It was so depressing. Jenna had been walking for miles now, it seemed, and the gentle fog rain wouldn’t stop. The trees and identical paths and idyllic houses stretched for miles in either direction, an endless testament to the American Dream where you can get rich, get a bunch of stuff, and die miserable. ‘Cause nothing’s perfect, right? Nothing and no one. Take Jim for example. God, what a prick. Thought his strength and male-ness gave him the right to do whatever the hell he wanted. A man. Yell away at stupid Jenna, she’s just a stupid woman and they never get it.

When they’d met he was a nice guy, polite and decent and all that. Somewhere along the way they got used to each other and fought over the pettiest shit you can imagine. It was pitiful, really. Two successful rich happy people with a rather unnecessary two-story house, three car garage, and an unused but well-maintained pool in the back, so miserable they couldn’t stand each other (or was it the other way around?)

Jenna felt sick. Not the flu/mild cold kind of sick but nothing serious either, just an unpleasant metallic electrical sensation emanating from just under her breasts to the top of her throat, like she’d screamed and burped at the same time. Damn the milk. Why the hell was she drinking 2% anyway? Twenty-two with an astronomic metabolism and perfect body, and she was worried about another 8%daily recommended intake of saturated fat. Screw that.

The landscape wasn’t changing, but the sun was flashing on and off, white light- like someone had set off a nuke- pulsating. Oddly she didn’t find this out of place or weird, just disconcerting.
Dammit Jim, stop messing with the sun.
It would be just like him to be flicking that switch just to annoy her, like when he’d stomp the passenger-side floor and cringe every time she rounded a corner, approached a stoplight, car, anything really. I can drive as well as you, she thought. Her car pulled up alongside, Ma in the back agreeing with her.
What the hell, this path isn’t ending or taking me anywhere I want to go…

She strapped in to the driver’s seat, turned the car around to head home, turned the radio on. Set it to scan for some familiar tune, but the sound waves turned into worms that tunneled into her ears and into her whole body. She shut it off. God, she was pissed off now.

Ma was talking to Pastor John in the back.
“And I am just going to die of grief, my very own Jenna was playing cards last night! Next week you’ll see, she’ll be one of those lesbians with male things surgically implanted, the gall of doctors these days, they left a scalpel in my stomach last week- yessiree- had to take it out with my own teeth…”
Ma turned into a panda and took Pastor John for bamboo leaves- which he was, suddenly, but then he’d been that all along as well- and ate him. Jenna rolled her eyes. Ma did the most annoying things, had the quirkiest mannerisms, guilt-tripped her into the most delightfully agonizing emotional abyss on a monthly basis, and yet she still cared for her. The ambiguity was unbearable.

The car disappeared, and Jenna was in a black empty chasm but the sun was still flashing brilliantly, all the more annoying now that it was dark in here- unbearably bright, pitch black. Unbearably white, pitch black. Repeat. DadMom was in the backseat, still talking but mostly to theirself now, like Jenna wasn’t even there. She could tell they were talking but it was too quiet in this place to hear them and they were talking silently anyway. But she could read their lips.
“She’ll be a lesbian tomorrow,” DadMom said, and agreed with themself. “Yes, and she’ll get drunk tonight- on the wine of Babylon, likely as not.” DadMom nodded sagely and turned into God (but they’d been God all along, this was normal). Jim stopped flicking the switch, but left it down and it was off and God was invisible anyway.
“Jenna,” God said, not in a booming God-voice but something approaching the real Wizard of Oz. Jenna figured He knew the outcome of this conversation already but answered anyway to see how it went.
“Yes God?”
“Jenna, I just got off the phone to Satan. He says you were playing cards last night.”
I did no such thing, she thought.
“Yes, I did.”
God nodded.
“Well, just checking in. Don’t forget to tithe from your winnings, unless that falls under the strange fire clause… have Pastor John check with me on that later.”
“But Mom ate him.”
“I know, it’s okay.”
And that was comforting, made perfect sense. DadMomGod said “I love you” and she was back alone in the car, driving in the same direction as when she got in- even though she’d turned around. She pulled a U-ee but it didn’t help. Tried again, still nothing and now she was headed downhill as well, with the perfect houses and perfect trees and perfect miserable families flashing by faster and faster, and the instrument panel was alive with red flashing lights, and Jim had put a red lens on the sun and was flashing it again, fast enough to cause an epileptic seizure. But she wasn’t epileptic- so how do you explain the twitching and spazzing and eyes rolled back in her head- the instrument panel was beeping and buzzing incessantly, and she struck at it violently, uncontrollably with her fists-

She sat up suddenly, sweating in her perfect honeymoon bed with perfect Jim by her side, both stark naked and not quite sober. He was already awake, holding her.
“Just a dream, it’s all ok, just a dream…”
After a while the shuddering began to subside, the tears dried. The shattered alarm clock in her hands turned into a knife and she screamed, startling Jim as she scrambled out of bed, wielding the knife in her left hand. Jim said something about calming down and reached for the wine bottle, but the bottle was a knife and she went in for the preemptive strike to the gut, then shoved his protruding innards into his open screaming mouth. He dropped the knife into his leg and she wondered briefly, annoyed, if he’d bothered to sanitize it first. She turned, went into the bathroom and stepped into the shower, turned the hot water on full blast and let it scald her skin, envelop her in comforting, suffocating steam. Thirty-two minutes later she stepped out of the bathroom.

Jim looked up groggily and smiled.
“Hey there, beautiful.”
She kissed him lightly, got dressed.
“I’m going for a jog.”
He nodded and got out of bed, whole and unwounded three steps to the bathroom.
Damn, she left the showerhead on mist again.
Jenna stepped outside and closed the door.

Two seconds later Jim woke up screaming, Jenna holding him in their honeymoon bed. In a few minutes, all was calm.

Then the sound-worms ate them both from inside out.