MicroHorror

Julie calls her new-found friend Alicia on the telephone. She can’t wait to finally meet her in person. Alicia is everything that she would want to have in a friend: personality, looks and a great attitude towards life.

They met online in a chat room, and Julie has become somewhat obsessed with her. She has never met anyone quite like her, and it is an obsession that she can’t let go out of her life. She convinces Alicia to meet her in a quaint, little restaurant in the hills. Alicia arrives before Julie, and the waiter sits her at a table in the corner. She sits and waits for the girl that she has met online, the person that she believes is a loving, compassionate friend. Julie arrives looking absolutely beautiful, wearing a black leather trench coat, and she finds Alicia and walks over to her table. She is just as beautiful as she has imagined, and she introduces herself and they sit down and enjoy a wonderful dinner.

Alicia awakens gagged, in a cold, dank, confined space that seems to be a trunk of a car. Her head is throbbing and she is discombobulated. She can hear the fumbling of keys, as she tries to gain awareness of her surroundings.

The trunk opens up and her eyes slowly adjust to the dim light that appears over her. She can see a dark figure standing in front of her; it almost seems to be smiling and pleased with her, which is quite disturbing to her… considering the condition she is in.

Julie smiles at her new-found friend, as she slowly lifts her out of the trunk. She gently lifts her out of her confinement, and apologizes for any discomfort the ride may have given her.

“I’m really sorry that I had to treat you this way, Alicia. You really are a great girl, you are everything that you said that you would be. I am very pleased with the openness and honesty that you have shared with me. I would do anything to be just like you…”
 
Alicia’s eyes grow huge like saucers; she sees the craziness in Julie’s eyes.

The last thing that Alicia sees is the large teeth as she peels her face off.

If it weren’t for bad luck, Doug wouldn’t have any luck at all. He was six months behind in mortgage payments, every creditor in town wanted a piece of his ass, and yesterday his wife left him–for a trapeze artiste.

As he sat staring out the front window of his low-rent store-front office, wondering how he could skip town without a trace, a tall man with long dark hair and a scraggly beard marched in. He wore a tattered medieval costume, complete with a ridiculous sword, and carried a large bag.  

“Are you Douglas of Morgan?”

“Who wants to know?”

“Kilauashu of Telor seeks his advice and assistance.”

“Okay, Shu, I’ll play along with you. I’m Doug Morgan and I have to say this is a new low, even for a process server.”

“Your help is needed. Money is no object.”

Doug stood up. “You have my full attention. What is it you need?”

“An Army of Darkness.”

Doug sat down. Same shit luck. A fucking kook. He lifted the phone receiver to have his secretary call the police, then remembered she’d quit.

“Sir Douglas, I need an answer.”

The man blocked the only exit from the office. Time to play along with Mr. Delusional. Doug calculated how much he owed, and doubled it.

“The price of army recruitment has gone way up this year, what with all the conflicts in the Middle East. Good warriors are hard to find. This will take a huge ad campaign- radio, television, billboards, internet, buses, subways, the whole shooting match- to scare up some new, fit soldiers. For an Army of Darkness, I’m guessing it’s going to cost at least one million dollars–US currency.”

“I’ll give you $500,000 today and the rest when you’ve recruited ten thousand soldiers.” Shu dropped the canvas sack on the desk.

Doug opened it, half-expecting an exploding paint can. The bag was filled with thousand-dollar bills. Boy, this guy was over the top. Doug looked out the window. Where was a cop when you needed one? He looked back at Sir Nuts-A-Lot.

“Work with me, Shu. Who will you be battling?”

“Kogonazglor, the Ultimate Evil of the Dugou.”

“Okay, sure, that explains everything.”

The man smacked his hand on the desk. “Sir, do you mock me?”

“Listen–I’ve never hear of you or your evil empire. You walk into my office in a costume, for God’s sake, and hand me a bag of counterfeit money. Is this some kind of setup? Because I’m having a really shitty week. In fact, you could say my whole life is one gigantic toilet bowl–and I don’t need any more crap!”

Shu reached out, grasped Doug’s hand, and yanked him across the desk until their foreheads touched. Doug closed his eyes, and prayed the man wouldn’t kill him–or kiss him.

The thunder of hooves rumbled in his chest, and the smell of sweat, hay, and manure filled his nose. Visions of men on horseback, waving swords, screaming, throwing flaming torches, and chopping off heads burst into his mind. In the center of a circle of thatched huts, a woman wailed holding the body of a child. A giant in black armor strode over to her and rammed a spear into chest. Eyes wide open, blood pouring out of her mouth, she fell over, dropping the boy.

Doug gasped, pulled back, and stared into Shu’s blood-shot eyes.

“How soon do you want me to begin?” 

Lying on her stomach by the cellar door, she hums tunelessly, her pale and spindly fingers carelessly wrapping a tendril of hair around the ribs of a dead mouse.

Mother is screaming and baby sister tries to compete. Father paces outside of the room where women come and go.

No one remembers little Bella.

She lies in the dying sunlight, her naked thighs dirty, knees bent and feet swinging. With a huff and a sigh, she flings the carcass into the high grass. She’s the cat in the cupboard and mice bore her now. She wants to see her mother, wants to study her face as she struggles to force the parasite from between her legs. Bella wants to rub her mother’s hair between her fingers and feel it against her tongue.

She watches the moths approach the flame in the open window, their wings purple in the gloaming. Thistles surround her and she wants to run into their arms.

The willow is where she could go. The tree will offer her the solace of silence and the view she desires. She climbs one bare foot and one hand at a time, the knuckles of the gnarled tree biting into her soft flesh. Blood wells from her many wounds and her mother and the screaming are forgotten. Tilting her head as her feet dangle yards above the ground, crimson swells and breaks on her hand, running down her arm in a ragged line.

Such a wicked little girl, she thinks as a smile plays along her lips. She feels no pain as she brings her arm to her lips, her tongue seeking and finding the river of red. Copper bursts in her mouth as the sun sinks beneath the horizon.

The wind whispers through the trees, branches floating towards her face before retreating under her gaze.

The bow in her hair untangles and gently flutters to the ground. Hair falls in her mouth, shafts grind under her teeth.

If she stands on this bough and steps off, would she fly?

The moon rises behind her and the screaming continues into the night.

The dead leaves crunched under Silas’s feet as his heavy boots trod through them. He grunted as he switched hands to hold the rusted metal pail. The weight was too much, but he was at least glad that the well wasn’t much farther. The dying sun blinded his eyes as its last rays jabbed through the bare tree branches.

The well, a derelict monstrosity of broken brick and mortar, resided just ahead. Silas switched the bucket in his hands once more. The fact that the well had been dried up for some time didn’t bother him. The bucket he carried was meant to add to the well, not take from it. He couldn’t remember the last time water was drawn from there.

He heaved the bucket on the well’s rim, and dumped it. The blood inside the bucket gushed down the stained-red walls like it had been gored. Loose appendages toppled out from it like discarded scraps, and disappeared into the darkness. He tapped the bucket’s bottom a couple times, and tossed it into the woods. Flies buzzed around after being disturbed. Silas smiled. “Got more fer ya to eat,” he said. “Feller got too nosy about all you guys.”

He turned and strode away from the well. The walk back to the farmhouse took a while, and the darkness was waxing. He decided to take the long way back—the way that would take him by the edge of his cornfield. He crested the small hill that overlooked the field. The numerous scarecrows stood high above the corn stalks, resting on their wooden poles. Silas walked up to the closest one at the edge of the field.

A tree stump was adjacent to the scarecrow, and hacked into it was a scythe. Just like the Grim Reaper’s, Silas thought. He freed it from the stump and sliced it through the air. The rusted blade laughed a metallic snicker as it cut. Silas brandished it at the scarecrow’s burlap head.

“Still suspicious, officer?” Silas said.

A slight breeze jostled the scarecrow. Silas waved the scythe beneath its legs that ended in tufts of straw. He moved the scythe in a sawing motion past the arms that were capped with loose work gloves. Finally, he knocked the straw hat off of the scarecrow’s head, revealing the crude, tortured face he drew on the burlap.

He pulled the scythe back momentarily, before he swung it in an arc that stopped abruptly at the scarecrow’s neck. “No, not yet,” he said. “Not ’til the harvest.” With that, he spun and wedged the scythe into the stump. It was starting to get too dark, even with the pale moonlight.

He found his way back to the farmhouse, and got ready to go to sleep. After changing into his pajamas, he decided he wanted one last look at his newest scarecrow. He looked out to the edge of the field, only to discover an empty pole, and his scythe missing from the stump.

It was just a joke. A harmless, juvenile joke that Simon thought up while sitting through a boring lecture in Philosophy 101. Hilarious, Simon thought. Priceless. He stifled a laugh, covering the noise with a fake cough. Simon couldn’t wait to tell someone. Anyone. If Professor Maya ever finished talking.

When class was finally over, Simon ran into his friend Artie in the hallway. “Hey, Artie, listen to this joke. It’s a killer,” Simon bubbled with enthusiasm.

And it was. When Simon finished telling the joke, Artie got a sick look on his face, and then pitched forward, dead as the proverbial doornail.

Paramedics couldn’t revive him and couldn’t figure out why Artie died. Simon related the whole story to them as they slid Jay’s body into the ambulance, including his joke. Both paramedics and the driver dropped dead.

By the time the police showed up, a small crowd of students and faculty had gathered around the ambulance and bodies. The two officers pushed their way though the curious group, and Sergeant Randy Graves asked, “All right, who knows what’s going on here?” The other officer checked the bodies, looked up at Graves and shook his head.

So Simon told the whole story again which, of course, involved repeating his joke. The reaction was the same. Both policeman, and the entire college crowd of onlookers, fell dead like a small and bloodless massacre.

Since the police car’s radio was switched to exterior, most of the police officers back at dispatch headquarters died at their desks. When investigating officers played the audio tape to see what might have caused these bizarre deaths, they joined their deceased fellow officers.

A local mobile news crew picked up the police call, tapping directly into the police band, and broadcast Simon’s narrative, including his joke, as breaking news, live to Channel 5’s audience plus their affiliates nationwide. People within range of their television sets or radios dropped like flies, flounders, or any appropriate metaphor. Suddenly cars with dead drivers at the wheels crashed into other vehicles on the freeways, killing many of those surprised drivers and passengers.

At this point, Director James Ender, CIA, Special Weapons and Tactics, Wetworks Division, was informed of the odd and lethal situation spreading through New Jersey. Reviewing the faxed information carefully, he calmly ordered, “Bring me that kid. And tape his mouth shut.”

“Remember; remember the fifth of November…”

“Shh,” she says as the ash falls from the sky, the lyrical sweeping prose of the poem loud in her ears. “Can you hear?”

“I can,” he calls and his voice is sweet music to her ears. She grabs his hand, and they run through the empty streets, until he stops and pulls his hands from hers. “I can hear her!” He kneels and grabs a handful of gray dust, throwing it into the air above his head. “She’s close, she’s coming. Annie! Momma’s coming!”

She’s distracted by the red ribbon tying her hair back, one end trailing over her shoulder. The string is bleeding. Her pretty white dress is ruined. The stain spreads slowly, crimson blossoming over her heart and down her breasts. “No, no,” she says, shaking her head, pulling her hands away from the bloody dress. Horror overcomes her as she pulls the skirt away from her chest, needing, wanting, having to get it away from her skin.

And still he dances.

She looks up at him, opening her mouth to ask for help and then she notices the black smear creeping out of his mouth, bruising the skin around his lips.

He twirls in the deluge, his hair lighting with tiny pinpricks of light. They catch and grow, engulfing him in an orange glow. His laughter turns to screams as she murmurs over and over, “Remember, remember…”

*

Strange, how easily she grows accustomed to the screaming.

Sitting in the middle of the white room, she can hear it seeping through the walls, the vibrations echoing all around her as the colors swirl and darkness looms. She pulls her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them and rocks back and forth, feeling them, their pain, their madness.

His voice is louder than the others, and her hands shake as she clasps them to her ears. She wants it to stop, prays it’ll stop, but she can still hear their screams.  The smell of brimstone and ash clings to the back of her throat. She’s afraid to close her eyes, afraid of what will come whispering in the dark.

Finally, it becomes too much and her own raw scream rips from her throat. She collapses backwards, landing on the large sheets of paper surrounding her, the crinkling noise loud under her state-issued pajamas. Crayons and markers lay scattered about the room, colors she doesn’t need bleeding onto the white cushioned floor.

Manic now, the only colors she wants are red, orange and black. The colors of fire and ashes.

Oblivion comes quickly in the form of a little red pill and a needle to her vein. Her rocking intensifies until she hears the screaming no more and when she climbs to her knees, she’ll have no recollection of her hands seeking papers, each one uncovering a horror worse then the last.

Black for the mist she draws swirling over and over again like a tornado over the wide open mouth.

Red for the scarlet blood seeping though the walls, pooling on the cold concrete floor.

Gray for the matches clutched tightly in her hand.

Orange for the fire licking up her brother’s legs, his guttural screams as it engulfs his entire body.

I know a lot of kids don’t think it’s cool to like high school, but I disagree. Good old Wintersburg High is great, and there’s no place else I’d rather be. I have lots of great friends here, and I’m really grateful to my teachers for everything they’ve taught me.

Let’s take Coach Maxwell, for starters. He’s the best football coach in the state, and everyone knows it. Yeah, he runs us ragged at practice, but we’ve made it to the state championships six years in a row! You can’t argue with success. Go Wildcats!

But I don’t want you all to think I’m just some dumb jock, so I also wanted to say thanks to Dr. Burneigh. She teaches biology, and she’s one of the best, most interesting teachers I’ve ever had. She’ll answer any question you have in class, no matter how dumb it is, and she’s always patient. And I’m not just mentioning her because I want an A for the semester, either!

Mr. King, our drama teacher, is also terrific. He says I’m a natural actor, and he always encourages me. You know, it’s interesting to learn about the history of all the plays, but I love the improv exercises most of all–they’re lots of fun, and they teach me how to think on my feet.

But as everyone knows, school isn’t supposed to just be fun. It’s supposed to teach you skills that will help you succeed in real life, and that’s the biggest reason that I’m so grateful to all my teachers. Like, when I’m talking to girls, I need to seem real sincere and convincing, and I have Mr. King to thank for that. They really believe that my arm is broken, and I need help carrying stuff! Of course, once they’re inside the van, I usually need to overpower them, and the credit has to go to good old Coach Maxwell for helping me develop the strength and stamina I need. And then, when I’m all done and I’m ready to cut them up and take my souvenirs, well, let’s just say that things would be a whole lot messier if it weren’t for all the anatomy I’ve learned from Dr. Burneigh. She’s the greatest.

I love my high school. It’s where I learned everything I need to know.

Go Wildcats!

George walks into the darkness of his bedroom. His hand is lost, trying to click on the lights. For some reason, he cannot find the light switch. He stands in bewilderment as he searches the wall, looking for some light to this darkness.

He knows too well that if he sets foot into the room without light that the evil will surround him, and he may not be able to free himself of the horror that pursues him.

He glides his hand over the wall, where that switch used to exist… he feels a tug on his hand, as if someone or something grabs it and pulls it. He pulls back and holds on to the door hoping not to be dragged into the darkness where evil sits and waits…

He starts to scream and wail and fight his way out of the room that will eat him alive, if he lets it.

He struggles and pulls the knife out of its pouch from his pocket, and he starts to strike at the hand that tries to drag him into the darkness. The pain and thrill of his horror causes him to pass out.

He wakes up, in pain and bloody, from the night before.

Once again, his hand is chopped up in a bloody mess, but it still hangs on for the next time.

The tenth-floor window offered a view like no other. From it, Jasper could see the park, the pool, their parking lots… beautiful, meaningless tripe. The view stretched out for miles, with people scurrying like ants to their average, everyday problems. He hated them. Envied them their simplicity, their ignorance. As if their lives were so much more important… no one bothered to know him or his task. He was vital to their success, their lives, and the ingrates didn’t even bother. Only his friends knew him. They had given him his purpose.

The wind plucked at Jasper’s shirt, tried to pull him off. He screamed at it; it knew how important he was, and was trying to stop him. Toes clung to the balcony ledge as fiercely as fingers to the roof, and he watched for his target. Sunlight sought his eyes, blotting out his target until almost the last second: a blue and silver bus. He could hear its roar even up here, the king of the iron jungle. If he marked it just right, he could delay the slaughter, maybe even prevent it. He tensed… a little further… now!

The sensation was incredible. He whooped with joy as he fell, arms outspread. Ants looked up at his cry, and some answered. Jasper smiled as the bus got bigger and bigger–they finally understood! They screamed their appreciation, but the wind yanked him left and the bus lurched right.

“Failed,” his friends howled in his ears as his mouth opened in a horrified sob. Black asphalt filled his vision. “Failed, failed, failed…”

crunch

Spade parts earth
Time and again
Across his face
A wicked grin

Memories of friends of past
And those he’s met not yet
Soon the soil will be replaced
Though some will be left over…
Or so it is I bet

In the hole a friend will be
Laid in their final nest
Chances are you’ll not escape
But end up like the rest

He’ll invite you for some supper
Perhaps a spot of tea
Lured to his lair
It’ll be just you and he

Dinner comes and goes
You throw some brewskies down the hatch
The spider spins his web
You’ll be an easy catch

Soon the sky burns amber
As daylight starts to die
He invites you to the basement
Says he’ll get you high

Beer in hand descending
The dank and slippery steps
Eyes peering eagerly
Into the darkened depths

Fumbling in the darkness
A finger finds a switch
Then a click, the room is lit
Your eyes adjust, your throat is slit

A bottle falls to the floor
And drains on stains of red
Stains of those before you
Stains of those now dead