Creepy - Cure for Cancer

Episode Date: March 21, 2022

Sometimes, the cure is worse than the disease...***Bonus episode: "Whatever you do, don’t stick out your tongue for snowflakes" Written by: PoloniumPoisoning and Narrated by: Megan McDuffee***Find our reward tiers and how to get your bonus magnet at patreon.com/creepypod***You can also subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/creepypod***Sound Design by Pacific Obadiah***Title music by Alex Aldea Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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Whether these stories truly happened or are simply fabrications is for you to decide. These stories may contain graphic depictions of violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised. Creepy Presents Cure for Cancer, when Marissa said. Maybe we should see other people. Nicholas decided to give her cancer. Nicholas, like many geniuses, had his great obsession.

The root of his monomania wasn't hard to trace. After all, he lost both his parents to cancer by the age of 13. He bore mute witness as they wasted away, leaking musilagnius fluids onto crisp white hospital sheets. colon cancer, father, and lung cancer, mother, had followed in quick succession. Outwardly, he remained stoic. Inwardly, he was a royal of emotion. First, debilitating grief, then rage at his parents for abandoning him,

followed by a searing guilt. Guilted surviving. Guilted having done nothing to save his parents. Certainly he'd been young when it all happened, not even of legal age. Still, he suffered lingering doubts that if only he'd asked the right questions, insisted on different doctors or courses of treatments, spoke out for his parents when they were unable. Things might have gone differently.

For years, he prayed that cancer would take him too. Seven months after he watched his mother's casket lowered into the ground alongside his father's grave. And one week after he turned 13, Nicholas matriculated at Harvard. By the age of 16, he graduated summa cum laude with a degree in biology. At 25, he'd already published half a dozen groundbreaking studies, was a full professor at his alma mater and an MD. His goal was nothing less than the Holy Grail of Canaan. cancer research.

A magic bullet to cure all cancers. By 28, frustrated with the incessant struggle for funding and bothersome distractions of teaching. He'd left Academe for full research in a corporate lab. Twelve years he toiled at Recombecon, insisting on working alone, skirted by colleagues made uncomfortable by his brooding intensity. He didn't care that he must look like a freak to them. tall and thin, a long, sad face, stooped shoulders, skin sallow from the fluorescent lights of the lab.

More than once he been likened to John Carradine, a perennial B-movie mad scientist. Yet he did nothing to dispel this image, favoring somber garb in the dark stubble of almost beards, while sectioning cancerous mammals with precise strokes of his scalpel. But he was tolerated, venerated even, by the corporation's board. His work had produced several lucrative patents. They gave him the things he needed and left him alone. In the same way cancer had relentlessly consumed his parents' vital organs, so it consumed his imagination, day after day in the lab,

and during endless sheet-twisting nights in his Spartan bare-walled apartment. Until Marissa happened into his life, that is. Even obsessed geniuses can fall in love. The IRS had sent Marissa to audit him. He never having filed a return nor answered any of their letters. She waited for him outside his apartment into the wee hours of the morning until he dragged himself home from work, startling him, looming out of the darkness, spectral, pale as a gibbous moon,

the oval of her lovely preternatural face framed in white hair. But most startling of all were her eyes, deep red pupils, like those of a photo's flashed frozen cap, surrounded by milky blue irises. Bewit. Nicholas couldn't look away. Marissa was a breathtakingly beautiful albino.

She wore a perfectly tailored black suit, a shocking contrast through her unpigmented skin and Argentine hair. A red garnet pin on her lapel glowed with the same early light as her eyes. You've been a bad boy, she said. And that was all it took for now. Nicholas to fall terminally in love. An audit can be a simple thing if one keeps good records, or if the records are spotty, it can take a long time,

require the auditor and audity to spend many hours huddled, head-to-head, weaving together the intimate details of one's financial life. Nicholas's case was the latter. Not only does parents come from money, carrying with them all the attendant stocks, bonds, and sundry other investments he'd inherited and then ignored. But the generous royalty contract he'd negotiated with his biotech firm it netted him a small fortune, now that three of the drugs he developed were fairly burning up the market. His tax liability, penalties included, was substantial.

Seven figures was her guess. A prolonged audit would. would be necessary. Nicholas was elated. Over the course of the next few weeks, he spent less and less time at the lab and more and more time at his apartment with Marissa, sifting through his financial records, slowly exposing his empty life through an audit trail. Within days, cancer had been displaced in all his waking thoughts by her.

When she wasn't around, he suffered the pangs of nascent love. the sleepless nights and torturous days waiting for her to reappear. To prolong the audit, he lost some of the critical paperwork, purposefully misreported on other forms. She was unfazed. They ordered pizza as they tried to make sense of his statements of earnings and losses. Tip dispressos in the local donut shop as they sorted receipts. When it turned out,

he was nominal president of three numbered corporations, and that his net worth was in the tens of millions. He shrugged. Marissa was clearly puzzled by his reaction. It is indifference to his own wealth. Still, she seemed to warm to him, took to calling him by his first name, to touching his arm lightly when she discovered something of interest in the sea of documents. One day

They even took boxes of pay stubs to dinner at her favorite restaurant An intimate Turkish cafe It was here after the meal That she jokingly suggested he might add to his paltry deductions By marrying her And having a child Marriage A child

With Marissa His heart His heart soared. Weeks passed before the first kiss. Weeks in which Nicholas fretted endlessly about her feelings. Replaying their encounters over and over in his mind, trying to gauge her reactions to his clumsy advances. Marissa.

Beautiful, delicate Marissa. When the last eye was dotted and the last T was crossed on his final form, They kissed. For the first time, cancer seemed unimportant. Maybe we should see other people. Maris's words jolted Nicholas out of his body. He floated above them. The vacated shell of his physical self still in bed next to her.

Frozen in rejection. His glistening erection not yet subsided, withered instantly, twice before he'd experienced this out-of-body phenomenon. Both times when the same stooped oncologist had explained his parents' cancers had been anesthetized, things aren't working out the way I'd hoped. Marissa said to the shadows of his bedroom, Nicholas collapsed back into his body. Every molecule of his being wanted to scream, no, you're wrong.

he remained tight-lipped, as self-contained as he had been at the side of his parents' hospital beds. I don't think you're ready for this level of commitment. How could she say that? Of course he was ready. Tonight he had planned on telling her he loved her, that he wanted to be with her forever. Too late for that, no. Unless, reaching out, he put his hand on her breath. tracing its shape the way she liked.

Don't, but her sharp intake of breath belied her admonition. Nicholas feathered the back of his hand down her belly, felt tiny invisible hairs rise to meet his knuckles. As soft as a breeze, his hand slid between her legs, his long index finger straightening into the mucalygneous warmth. No, Marissa disentangled herself and rose, looming naked in the moonlight. Her skin flawless as the finest English porcelain. Hearts stoppingly beautiful.

A contrast in Nicholas's imagination to his own scrawny, consumptive form. Of course she wanted to see other men. Younger, better-looking men. men she could love the way he loved her. He pulled the sheets up to his chin, ashamed of his pitiful carcass. You're dumping me. Don't say it like that, Nicholas.

His genius utterly failed him. She was slipping away while all he could do was stupidly clutch the edge of the sheet. You know I want children. She looked away. I'm sorry, but I don't think you're ready. So that's what this was about. You're wrong.

Look, Nicholas, you're a nice guy. But there's an anger inside you that scares me. It's poisoning our relationship. I can barely cope. So how could a child deal with it? Anger. Nicholas was taken aback. I don't know what you're talking about.

You can't bring your parents back, she said sharply, as if she were annoyed at him for forcing her to explain. Not by being with me or by having your own child. Marissa pulled on her panties, an absence of black against her alabaster's skin. slid her arms through the straps of her bra. It's dark lines bisecting her breasts.

I've got to get going. Her tone softened, becoming conciliatory. We'll talk about it later. When we're calmer. Next week. Okay? He had nothing to say. Too fast.

Too fast she'd gathered up her things and was gone, leaving Nicholas in the dark. A ghostly after image of her naked luminescence burnt indelibly into his corneous. He felt abandoned, lost. As much as he had that day, he stood alone over the twin graves of his parents. That was when he knew he had to give her cancer. The essence of his plan was simple. He'd save her, and she'd love him.

How to do it? years ago, he'd worked on a clandestine project funded by the CIA. The agency had requested an undetectable delivery system for aggressive cancers using emasculated viral vectors, a kind of deletrious gene therapy. Nicholas pulled up the old files. The cancer he selected, an accelerated pancreatic cancer, was one he'd fathered in his lab. He knew it, so. He knew it, Cell surface proteins as intimately as he would have known the face of his own child, and so knew its weaknesses too. In his experiments, he found that he could vanquish the malignant neoplasm easily, working miraculous recoveries and chimpanzees languishing in the latter stages of the disease.

He also knew conventional therapies would be useless in fighting his variant. It was ideal. the only problem was its liquid suspension system. Too dark, too viscous, and with a sharp, funky aftertaste that made it useless to the CIA. But Marissa loved the thick brackish coffee served at the Turkish place. Nicholas was right in believing that the murky liquid was one of few substances likely to mask the taste, smell, an appearance of his acrid, chrycinogenic goo, a tiny,

these squeezed tube in his pocket. An opportune moment when she excused herself to go to the toilet. Nicholas picked up a silver-plated teaspoon, stirred, watching the liquid diffuse in the miniature cup. Marissa returned and resumed her seat. She looked at him oddly. Nicholas frowned, then realized you still stirring her coffee. Sorry, he said, dropping the spoon.

She looked at her cup, then at him. Are you all right? Sweat trickled down his temple. Fine, his stomach nodded. Until now he'd been so focused on preparing his cancer he hadn't had time to experience doubts. Now he looked at her, at beautiful Marissa. What the hell was he doing?

Reaching for her cup, he curled his fingers around it. "'That one's probably cold. "'I'll order you another.' "'She grabbed his wrist. "'Nicholas felt his own quick and pulse "'beating beneath her pale fingers. "'No, it's fine. "'I...

"'I have to be going. "'Going, but we haven't really talked. "'I'm not sure there's a lot more to say.' "'She looked away, out the window. "'Besides, she's a little. said, far too casually while letting go of his wrist. I really have to be going. Another case. Another case? Another late-night audit? Like his? Nicholas felt nauseous. He let go of the cup. Marissa picked it up and put it to her lips. Nicholas watched her drink. She'd

robbed her share of the bill on the table and, with a chaste pack on Nicholas's cheek, was gone. Six weeks later, she called him from the cancer ward. Ask any researcher. As good as a chimp is for modeling a human being, a chimp is not a human being. So it shouldn't have been a complete surprise to Nicholas when things went awry. amidst the monitor ping and the drip of the IV, he hovered over her hospital bed, devastated. Marissa's fingers clutched weakly at his.

She looked deceptively normal, but inside things had gone very wrong. Unlike the lab experiments, Marissa's cancer had metastasized, slipping into other organs where it wasn't supposed to have gone. It spread with a single-minded virulence that befuddled the doctors at the hospital. In a matter of weeks, Marissa's poor body had not only been assaulted by pancreatic cancer, but had been besieged with an inexplicable spat of other cancers

afflicting her colon, lungs, and throat. Nicholas's miraculous cure aimed only at one target. the pancreas. In that respect, the experimental drug who preferred the doctors had worked exceptionally well. They were singularly impressed

at the results. But as for the other cancers, they gave her four months, tops. Nicholas stared at Marissa's beautiful, sad face. She would abandon him as his parents had.

And for all his genius, there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it. Or was there, fuse trophoblasts? He'd made the proposal to the board several years ago. His notion was to fight cancer with an equally aggressive vector, embryonic cells, or, more specifically, trophoblasts cultivated from embryonic cells. After all, the embryos struggle to bury it. itself in the mother's uterus was rivaled only by the assault of malignant cancer on normal tissue. His PowerPoint animation showed the engineered cells, his black magic bullets,

dispersing throughout the body like a swarm of angry bees, targeting malignant growths, then hijacking critical blood for their own voracious appetite, starving out the malignancy. Once its host died, the engineer Truffelblast cells would starve too. On Nicholas' scream, bright tangles of tumorous cells crumbled under the onslaught, disappearing altogether. Complete remission in days. A catholicon for all cancers in a single syringe. A convincing presentation, he thought.

Unfortunately, the board hadn't found it so. Rather, they found it unpalatable. developing bio-weapons for the CIA was one thing, creating human embryos from which to harvest cells was another. Support for the project was roundly rejected, thus making it impossible for Nicholas to obtain the embryonic material he needed for his experiments. He moved on. Only now his magic bullet was Marissa's last hope. She simply had too many tumors. too many targets. Even if he stole all the experimental drugs he and his colleagues had ever produced and pumped her full of them, so Nicholas made a copy of the necessary files,

snapped the lids onto several petri dishes, and stuffed everything into his briefcase. Then he tendered his resignation. The next day he rented a vacant butcher's shop and spent a significant amount of his liquid assets equipping it. The place was in the middle of his own of his liquid assets equipping it. an industrial neighborhood, surrounded by decaying warehouses on three sides and a rail yard on the forest. Painting over the windows, he worked feverishly to convert the shop into part lab, part operating theater. He installed everything necessary for blood work and biopsies,

then put together an imaging center of sorts, including an ultrasound and used x-ray unit. Against one wall he placed a rack for a dozen rack cages. Against the other, he put two blue plastic lined bins for animal waste. He'd used the animals to perform toxicity and side-effect tests, at least whatever time would allow. Long after visiting hours had ended, the corridor was silent save for the occasional nightmare-inspired moan or distance, bottom-laden cough. Unseen, Nicholas slipped past the sleepy duty nurse and crept into Marissa's darkened room.

Her eyes were closed and her chest rose and fell with a wheezing irregularity. It had been a week since his last visit. He'd been busy prepping his lab and beginning the first series of live animal experiments. And her condition had so deteriorated, Nicholas was shocked into momentary inaction. She looked hollowed out. Her cheeks sunken. Her eyes, dark bruises. Her long, glorious hair all but gone from the futile regimen of radiation and chemotherapy.

Nicholas picked up her hand. It was limp and damp, like holding a drowned kitten. She stirred and grown softly. Her eyes fluttered open, startling him. Her red pupils were dilated. Nicholas? I'm here. She floated grogly in a sea of painkillers.

He stroked her forehead gently. Why what, Marissa? Why did you do this to me? Nicholas was taken aback. Did she know? She'd never mentioned it on any of his. previous visits. Or was she just delirious, talking about something else?

An errant memory swimming up through the analgesics. He searched her face, but couldn't tell. She swallowed and closed her eyes. In a moment her breathing slowed, and although shallow, became regular. Because I love you, Nicholas said, kissing her lightly on the forehead. He carefully detached the ivy drips, sliding the needles from her vellum's skin, dribbling bright red lines on her thin arms. Peeling back the tape, Nicholas removed two catheters, cradling her like a newborn. He lifted and placed her in the wheelchair he'd brought.

He made for the elevator, passing the now empty nursing station and down to street level. He rolled her through the emergency room, passed in curious, dazed eyes lost in their own pain, and out to his waiting van. Please, Nicholas, let me die. Merce's voice was raspy. It was the first time she'd addressed him directly in a week. Usually when she spoke, it was to phantoms.

Occasionally she sang snatches of children songs. But for the last time, hour she'd followed his movements around the room for where she was strapped to the gurney, repeating her plea like a mantra. Nicholas increased her morphine dose two milligrams. Please. She started again, then shuddered, lapsing into abrupt silence. Nicholas felt a sharp pain of guilt.

She hadn't really needed the analgesic, but his nerves were raw. And now, of all times, it was critical that he'd be able to concentrate. For three weeks, he worked on culturing trophoblasts from Marissa's eggs and his sperm. Of the dozens of cultures he'd started, only one cell line was still viable. Nicholas filled a syringe with half of the murky fluid in which her final hope swam, slid it into a vein in her arm, then thumbed the plundering. firing his magic bullet at their targets. Marissa rallied and Nicholas allowed himself a faint hope.

In the days that followed, her tumors began to shrink. In the next two weeks, her progress was astonishing. Her recovery seemed a certainty. Nicholas was joyous. Then, her remission came to a crashing halt. Her tumors began reasserting themselves. Nicholas applied a second course of treatment. He used up the last of his engineered cells.

Only this time her rally lasted no more than 48 hours. The cancer made up for its temporary abatement with a deadly new efficacy. Fresh lymphomas, carcinomas, and myelomas appeared. Lumps developed on her breast. and uterus. Her left iris flecked with the black spots characteristic of melanoma of the eyes, and her nose developed ulcerating sores. Her beautiful, once pristine skin, slowly receded under masses of brown legions and the red-purple nodules of Kaposi's sarcoma. Isophageal cancer ravaged her throat, reducing her cry to an unrecognizable rasping noise.

When an x-ray revealed the dark spots of several gliomas and her brain tissue, Nicholas finally understood her cancer-riddled organs were beyond even his powers of redemption. In days, perhaps hours, Marissa would succumb. He had lost again. Six weeks to the day after he'd brought her, her here, exhausted and filled with desperate anguish. He pulled her off life support, then lay next to her on the gurney, and wept. Despite his belief that he was feeding the cancers more than her, Nicholas kept her IVs attached. He couldn't bear to starve her to death. He loved her too

much for that. So she lingered another day. And then the next, for her. For her, for her, for her. For a whole week. But how? For two long weeks, the cancers continued their rampage. She barely looked human. There wasn't a single centimeter of her ivory skin left. Although she was still vaguely Marissa-shaped, she was a mass of legions,

waxy brown lumps, and separating tumors. Her left eye was dark with clotted blood. It swelled and crusted. over, forcing her lid perpetually open. Nicholas leaned over to examine the brow and distended globe. He touched it with a tip of his latex-clad finger, and it popped, splattering his cheek with a yellowish white pus.

How could she be alive? Nicholas hadn't a clue unless a snatch of conversation he'd once had with Marissa came back to him. one of few times he talked to her about his work. Isn't cancer caused by a mutation? She'd asked. He'd answered in the affirmative. And isn't that how new species evolve? He conceded the point.

So maybe cancer is a new form of life struggling to express itself. At the time, he tried to explain the naivete of her point. but now Nicholas wondered if he hadn't been the naive one. Another week passed, Nicholas's lab filled with a stench of death of the bacterial products of decay, histamine, putrescine, and cadaverine. But instead of killing her, the tumors commandeered her organs and stabilized them, creating dark, clotted doppelgangers. This smelled diminishing.

new growths popped up. The cancer is somehow activating long-dormant sequences of DNA. Strange, misshapen organs proliferated inside her abdominal walls and thoracic cavity. They pulsed with life and dark fluids passed around and through them, sustaining her. Her blood-starved skin cracked and peeled, then sloughed off in broad swatches, revealing a brown carapest beneath. where her mouth had been was a blistered oval, something that might have been a tongue twisted in its steps. Two brown, fibrous orbs had replaced her albanic eyes, twitching in dark

sockets, mimicking the movements of real eyes. But did they see anything? Nicholas had no way of knowing. Marissa was alive. He stared at her, incredulous and appalled. How could he be able to be? How could he love such a monster. Yet he did, when blood formed dangerous, fetid pools in her new organs. Nicholas disensanguinated her. He washed the blood from the floor with a hose, spraying it into runoff channels. A brown sludge now circulated in her sclerotic veins. A few days later, he cut out her fibrous, atrophied heart.

It had no appreciable effect on her. Marissa His Marissa Made odd Ullating sounds Turning her head back and forth as if trapped in a nightmare Nicholas discontinued the morphine She calmed

However when he approached Her head swiveled in her body strewned towards him As if she wanted him to comfort her Nicholas pulled on his latex gloves And stroked her strided force head. She relaxed. A dark arm pressed against his thigh, though nobody else in the world could possibly have understood the mangled word. Nicholas did. Marissa, his Marissa, had called his name. Nicholas peeled off his gloves. He reached out and for the first time since he brought her here,

touched her directly. Her skin was stippled with waxy bumps that felt cool beneath his fingertips. Yet in that moment, he could not have loved her more. She stirred when he touched the prominence of her breast. The nipples had rotted and fallen off nearly a month ago, but the rest of the breast had hardened into a shape that remained true to Marissa's. He stroked her the way she liked. Marissa groaned, arching against the restraints.

Just as he had done long ago, Nicholas feathered the back of his hand down her belly, felt tiny invisible hairs rise to meet his knuckles. As soft as a breeze, his hand slid between her legs, his long index fingers straightening into the musilagnius warmth, a single drop of brownish flus, fluid ran down his finger to his knuckle and fell onto the table. Nicholas had an erection. She called out his name again, climbing onto the gurney.

Nicholas straddled Marissa. Her head rose to meet his, her lipless mouth fitting precisely over his. And something pointed and greasy tore across his tongue like a rasp. He jerked his own head back. tasting his own welling blood and something else too. The pain of loneliness, abandonment, and dark brackish coffee. The taste of cancer, he leaned forward and kissed her harder this time, pressing his face against hers, his weight full on her chest.

Her blistered breath forced down his throat, scalding his esophagus like bad scotch, unfurling in his lungs, settling contentedly there. He kept his lips on her, one minute, two minutes, almost three, then pulled back, gasping for air. His heart hammered desperately, his vision blurred. Losing his balance, he toppled backwards off the gurney, felt ribs crack, when he hit something that jutted from the cold floor, though he couldn't quite think what it might be, and it didn't really bother him all that much.

Nicholas's limbs twitched uselessly as he convulsed, but bit by bit, his body stilled as the cure took hold. For your bonus episode, creepy presents, whatever you do, don't stick out your tongue for snowflakes. Written by polonium poisoning and narrated by Megan McDuffie. Before the great incident, my brother and I were such good friends. No one would guess how a single afternoon, a single trivial action would doom our family forever.

Brandon, Bethany, come inside. It will start to snow and I don't want you getting sick. Mom's tone was always polite, but final. Still, as she turned her back to attend to some other task, we stalled so we could stay outside until the first snowflake fell. Before that day, I always thought that it was beautiful, how every single snowflake is unique. Now that I know why, I'm sick to my stomach,

and I absolutely despised the mere possibility of being near snow. I had no way of knowing or avoiding it, But I wish I did. Brandon didn't deserve to seal his fate at only 13. We both stuck out our tongues to see who would get to lick the first snowflake of the season, foolishly and innocently. God, I wish it had been me. At least it wouldn't be that snowflake.

I was closer to others, so I'd probably get a harmless one. Brandon loved to win. He laughed at the accursed thing with gusto as it melted on his stomachs. tongue, and he immediately collapsed, his mouth foaming. The ride to the hospital was incredibly unpleasant. Mom screamed at me for not looking after my brother, despite the fact that I was only 15 months older than him and also a kid, then screamed at dad who refused to drive unsafely as the road started getting icy and slippery. Everyone was a nervous wreck, but we made it. Despite the situation being very scary, it was just an average seizure and bring to the

Brandon was fine after a short period of time, but he was never the same after that day. Firstly, Brandon started claiming to be a man named Jose Messiah's and was suddenly fluent in both Spanish and Portuguese, two languages I'm sure he know no more than five words from, and he'd curse and use aggressive slang the whole time. Around the same time, my brother started complaining about his wimpy and small body, and that it would be useless to carry out his revenge. Brandon became obsessed with getting stronger and fitter, and I'd often find him doing push-ups in the living room

when I got up to fetch a glass of water. I can't wait to go up and go after those bastards, he often muttered under his breath, and when he noticed me, he called me a nosy brat to sugar-coated. But it was just the beginning. Brandon suddenly became ill-tempered and even violent, He'd constantly have screaming matches with our parents, and they always ended with broken objects. Before the seizure episode, he was no saint, of course, but his teenage angst used to be pretty mild.

It was six months after the snowflake incident when Brandon had his worst outburst, and it ended with him threatening dad with a kitchen knife. Mere two days later, he almost killed our 20-something neighbor over his dog pooping in our yard. By then we had no idea of what was happening. Maybe his brain got messed up after the seizure? Maybe it was demonic possession? I was not ready to find out. It was a little of both.

After the situation with the neighbor, our parents decided to put Brandon in a psychiatric hospital. It was sad, but he was a danger to himself and everyone around him. We didn't want him to end up in juvie or dead, so this was the lesser evil. I never saw someone kick and scream as dead. Desperately as Brandon did when he realized where he was being sent to, it took seven nurses to restrain him.

I remember feeling so scared for not recognizing my sweet, normal brother in that person. Maybe he had somehow turned into this Jose guy. The confirmation came the first time we visited. Brandon was pale and dispirited, but he looked like a boy his age, not like some older, vicious man. Our parents seemed relieved by his improvement, but my brother's eyes were filled with terror as they made plans to bring him home. He asked to talk to me privately, and mom and dad complied. Bethany, I can't leave. You have to convince them to keep me here forever.

Brandon seemed to be truly scared. But you're better, I replied. No, I'm not better. It's just that the medicine they gave me is shutting down Jose for now. As soon as he manages to wake up, I'll be vicarious. violent again. Maybe he was messing with me. Maybe he had lost his mind. But I knew my brother. I knew when he was lying. And I knew when he was just impressed by something his own mind had created. It was neither. This guy has possessed my body. He died thinking of revenge, of coming back to destroy his killers.

Brandon explained, he's done awful things, and he was an evil guy. His enemies murdered him. How do you know? I ask. Because he's living inside of me, Bethany. Jose knows everything about Brandon and vice versa. How did he possess you? I don't know. Tell me what else you know about him. Let's think together how we can stop him.

His face said it was fruitless, but Brandon believed me enough to give it a try. He told me personal details a boy could never make up, then gave me the piece of information that made everything make sense. Jose Messiah's had died on the day of the first snowfall right after the snow started. I don't know what made me connect the dots, but I had a bizarre clue about the snowflakes. So I searched on obscure blogs and forums

about snowflakes causing possession by a dead person. Crazy, I know. I was possessed by Michael Jackson when he died. When he got tired and left, I suddenly stopped being the best at moonwalking. Do you guys know how I can bring him back? I miss being the life of the party. My daughter is Lady Die reborn. Can I sue the royal family into paying alimony?

My neighbor claimed that his son was the reincarnation of Maltzy Tong. That's what he said when asked why he killed his own child. His attorney pleaded insanity, of course. Most of them seemed like a dead end. and they didn't even mention snowflakes. Only strange happenings, always depicting famous and important people. There's a dead woman living in my body after I ate a snowflake.

Here's everything I know about it. I clicked it. It was the only one that didn't seem utterly ridiculous. Hi, guys. I've been living with a second soul inside my body, or if you prefer it, a second mind inside my mind. Ever since I swallowed a snowflake two years ago, I've been both Kate, me, and Maria, the dead woman.

She's pretty nice, and she accidentally died while performing an experiment on herself about the afterlife. She was fiercely clawing her way back to life so she could tell her peers that after you die, you become a snowflake, while still retaining your memories and basically your whole personality, ambitions, and tastes. We don't know what happens after you melt, but Maria thinks you peace. faith away and probably return to some larger hole. Again, we're not talking religion. Maria is great, and my grades improved so much since I gained access to her knowledge. In fact, Kate alone would never be able to write this much. Here's what Maria says about the

snowflakes. Every snowflake is unique because every person was unique in life, even if they were pretty similar to someone else. All snowflakes are kind of the same. You have to be careful swallowing snowflakes because those with a strong will to go back to life are able to use the new body, yours, as a host to their wishes. You have to be extra careful because most people like that are the bad ones. They will control your body and use it as they please while you were trapped and unable to do anything. Unlike Maria, who kindly asks me to do stuff for her, she just wants to spread her knowledge. The other person can go away when they please.

Regular people who are adamant about going back usually just need to give one last message to their loved ones and are ready to leave for good. While every snowflake is a mind and soul, not all snowflakes have a will strong enough to subdue yours. When you become a snowflake, you don't necessarily fall where you used to live. It can be anywhere, as long as it's snowing. There are some places where it snows almost the whole year, so don't worry. There will always be snow somewhere. the host can't get rid of the parasite snowflake but some medications can put the parasite snowflake to sleep for a while i immediately messaged kate slash maria despite her post being from five years earlier no one commented on it on the forum so she was more than happy to message me back to talk about it after i shared all the details i knew about my brother maria i assume said she was really sorry but i had to kill my brother before he became an adult or else his body would be used for nasty things.

How do you know that? I typed. The name is familiar and yours isn't the first real case to ask for my help, she immediately replied. Have you killed someone? Yes, but he begged for it. I swear. Maria's words were stuck in my head for a long time. But like any normal person, I hope, I couldn't bring myself to kill my own brother just because someone I barely knew said so. maybe he could stay isolated and safe on medication so Jose would never wake up again that however was too optimistic when brandon came back home jose woke up as soon as the effects of his medication wore off angrier than ever

he knew that he'd been neutralized and that he had to be cautious around our parents so it didn't happen again so he became good at pretending to be our nice normal somewhat childish brandon so good that I even forgot that he wasn't. Jose slash Brandon was only caught two years later because he was careless, but at home he gave no signs of anything being wrong. He was dedicated to school, loved video games, and acted like a regular boy his age. But by then, he was already an arms dealer,

the local drug lord, and repeat arsonist, Jose's favorite way to get rid of the competition. Mom, dad, and I were left. that he never directed his anger towards us. We'd been under the same roof as a dangerous criminal, defenseless as little lambs. Brandon was still a minor, but his crimes were far too serious. Our parents gave all their earthly possessions away to pay for a good lawyer, which meant a chance for Brandon to just go back to the mental ward. A chance that was given and wasted, as Jose managed to get rid of his pills for a few days and tried to escape. We were called in the middle of the night with such urgency

that my parents thought he had died. That was a hurtful moment. The last straw for me was when dad, his face 20 years older and only three, asked crying why Brandon was being like that. But he wouldn't just accept to be cared for. What else he could do to protect him from himself? Jose simply grinned and replied that the next time he was home, he would know how to use the kitchen knife. As soon as we returned home, I messaged Kate slash Maria. I have to kill my brother. Kate slash Maria promised to help as long as I became her business partner. I don't understand. You will soon enough. I accepted her terms. She couldn't possibly be more dangerous than Jose. The very next day, she took a plane to the city where my family lived.

we wouldn't be safe to give the details of our modus operandi, but despite me being just a scared 17-year-old, we managed to kill him. On the same day that Brandon died, Bethany went missing. I know that our parents didn't deserve this much misfortune in misery and all at once, but I hope someday they will understand that I did what was best for everyone, including my beloved little brother. Bethany was never found, and with another name, and another face, I became Kate-slash-Maria's business partner. As you probably guessed, we are the only people qualified to deal with other troublesome snowflakes. There are demons walking among us, and they often seem beautiful and harmless. You don't always get to know before it's too late,

but you can avoid needless suffering and spare my partner and I from a hard, thankless job. So whatever you do, don't stick your tongue out for snowflakes. You never know who you're swallowing. For more information on this podcast, including how to submit your own story for consideration, please visit creepypod.com. You can also follow us at creepypod on social media and YouTube. All stories told on this podcast are done so through, creative common share-a-like licensing or with written consent from the authors.

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