MicroHorror

“Shh…” Seated on the edge of her bed, he held his four-year-old daughter, gently smoothing her hair. “Shh… There’s no such thing as monsters.”

“There are, Daddy!” she sobbed. “Mommy told Aunt Maria there’s a monster in the house.”

“No.” He laid her back on the pillow, cooed soothing words, and held her hand until she slept.

His wife stood at the kitchen sink washing the dinner dishes.

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” The flat of his palm slashed her cheek. “Where do you get off telling her about monsters?”

“I didn’t–”

“There’s… no… such… thing… as… monsters!”

His fists underscored each word.

 The bonsai lives alone on a table that sits in front of a bare window in a dark, dingy, dull apartment on the west side of an urban city. It bears silent, uninterested witness to the humanity that passes it by every day. Anger, apathy, passion, and pride…all these things are on display in front of the bonsai’s window at one time or another. The bonsai cares neither for the city’s politics nor its economy, and its populace does not move the bonsai to sway or sigh any more than the fragile, intermittent wind from the small split in the window pane in front of it.

It does care about the garden across the busy street from its dank, cavelike existence; a small slice of greenery in the asphalt jungle. The bonsai envies the trees, shrubs, and flowers that live there, basking in the scant sunlight, drinking the occasional, polluted rain, and soaking up the admiration of the people who bother to look that way as they wander by. It even envies the occasional careful attention paid to the garden by the men in the long, dark coats who come and dig up the plants and then carefully put them back exactly as they were after they bury the bodies beneath them.

“But what will we use for bait?” I asked, looking over the endless expanse of the lake, silvery now in twilight. Michael stared at me wordlessly, shivering. Nothing stirred but the water lapping the side of the skiff, and of course, Janice, my pet turtle, slowly crawling into the folds of my clothes for protection.

When something’s dead, it should stay dead. But Clem’s rotting corpse didn’t know that, I guess. Moving too fast for something so long dead, his grayish, mottled hand grabbed Holly’s arm. She screamed like the devil himself had hold of her, and maybe he did.

Luckily Clem had trapped us in the boathouse. It offered the only weapon that might possibly stop him. Finding the flare gun, I broke it open, dropped in a cartridge and aimed the pistol directly at Clem’s decaying chest. Holly realized my purpose and somehow twisted free of his slimy grasp for just a moment. It was all I needed.

“Go back to hell,” I whispered hoarsely in my best Clint Eastwood impression.

I fired the charge, which exploded in bright magnesium light. Clem became a walking Roman candle, screaming and swearing like the damned soul he was. He staggered out of the boathouse, down the old dock, until his blackened, smoldering skeleton collapsed, crumbling into dust only inches from the lake.

I held a shaken, stunned Holly close to me. One hell of a first date.

Tommy wasn’t even sure if it was a pet shop. Most of the animals looked dead, or at least, really sluggish. He picked out something that resembled a Golden Retriever puppy, except with one big muscular paw instead of four. He liked it because he noticed its sole luminous eye followed him no matter what. He carried it to the counter with some difficultly, since it was surprisingly slippery.

“I don’t think it’ll suit your taste,” the owner said. He twirled his fingers around, but some screeches from nearby parrots drowned out the rest of what was said.

Later, at home, Tommy tried to feed it some lettuce, but it would have none of it. The leftovers from his own dinner weren’t regarded any better. A little foolishly, Tommy offered the beast his own finger, and immediately, it bit down hard.

An incredible stifling pain shocked Tommy, not just in his finger, but all over his body, like a large hand gripped him. He was sure he had been poisoned. But as suddenly as it came it disappeared. Tommy felt fine, if not a little dizzy. He tried to extract his finger, but it was caught in the perfectly round, toothed mouth.

“Come on, buddy, let go,” he pleaded.

Impossibly, a foreign voice boomed in his head. “TRADE,” it said.

“Is that you?” he asked. But, again, for no apparent reason the little beast let go.

Three days passed, and Tommy couldn’t find any food Trade liked. “What do you want, Trade?” he asked. Trade’s breathing was shallow. His great luminous eye was sunken, dehydrated. He barely moved. In desperation, Tommy resolved to offer Trade his finger again, despite the pain it caused.

“Maybe you’ll tell me what you want, huh?” he said, prodding the orifice of his little furry mouth, feeling the tiny teeth clenched together.

All in all, the pain wasn’t as bad as last time; pins and needles rippled through his body, and then a similar release of pressure.

“Can you speak?” Tommy said, not even sure now, if he had heard anything properly the last time. “Say something, Trade.”

“TRADE,” the voice announced.

“Trade what?” Tommy asked. “Is that something you eat?”

“TRADETRADETRADETRADETRADETRADETRA–” The voice boomed ceaselessly in his head.

“Okay, trade,” Tommy agreed, not really thinking, not really knowing if he was saying Trade’s real name or not. Maybe, it occurred to him, that was his real name. Then it happened again, the enormous hand gripped him, this time squeezing until he passed out.
 
Tommy awoke, feeling stiff, strange. His throat was parched, and a hazy circle of light, like a smattering of stardust surrounded his vision. He could barely move. He looked up in horror to see an immense chin. He realized he was being carried in someone’s arms, some giant. The face tilted down towards him, and spoke to him. But he couldn’t hear anything, there was no sound at all. He was deaf. And to his surprise, he recognized the face that was looming so large above him. It was his own.

He now inhabited Trade’s body. He saw the large paw lying beneath his aching mouth, moved it under his own power. In response to his squirming, the enormous hand squeezed him, and pushed him rather cruelly along a cold countertop.

On the other side of the counter’s horizon was the familiar face of the pet shop owner, now grotesquely large, swimming in the fragmented sparkles of his new vision.

He looked back to his own enormous face in desperation, trying to catch his old eyes, wanting to plead with them. But instead, in an odd moment of recognition, his old face looked towards the owner, and even though he couldn’t hear what was being said, he read his large lips.

“No,” they said, as his heads both old and new, shook in refusal. “It suited my tastes. But would you give me something in trade?”

Autumn was my favorite time of year, snatches of gold, tangerine, and red. Cool, crisp images of color, flames of wood fires added warmth and the spice of rich brown cider. Color still comes in snatches, bits and pieces of red, red sweats, red blood, and red fire truck. Sometimes, for a long time, all I can see is red. When I start to see other colors I sit on the floor and rock as if the engine were still there. I bang my head against the wall until red flows hot behind my eyes and blocks out the gray and yellow bits of brain, and the faces of woman and child vanish.

I don’t want to think about the faces. The faces show up in my dreams and I bolt upright in bed screaming. When the world is only red I don’t have to see silver-white hair glistening in the morning sun. I don’t look into the eyes of certain death. I don’t hear the horn of my locomotive blasting or the sound of steel wheels on steel rails. Here where everything is red flashing crossing lights and red striped shirts the horror is distant, unreal. The horror flies up quickly, smacks me hard.

Her face makes it real. I don’t know their names. I don’t know what brought them to the rail crossing, the woman in her red jogging suit, the child on his red bike. Something inside me wants to know what made her stand there watching the train approach. What caused her to choose that moment–that way to die?

I don’t want to think about the child, small fingers of his hand clutching the grated lower step of the locomotive. I almost stepped on those fingers dismounting the engine, almost stepped on that little hand… my head thumps the wall over and over again until thinking stops and the world turns warm and red again. I want to stay where it is warm and red forever.

Hot tears don’t well in my eyes in the red place. I will myself to stay here where I don’t feel the rocking train, or hear clicking steel wheels on steel rails. I will stay here forever. Then I won’t feel the impact of that old woman in red, I won’t see her blood spatter on my window, or drown in the fear in that little boy’s eyes.

Joel flicked the remnants of a Winston off the second-story balcony. He could hear the single mom below bitching in the corner of his mind: “My kids play down here; put your trash where it belongs.” Fucking cunt. She should not have spawned those worthless grease stains.

As he rose and turned to go inside he drew a half-empty pack of smokes from his breast pocket and tapped out a fresh Winston. Lighting up as he strode through the open sliding glass door, he decided it was finally time. Time for resolution, time for redemption, time for satisfaction, time for liberation. Joel strode easily along the path through dirty laundry, beer cans, and old microwave food cartons to the closet by the front door. He had gone over the mission a thousand times in his head. He grabbed the Army rucksack, packed months ago, and the black case.

Exhilaration, anticipation, accumulation of preparation. Joel stopped at the door, looked back, and flicked the half-gone Winston onto a pile of trash. Giggling, he easily descended the steps and quickly crossed the lot, heading toward his beat-up AMC Matador. He didn’t even break stride as he fired up a Winston, smiled around the cig, and flipped off Eugene the 78-year-old war veteran that lived three doors down.

Joel flung the ruck into the great expanse of a back seat and carefully set the black case in the rear floorboard. Hopping in the captain’s chair, he hit the start button; the key ignition quit working years ago. The 304 revved and left a one-tire peel-out mark as the yellow barge lurched into the street.

Heading to the core of town, to the clock tower overlooking the schoolyard, to the cliché that would be the final chapter of his pile-of-shit life, Joel envisioned the coming events. He was trying to adjust his jeans to free up room for his sprouting boner when out of nowhere a big yellow blur entered the left side of his vision. Then thunder rocked the car, immediately followed by strange silence. Joel felt nothing as he lay on the seat, watching blood pool.

The paper said he must have been heading to the gun club across town, where he had been a member for ten years, when the bus loaded with nuns suffered brake failure and smashed into his car, killing him on the scene.

Through the bars of my second-story window I saw him. At first he was only a strange shadow lurking behind the big oak. Slowly over time he revealed more of himself. Then yesterday without warning he suddenly stepped from behind the massive trunk, his bottomless black eyes staring menacingly through greasy, unkempt bangs. Then all was dark. I awoke to the bright white light of the padded room. I couldn’t tear my mind from those eyes. I craved them like a wino craves a bottle, guts wrenching and mind whirling. Then after my daily injection I awoke back in my room. After gathering my wits I clumsily gain my feet. I slowly stagger towards the window. My heart pounding like a war drum drowning out any chance of outside sound and… he is there! As his eyes lock on mine I feel the cold chill of Auschwitz, the warm embrace of a beautiful woman, a mother’s love for her newborn and hatred in its purest form. I feel all of everything; pure, whole and almighty. I writhe against the restraint of my jacket, pressing my face against the Plexiglas so hard my nose begins to bleed, but it is a minor wave in a sea of sensation. I uncontrollably orgasm as my mind becomes clear and mitigated. Beautiful colors fill my vision. As the smell of mountain wildflowers embraces me I hear soft surf lapping over warm sand. All fades to darkness as I drift into extinction.

“Can you gift-wrap that?” he asked.

The teen-aged clerk gaped at him. “This?” She swallowed. “Not really. We’re mainly a hardware store. Try the drugstore down the street. They sell wrapping paper.”

“Good idea. I can buy a card there, too.”

“Kind of an unusual present, isn’t it?”

He smiled. “It’s for Mother’s Day. Mother’s an unusual woman. Unique, really.”

“She must be.” The clerk rang up the sale. “That’ll be four-seventy-seven with the tax.”

She handed him the bag into which she’d put his receipt and the box of rat poison, and Norman Bates headed to the drugstore.