It was the Christmas season, and it brought with it merry caroling, gift giving, and gingerbread men. But this Christmas, there was one very special gingerbread man being created, not in a conventional oven- but in the oven known as Louis Doleman’s womb.
     You see, the conception of this rarity was the most amazing miracle of Christmas. Only a week ago, creating gingerbread men the way they were supposed to be made- with a cookie cutter and an oven- she found herself lonelier than any other woman in the state of Oklahoma. So lonely, in fact, that she decided to… become close to her best-designed gingerbread man. Her loneliness temporarily stayed, she felt better by the end of the night.
     The next morning was a different matter, as she had a certain sickness that she had never felt before.  She went to the doctor, who took a medical look inside her belly, and she was not prepared for the news he was to tell her…
    She went home that day with a creepily cartoonish sonogram, showing a tiny little gingerbread baby growing inside of her uterus. It did not gestate as human babies gestate, growing first as a heart, and a head, and torso, arms, legs, and finally fingers and toes. This gingerbread baby had all the necessary head, arms and legs right from the beginning, and only grew in size as the days past.
    The baby was born a week later, in what proved to be a bittersweet day for Louis. She had the joy of bringing a new being into existence, but also carried with her the duty of informing the child that its father was thrown away shortly after conception.
    The baby did not move very fluidly, but eventually learned to walk by swaying its entire body back and forth. One day, while playing outside with the other neighborhood kids, the sky grew dark. Before Louise even knew what was happening, rain poured down upon Gerald, her gingerbread son. Gerald began to absorb all the water falling down around him, bloating up to twice his normal size. Then his gingerbread body began dropping off, melting into the grass as he scurried his way home. Before he could make it, the rain did him in, reducing him to nothing more than a brown puddle in the grass. But he did not die at that point. He still remained conscious… that is, until the legion of ants came out the next day and ate him slowly and methodically.

THE END