MicroHorror

The ship was waiting when she reached the launch site, shining pale in the light of the full moon. She took her place at the end of the queue of prospective passengers, which seemed to snake for miles towards the distant hatch. As she stood in the chill night air, she observed her fellow travelers. Most seemed to be solitary, but there were a few knots of friends or ad hoc families. All, like her, were free of baggage or other encumbrance. Once aboard the ship, they would nestle inside stasis chambers and sleep dreamlessly while the ship moved silently through empty space. The voyage would take centuries, if not millennia, the planners had said, but time meant nothing to those waiting to board. Only the destination mattered: that distant, unimagined planet where the vampires could dwell without fear, free from the dreadful light of Earth’s burning sun.

My parents say it’s not there, but I know it is. I can hear it breathing under my bed. I see its shadow across my dresser. And I know that if I get out of bed, it will grab my ankle in its clawed, scaly hands, drag me under, and eat me. But tonight, I won’t let it get me. I’ll be ready for it. After Mommy and Daddy are asleep, I sneak out of bed. I jump into the middle of the room and run out, so that it doesn’t have time to grab me. I tiptoe down to the kitchen and grab the butcher knife that Daddy left in the sink. Now, it can’t hurt me. Back in my bed, I sit up straight, watching and waiting in the darkness. Finally, I hear a noise from under the bed. There’s a rush of air as something jumps out of the darkness. I see eyes, and sharp teeth shining in the moonlight. I stab it with the knife as hard as I can, and it makes a noise as the knife goes in. But monsters are supposed to growl, and this monster doesn’t growl. It makes a noise that sounds more like a surprised bark, and then a gurgling whimper. And the bloody shape on my bed is much smaller than I thought monsters were supposed to be.

He was a thin cigarette butt of a man, just waiting to be extinguished in the ashtray of life. But he had a mission, by God. Gotta protect, gotta serve, patience, that’s all it took. He spat and waited, a tune emerging from his toothless grin.

A mile away, another man crawled out of the sewer pipe, furtively looked around, ran across the highway. His mouth was dry and cotton-filled. He lacked even the energy to sweat while the desert sun beat down in mockery. Despite the rush to keep moving, he stopped suddenly, a decrepit body with his cracked lips, calloused feet and raw red countenance. He heard the siren song. It sounded like the Star Spangled Banner. Was that his beloved Guadalupe ahead? He willed his body to move.

No, it was just another Minuteman whistling and patiently awaiting his game.

There’s something in my room. I don’t like it. It’s big and ugly, and it keeps looking at me. I try to ignore it, but every time I look back, I see it staring at me again with its big ugly eyes. I haven’t seen it move yet, but it’s watching me and drool is dripping out of its big ugly mouth from between its big ugly teeth. It makes me angry, and I want it to go away. I look straight at it to show it I’m not afraid, but it just looks back at me. I shout loud, but it doesn’t get scared. I have to hurt it. I raise my right hand, and for the first time, it moves, raising its own big ugly hand to stop me. Its hand is covered in big ugly scales and bumps, and it has big ugly claws, but I’m not afraid of it. Before it can attack me, I swing my arm and hit it as hard as I can. There’s a loud noise, and my hand hurts a lot. My hand is bleeding. This makes me even more angry, and I look back at the thing, but it’s gone. I don’t know where it went. There’s nothing in my room now but a lot of shiny sharp things on the floor where the thing used to be. But at least the big ugly thing is gone, and if it ever comes back in my room, I’ll be ready for it.

“Time! Time!”

“Aw, man, why’d you call time? I was gonna score!”

“Look at the ball. It’s wrecked.”

The boys gathered around the ball. Sure enough, it was ruined. Countless kicks had left it a shapeless, pulpy red mass, and there didn’t seem to be a single remaining tooth.

“Guess we’d better go get a new one, then.”

“Guess so. You got your knives?”

“Right here.”

“Let’s go.”

Fourteen children had disappeared that summer, and the bodies were turning up one by one. Nine-year-old Angelina Horowitz, ten-year-old Robert Jameson and seven-year-old Hyung Kyun Park were only a few of the victims whose corpses had been discovered tortured, mutilated, dismembered, and left to rot in garbage bags discarded in ditches. Most of the children were still missing, including the first to vanish, nine-year-old Tom Purleigh. Hope was dwindling fast.

Inspector Susan Marshall had analyzed the available evidence and followed it to the thick woods near town. A crude structure, nothing more than a few sheets of plywood leaned against a tree, caught her eye. The roof was low, far too low for a fully grown adult, and she had to stoop to look inside. Blades of all sizes, hammers, pliers, a handsaw, all covered in blood and dried gore. But among the gruesome weaponry were brightly colored comic books, trading cards, action figures, even a portable video game system. A boy’s prized possessions. Realization dawned in slow horror, and in the split second before the knife plunged into her back, she knew exactly where Tom Purleigh had been all these months.

I try to crawl away but it just keeps up behind me. Its gaping maw keeps reaching for me, and I just keep crawling. I can see a light at the end of the crawlspace. Dear god, its eyes are as black as coal. I can’t look back; I have to keep going. I’m almost there. Wait, it’s a dead end, it can’t be. It has me, I feel its cold teeth wrap around my ankle. I can feel myself slipping, I grab onto everything; anything that I can. My nails are digging into the wood finishing, all I see are teeth and then I hear it: a crunch, like my bones snapping. All I can see is black; all I can hear is a hollow rumble. Now I realize that this is my fate, this is where I am going to stay, forever.