It Breathes, It Bleeds, It Breeds | Creep Cast
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How'd you like that? A lot of energy in that one. Wow. You were over there. You woke me up. Start up a group guys. And then immediately followed up like a hard stop. Excuse me. All right. Well, um, hi everybody. Um, but we were, we were talking so casually 20 seconds ago before that. I'm trying to get amped up. I can see that. That's the kind of day this is going to be. Hello everybody. Welcome back to creep cast. Uh,

Thank you all so much for the support you've been showing on the show. I looked at... This is like a couple days after the last Creep TV went out. Support on that's been great. You all are fantastic as ever, and I really appreciate you guys. You're awesome. And then... Yeah. I don't know. I'm scared. You yelled like that. You had to get the energy up when the story is called It Breathes. It Bleeds. It Breeds. This is a very...

very metal and sick title, but it also, it, it, I'm, I'm not gonna lie. There's a couple red flags kind of popping up. I'm just the, the, it breeds part. I can see this being maybe, maybe a cheesy, you know, fun story. I'm hoping it's, I'm hoping it's nice and scary.

but it's also very ominous too. I mean, it breeds, it bleeds and it breeds, which also it kind of, whenever I think of it bleeds, I think of predator, the, you know, right, right. If it bleeds, we can kill it. Yeah. The issue though, is when I saw the title, I was with you, I thought it was cool, but then I read the word breeds and I'm like, Hey,

I don't know what it is. I don't know where it's going. We've had some weird breeding instances on the show in the past, so I'm a little bit suspicious, but I agree the title sounds cool. I'll be honest. Breeding...

in our on these stories so far from the ones we've read have not gone over well. They have not been great. They have not translated well, but I am excited. This is, of course, by it turns out you all are not a big fan of breeding. And who could have guessed for people who watch four hour podcast episodes? I we exclusively will make this a breeding podcast if we have to. Oh, this is this is by this is by Imperial and Invictive. And what is it?

incentive, it's not spelled or maybe it is invective. I feel like it's supposed to read Imperial incentive. You can show it on screen. Neither of the words are spelled like that, but I think it's Imperial incentive. I don't know. It also says next to it, AKA Travis. So Travis, this is by Travis.

So I am not familiar with this story at all. We, someone on the team mentioned the title. I'm like, that sounds cool. After Hunter freaked out over how cool he thought it sounded. So I know nothing about the story. I know nothing about the author, but just giving him a quick glance on the creepy pasta wiki. This guy has definitely,

dozens and dozens of stories in categories from apocalyptic to series stories to angels and ethereals to collaborative projects like so many different works. So if this guy, if this story is cool, then this might be a good honey hole for some creepy stuff. So I'm excited. Hopefully he's our little creepypasta Stephen King, huh?

I hope so. That's what I'm hoping for. Other than the part about Stephen King where he doesn't know how to end the story, so it just kind of ends. But other than that, I agree. They don't understand what we do, do they? Travis, it appears the amount of work he has, it seems like he might have that little booger sugar, little Coke nose like Stephen did. Maybe that's what's powering through these. But it breathes, it bleeds, it breathes. As always as well, guys, if you can...

listen to this podcast and give us a nice rating on Spotify and Apple podcast and all that jazz. It helps us out a lot and it keeps, you know, it keeps us, us nice and warm, nice as nice and fuzzy. It keeps a, it keeps our power bills on because Lord knows we need the money. Am I right? Uh,

But to be honest, I have absolutely no idea how Spotify or Apple podcast works, but I'm told that the liking stuff is a good thing. So keep doing that. And thank you for the support. It means the world. We are regurgitating what people tell us to say, but it is cool. We are puppets for the machine puppets for the gladly be puppets for the machine. And we're, you know, we've been constantly in like the top 50 forever. So we appreciate that. And that's just because of you guys. So thank you.

Let me actually look at that. Actually, I don't know. Yeah, what are we now? We were like a couple months ago and over and now Spotify podcast charts. Podcast charts. Let me see if I can find us. Number 41 in the world, it looks like. Wow. Number 41. Not bad. We'll take it. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. We are unfortunately underneath Ben Shapiro's podcast.

Are we? That's a shame. Hold on. Let me look. Yeah, he's 34. Okay, we have to do something about that. We're one under NPR news. We're under the BPD podcast, whatever that is. Yeah, all this stuff. I'm always like this fluctuates so much too. So I want you. We will probably be lower when you guys look at this, but stop yelling. Okay, hold on. We've gone pretty high in the past and I think to what happens is when we post we're

we jump up like 10, 15 spots. And then when we have it posted in a while, we go down. So I'm looking at it right now. It's been over a week since we've put an episode on Spotify. So it's, you know, it's calmed down. So that helps. We are, I'm looking at right now on Spotify, at least we are six spaces above Shane Gillis's podcast.

We'll take it. The Matt and Shane secret. That's pretty good. I'll take it. If I'd ask, I'll take it. I'll take it. And it only helps us if you guys go there and be our champions for us as well. So please be sure to go rate us on those. It does help us out. And I say without further ado, let's get into it. Let's get into it. All right. So here we go. It breathes. It bleeds. It breathes. Oh, wait, actually, hold on. Let me look. No.

I think that's implied with the breeding part. Let me say really quick. I saw a bunch of comments on, I can't remember how many ago it was. The, the second creepy grab bag we did. Yeah. When I was acting as the guy in the interrogation, there were so many comments that were furious at me. Like, why is he adding so many? Why is he pausing so much?

It is called acting. I never said I'm good at it, but I didn't just forget how to read. There was a lot of people who liked it too. I thought it was fine. I was immersed when I was on the other end of the call and I was very immersed.

I appreciate that. I appreciate you and the other people who appreciate it. But to all the people in the comments who were like, what is he tired? Why does he keep stopping? What is this? This is stupid. That is how this is a show. That is how shows work. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Welcome to show business. You'll never get by. I had to get that off my chest. Anyway, I've always been a sick child. It was never bad enough to warrant a trip to the hospital, but it was always something that was hanging over me.

I was smaller and less energetic than most kids my age. While they preferred to run around and play outside, I chose to stay inside and read. This sounds exactly like you. Shut up. This feels like it's this young Wendigo talking to us. Shut up. I prefer to stay inside and read. Okay, I did do that because I was a wimpy kid. I wasn't sickly, but I was very small.

and I was also sheltered. So I did read a lot of how I know some of these pasta stores. Well, guess what? All those guys were outside playing. They probably work at like staples now or cracker barrel or something. And guess who has a YouTube channel? So you know what? Look at that. It looks like the nerd gets the girl. So check me out. But I was laughing about while I was reading that as I imagined that that meme of the dragon that's like, well, you played your sports. I studied the

Why you play sports? I studied literature. Yeah. Were you about to say something before? I was just saying, I imagine that you weren't a sick child, but I'd like to imagine you went to the doctor and the doctor was like,

His lips, they're far too fat and they're only getting bigger. I'm tired of this lip thing. Do you know how many, I've got so many DMs and comments about like, man, this YouTuber is really cool. I wish I could see him over the lips swell up. Like their description of me is just like a giant pair of lips and it's gotten to a ridiculous degree and I'm kind of tired of it, honestly. So.

I can't stand you. Anytime you say something to me, my comments are that for a week straight. So...

Okay. All right. Fine. Can I ask you something? What is the, I know, I know we just started the story and people are so mad right now, but I also don't care. It's my show. Um, go back outside and play with your friends while I sat inside and study literature. Um, what is the thing about you being able to control fire? I went to, um, I did a video ranking chicken sandwiches and I went to, um,

Chick-fil-a and I this is probably like the sixth stop that we went to right and this guy is in chick-fil-a They're outside. They take your order outside in the drive-thru or whatever and the guy rolled down my window I was like, hey man, can I just get a chicken soon? She's like, oh my god, you look like you could control fire Damn that's crazy. Oh, yeah. Take care, bro

And I said, well, it's in the video. Completely unprompted. Well, yeah, I was like, what? I was like, and now there's a pause. I'm like, damn, cool. Thanks, dude. I thought this was cool. He's like, yeah, you're just giving off this aura. He's like, says something about my hair. Somebody says like, you look like you could control fire. And I have not been able to. You look like you could control fire. I was just so fabricated. I thought that it was a, I thought he was a homosexual man flirting with me at first.

because it was just so unprompted. It's Chick-fil-A. I think they execute people for that there. Well, I don't know. That's why I'm saying he's living on the edge and he's shooting his shots where he can't. He probably is. That could have been like an under-the-radar shot that was shot. He was a super, super nice guy.

But I have not been able to live it down then. But if you want to see that moment, it is in the chicken video. Okay. All right. And I just saw that comment a lot. I didn't know what. Yeah, I'll go back to the story now. Okay. The slightest bit of activity was enough to exhaust me for days on end. It wasn't a bad life, but I can certainly see how it made me into the introverted person I am today. I took comfort in books and I experienced the world through them. Go ahead. I heard that laugh. It's just fun. It is fun. I'm just actually picturing you like just young now.

I got to Exocet easily and I took comfort in books. Now that you have to do my exit on top of that. Yeah. Oh my God. You're apparently so good at it. I experienced the world through them. I hate that voice so much. It's just like never ending story. Where's Falcorad? Oh my God.

I can't describe what it sounds like, but it makes me mad. I know. I know. I'm sorry. It's such a cartoonish version of your voice. If it makes you, if it helps your imagination any...

When I was a kid, I was like very frail and skinny, but my head was almost the same size it is now. Like it was an insanely large head for a child. And my sister made fun of me for it all the time. Like, you know, you remember the TV show invaders in? Yeah. She said that I looked like the way all the characters from that show were drawn. Yeah.

So yeah, to give you a visual. Anyway, it wasn't until I turned 23 that I began to question myself. Everyone around me seemed to be getting married and settling down, but I wasn't. I had a few friends at work, but no one who I really hung out with in my free time. My family was gone.

I lost my father at a very young age to a heart attack brought on by a lifetime of high cholesterol. And my mother passed away shortly after I graduated college from an extremely malignant form of pancreatic and dino carcinoma. My mother clung on to life for a few weeks before her body shut down. I remember my last memory of her in the hospital.

She was so thin that it looked like the slightest breeze would take her from me. Her eyes were bright and feverish, and her skin was yellowed like the pages of an old book. The palliative, Demerol, they were giving her to ease her into her final moments robbed her of any coherent last words. She just stared at me with her glassy eyes as the end came for her. I clutched her hand in mine, but it wasn't like she wasn't even there. Sorry, I clutched her hand in mine, but it was like she wasn't even there.

I told her I loved her. She didn't respond. She just closed her eyes and let everything go. I decided that it was time for me to do the same. I will say off the bat, I really like this writing style. It's like artistic in moments, stuff like she was as yellow as the pages of an old book, stuff like that. But it's not like overtly, you know, it's not like the guy pulled out of the source to make stuff up. It feels, I don't know. I just like it. I just like the way it's written so far.

No, it's pretty. Also, it's very haunting and cold take of losing both your parents. I always try. Sometimes I think about that, what it's going to be like to lose a parent. So I always have this like deep respect and sympathy for people who have already gone through that, especially at a young age. It would be a lot to process that. Yeah. Yeah. I know close family nearby. Sorry. You know what I would say to my mom if she was on her dime? Go ahead. Let's write it down. Go ahead. It's not a joke. Okay. All right.

Never mind. No, say it. No, I was just going to say, I was going to go to her and say, I love you and you robbed me of my happiness when I was a child. And I hope you burn in hell. You tired old goat is what I would say to my mom. You tired old goat. I was trying to think, what would be the most insulting thing you'd say to someone who would die? I feel like calling him a tired old goat has got to, it's got to hit hard.

What? You sheepish, you sheepish looking human being. Hey, Hunter, who do you want to die first, your mom or your dad? Probably my dad. You were way too ready. I like my mom more. What am I supposed to do? Oh, my gosh. I was expecting like some level of like, yeah. Oh, wow. Why would you ask that or whatever you're like? If I had to choose between the two, I mean, it's going to suck when they both go, but I'd definitely probably say, you know, my dad.

I'm gonna, I don't know your parents, but when I do, guess what I'm telling them? Go ahead. First thing that my dad probably be like, yeah, sounds about right. I'm going to go back to the story now. I had no close family nearby or any real friends. I was alone in the world. I put in my two weeks notice at the small company that was gracious enough to hire me fresh eyed out of college and left town shortly after my mother's funeral.

In all honesty, I didn't want to stay there any longer. Everything reminded me of what was gone and what I was missing out on. After selling our house and settling the matter of her will, I had enough to get far away. I chose the countryside. I wanted to be alone with my thoughts for a while. I felt like I needed some time to work through everything and decide on my next course of action. My inheritance afforded me that privilege. In hindsight, I realized that this was the worst possible choice in my life.

Living alone with only my thoughts to keep me company, a mile away from my closest neighbor, only served to deepen my sense of isolation. I was alone with my thoughts and I quickly realized that none of them were good. I think my mental state only quickened my descent into sickness. Everything began when I noticed a small mass on my left upper arm just underneath the skin. The growth was about the size of a pea and I could move it around under my skin about a quarter of an inch or so in each direction.

At first I told myself that it was a fatty deposit and nothing to be concerned about. Under palpitation, I experienced a slight discomfort but no more than that when manipulating any other section of my body. It wasn't until I noticed that it was slowly growing that I began to get concerned.

Love this setup. Yeah, this is... Again, I have no idea where this is going, but it's pointing in the direction of some body horror stuff, and I am into it. Yeah, definitely. Almost like a...

I don't know if I know I use love crafting a lot, but I don't know if I've used Cronenberg yet, but my love of Cronenberg and how he sets up body horror in that way too, is very fun. Has a, just that little plant of the, the, the scariest thing and the most, I don't really think that there's a lot of horror nowadays that like,

legitimately scares me, but I find a lot of horror to be fascinating from a story, like a standpoint of like things that are the perception of scary, like the, like the, the things that are horrifying and Cronenberg really does a great job by like breaking down how fucking horrifying the human body can be. So these things that just kind of happen almost like a cancers and having things that are also like hereditary that are passed down to you from your family, like genetics and, you know, sicknesses and that kind of stuff.

is just like i don't know extremely horrifying i love just this little slight nod to that kind of body horror thing of well it just started out as like a bump on your skin because who hasn't experienced that you know what i mean you like look at something on your arm or something and you're like for a second yeah yeah

And I, uh, I don't know. I just, this is like a very subtle and fun way. I'm excited. I eventually broke down and went to see a doctor who assured me that it was likely a lipoma or xanthoma and was nothing to be concerned about. He reassured me that it was more likely a symptom of high cholesterol rather than the sign of cancer. He explained that while family history and genetics had given me a bad hand, that didn't necessarily mean I couldn't live a long, healthy life.

I was still unsure about the lump, which led me to asking if we could biopsy it. He reasoned that there was no real need to do so, that they were harmless. Since the mass was movable under my skin, that meant that it was encapsulated and was likely benign. He said that getting a sample would only confirm what we already knew and would cost me about $400. He advised me to cut back on my red meats and to come back if I noticed any change in the lipoma. I thanked him and left the hospital feeling comforted.

That reassurance lasted about a month. For the first days, I was constantly poking and prodding the small lump. After about a week when I was confident that the mass hadn't grown any, I went back to my usual life of solitude. I woke up late every morning and read. I did some minor chores around the house and thought about what direction I wanted my life to go in and what field I wanted to work in. Sometimes I would go days without talking to anyone.

Looking back, I now realize how unhealthy it was to isolate myself after my mother's unexpected death. I was stagnating and I didn't even realize it. About a month after getting my lipoma checked out, I began to experience a stinging pain in my upper left arm. That discomfort brought back the memory of my visit to the doctor. The mass of my arm was now dime-sized. I could still move it, but now the slightest touch felt like I was being poked with a needle.

I left it alone for a few days, hoping against hope that this was all my imagination running rampant. But the pain continued. I think some sad part of me thought that it would go away if I ignored the issue long enough. To be honest, I was worried about going back to the hospital. That was partially due to the fact that I was afraid of what the diagnosis would be. A growth can be a symptom of cancer. My mother's experience in the hospital also kept me from going.

I lived with the slowly growing mass for about a week before I realized how dire the situation was. It wasn't until I woke up one night with the stinging pain in my arm that I decided to go back to the doctor. I rolled out of bed and went to the bathroom to look at my arm. I figured that I had slept on my arm wrong or possibly struck it against something and that was what was causing me pain. I realized I was wrong when I flipped on the light switch and saw a small bit of caked blood around the area on my upper arm.

i hopped into the shower to wash away the silver dollar-sized splotch of blood and had a startling realization there was a fingernail sticking out of my arm oh let's go let's go baby let's go we're so bad we're so bad this is sick it was over i was terrified reading a title that said it breeds

but there's a fingernail coming out of his arm. Now it's talking about breeding in like a biological microscopic sense or something probably. So I don't have to worry about the breeding thing anymore. Yeah, I'm going to say, I don't know if I want to confirm that yet, but yes, I'm hoping. I just love the...

One thing that I'm liking about the writing style too, also not to bog it down again, but I really love the way that he's breaking up these paragraphs and he kind of does like a nice, he kind of always reveals a little bit more each time. Like by that, I mean, uh, almost like a little, like a hook. He kind of keeps re hooking you with some of these fun, like little, little blurbs.

Every time that there is a paragraph break, I'm like, well, what next? What next? Like, I'm like eager to get to the next one, which is really cool. I'm stoked. This is awesome. At first, I thought that I'd inadvertently rolled over and accidentally jabbed a clipped toenail into my skin. But as I went to pull it, I experienced a sudden tearing pain that actually made me gasp. It felt like I'd grabbed a nerve and pulled on it. I rinsed off the area and examined it.

The nail appeared to be sticking out of my skin rather than piercing it. When I painfully shifted the lipoma, the nail wiggled and receded further into my skin as if it was part of the mass itself.

I made up my mind then and there to go to the doctor first thing in the morning. Man, that's so cool. Oh, that sounds so brutal. Isn't there an actual condition where like toenails grow out of your body randomly? I don't know. That seems like something that would be like a weird human condition thing. I don't know why. Do you think it's like, I'm just trying to think about like, if I saw a legitimate fingernail poking on my arm, I

I feel like I just want to go to like the emergency room immediately. I don't know if I'd be able to sleep with that. Like, well, it sounds like what it was is that, uh,

he was having fear that it almost certainly was cancer and he saw what cancer did to someone. So it was like, it's a, it's, it's like, you know, what could happen if you don't do it. But the realization of like manifesting it, like, yes, this is real. This is happening. It's almost more terrible than taking care of it. Sure. Having to address it. So I think, I mean, I think that might be. Yeah. I mean, I don't, it's not totally irrational. I'm just trying to like in my own,

In my own case, I just feel like there's no way I'd be able to just go to sleep. They'll drive me crazy. But I could see people being like, you know what? First thing in the morning, I'm doing it. Maybe I'm just, I don't want to get ahead of myself. Like there's plenty of rational explanations. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I've had stuff before that I'm like, is this something serious? And then it goes away and I don't have to worry about it. So that's part of it. But I think more so in our author's case, it was like, yeah,

you know, a, um, the, the realization of it, not that he was waiting for it to go away. He just didn't want to manifest it basically. Yeah. Touches. I'm trying to look up if there's, if I'm losing my mind, I swear I heard some story about a tumor that actually presented like a fingernail before. Yeah, here it is. Uh, a rare it's called an, I think this is what I'm supposed to be looking at an Ani coma trip.

On a coma trick coma, okay, sorry. A rare benign fibroepithelial tumor that's usually slow growing and painless. It often causes changes in the nail plate, but the tumor itself is hidden beneath it. In one case, a 60-year-old South Asian man developed a large, smooth, shiny, green dome-shaped nail.

I think that's talking about it grows in like the actual material of your nail rather than making a new one. I swear I'm not crazy. I've heard of this before. There's going to be some like fucking toenail riddled back viewer we have who's just like, trust me, buddy. It's real.

Don't believe me? He tweets at me a picture of like toenails coming out of his body. Yeah, looks like one of the goddamn Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Just like, he's like cowabunga, asshole. Yay. Can't wait for that. At first, the doctor tried to rationalize it the same way that I did. He said it was like leolipoma and my constant worrying was just making it more pronounced. It wasn't until after I showed him the error that he began to take me seriously.

He concluded that the skin ruptured outward instead of inwards, which meant that it had come from under my skin and poked out. I asked if he would excise the lump so we could examine it, and he agreed due to possible risks of infection and identifying the cause for the growth. I turned down his offer for a general anesthetic. He tried to convince me that it would be easier with one, but I asked for a local anesthetic instead.

I remembered my mother's final moments. Even if it was going to be a simple procedure, I didn't want to experience anything like that ever in my life. A part of me realized that it was my fear of being in the same situation as her that made me so stubborn about the anesthetics. After he explained the procedure to me and its risks, I followed him into an operating room, laid down on the table, and waited for him to begin. I did my best to look away while he worked.

I imagined turning my head to see what was happening only to sneeze into the open wound or faint from the mere sight of the surgery. I did gather up enough courage to look towards the end. I looked up into the mirror to see about an inch of skin peeled away with a slightly red mass beneath it. It didn't look nearly as grotesque or sickening as I thought, instead it looked clinical and clean.

He set an object in the tray and proclaimed, "I think I got it. Let's just see what we have." I heard him drop the heavy tweezers on the ground as if something had shocked him. I went to look but he told me I needed to stay still until he could suture up the area. He reassured me that the utensil had just slipped out of his hands and it was nothing to be worried about. I waited for ten agonizing minutes of uncertainty as he sutured the area and swabbed it down again with betadine. When he finished, I sat up and looked at what he had set in the tray.

It was a grayish mass that was about the size of a misshapen marble. Through the antiseptic scent of the hospital, I smelled something like spoiled meat. I felt my stomach turn as the realization that this had been inside me and had just begun to rot. One end terminated in what looked like a fingernail that had broke through my skin. It wasn't until he asked me if I knew what the term... It wasn't asked me until...

What? If I knew what the term fetus in fetu meant, that I connected all the macabre pieces of the jigsaw. Fetus in fetu. A parasitic twin. Yes. What? So is that under the assumption that he's saying that the thing was trying to copy him? Or like it was, oh, this is your...

This is your twin at one point, but you absorb the body. You know, they say like fetuses do that in the womb sometimes. I always hear about that, but I never have actually looked into it. Yeah. So that's what, okay. So fetus and fetus different from that. So a lot of the times actually like in early, early stages, I say a lot like it's all the time.

what will happen sometimes in early stages of pregnancy is there will be like two eggs that are being fertilized and growing and then one of them will pass the other in development so the smaller one it's like you know the body the body accommodates resources or whatever um will effectively combine early on the other one whatever basically absorbed but that happens like early early on i don't

I mean, it probably does, but I don't think that happens into like late trimesters of pregnancy or anything. Now, a fetus in FETO is something different. That's when there is instead of being absorbed, one of the pregnancies that is non viable joins inside of or attached to the viable pregnancy, effectively becoming a parasite.

Weird, man. I've never heard of that before. And that is not good. That is like, you need to get rid of it. Yeah. If you want to, I don't recommend this for the audience. So normally the parasitic one isn't a like developed to any degree. It's probably just a mass of flesh. So it will just attach itself to the viable pregnancy. Right. However,

What happens a lot of the time is they won't recognize this until the child is born. And this is especially common in like third world regions of the world and stuff like that, right? Where there's not as much like, you know, pre-pregnancy screening and stuff like that. The non-viable one will just kind of develop into flesh and then attach itself to the viable one in such a way that removing the non-viable pregnancy will

would be detrimental to the actual child. Oh, so yeah, if you remove it, then they would like basically kill the child. Yeah. Imagine conjoined twins, but one of the twins is like a tumor effectively, a massive flesh and you can't pull it off because there's so many arteries and connections made. So there are people who just have to live with it. Um,

Um, so if you ever want to traumatize yourself, you can look up what that looks like. It can be pretty brutal sometimes. Yeah. So that's basically what it is. It's different from absorption because absorption normally means that the, the pregnancy that's born is like viable. And if anything gains nutrients or whatever from the other one, whereas a parasitic twin is, you know, a problem.

Most of the time, like a parasitic twin revolve results in a miscarriage because it's just like too much for the, you know, the pregnancy, the body to handle and everything. Right. But sometimes it, sometimes it's born and the effects are normally weird. Interesting.

Yeah, there's my biology degree coming in. There you go. Working out a little bit. Every now and then I have my moment. We went into the examination room where the doctor explained what he thought was happening as he gave me a complete look over. He posited that I had started off with a twin, but somewhere along the way, I had absorbed my twin into my body. It had likely siphoned off nutrients, which explained my lethargic activity and smaller stature when I was younger.

He assumed that the mass had been reabsorbed by my body over the years and there was likely nothing left except that small piece we had just removed. However, as he palpitated my back and his face turned cold, I knew that was not what had happened. Oh, yes. Let's go, dude. Oh, my gosh. There are pieces of his parasitic twin laid throughout his body that were dormant. Bro, let's go. Let's go. We're...

It's time. Oh, so... Yes!

The doctor said he felt something just above my right kidney and that exploratory surgery was necessary. I don't know if that's true. I do not want my doctor to pull out a treasure map and say, you mind if I go look? Like X marks the spot, dude. I need to go search for something. I would just be like, is there no machine you could use that you could just like, why do you have to cut into me? I

exploratory surgery is necessary. Sometimes if there's like, if the thing they're looking for wouldn't show up on an X-ray and MRI, maybe like discoloration or like a splotch on the side of an organ or something, but you would see this on an X-ray or an MRI. I feel like an MRI, you would have to see whatever's in there.

Yeah, you would think at least. He told me that the sooner they performed the procedure, the better. I agreed and he asserted that I would need to be completely anesthetized for the operation. It was then that I was forced to accept my worst fear. I would have to be sedated like my mother was. I tried to talk my way out of the situation, but my doctor explained that this was a life-threatening issue that needed to be resolved.

I eventually relented and consented to the surgery. Or you could be like the thing from the Russian sleep experiment, just like be awake and stare at the doctor the whole time. Yeah, exactly. Put the gas back on. So nearly free.

What if this just like because we summoned it, it just like ruins it. It is ramping up to be something fucking awesome. I'm super stuck on this. I'm liking it so far. I hope it doesn't die, but we'll see. And if it did, it's our fault. I summoned it into existence. I spent a sleepless night in the hospital with my stomach growling at me the entire time.

I prayed it was my stomach growling and not having eaten all day rather than the partially formed fetus of my twin inside me. That was, that was a slight, that was a slight campy joke a little bit. Yeah. I kind of liked that visual though of hearing the, when you hear your stomach do like whatever from being hungry, that it's like a person inside you grumbling. That's good. That's kind of crazy.

Does this go back to the thing you talked about where you just wanted to be pregnant? I don't, I can't confirm. So the anesthesia, what was this next learner? We were in a story. This is a podcast about stories. The anesthetist arrived about an hour after I woke up and talked to me through the process. Step-by-step. She put the needle in my arm and connected it to an IV bag.

She asked me if I was ready and I nodded, terrified about what was happening and horrified about my prognosis. She told me everything was going to be alright and then hung the IV bag filled with saline, Ativan and anesthetic. My last coherent memory before going under was of my mother and her final moments. What happened next was the worst 5 hours of my life. I remember hearing music in my days.

At first, I thought the surgery was over until I heard the surgeon talking over the music, asking for a retractor to hold the surgical area open. I had two horrifying thoughts in that moment. The first being that Nicki Minaj's anaconda was one of the most... I might have ruined it, Hunter. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I might have done this. This might be my fault. Nicki Minaj's Anaconda was one of the most discomforting songs to hear playing in an operating room. That should be illegal. I agree. I do think that would be kind of... Imagine cutting open... I know that they do that a lot when my wife does surgery, which granted her surgery is on primates. So I think the level...

of what you can do around the patients different. But I just can't imagine blaring Nicki Minaj in an OR. Yeah, I just feel like, yeah, I don't know. I bet you there's all kinds of music that fucking plays, but to me, I'm just like, that just feels oddly inappropriate.

You're getting your stomach cut off, but it's like, boy, toy. Detroit. Dig bigger than a tower. I ain't talking about Eiffels. Exactly. You're just watching your rib cage get removed. My ender kind of don't. My ender kind of don't.

The second was that I was going to be conscious for the entire surgery. That is terrifying. They had taped my eyelids, so I couldn't see anything, but I heard everything. Wait, they taped your eyes? You're anesthetized and they taped your eyelids? Is that normal? I have no idea. I don't think that's normal. Surely. Do surgeons. I've never heard of that before. Tape eyelids. It's not like clockwork orange.

Yeah, surgeons often tape eyelids closed during general anesthesia or when a patient is in a medically induced coma to protect the eyes from corneal abrasions and other injuries. Okay, well, the Google AI at the top of the page says that so and then yeah, the next next source small pieces of sticking tape are commonly used to keep the eyelids fully closed during the anesthetic. Okay, well, I never knew that whatever. Okay.

Well, we learned something new today Hunter, me and you both. As I laid there, unable to move during the gruff course of "X-Gun Give It To You" by DMX, the head surgeon asked if what he was seeing was really what made up the mass. I heard one of the assisting nurses gag as he set the excised material into a pan. She excused herself and someone joked that she wasn't good when situations got hairy.

The people around him groaned at the pun that I wouldn't understand until they showed me what they extracted. I was in surgery for about five hours, conscious and paralyzed for the entire experience. Oh my God. I've heard of this happening before. People who are in surgery and they feel it as it's happening. That's got to be a bad time. Oh my God. Luckily, I felt nothing, but I heard every joke, jab, and bit of gossip.

I heard the sizzle as the bovie, looked up the name later, cut and cauterized the incisions. Those 300 minutes were the most excruciating moments of my life. It felt like I was on that table for an eternity listening to music, puns, and the sound of my own operation. The worst part of it was the realization that I couldn't see what they were doing and I had to imagine what was happening to me. My faculties returned a while after surgery.

I didn't say anything to the attending nurse. I wanted to believe that what had happened hadn't actually occurred. The nurse was hesitant to show me what they had removed, but I explained that I needed the closure. She told me the surgeon would show me when he gave me an update. I waited for 30 minutes, imagining the horror they had removed from me before he arrived. He took me to a back room where he showed me the mass floating in formaldehyde. It was the size of a baseball and covered with hair.

tiny teeth, and grain flesh. Oh my god. Ah, that's so cool. It looked like something pulled straight from John Carpenter's The Thing. He told me the surgery had been a success and they had removed most of the growth. He reassured me when he noticed my concern by explaining that a small mass had fused to my spinal column in utero and that it would be dangerous to attempt to remove it. He explained that my body had walled it off and encapsulated it and there was no danger.

to attempt to remove it could have left me paralyzed from the waist down oh man that is brutal oh that's so cool so curious to see do you think it looks like it probably has to look like a tiny head right probably the skin the teeth like i swear i've heard i i may just be making stuff up i'm okay yes tumor that grows hair and teeth yes i am correct a teratomas are rare germ cell tumors that can contain hair teeth and other tissues

Yeah, so it is a thing that you can have a tumor that grows hair and teeth. The human body really is just a fucking nightmare, isn't it? Yeah, it is. All the stuff that could go wrong is terrifying. These pictures of the tumor are terrifying. It looks like someone's face sprinkled up into a ball because it's just there's random teeth sticking out and hair sticking out and stuff like that. It's horrific. Yeah, no, I do not care for that.

Yeah, did you look it up? I did, and then I also realized I haven't been recording my camera this entire time, so now I'm going to start recording my camera. You haven't been recording your camera? I have not been recording my camera.

But there will be a picture of me in place. And then now I am back. I'm here. I swear. I've been recording. I can't stand you. I've been recording my audio at least. So that's all that really matters. Oh my gosh, this guy. All right. Well, thanks, man. Great job. I'm so proud of you. I'm leaving a screenshot so you can just use. There you go. Oopsie poopsies. What I got to do that. Even think about it.

Well, anyway, did you see the tumor? Did you like the tumor? I did, and it was disgusting. That looks like something you would make unironically. Well, I appreciate that because it's disgusting and it's horrible. Yeah.

Yeah, it looks like something you make. That's why actually what you look like to me when I think of you in my head, that's you. It's honestly not that far off. Especially the search result with like the little tuft of hair and all the teeth in a straight row. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why not? I'll take it. I'll take it. I thanked him and recuperated in the hospital for a few days until I was able to go home. As soon as I got home, I looked into the mirror. There was a small line of stitches on my stomach and a divot on my back where they had removed my parasitic twin.

I just wanted to put everything behind me and forget about what I had growing and rotting inside me. I wanted to forget about what I remembered from the surgery. I felt on both of those fronts. I spent the next month in a chemical daze. The doctors prescribed me Oxycontin for the pain. At first, I was hesitant to take it given my history, but the pain soon forced my hand. To be honest, it was pleasant. It felt like a ball of warmth at the center of my core that spread throughout my body 30 minutes after I took a dose.

There's going to be one person in our audience who relapses their oxy addiction because of that line. I can tell you right now that is not wrong. I was on hydrocodone when I threw my back out and you're not helping. Now it was awesome. I was like, I know why I could see. I could definitely see people getting hooked on this shit. It was lovely.

But please don't do it. Yeah, don't do it. It's not good for you. The closest I had to that is when I went in for surgery three years ago, four years ago. I can't remember if I had started YouTube yet or not, but I had a cyst on my lower back that had to be removed. And I was like nervous about to go into surgery. And I already had an IV set up.

And the surgeon or the anesthetist comes by and they're like, you kind of nervous, buddy. You want some Valium? And I'm like, sure, whatever that is. And he just pushes it in the IV. And dude, I'm not kidding. Within seconds, I went from nervous to like, well,

why did it be nice? So happy kicking my feet. I like, I went into the OR and one of the nurses was like, we're going to put you on the table now. Okay. And I said, according to her, I said, whatever you want, Mrs. Dr. Lady, whatever you want, Mrs. Angel face. Yeah, I was having a great time. So after, after the surgery, I was like, yeah, yeah, that's dangerous. Yeah. Yeah.

someone just relapsed on volume because i said that anyway those four weeks drifted by as a fuzzy and warm memory without anything interesting happening it was so pleasant that i even pestered the doctor for another regimen of oxycontin under the pretense of pain it was about two weeks after i finished the bottle that odd things began to happen

At first, I assumed my increased appetite. Oh, yes, we're going this route. Let's go. First, I assumed my increased appetite was just me getting back to a normal diet after surgery and a month of opioids suppressing my hunger. I don't know why I pronounce opioids like that anyway. Also, I think just real quick, do you think that he was a scrawny little boy because all the nutrients was being eaten up by several? It was being stolen by the parasite, yeah. Sure. However, I was eating more than usual.

Usually I would cook myself something to eat and sit down with the book. As I got lost in the book, I would eat. Sometimes I would finish a couple of chapters before I realized that I had eaten multiple plates of food. I didn't think anything of it. I just assumed that the excise mass had cleared up some space in my stomach. The stomach pains were harder to explain away. I eventually broke down after the pain continued and went to see the doctor.

He felt the area and we talked for a while before he explained that it was likely a side effect of repeated opioid usage. He said it was common for prolonged usage to cause feelings of nausea, discomfort, and sometimes even anxiety.

And and and Adonia. I actually don't know what that term is. Adonia. Yeah, I have no idea. Let me look that up. This story has a lot of medical words and I appreciate the research. Tons of fucking weird medical words. I'm learning so much. This is the first one. I don't know though. The end. Okay. And Adonia is the inability to experience joy or pleasure. Oh, well, that's comforting. All right. That makes sense. You're stalking your body's like dopamine system so much that without the drug, you're like, you know,

um dulcent that makes sense right he looked at me in a way that implied i was going to ask for another prescription i wasn't to be honest but the implication was enough to keep me from pressing the issue i agreed with his explanation and left without discussing my discomfort any further the discomfort continued for a few weeks before the breaking point i woke up in the middle of the night screaming in agony

There was a sharp pain in my side, and in my confusion, I came to a sleep battle conclusion. I'd been stabbed. I looked frantically around my room for any sign of an intruder, but there was nothing. I made my way to the bathroom to look at the area. I wished that I had been stabbed. Instead, there was a quarter-sized chunk of skin missing from my back. I had been bitten. Oh, let's go, baby. There was no mistaking the wound for anything else.

I could see the area where teeth had scraped and cut into my skin, as if it had been pinched and torn into a ragged hole from the inside. I tried to block out the memory of what the mass that was removed from me looked like. It was an amalgamation of hair, grain, flesh, and teeth. I won't lie, I had a complete mental breakdown when I connected all the dots. I curled up in the fetal position and began to weep uncontrollably. It was too much.

A recurring thought bounced around in my head like butterflies in the stomach. "Why me?" I started to have a panic attack on the cold tile floor. "Why me?" I began hyperventilating and couldn't catch my breath. "Why me?" I think I went crazy at that point.

Because the next thing I heard was, it's okay. We're going to be okay. Let's go, baby. We're back. We're so, we're so back. Let's go. It's so cool. It's like, it's like a more serious version. Did you watch that movie? I think it was James one malignant.

Yeah. Malignant. Yep. Yep. Yeah. It's like a more serious, like taking itself more seriously version of that. Yeah. Malignant. First off rules. It's one of my favorite James Wan film for sure, but it's like a lot of fun. So, so fun. So stupid and like funny. And I was going to say is,

The way that the medical stuff has been treated so seriously so far that it's a perfectly veiled, like, schlocky B-horror film is what we're turning into. And I really, I love that. I love how it's- Yeah, I'm down for it. I'm vibing so hard. I'm excited. I looked around, half expecting someone to be in the bathroom with me, but no one was there. It wasn't until the voice repeated those words that I realized where it was coming from. It was coming from the hole in my back. Oh, yeah.

Don't go.

They hurt me. I don't know why I responded. If I had to guess, I would blame it on the ridiculousness of the situation and my complete mental breakdown moments earlier. Something was growing inside me like a creature from Alien that could talk. I should have sprinted to the nearest hospital screaming, but instead I spoke in a shaky, uncertain voice. I have to. You're hurting me. If I don't, you might even kill me. What if I didn't? I can shift while I grow.

I can make it so it doesn't hurt until I'm ready and then we can work together to make it as painless as possible so we both can live. Ready for what? Until I'm strong enough to leave your body. Right now, I'm not strong enough to survive outside you. I just need you to sustain me for a few months. They'll kill me at the hospital. Brother, I can be your friend. I want to be with you. I don't want to be lonely.

Please. Oh, it's so fun. It's so fun. It's such a fun setup. It's such a great setup too, especially how I can see him sympathizing with the guy being like, I don't want to be lonely. That

That's all the guys ever felt, you know? Yes, exactly. Yes. The guys have been alone this entire time and then he's given like almost like a monkey paw unraveling where now it's like he has a brother, but it's like inside of him. It's so, so, so sick. This is great. I imagine it physically speaking to him out of the hole in his back. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Like a bit a hole in him to look and now it's like a crater in his back. It's like a, it's like a worn like hole in a tree that like a bird would like bear when you know what I mean? Like,

It's just this kind of like dark hole. And you can just only picture it like being able to barely move its mouth and like wheeze talk to him just like claustrophobically trapped inside muscle. Like how cool.

This goes so hard. He's gonna live with it and stuff inside of him growing. Oh, it's so good to be completely truthful I don't know what made me agree. Oh you dumb son of a bitch I would be like I'd say mm-hmm and I'd immediately go down to the doctor's office. I'd be like You know what, you know what I agree let's get you to

to uh let's go to a buffet right now and you can eat all the food out of my spine that you want and then you just go to like uh the doctor and you're like shoot it please yeah exactly right here i would get those little like barbecue tongs and i would give put in the doctor's hands and i'd say dig and keep cutting now you are the rush

make me paralyzed I don't care yeah it I don't care meanwhile you're like sure thing buddy we're gonna we're gonna hey we're gonna go to that big Chinese buffet in the sky you and me how's that sound I can only try to explain my mindset at the time I just had the worst experience in my life in the surgery room if I had it my way I would never return to a hospital ever again I didn't want another repeat of what happened to me the first time occurring again

i also didn't want to relive the memories of my mother's glassy stairs i held her hand and waited for her to die the thing growing inside me had promised it wouldn't hurt me i don't know but listening to that quiet tone was reassuring it spoke in a way that reminded me of dogs whimpering and babies crying the voice sounded weak and scared i promised that i wouldn't go to the doctors

I think those reasons were what made me agree to the stupidest decision I've ever made in my life. Well, yeah, I don't foresee this being like... And then he was my brother, and we're best friends now. Yeah. And now he works at Enterprise Rental Car.

He's a regional manager. No, I think I like also that you set this up with almost having a guy who has been sickly his whole life, but even then, when he's like, I never wanted to have a surgery, I've seen how it was done with my mom, and then whenever he does have his first surgery, he's awake and conscious the entire time.

That is hell. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like, why would he want to have to go through all that again? Fuck it. I'll just live with the weird. It has set itself up in a believable sense to be the kind of person that would almost let it happen between, between his loneliness and his seclusion from society and the trauma of his mom dying and the trauma of the surgery. It's like you could, I mean, it's still the wrong decision.

But you could almost see why this person would be likely to say yes to this scenario. Yeah, the wrong decisions are always... In a not over-the-top way. I would say 90% of the time, the wrong decisions are always the easier pill to swallow. Yeah, yeah. And also, like, in a lesser story, earlier it would have been like...

Like, I've always liked the idea of a friend growing inside of me. You're like, I've always had imaginary friends. And it's like, I've always had imaginary. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whereas this one's actually like, okay, I get it. It's a bad decision, but I get it. The first few days were the most awkward moments I've ever experienced in my life. Every now and then, I would feel it shifting inside me and apologizing when it moved in a way that brought me discomfort. Sorry.

You know how creepy that is? I'm picturing almost like a slushing kind of sound, like...

Like moving inside of them. And then he's just like, sorry. I think I've mentioned it on the show before, but do you remember that ABCs of death thing about the woman who never gave birth? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It grew to full size inside of her. That's what it reminds me of a little bit. Yeah. It's like cracking bones. I mean, not yet, but that's where I imagine this is going. I need to rewatch that. That's such a good one. It is a pretty good one. Also, how big is this thing going to grow? Is it eventually going to be like...

like person, like full person size. I don't know. I mean, apparently the guy, the, the little fetus man has, he's like, I mean, he's confident in an exit strategy, but the problem is I don't think that he's told him. I think that it's one of those things where it's like, when I'm big enough to leave to where it's like,

he's probably just keeping him at bay until he just can like burst out or just like kill him when he leaves or you know something like that yeah i i can live on my own now the only thing is i need your heart your lungs your small intestine yeah it explained that the surgery had only mangled it it would need some time to heal and regrow as it was still in the fetal stage and could produce fetal stem cells to regenerate i like how the how it knows all of this yeah

I've been on doctor websites, wiki, wiki house, and this is what I've learned. There's WebMD in here. Did you know that you have Wi-Fi? Yeah, exactly. Logitech makes some pretty crazy equipment now. It held up its promise, and the pain I had been experiencing for weeks went away. A large part of me was still driven to go to the doctor and have my parasitic twin removed.

I think the only thing preventing me from doing that was how frightened the voice sounded and the realization that I would be murdering a living, breathing person. It wasn't until dinner one night that I felt any real sense of connection with it. I just sat down to have a cheap microwave dinner when the voice spoke. "What are you doing?" I was taken aback as it had previously only spoken when it was apologizing for shifting. I responded that I was eating and reading a short story. We can remember it for you wholesale from an anthology.

He asked me to read the story to him, and I did. I'd read a paragraph to him in between each bite of food. When I finished both the meal and the story, he asked if I could read him another. We spent the entire night reading and discussing various stories. As I enjoy multiple genres, I read a wide range of stories to the voice as it quietly listened. It wasn't until the sun crept in through the blinds that I realized how much time had passed. I lost track of the time while talking to my twin.

We'd read dozens of short stories and spend hours talking about the ones we liked best. I went to bed after I promised my companion that we would continue this later. It became a daily fixture of our lives. Sometimes the voice would talk to me as I did chores or cooked a meal. I'd always sit down for the meal with a book and I would read aloud while I ate. Sometimes I would have to stop and explain an event to them, but most time they just listened quietly and waited patiently. Afterwards we would discuss our feelings on the book or what we thought was going to happen.

Sad part of me realized that this was the closest thing I'd had to a friend in almost a decade. I found myself looking forward to the discussions we would have after each meal. I'm laughing. I'm laughing because in a sense, you are my parasitic twin that I read to. What do you mean? I was just reading that. And it was like, I would, I would read to him. And the part where it's like, sometimes it would talk to me. Sometimes.

Sometimes I would have to stop and explain. This is a Creepcast origin story. What if it is and it's like the same hunter? This is fucked. I was a big-lipped Hawaiian shirt-wearing man. There it is. And the twin could control fire and also was a little punk.

Sometimes I'd have to stop and explain an event to them, but most time they just listened quietly and waited patiently. That's so you. Afterwards, we would discuss our feelings on the book. It's just the Creepcast origin story. The next one's great. A sad part of me realized this was the closest thing I had to a friend. Yeah. I found myself looking forward to our discussions. Yeah.

I didn't mean to ruin it, but I think I just did. Oh, well, it's great. Oh, the fan art. One night, a few weeks after their discovery, I heard the voice talking to me. I can only assume that it thought I was sleeping when it spoke those words. I'd been asleep until I felt them shift inside me. We had once what had once unnerved me now reminded me of a baby turning in their mother's womb. Oh, the voice twisted in my stomach and began talking. Soon I'll be with you.

Soon I'll be able to touch you with my own hand. Soon you'll love me. I was so lonely all these years. Now I experience the world through you. Now I want you to experience the world with you. I want to feel the sun on my skin and the wind in my hair. I want to be by your side. It's creepy. Those words. That's so good. It's so, I was just kind of, it's so good. Just the idea of it speaking out of you. Like I want to be by your side. Ah, it's so good.

it also freely moving now and just like the guy accepting that and like taking this motherly role almost to a shot a pregnancy yeah it almost has like a hitchcock psycho like a guy like it's like a weird relationship with his mother who passed he hasn't processed it fully and now it almost seems like he's taking on these like maternal instincts it's like it's very odd yeah i'm i'm i'm totally bought in i love this thing

Not the story, as in the thing, not the thing growing inside of him. They should probably kill it, but I kept those words to myself. A sad part of me realized that I now wanted the same thing. I wanted to be able to look at them while we talked. I wanted to take them outside and show them the world. I wanted a friend. These words filled me with a warmth similar to Oxycontin and yes, Oxycontin, sorry. It made me realize how lonely and depressed I'd actually been up to that point.

I had no one I could talk to, no one I could relate to. Now I had a friend. Those words were lies. Subterfuge to convince me that it actually cared about me and make me suffer through the growing pains. The veneer of fraternity and friendship sloughed off to reveal the decay underneath. I woke up early one morning to find that the owner of the voice had gone still inside me. It was asleep.

I quietly made my way into the bathroom to do my morning duties when a macabre whim drove me to look at my back. The small hole in my back had almost quadrupled in size since it first spoke to me. I had treated and disinfected the fistula in the hopes that I could slide them out of the canal when they were strong enough to survive outside me. Through the fistula, I caught my first glimpse of my twin as it slept inside me.

my word. That's, oh, that's so cool. Oh, the idea of it like slipping out of you like a birth of sorts. Now is the, is the fistula, what is, what is a fistula exactly? It's an open wound. So it's just an open wound. Now this is just me,

I'm wondering. Sorry, sorry. No, no, no. I got that wrong. The official is when two body parts are merged together at a point. It's normally like with like an orifice in the body, like tubes or like arteries or something like that. When two stuff is merged together where it shouldn't be, basically. I'm wondering if the imagery in your head, I was curious because I don't know if I'm feeling like I didn't know if it almost felt like

I mean, like a legitimate womb that's open that he's actually going to give birth out to this thing. Not that it's actually taking that shape, but if the imagery is supposed to be akin to that, I guess, of how the thing is just supposed to slip. I think that's right. So maybe if it's growing inside of an open cavity in his body, it could be like a natural, an opening that's being cut open for him to crawl out of.

Man, that's so brutal. Ah, this is so good. This is such good body horror. It's not my twin. It's not even human. It has multiple eyes on its face that look more like a fly than a human.

It is still in the process of development and in the 30 or so holes that pocketed its face, only a dozen were filled with actual eyes. Its skin is cracked, mottled and gray like maggoty pork with a tiny hair like cilia breaking through its body. The thing's mouth looks like a lamprey eel, a concentric circle of needle sharp teeth with a grotesque sucking appendage in the center.

I stared in horror for a few minutes before I realized that it was starting to stir. I moved away from the mirror and did my business before I could fully wake up. I left the bathroom knowing that this thing was not to be trusted. Let's go. What is delightful? Delightful description. It's so cool. Oh my gosh, it's so cool. I need it.

Oh my gosh. Just like, it's like a giant fly looking thing with like a sucking face. Now I'm imagining it as like, like a, a, a,

Jeff Goldblum haha Jeff Goldblum like the fly yeah like the way he looked at the end of that movie that's what it looks like in my head oh I'm so excited yeah to me it's like this like a bug like a amphibious bug kind of like weird it's almost like a giant amoeba like with the cilia poking through and everything and like it just absorbs stuff oh it's so good it's a living tumor it had grown faster than any organism should in a few weeks it went from the size of a softball to the size of a watermelon

It is swollen like a cancer inside of me and only now do I realize how thin I've actually become due to it siphoning off my nutrients. I don't know where I contracted this thing. It isn't an absorbed fetal twin. It is a parasitic entity growing within me, looking to be birthed into this world so it can infect others and perpetuate the cycle

It'll find the weak-willed, the weary, the wretched, and it will take advantage of them. It'll promise them false friendship and hollow hope as it incubates inside them. You know what this also fucking reads like, dude? What? This reads like, so he's skinny, right? And he probably has this huge lump, like a pregnancy bump.

It also kind of reads like postpartum depression or something like that. Or like, or what is postpartum? What's the, is that what it's called for the women? That's when you give birth and then you have like an intense depression around no longer being pregnant. Well, sometimes it can't see the baby as your own or something like that. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Just like a resentful kind of, I don't know. It's just, it feels like a trait of like a pregnancy, like a negative pregnancy trait.

emotional experience to it. That's like immediately what my mind went to when I just read all that. It just feels... Now he's saying it's not a parasitic twin. Instead, it's something that just is presenting itself as a parasitic twin. It's completely alien. It is not human. It is nightmare incarnate. How else could it regrow so quickly after being torn out of me by doctors? The growth they removed was a bud likely ejected to seed another part of my body.

I can now feel dozens of other lumps in my arms, my legs and groin, embryos in development. I am a hive. Now it's every movement sends waves of agony through me. It is strong enough to survive on its own and it doesn't need its wretched host anymore. I try to hide the pain for fear that it'll realize how much of an advantage it actually has now.

I know that the time of parturition is soon upon us and there's only one choice left. It will likely kill me on its way out to prevent me from trying to stop it. It's too late to go to the hospital. I'm beyond help. The creature will realize what I'm trying to do and stop me. It will either twist and constrict my spine, leaving me as a paralyzed nest for it or simply debilitate me with pain until I can't move. Both are less than pleasant options.

Even if I could make it to the hospital to remove them, what's to stop the host from casting off more migrating buds to grow into those fiendish things? It wants out, and I can't allow that. I have my own option. The thing likely won't see it coming until it's too late. On to why I'm writing this. I always wanted to write. I spent so much of my life reading that this seems like a logical progression.

I don't know if that's irony or if it's just the fumes from the gasoline I poured around the house that have now soaked into the rug, coated the walls and furniture, getting me, but it seems comical that the only piece I write is basically my suicide note. I have to share this story before I strike the match. I can feel it stirring inside me as the fumes permeate the house, unaware of what I'm planning. This thing. It breathes. It bleeds.

It breeds and soon it'll burn. Will burn. I know what will happen when the end comes and it tries to break free and wriggle out of my shredded body. I hold it to me in my final moments. It'll likely snap my spinal cord like a dead branch paralyzed me from the waist down. My legs won't matter though as I have no intent on escaping. It'll scream, seethe, and shriek as the flames crackle and snarl around us.

I will look into its horrifying visage and I will smile, even if its maliciousness made flesh. It's still my only friend left in the world. As the flames lap at us, I'll press it against me and whisper platitudes into its malformed ear. I'll tell it about how lonely I had been since my mother died. I'll tell it how glad I was to finally have a true friend that understood me. As we burn together, I'll tell them how much I love them. My God.

what a unbelievable ending. That is the end of it breeds or it breathes, it bleeds and it breeds. What a, wow. I will say the ending felt not necessarily abrupt, but I, I really was so invested. I really wanted to like, it could, it could have taken one more of a story. I think so. Yeah. I think it's time to spit more variant, but that's, do you think that,

No, no, no. Of course. That's just a subjective opinion. I agree with the nitpick though. I agree. Yeah. Yeah.

Now, let me tell you. So here's the interesting thing. These are my initial thoughts. One is, could this be taken that he is actually kind of gone, that he's gone a bit crazy from these traumatic things that have happened, and that has he manifested that? Or do you think that it is just without a doubt? Sure. I think so, but I don't think that was necessarily Arthur's intention. Yeah.

On it, I think I feel like because I feel like if that was intention that he's imagining a lot of this, we would have had more clues to it. Maybe he's on some kind of drug during this part of it rather than just being on the previously or something like that.

So we've had some stuff and we can tell that he is very like a hypochondriac in a way, right? He doesn't like to have the surgeries, the surgeries. He also comes from a line of people that are also kind of sick. And it seems like something is growing inside of him. And he's like, kind of, it just seems like when I'm like trying to digest this a bit, I wouldn't mind reading it again on my own just to see how I digest it again. But I could see it being that. Could it be a guy who has just kind of.

Just had the shit end of the shit end of a stick for his life. Right. And he is kind of it's all falling on him all at once. And he is now almost manifested it like kind of gone crazy. And he thinks that this thing is here and it's almost he's even talking to his body. That's kind of betraying him. And the way he looks at his body that he has manifested this new friend inside of him only for it to.

act as a threat to him i guess like i i i i want to believe that it's real because i do think let me i guess i should say this sorry i want to say that i do think it's real i think that like the creature that's inside in this story i do think that it's not fake i think that but i could just see it's actually happening yeah but i could see it in a way where i wouldn't be surprised if the author also came out and was like actually you know we don't know because he even alludes to that in

you know he references the thing in the story which is of course a great example of you know who is the thing what it's very ambiguous it's all up for interpretation of like who knows what the thing is right um but just the idea i think it's certainly possible for sure i think it's just one of those things where it's like uh you've set up so many you've set up two great

You set up two great lanes. One that he has been to the doctor. The doctor definitely removed something. It was fucking crazy. And you've also set up this character who is kind of afraid to go to the, to go to the doctor has like a weird distrust has like weird mental issues and has also been taking like prescription medication, all kinds of stuff. So it's just, it sets it up in both ways. It's really is a great, I can't tell. Yeah.

I think it's real, but I see where you're coming from that there's like ambiguity for it. I think I like the way you kind of directed it, that maybe not postpartum, but it's almost reads as like a horror story of there's not, it's not postpartum. It's whenever someone is terrified of a pregnancy or like fear of pregnancy, it's like postpartum, but like during the course of the pregnancy, it almost reads like that, like

they were okay with it at first, but now it feels like there's an alien inside of them. And it feels like a way of expressing that kind of horrific emotion. The emotional, the,

the emotional waves a woman goes through during pregnancy is very fascinating. Kind of like what the brain does and like the kind of like go again, the waves go through. I'm telling you, this is, this is the original creep cast origin story because he even talks about pregnancy. But no, I think that to me, it just reads so perfectly that the snapping point would have been his mother who he was so close to. And he had such a horrific,

Way of seeing her pass. Right. That now he is almost like.

He has like mirrored himself with her and his experience of being with her. And that he has created essentially a child inside of him that is going to betray him almost in the same way that maybe he felt that he betrayed his mother by not being the son. Exactly. Plus, plus he explicitly refers to his role with the creature as motherly at one point. Yeah. Yeah. That mirrors that to a big degree. I think that.

The only reason I'm speculating on all of this too, is that it reminds me a little bit of this Cronenberg. I can't remember if it was Cronenberg or there was this YouTube, there was this little film that Cronenberg put on YouTube. I don't know if it was meant to be a full feature length thing, but it's like this, the short, I think it's called the nest. Have you heard of that?

The nest. And it was definitely a Cronenberg one. I'm almost positive it was a Cronenberg thing. It was like early 2000s, maybe 2008, 2009 or something. But the whole thing is that it's all from the perspective of a doctor. And it's a one shot thing. It's very short. But it's a woman who comes in and she believes that her breasts are filled with bugs. And she's like, oh, I'm telling you they're there. I want them cut off. And the guy's like, okay. I think that he thinks he's dealing with someone who's mentally distraught or whatever. So he isn't like kind of

He isn't, I guess, being like, you're crazy. I think he's kind of like, okay, well, let's talk about this. But it's her saying, no, they're crawling inside of me. They're crawling around. I want them off. I want you just to cut off my breast, basically. So now, but it sets up a thing where she's so sure about it that then you're like, holy shit, is it does she actually have this? Like, is there something weird about

Going on that like her, her tits are just filled with bugs for some reason. It's just, I love that, that dichotomy of might not even be the right word. I love just the, the, the parallel of you have somebody who is so confident. It's the literal definition of being crazy. It's just, you're so confident that this is real when the reality to others is so blindly different. And I just, it's just, it reminded me of that in that fun way where you can be, you have the fun, you,

of, wow, is it real? Is it not? And even if it isn't real, it's still this idea that someone is living in this reality where it is. And that's just so horrifying. And I just, it's, it's just so great. And that's why the only nitpick criticism I have, if you can even call it a criticism, I would say it's just my own kind of opinion is, and it's not, I wouldn't say it's constructive criticism or anything. It's I just wanted more. Like I wanted more of like,

You know, like, how did he try to deceive it? Did he try to go to the hospital, but he ended up having, oh, I couldn't. I had to turn around and go home because it was catching on or just all these like little deceptive things that maybe he wanted to do to it that could have like been little breadcrumbs.

this little trail that would have led to this, basically him burning himself alive. And I love, love that the ending of the story is you find out that the whole thing is a suicide note. Like it's so, so thoroughly put together and so cleanly.

put together. It's just part where it's like, you know, we like, yes, this thing is a monster trying to take from me, but the emotions I had while we talked to each other, cause I never had a friend before those emotions I had are still real to me. So as I kill it, I'm going to tell it how much I love them, which also that's so cool to me. Once again, it seems like a guy screaming out that he loves himself, that he wished that he could have, uh,

I guess, given himself that kind of appreciation as well. And then maybe others could have seen it. It's how it reads to me. Um, is it feels like a self confessional of a guy who may be that the thing inside of him was a direct reflection of how he pictured himself or how others pictured himself. It's how I, it's how I, I read it. And I just, this,

This is such a great one, man. Do you also have a great length to, I mean, like, I know I just complained that I wish I wanted more, but like right at an hour 15, it's like a good read. Good whore. I mean, it's honestly shorter, like probably under an hour if we didn't take, we had a lot of side like stuff, but you,

You know, I imagine that scene, the one that sticks out in my head as being really disturbing is when he takes that look in the mirror and the hole's gotten bigger and he can see its head now and stuff. You know those images that went around the internet a while back that's like, it was like the trypophobia images or trypophobia, whatever, where it would be all these holes in the human skin.

like all these open cavities. I imagine that, but it's like on a ball, like rolling around and some of them are full of eyes and some of them aren't. And there's hair mixed in and stuff. It looks like, it looks like a giant open wound fly like inside of him. Moist, wet, just kind of like, I mean, just like almost like it's all covered in Vaseline or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. I will say whenever I were thinking back at that too, I was kind of picturing almost that it felt like the first time, um,

he actually got to do like a, uh, this is blanking me for some reason. What is it? Whenever you go to the, uh, the pregnant women go to the doctor and they put like the gel on their belly and they like, you can see the base sound. It felt like an ultrasound is what, is what it felt like when he first saw it. It's almost like, uh, it felt like the first time you ever see your child. And the first time that he saw his, it was like this fucking disgusting monster. It's like a, it's like a horror, uh,

A horror adaptation of pregnancy, basically. It's like there's that kind of thing a lot. Like people will take strangers and, you know, make that into like this crazy, you know, blood horror story or like people smiling or something like that, right? This is like an exaggerated, like you said, Cronenberg level take on pregnancy. The human body is just so disgusting and creepy as it is. There's so much that can go wrong. And it's also such a deceptive,

it's like it's such a deceptive palace of like agony is like the human body is just like a

At any time, it can just portray you. You know, you can do everything right. That's like the craziest thing is people who are treat their body really right. Whatever. Those are the people who get cancer and people who smoke and do what, you know, it's like, it's just this, it's this extremely deceptive thing into, I don't know. This was just such a fun one, man. I loved it. I think it started off. So like, I did not expect it to take this kind of like, like I said before, like eighties. So at the very beginning, I thought it was going to be like a monster. Yeah.

right? Of some kind, like it, it bleeds, it breathes, whatever, like a Bigfoot esque thing. But then it's like, Oh, it's something inside of him. That's cool. And there was a parasitic twin, but then it's not, it's something that says it's a parasitic twin and it's growing. It's like a, every twist and turn was great. Had me engaged the entire time. Incredibly well done. I love that. I will say too. And you, like you said, this is a, I can't wait to just check out other, like other stories he's done. I hope that he has some kind of

short storybook or something. So he's got, when you go to his creepy pasta wiki account and he has 16 different categories for his stories. Wow. Um, he, he lists his inspirations. He has a writer's lounge, a writing advice board on the creepy pasta wiki. When you go to his stories, try to see what he categorizes this one as, because there is, there's a series he does called at my most human state. He has several anthologies, uh,

It looks like a couple of collaborative projects. Then he has existential aggress, evils, angels, and ethereals.

Uh, Nicaraguan myths and stories. Oh, okay. Interesting. Maybe the author's Nicaraguan or he just has an interest in. I think he is. Yeah. I will say it has 60, 68 stories on his wiki here. Some of these are really cool because he has like a synopsis of the story next to it. There's one that's called echoing calls and it says a nine one, one dispatcher begins to receive calls from a brutal homicide that happened years before. Um,

Might be a fucking another good. We might need to dive back into that. So that's such a sick concept. We might need to dive back in and maybe just do a grab bag of his stuff too, depending on how long his stuff isn't super short either. So it'd be fun to see. Yeah. I, I, I, this is a hospital that says a hospital security guard recounts how he lost his job. Uh,

uh there's one called lavender a psychiatrist deals with the scorned stalker after an abysmal first date dude okay so for everyone we're not gonna be able to read all these of course whatever but his link again he goes by imperial invective or imperial incentive on creepypasta wiki we'll put a link to that in the description y'all go check this out like this is just one but there's probably yeah like travis coleman is his name travis pullman

does he have any books or anything i'm trying to see if we if we do end up finding some i will try to link it i've also tried to see if he had like a twitter that people could follow or to keep up on his work but uh we'll try to link all that stuff here as well but honestly this was uh man i don't

That was cool. This is just, I really, really love this one. This is such a fucking great one, man. We've had, we've been reading a lot of good stuff lately. That's what I feel like we were in this rut of kind of like, eh, but man, we're hitting, we're hitting some just great shit, especially. And I had never heard about people. So many of like the big ones that people talk about that we've read, it's been the kind of like, yeah, you know, it's, it's cool. Some of these ones where we, I've, I haven't heard of it or you haven't heard of it. They've just been awesome. A lot of great sleepers.

the, uh, not counting the grab bag. Cause obviously we throw some like stinkers in there on purpose. Um, our last three have been feed the pig stolen tongues and out this. So that's a pretty, that's a pretty good record track record. If I do say so myself, I think it's great, man. And I'm always, as, as always to guys, if you have stuff that you want to us to read or for like recommend, always comment this stuff down below. Cause we're always looking for new stuff, but this was an awesome one. And please go give Travis, uh,

some love and check out some of his work because this is awesome. And I'm a million percent. I hope more people check out their stories. I would like to cover some more of them just off what we've seen in future ones. I'm high. Well,

Without further ado, guys, as always, thank you for watching. And if you've been listening on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, we appreciate you all for listening along. It really does mean a lot. And until next time, we hope you stay screaped. Stay spooked, you creeps.

Stay spooked, you creeps. I like that one because I said it the other way one time and Hunter yelled at me because it's apparently a bad word. So I apologize, but I like that one. Stay spooked, you creeps. Thank you for watching. Bye, guys.