Dirk

 Dirk awoke with a start. As he glanced at the clock, he noticed it was already 4am. He had been tossing and turning in his bed all night, the weight of his thoughts unbearable.

The nightmare seemed even more real, as he had just received an official diagnosis that afternoon.

He had cancer.

After finally drifting back to sleep, Dirk woke up again and the first thought that entered his mind was the prognosis. He had never thought he would be part of a diagnosis like this. Despair and helplessness filled his heart.

He tried to compose himself, to remain optimistic but his thoughts kept dancing around in his head, each one worse than the last. Then, when he finally closed his eyes again, he was overcome with terror.

Images of his life on borrowed time] flashed before him. He felt the grip of an unseen force in his chest squeezing out every bit of life he had left.

As his breathing became quicker, harder, he heard a faint moaning sound. His heart raced. He opened his eyes to see what could be causing this sound. He expected to find an intruder in his room, but what he saw was even more nightmarish.

In front of him, his skin and clothes had been replaced with a menacing black mass that bore a disturbingly familiar shape, a human figure. The figure shifted and twisted before him, its hunger for life obvious, and he let out an ear-piercing scream.

The figure was cancer, and it had come to take his life.