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Cancer Staging for Beginners



Estimated reading time — 4 minutes

I tried not to notice it. I pretended it wasn’t there. I wore long sleeve shirts, and I never looked down. If I didn’t think about it, I hoped, it would cease to exist.

But I couldn’t forget it. At night my arm would throb in bed like the stain in the Scottish play. Spots don’t come out.

Wednesday I decided to actually look at my arm for the first time a little over two weeks and, upon close inspection, any thought of a future as a non amputee ended. The thick black circle I had been trying to pretend wasn’t there just was, was actually completely there, in a very present kind of way. Inches below the center of my bicep, it was the size of a Krispy Kreme donut with same sort of strange shine to it. A slightly raised appearance almost suggested it was swelling inside. The edges were rounded, not erratic like the pictures melanomas I had found on that evening’s increasingly ragged image searches. But what else would it be?

I didn’t want to call my doctor. I didn’t even have a doctor. Just a clinic, where I saw a rotating cast of semi qualified residents who toiled for low wages, solved mundane problems and lost sleep. I didn’t want to make an appointment there and have to talk to somebody.

I didn’t want to see what someone’s face looks like when I’m being told I’m going to die.

Hopelessness has limits, so I finally called to make an appointment. The scheduler asked me why i needed to see the doctor and, in a moment of horrified honesty, I mumbled that I had a growth on my left arm. Like a black donut. Giant.

She interrupted me- “Which arm? Left or right?”

“Left.”

“Please hold.”

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The line went to something classical. Cellos and violas and a feeling of disconnect.

“Still there?”

“Still here.”

“Look, the doctor has a recommendation for you. A specialist for things like this.”

The oncologist’s office was right on the edge of a bus line, on the edge of gentrification. The elevators in the lobby had cones in front of them and signs suggesting they were no longer working. The lights flickered, making it feel like a stop motion movie. I took the stairs to the 3rd floor.

The waiting room was crowded, with barely enough seats for everyone, and the temperature was insane. High 50s? I thought I saw someones breath.

I looked at my phone mindlessly while waiting to get called back. I thought I would have had issuance forms to fill out, so I hadn’t brought a book, but I wasn’t given anything. I just said who I was and they told me to sit down. I didn’t sign a thing.

My arm kept spasming. I was in long sleeves to cover it up, which was awful. The Fourth of July was only two days away.

Everyone else, I realized, was wearing long sleeves too. I told myself they had simply dressed appropriately. The place was arctic, after all. They all knew that. Except the girl behind me, at the desk, she said it was her first visit…

I looked over at her, trying not to be noticed. She was wearing a cardigan.

My name got called. I stood and followed the nurse to the examining room.

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It was standard white, with the scale and the table and the biohazard trash. There was a mirror and a window behind me. My arm was pulsing, like a second heart.

The nurse barely spoke to me, just told me to sit on the table and the doctor would be in soon. She was starting to walk out and she hadn’t asked any questions. I asked if she wanted to see my arm.

She looked– repulsed. “No. The doctor wil look at that,” and she hurried out, into the room almost directly across the hall.

She didn’t close the door completely shut behind her. I could see her walk into the room across from mine in the reflection of my room’s mirror. In the other room was the girl in the cardigan. Except she had taken it off.

I couldn’t see everything in the room, but I could see scraps of image, the nurse walking back and forth, the girl’s shoulders. Her arm. And the growth on her left arm.

It was like mine. The same size, the same deep black almost purple color, that jelly like seeming consistency. I could feel it throbbing like mine.

I heard footsteps down the hall, watched as a lab coat slid into her room. I expected to hear that low HPPA murmur as soon as he stepped in but, no. Nothing. I heard her start to talk and then in the mirror I saw a knife.

It was bright and shiny and he moved so fast before she could even cry out. I saw the knife go up and down and up and down and a sprinkler turned on for a moment, a dizzy spray of bright scarlet that splashed out in clear, brilliant streams.

And the black thing on her arm opened. An eye was there. Red vein laced, pupils dilated, fluttering back and firth like a seizure patient.

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The blood stopped and the blackness returned over the eye, like a lid closing for sleep. I heard the harsh sound of old pipes as a faucet was turned on.

I rushed to the door and pulled it closed. I couldn’t bear to look my arm. It felt like it was trying to run away underneath my sleeve. I grabbed the biohazrd trash can and pressed it against the door, then the examining table.

Someone outside pushed, confirming my hope the door opened inward instead of out. The doorknob rattled; noise mingled with panicked cursing.

It was the third floor, but looking out I could see a dumpster nearly directly under me. I tried the window. The door started slowly opening behind me. The window raised. And I was gone.

The dumpster was full of red bio bags, lumpy, and horrifying. The alley smelled like rot. I climbed out and ran without looking back. I remembered my myths.

I caught a bus 3 blocks away and rode it blankly for almost an hour. I got off in a neighborhood I didn’t know and almost immediately pulled up my sleeve. The growth twitched and flexed. Bright white glimmered and then a strange pink forked thing appeared, moving up and down. And I realized: I didn’t have an eye.

I had a mouth.

And it was hungry.

Credit To – O.H. Manchester

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33 thoughts on “Cancer Staging for Beginners”

  1. I was slightly creeped out when it mentions that the 4th of July is in two days..Then I was relieved when I looked and saw that it was the 1st today..

  2. This was excellent. It read very much like Chuck Palahniuk or David Wong’s work. The whole thing had an air of dark humor that I absolutely love in my stories. A very trippy, surreal, what the f-ck kind of story.

  3. It was okay, but it wasn’t as creepy as it was disgusting. Good job though it was really nasty and made me cringe. I also felt bad for the guy in some parts… Good job!!! :D

  4. Enjoyable and not too real for me (I don’t like overly disturbing TBH). I found one part unclear:

    ” The thick black circle I had been trying to pretend wasn’t there just was, was actually completely there, in a very present kind of way. ”

    Probably a typo, but I’d’ve said “The thick black circle I’d been trying to pretend wasn’t there indeed was, and in a very present sort of way.” I changed a few extra things, but you get what I’m saying. As for what that other person said about having to read it 3 times, I didn’t. It was pretty flowing. I would have been quicker to describe the knife scene. Maybe instead of going into detail about what it looks like to see someone killed, maybe say something more general. “The woman began to speak, but before she could even cry out for help, the doctor swiftly grabbed a knife and thrust it into her chest.” Something like that.

    Anyways, good job and good story. Keep it up!

  5. All in all I liked it (besides small errors that Sepia already pointed out). Like others I would really enjoy a continuation of this. With your lovely writing style it might become a fav.

  6. Wow this pasta was delicious. I really enjoyed it. However a few grammer errors (I couldnt bare to look my arm???) pulled me out of the story and towards the end of the story it got a little rushed and confusing.
    Overall great pasta 8.5/10

  7. While it’s a decent story. The whole “it had teeth” gig is a straight rip from a Lovecraft story. Pretty much same concept. Again, decent story, but to much of a ripoff to become good.

    1. Body parts with teeth most definitely did not begin with Lovecraft. It’s an ancient horror trope, you can find it in mythology from around the globe.

  8. The obvious thing to do, if you have a gnarly black growth on your arm, is to pretend it isn’t there for two weeks. If this was told better (and had been proofread), it could be an awesome story, but.. it wasn’t.

  9. I agree with Tylar. The ending was VERY ambiguous. EXCELLENT! Any chance this might become a series? I’d like to know more about the strange growths. What are they? WHY are they? Why is there a facility dedicated to killing those that have them? PLEASE PLEASE continue this!

    1. O.h.Manchester

      Maybe I’ll continue? I think it sort of folds into something longer I’m writing.

      I’m glad you like the ambiguity.

      There absolutely is something involved in containment policy.

      Thanks for reading/commenting!

        1. O.H.Manchester

          If it goes anywhere else, Mr/Ms Derpbutt, you will be the first to receive an email. Thanks for this site!!

    2. TheIntimateAvenger

      I didn’t get the impression that the girl was killed. I got the impression that the thing was cut off her arm.

  10. Hey!

    I felt genuinely queasy after finishing this pasta, and this doubled as my first genuine reaction. Pasta is disturbing in a feverish way, that apprehension you get when you’re rushing around trying to get help and everyone else is being distinctly nonchalant. The other thing I noticed was that this pasta managed to fit in a lot of implications.

    IMO the writing style was rather brief but loaded, fitting considering the theme. The writing’s understated, and I thought it worked here; the author managed to imply a lot of things while being economic with the prose.
    The plot is rather straightforward, and there’s also a distinct tone of confusion – it’s made painfully clear that the protagonist doesn’t know what the heck is going on, except that the thing on her arm is hurting her constantly.

    That being said, the style of prose is rather ambiguous. I thought some of the sentences were clipped, and some may have objections with the lack of clarity, especially towards the end (I had to read the ending thrice to get it). I personally thought that this worked in favor of the pasta, adding to the confusion, but some bits could’ve been made clearer.

    As with the prose, I thought the descriptions were done fittingly. There’s room for imagination (the knife killing scene), but when it’s called to do so it can be strikingly clear (the bits describing the growth). The emotions felt real, with the constant throbbing sensations of the protagonist’s arm being the main attraction; it managed to go hand in hand with the brief prose to evoke disturbing gut feelings. However, at key points I felt that the protagonist was a bit too calm to be believable, and the escape scene struck me as lacking urgency.

    The monster at the heart of this pasta was disturbing in the way an open, bleeding sore is disturbing. It’s rather visceral, but I felt the implications help make it scary rather than flat-out disgusting. It’s clear that there’s a sort of epidemic going around, some kind of parasitic growth – my first thought was sentient cancer, which isn’t too far fetched.

    Overall, I felt this was a rather deft pasta, leaning on the visceral side of things. 8.1/10

      1. O.h. Manchester

        Hi!
        Thank for thoughtful critique/kind words. I wanted the piece to be ambiguous but I was hoping to not sacrifice clarity.

        I’ll definitely clean it up a little, particularly the ending.

        And this movie’s last five minutes are soooooo soulcrushing. And amazing.

        1. Hey O.h. Manchester!

          You certainly succeeded in the ambiguous part! I really like the way you sort of compressed lots of detail and implications into the sentences – at least that’s what I caught.

          Ending could use a little more detail, but as you said it’s meant to be ambiguous; IMO just enough detail that, when the reader gets to that point he/she’s creeped out rather than scratching their head.

          Oooh, I actually thought your story’s confusion was like that. Like, the part where the Jared Leto character gets a gangrenous wound on his arm.

          Anyway, good job! I’ll really be looking forward to your sequels or stuff.

        1. Hey Lola!

          I’d love to hear why you hate these kinds of comments. Is it purely the length or something else?

          For the record, it’s 300 words (comment) vs. 1100 words (pasta). Maybe it was the formatting that gave it a kind of bunched-up look.

    1. O.h. Manchester

      Thanks for kind words/thoughtful critique! I replied to your comment, and then it seemed to vanish, and now it’ll likely reaapear and I’ll just look like some loon constantly replying.

      Anywho, I was going for an ambiguous vibe, but I certainly didn’t want to sacrifice clarity. Perhaps I’ll tidy it up a bit.

      Again, thanks for reading!!

  11. Say what? Freaked me the fuck out. Not particularly scary… just kinda gross. And the ending is very ambiguous.

  12. THEN WHO WAS.......nevermind...

    Not…bad. catchy ending I suppose. Matter fact I knew a man that had something similar happen. The growth on HIS arm prevented him from EVER lifting a sleeve in public. Why?? Well lets just say he doesn’t have to unbuckle his pants to pee…

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