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Malignant



Estimated reading time — 3 minutes

I am walking in a thick, swirling, yellow haze. Struck with an overwhelming nausea, I sink to the ground and vomit viscous bile. I’m surrounded by figures that are tall and distorted, almost like shadows on a wall. They have elongated faces and their wide open mouths scream that cry out all at once. It is a primal sound of pure fear and unimaginable agony. Their distorted faces stare down at me. They surround me. I try to escape but they come closer.
I awake in a cold sweat. My husband is snoring peacefully beside me. The clock reads 3:09 am. I am home. I am safe. So why do I feel so uneasy? I convince myself it’s just the after affect of a vivid nightmare and go back to sleep.
The next day is normal. I kiss my husband goodbye. I go to work. The uneasy feeling never leaves me. After work I tell my therapist about the nightmares. “You’re just stressed, ” he says. “The nightmare is nothing to worry about.” I don’t share his certainty.
Despite my fears I manage to fall asleep at night. The figures wait for me. Their anguish is deafening. “Stop it! Stop!” I beg. In a voice that sounds like my own they scream, “Wake up!” My skin and eyes become the yellow haze that surrounds me. I become their jaundiced pain. My hands and arms are yellow as my bile. The shadowy figure reaches out to me again. “Hurry!”
I awake with a shriek waking my husband. “Another nightmare?” Freed from my dream I cling to my husband. “See your therapist. Tomorrow.” I suddenly feel sick but make it to the toilet. I can’t stop shaking. My husband gives me a glass of water.
“He’s no help. Says it’s just stress. But something is wrong with me. Physically.” He doesn’t answer. It’s clear he doesn’t believe me.
I make an appointment with our family physician. The doctors run blood tests and say I will get the results tomorrow. They seem unconcerned. I tell them I dream about feeling sick, vomiting. I feel wrong. I’m worried. I’m scared. They prescribe a higher dose of Lexapro. They send me away.
But I dream again tonight. I touch the back of my head and I have no hair. My cheeks are sunken in and my ribcage protrudes. My abdomen is swells under my ribcage. I am in so much pain I can’t stand. The hazy yellow figures continue to wail and scream. “What do you want? Leave me alone!” I scream and put my hands over my ears. Nothing drowns out their cries. Almost as if the sounds are coming from inside my own body.
Suddenly the figures move aside in fear as a shadowy, black creature enters the circle crawling on all fours. I stare into its sunken, black eyes and I see pure malice. It approaches me extending its gnarled, black fingers. I watch in slow motion, in too much pain to resist. It reaches down and touches my swollen abdomen. The place it touches turns black. The creature crawls inside my abdomen and the blackness spreads throughout my body until I was swallowed whole. I feel an emptiness and the world around me fades into nothingness. The cries fade. I awake.
Immediately after getting up in the morning I make another doctor’s appointment. I schedule an MRI of my abdominal cavity. The doctors warn over and over that this is an unnecessary procedure and the insurance won’t cover it. I give them my credit card. They do the scan.
The doctor returns with the results, “You have a malignant tumor in your liver. You’re so lucky. Usually by the time we detect liver cancer it’s too late.”
Lucky.

Credit To – Sarah L. Schaefer

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Copyright Statement: Unless explicitly stated, all stories published on Creepypasta.com are the property of (and under copyright to) their respective authors, and may not be narrated or performed under any circumstance.

36 thoughts on “Malignant”

  1. Short and sweet and to the point. Well I guess “sweet” isn’t the right term to use lol. Anyway, if my wife were to go into such great detail about a dream she’s having EVERY night, the last thing I’d do is brush that off as “stress”…what a careless husband.

  2. The pasta gave me the chills. Unlike some of the other people, when I read the part of your hair falling out(balding, etc) I thought you were referring to the disease/illness in your dream, but I liked the twist. Your imagery seems more dense in the beginning of the story than at the end, but it was very effective.

  3. I think this was an incredible display of how your subconscious works. Kinda like dreams I still get when imdrowning and I physically cannot breath and when I wake up I’m face down in my pillow. Great work.

  4. When you described the figures and your abdomen I thought this would end with you having a satanic or demon baby but im glad you took another route, original is good.

  5. I knew it the moment it mentioned the back of her head not having hair, I was all “SHE HAS CANCER” Lmao xD

  6. Although the dreams were somewhat creepy, I liked the twist at the end. :) Hope you upload more material! 10/10

  7. The second I read that in the dream, she was balding.. I immediately thought chemo and cancer. Whether that’s a positive or a negative, is up for interpretation. Personally, I enjoyed the journey.

  8. celestialmoonfire

    Not what I was expecting. I thought something evil was going to come from her dreams or something. I didn’t think you would literally mean malignant as in a cancer. My mind was settled on something like a growing demon-like thing influencing her dreams.

    I really loved that you didn’t use a monster or anything. I think I’ll give this an eight, just for the fact I don’t like the use of ‘I’ so many times. But you’ve got something going with your imagery. Good job with that.

  9. I guess the moral of the story is that you shouldn’t always presume something is evil. The dream ended up saving her life.

  10. Whoa! Intense.
    Apart from a few unfortunate spelling errors it was really effective and creepy too.

    There should be more disease based pastas, because it really is one of the scariest human circumstances.

    I may even write one myself …

    1. Thank you! I agree disease is sometimes more terrifying than any monsters in the dark. Cancer is a reality many of us will have to face (or have already). I hope you do write you pasta. I look forward to reading it. :)

      -Sarah L.

  11. I thought this dreampasta had certain welcome parallels with Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”: the focus on disease and (gendered) helplessness in the face of disbelief, the color yellow; it manages to transpose these themes into a modern setting, where we’re more likely to be chided by doctors, or be told that it’s ‘all in your head’.

    The dreams clearly matter here, setting up a mild but sharp twist. I liked how they could be interpreted as the protagonist’s body calling out to her, or as a genuine supernatural intrusion. The imagery is clipped, more confusing than horrific as is typical in dreams. I would’ve preferred a bit more ambiguity, but that could’ve messed up the narrative.

    IMO the prose was quite adequate; the descriptions were a bit short and prosaic (I did X. I felt Y), but they otherwise got the message across. I had a problem with the recurrence as it made the pasta feel somewhat predictable, but they did serve a twist-setting function, and at the end it was well set-up.

    Overall, a good dreampasta exploring perennial themes. 7.8/10

    1. Funny you mentioned The Yellow Wallpaper because that story has been an inspiration to me and is one of my favorite short stories. I’m flattered and honored by the comparison. Even today if a person (and especially a woman) is diagnosed with depression or another mental illness then everything they say about their own feelings are put into question. I lost a cousin to a treatable problem because the doctor didn’t believe her and said she was just depressed. Thank you very much for your input and I’m glad you enjoyed the story.

      -Sarah L.

      1. I’m sorry for your loss.

        You can even make the case that it’s not gotten any better, as besides the perennial dismissal of ‘womanly hysteria’, it’s augmented by the rather more egalitarian scythe of doctorly dismissal. Thank you for sharing your story.

  12. Really good pasta. The dreams and madness were just premonitions of contracting liver cancer. Very nice work

      1. I think that the many I statements are hard to get around using present tense. Maybe using more kinds of sentence structures might help you around that.

        The theme was different (not in a negative way) but the timing was rushed. If you had elaborated and taken your time to build up the suspense and confusion, I think it would have been that much better!

  13. Machine of Death

    I don’t even know what to think of this. Haunted tumors? Prophetic dreams?
    I didn’t like this one and felt it was poorly written. 2/10

    1. Heh haunted tumors. That wasn’t exactly what I was going for. I intended it as a story how the subconscious mind is often aware of problems before someone is physically aware of them. But any interpretation is valid. Thank you for taking the time to read and review!
      -Sarah L.

      1. “I intended it as a story how the subconscious mind is often aware of problems before someone is physically aware of them.”
        I definitely picked up on this. great pasta. my only critique would be to add more imagery to when the creature reached out and touched you.

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