Hi listeners, I'm Samantha Ware and I have a story I want to tell you.

A story about death and the way it burrows inside of us.

So gather round in this enclosed.

The day that the worms finally came, I wasn't surprised.

I'd been telling everyone, my therapist, my psychiatrist, my mom, anyone who could listen really.

I'd been telling them about it for years and not a single one of them understood or believed.

And all of the pills and talk therapy and doctors and art therapy and ECT in the world can't change my mind.

I'm dead. I'm absolutely sure of it.

I hadn't always known. The idea trickled in and out at first.

There were always clues, but the moment I paid too much attention to it, the thought disappeared.

The fact that I wasn't alive anymore hadn't been apparent until I was in my early 20s.

I had my temperature checked at the doctor's office for a checkup before yet another psychiatric referral.

There had been the scale, first, and of course, I'd been underweight.

I was always underweight. But last month I had dropped 10 pounds

and that had been my mom's biggest worry and my old psychiatrist and it seemed nearly as concerned.

So there we were, jumping through insurance tubes to find another person to give me my new drugs, new words,

and ignore the things I said.

The nurse gave me a weird look and muttered, hmm, she started shaking her thermometer a bit and frowned.

This thermometer's glitchy. I'll be back with another, she said.

As soon as she left the room, I had hopped from my spot on the paper-covered exam table and grabbed the thermometer.

She had left it alone upon the counter. The disposable plastic sheath still around its metal tip.

I popped it back in my mouth and then read the results. 94.6.

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