MicroHorror

Cooking the dog was a mistake.

I can’t believe I was even trying, especially given the experience of the post-skunk bath. Or the day I took Muffy to the ocean and she slipped her leash to bolt for the parking lot.

Even at the best of times, Muffy was not exactly a water dog. Just now, she leapt from the pot on the stove faster than she’d dropped in.

After turning off the burner, I called my mother and explained the situation.

“You’re doing what?”

“Cooking Muffy.” My mother could reduce me to a child, just by modulating the tone of her voice.

“Have you lost your mind? Boiling is for six-minute eggs. Are you cooking an egg?”

“No.” I tried not to mumble.

“You’re mumbling.”

Raising my voice, I annunciated clearly. “No.”

“I didn’t think so. You want to cook a Pomeranian, you use the oven.”

“Okay.”

“Take out the racks and pre-heat to 350 degrees.”

After placing the racks on the counter, I examined the oven dial. “There’s no pre-heat.”

“It’s a wonder you haven’t starved to death. Pre-heat just means to raise the internal temperature before setting the timer.”

“I can do that.” I did.

“Julia Child would almost be as proud as I am. Do you think you’re all set? The choir is coming over shortly for a pot-luck.”

“Thanks for all your help, Mom. Enjoy your social.” I disconnected.

Muffy stared at me from under a kitchen chair.

“Good news.” I emptied the pot into the sink, moving my face to the side so I wouldn’t suffer a steam burn. “Treat?”

Muffy’s ears twitched.

“Does fluffy Muffy wanna treat-see-poo?”

Her plumed tail rose and then wagged.

Recognizing I needed to earn her trust back in stages, I fetched the box of dry dog biscuits, stepping away once I placed one in front of her.

Muffy swallowed it whole.

“Chew, Muffy. Those hard things surrounding your tongue? Those are teeth.” Seeing the oven light had gone out, I opened the door and tossed a biscuit inside. “You don’t want to choke.”

The dog rested her head on her paws.

“Playing hard to get?” I retrieved the beef strips from the cupboard and sniffed one before tossing it into the oven. “Yummy, yummy.”

Muffy whined, the sound multiplied by tiny voices on the other side of the door.

Would my mother be glad to prove to her friends that I couldn’t live without her or be pissed if I interrupted her social to beg for advice?

“Muffy. Oven. Now.”

She yipped. Again the echo.

I glanced at the clock. “Look, Muffy, I promised the light of my life a fancy dinner this evening. You and I need to get a move on if I’m going to make that happen.”

Muffy scooted backwards.

“You can’t say I didn’t try.” I wagged my finger. “What did I tell you? Do you remember? I said that if you loved your puppies, you’d cooperate.”

I marched towards the door. “Well, you didn’t. I guess that means I’m making kabob tonight.”

On the Thirteenth Day of Christmas, my True Love sent to me…
Thirteen Witches dancing widdershins,
Twelve Ghosts of headless drummers drumming,
Eleven Wizards casting runes,
Ten Decaying Corpses dangling from a hanging tree,
Nine Keys to the Nine Gates of Hell,
Eight Virgins Maids for sacrificing–always a popular gift as the genuine article is so difficult to find at this time of year.
Seven Deadly Sins,
Six Hands of Glory,
Five Golden Pentacles.
Four Dragon’s Eggs,
Three Unicorn Horns,
Two copies of the Necronomicon–second editions, both bound in Cthulhu hide.
And a Cockatrice in a Pear Tree.

The drifter wandered onto campus on Christmas Eve. A few students remained despite the break, and laughter streamed from the windows of the Phi Delta sorority house. The very notion made the drifter’s stomach churn. All those girls, defiling the birthday of our Lord with their obscene music, and their frilly underwear, and their faces painted like whores… something would have to be done.

An unalarmed hardware store equipped him with hammers, pliers and other delightful instruments with which to carry out the Lord’s will. By sheer luck, the drifter also encountered an unsuspecting Salvation Army fundraiser, whose Santa suit would serve to conceal his identity.

As the evening wore on, the merriment inside the Phi Delta house showed no signs of abatement, and the drifter could stand it no longer. In the back of the house, he found an unlocked window. The drifter pried it open with ease, and entered.

From the kitchen, he could see the girls’ party in the living room. It was worse than he had imagined. They wore nightgowns which barely concealed their bodies, and they were dancing! Selecting a hatchet from his sack, the drifter advanced.

The girls turned to face him, surprised. Then a redhead smiled. “Hey, look, it’s Santa!”

“Santa!” cried a brunette. “What did you bring us?”

“Let’s find out,” said a blonde.

Later, as the girls licked the last of his blood off their fingers, they agreed that the visit from “Santa” had made this the best Christmas ever.

Hush, hush. Something evil’s on the stair. Hush, hush. There’s a killer at the door.

I knock once. I knock twice. I knock a third time. The great green iron door slowly glides open. Standing at the threshold is the Old Man. With a nod of his head, he welcomes me into his lair.

“You’ll take tea?” he asks, pouring me a cup from a small bamboo-handled oriental pot. The tea is green and has the aroma of roasted brown rice.

“Popcorn tea–Japanese genmaicha? So difficult to get hold of these days. Especially since the war,” I add. The Old Man smiles in acquiescence.

I take another sip, put down the cup and, palming Mother-of-Pearl in my right hand, flick the switch to unleash six inches of Damascened steel. In the palm of my hand, the switchblade’s handle feels warm, firm–and comforting.

“Do you keep the faith? Have you a god you’d like to pray to?” I ask the Old Man.

“Oh, yes,” he replies. “But I sacrifice to the Elder Gods. Ancient–and insane–deities, who still haunt dark forgotten places, to gibber and bay in the wind on moonless nights like this.”

I stab once. I stab twice. I stab a third time.

I pour more tea–it would be a pity to let it go to waste–and watch as a pool of blood seeps out from beneath the Old Man’s body. The blood trickles through a gap between two floorboards. I hear it fall and drip onto something far below in the cellar. How could the Old Man’s withered little body be filled with so much blood?

Hush, hush. Something’s on the stair. Hush, hush. Something’s at the door.

Mother-of-Pearl–its blade still slick with the General’s spent gore–sits waiting in my hand as the great green iron door slowly glides open.

In the window of the big wooden house across from Ricky, the girl sat doing her homework every day except Wednesday, which was horseback riding. Ricky watched this, memorizing her routine. He was 12, was suddenly getting feelings he wasn’t expecting, and had no idea how to go about this. He could always talk to his dad, though. So Ricky started to ask his dad about this stuff he was feeling. His dad smiled as he stopped Ricky from having to verbalize stuff that 12-year-olds had trouble talking about. His dad recounted all of his own nervous first loves in middle school. Sometimes the stuff he did turned out to embarrass him or get him in trouble, and other times he didn’t do anything. He didn’t regret any of the embarrassing stuff, but regretted every time he never did anything. So go do what your heart tells you, his dad said, no matter how much you’re worried by the consequences. Ricky gathered up as much courage as he could, and marched over to the girl’s house on a Wednesday. He poured the gas for the lawn mower up and down the wall, and lit it. He watched, swooning, as the whole wooden house burned away. First loves are wonderful, even for pyromaniacs. 

“Lords and ladies, your Renaissance Faire is as unrealistic as this plastic sword! The Dark Ages did not have snack bars every corner! And if by happenstance they did, you peasantry could afford neither the Mountain Dew nor the cheeseburger! None of you would be playing a human chess match; you wouldn’t even be able to read! You would toil 12 months of the year in the fields only for your feudal lord to snatch your harvest as tribute to himself! You had fourteen children just because you wanted one to live past five! What an unpleasant place to reside, you say? We agree! And by only seeing this loathsome Disneyland past, you misconceive the value of the modern world! Today is a paradise for peasants of yesteryear! And today, we will demonstrate this! Our star attraction this Saturday is a swarm of fleas, 10,000 strong, released at sunrise from the corpse of a plague-infected rat! Every itch you feel could be the beginning of your end! Every cough might be your lymphs hastening you to your grave! But rejoice! For as the plague killed one of every three during the Dark Ages, in the hallowed 21st century only one in seven will die! Thank your God for modern medicine, and be glad you live in such fortunate times!”

Since September 11, 2001, the Statue of Liberty has been closed to visitors. No field trip or tourist has taken the walk up her central spiral staircase and peered out the windows of her crown. The explanation is that she is not guaranteed safe from terrorists–which is true but is not the reason for the closure. During an intensive search for bombs immediately after 9/11, a copperish blob was found on the ascending banister, at about the statue’s waist. It was assumed to be gum, but in the days it took to officially declare the statue bomb-free, the blob had doubled in size. It was a forgotten curiosity until a guard several months later patrolled the vacant structure and found the blob as big as a football. Was this some fungus? It was growing like one, although it was pure copper. It soon grew to a point where the ascending staircase was blocked by the mass. The mayor’s office recommended the mass be chipped off and removed, but no one who climbed the staircase was willing to do so. As it grew, it developed features–a head at one end, and feet at the other. Nobody vocalized such an unrealistic thought as the Statue of Liberty being pregnant, or could even explain the logic behind it. But everyone who viewed the mass could tell you she was having a boy. 

Gideon Kingsley felt his hotel’s sheet, and for once was not appalled. He had been staying here a month in Budapest, and had put up with slow room service, massages by people who literally didn’t know their arse from their elbow, and toiletries that might as well have come from a janitor’s closet. The sheets rifled him the most. They claimed to be 500-thread-count Egyptian cotton, but anyone of his expertise could feel multiple-ply fibers that only contributed 250 or 125 true threads. He logged a daily half hour yelling at the staff to get their act together. The whole staff was immigrant, from Turkey or someplace, and he finally had some response when he began threatening to deport them. There’s Europe for you nowadays. But the threats were worth it, for now Gideon was feeling one of the silkiest sheets of his life. The new toiletries in the bath were of high caliber, in four big ornate jars that actually looked hand-made. And that knock on the door must be his massage. It was a new masseuse, an older woman who applied some wonderful tingling lotion. The hotel had gotten it right, finally. Gideon smiled, for the first time in a month, and looked up from the massage table. The whole staff of the hotel was here, staring at him silently. Gideon struggled to move, but the masseuse had him pinned, and gagged him with cloth. The sheets had been stripped from the bed, and were being ripped into lengths. An old man began chanting, and approached Gideon with a metal hook, closer and closer to his nostrils. Gideon shouldn’t have threatened to ship these people back to Turkey–although he had a feeling they weren’t Turks.

These eyes don’t feel right. They see things I’m not meant to see. Having sight took a lot of getting used to. A black world where my ears and fingertips ruled for so many years found it difficult to take a back seat.

It’s amazing what can be successfully transplanted nowadays. God must look down on us with so much pride.

I stare into the bathroom mirror at a face that is different from the one I’d imagined through touch. My hair is black and my eyes are green.

My eyes.

Donated tissue is usually anonymous but I know where my eyes came from. I’ve seen the crimes–seen the blood. I lift the knife up and rest the cool blade against my cheek. I’ve seen enough.

Shinzo never knew how freeing it was to have his house on fire. The firemen ran around him with hoses, but Shinzo didn’t care if every inch of it was incinerated. So much of his life was just maintaining possessions! He didn’t want to destroy them himself, but now that the only way to save them was to enter an inferno, he was content to let them burn. His old record albums, which he had been carting from house to house without even owning a record player any more, were no longer a concern. His college textbooks and old manga, which took up an entire room and were still in cardboard boxes, were no longer a concern. The heavy oak furniture carried up the stairs into the bedrooms, which he would invariably have to move back down when they moved next time, were no longer a concern. His wife came home from work, saw Shinzo standing by himself in front of the still-burning house, and began wailing. Shinzo tried to calm her down, to say that nothing inside the house mattered. His wife wailed even harder. She was still attached to the furniture, and the books, and the children.