, and poured out of the sides. I was pushed back out by the resulting tidal wave. Outside, I found the log was still burning, so I grabbed several large branches and some dry brush. I spread the brush in a circle just outside the tent, and then lit the branches on the log. Using the branches to light the brush rendered the tent a flaming, overturned bag of grotesque popcorn. I didn’t know maggots made a sound, but the shrill of millions screaming in unison is a sound not meant for human ears.

It was a shame, what happened with my girlfriend. The whole maggot thing I could have dealt with, but I hate when stupid bitches lie to me.