MicroHorror

Kris twiddled the screwdriver, tongue peeping out of cherry-red lips. The bulb squeaked into place, and he gave it a gentle flick. It shuddered into life, reflecting back against black eyes. Wiring the bulb had been difficult, but it was worth it–a brilliant red glow lit up Rudolph’s glazed eyes. Satisfied, Kris patted the dog’s head, dropping him to his knees. He fell over and lay still as Kris straightened, groaning over a pot belly. “Time to cut down on the cookies,” he rumbled, chuckling. Rudolph, lying prone in a sticky black pool, didn’t respond. Shrugging, Kris turned to the next task.

“Well, look at you, Prancer,” he shouted, startling his pet. Prancer shivered and shrank back as Kris crossed the room. “You’re uneven!” Kris scooped up a nail gun as he passed the workbench. He held a crown of deer antlers steady, and shot a single nail down through the top. Prancer yelped once then collapsed. “Now you’re ready. We mustn’t disappoint the kiddies.” Ignoring the sticky black that slowly spread around Prancer’s head, Kris swung around to face the pen on the other side of the room. Sixteen dogs cowered behind chicken wire, whining and howling. Kris picked up a soldering gun and more antlers. He smiled brightly at the dogs, green eyes alight. “Now… who else wants to guide my sleigh tonight?” 

It was common practice to wait until rain before lighting scrap wood on fire. Raymond Ruthers had been doing it for 72 years, and hadn’t sparked up the countryside yet. His new neighbor Todd was from Indianapolis, so he didn’t have that sort of common sense in the blood. Todd had bought the farmhouse next door for the architecture, not the land. So Raymond told Todd about the rain trick, and Todd was appreciative. Those first couple burns of his were full of construction debris–Todd was putting in a darkroom of some sort, which he never asked Raymond to see and so Raymond never asked about. Whenever Raymond’s knee said it was going to rain, he would walk over to Todd’s house and tell him now was a good time for a burn, and Todd would always round up a huge pile of dead branches and detritus. Then Todd would disappear, drive off to who knows where. Raymond would go to sleep, and wake up in the middle of the night with Todd’s intense fire lighting up his bedroom. There were chemicals in there, photography stuff maybe, burning blue and green. Raymond couldn’t get within 30 feet of those burns–it was upwards of a thousand degrees. Raymond wasn’t going to tattle on his neighbor; he had some spilled solvents in his barn he wouldn’t want anyone poking round, either. When Raymond’s knee told of the next fire, he asked if he could throw in the bones of a deer he had recently butchered. Todd was fine with it, so the bones went in the wood pile. Again, it was lit in the middle of the night. The next morning, Raymond sifted through the smoldering ash, to find some remains. He couldn’t find a single trace from 30 pounds of bone. This was a very good way to dispose of a carcass. Raymond felt a ripple of fear running up his backbone. Todd knew this, too, and only drove to town when Raymond said it was safe to have a burn. 

In the blink of an eye, fate can change your whole world, affecting your stability and mental capacity. An idle mind is the devil’s playground. Don’t let your mind wonder. Keep it focused and in tone. While you are sitting back relaxing, your idle mind is still running hard, coming up with scenarios and consequences. Your thoughts and fears begin to grow. Have you ever sat back in a nice quiet room, no one else in the house, and started recalling crime stories from TV? Just really let your mind start to wonder and see how far it will go. Will every creak and sound be more noticeable? I’ve heard stories of people dropping babies in commodes or placing them in a trash bag and throwing them out on the roadside. When you see a trash bag in the middle of the road and run over it, do you think what could have been in there? Did some crazy person throw their baby in the street and you just ran over it? Do you go back and see what was in the bag or do you keep driving in hopes that no one could be so uncaring as to do something so terrible? You hear of crazy things that people do every day. You could’ve just become a murderer, accidental of course, but the same. You need to be careful of some fears. The more you feed into them, the more alluring they get. Wondering if you are really afraid, wondering if it would really be that bad, wanting you to get pulled into it to try it, thinking, would you would survive if you swerved in front of that truck or if it came at you? Don’t tread too heavy there. Some people say you worry too much. Do you really, or do you just open your mind enough to realize and know what this world is capable of? All right, so you do live your life in fear, but do you really know what all you have and haven’t done, or are you too scared to open the door? You start losing all emotions for common things. So why have fear when there is nothing to lose or gain? Somewhere in society we’ve gone astray, where you’re more worried about other people’s sick minds, and it’s polluting your own judgment. Some people say exposing your fear is a way of overcoming your fear. There is no overcoming fears. No escaping fears, only displacing them to other areas to release tensions. Grasping whatever helps to get through the initial fear. So the next time you come late at night and go to bed, you might want to walk around and make sure that your family is okay, because how do you know what had occurred, the lights are already off… well, good night, and hope you find your family alive in the morning.

The devil could read every thought on the planet at once, but he gave a particular focus to Gregori Ivanov. He ran a newspaper kiosk in Tbilisi, an unheated one. The winds would whip through his kiosk, disturbing the newspapers. “Stop, you pest,” he muttered to the wind in Georgian. When it rained, he took the papers inside the narrow booth so they’d stay dry, but people would assume he didn’t have newspapers and would walk by without giving him any money. “You’re worse than a month-long hangover,” he muttered. Whenever it wasn’t raining, the papers would go outside, weighed down by rocks, but in this wind even those rocks were threatening to be overturned. He was freezing to death in the dark kiosk, and his papers were going to be littering half the city. “God,” he muttered with the devil watching on the edge of ecstasy, “I’d sell my soul if this wind would stop.” The devil screamed with pleasure. The wind stopped. Gregori looked around, smiled a little bit, and continued on with his day. It would be 43 years before Gregori’s death, upon which he would get a big surprise.

The Greek island of Delos was pumice, the only rock that floats. It drifted across the Mediterranean, subject only to the currents. The island held 500 souls. The men fished the ever-changing variety that was found on its ever-changing shores, and never had to work more than the morning to feed their families. The wives were always with child, fed with fish. As their children grew taller, the island grew smaller. The weight of the growing population caused the island to sink, the waves to wash higher and higher on the Delos shore. The men told others on the island to sacrifice their children, but no father would do so with his own children. The island sank deeper into the Mediterranean until it found the seabed and halted. Delos would never move again. The fishing was not good, and the men had to work mornings and evenings just to survive. Years later, when the men were elders, the young asked them if the island really used to float. Yes, they said; Apollo in his wisdom tethered us to the ground. They could not remember when the island floated, but assumed it must have been a terrible life because it did not offer stability. 

Franz was never told what country the prison was in. He was in a nightclub with a girl in Munich, things were going well, and then she pulled a weapon on him. She called five men in riot gear from another room, who bound and gagged Franz. He was driven in a windowless vehicle for eight hours or so, to some stone structure in the mountains. His cell was small and dank and wet, with no cellmate. There was one small window, which was so inset in the wall that sunlight never entered the cell. There was a small bed, and a bucket, and once a week Franz was bound and gagged while guards emptied the bucket. He could hear echoes of other prisoners, but they all spoke Russian and Franz spoke no Russian. The only person he could communicate with was the guard who fed him. He spoke German, with a Romanian accent. He slid Franz a daily bowl under a slot in the floor, and every once in a while he would tell Franz a joke. The jokes were bad but they became the highlight of Franz’s life. Franz never knew how much he wanted, needed human contact. He craved it almost as much as his daily bowl of blood. 

Five hunters each paid $5,000 to kill a zebra, and without leaving Michigan. A small zoo has closed, and the animals sold off. A local hunting lodge bought the zebras. The zebras were in a fenced-off area of 120 acres. As the hunters lifted the barbed wire to enter the zebra pen, a young man rode over on an ATV. A beer cooler was strapped to the back. The young man said his dad owned the ranch, and he wanted to make sure the hunters got the best experience possible. It was 8:00 A.M., but they were on vacation, so they all put their rifles down and helped themselves. The men recounted their memorable shoots. All had bagged deer, ducks and geese. Two of them had been to Africa. One of them had killed a crocodile in Australia. The young man asked if this was going to be a difficult shoot. No, the hunters all said, these animals were accustomed to humans. But it was still a chance to bag a zebra. The young man said, “I heard they drug the animals for these hunts sometimes.” Yeah, sometimes, the hunters responded, but of course these five were skillful enough to bag sober zebras. There’s no sport in shooting drugged animals. “Well, I guess I don’t think of it as a sport,” the young man said, pulling out a handgun and firing. The men were too drunk to grab their rifles and retaliate.

Her ear would not pop! Alisha in 23F had tried to ignore the whole flight by keeping her window closed and doing a couple Sudokus, but now that the plane was descending this was too much. It was like someone was blowing up a balloon in her right ear! Nothing was stopping it! She had gum to chew as soon as the pilot said they were beginning descent. She chewed and chewed, working her jaws and swallowing, working her jaws and swallowing, but it didn’t help. This hurt! She pinched her nose again, blew through it until the air came out the tear ducts of her eyes. No good! She closed her eyes tight, kept the hand pinching her nostrils, and blew again. The pressure built and built in her head, began hissing out of her equalized left ear, but just caused more throbbing in the right. After fifteen seconds of daring, she let go of her nostrils. She needed a release valve! She jabbed a finger in her ear. Maybe her French wrap would reach the key spot. She pulled it out in pain. There was a lot of swelling in the whole ear, and it hurt like hell, but even her nail was too big to get at the sore spot directly. She took the pencil from her Sudoku. She was crazy for doing this, but she just couldn’t go on with this ear! She gently inserted it into her ear, very slowly, not wanting to do anything but make a tiny pinprick. The plane hit a storm cloud head on, jarring it like an amusement park ride. Alisha might have noticed the dark cloud if her window was open. She didn’t notice anything now. The pencil rested with the eraser on the closed window screen, the tip deep within Alisha’s brain. A hissing sound came from her eardrum.

The man had died three days ago, but the vampire within him had just woken. It was dark. He was lying in a coffin. Some sort of metal, with silk overtop. His family spent a lot of money on his burial. They’d be the first people he killed. He had been so worried the night he was attacked, but he was just ignorant. He had been ignorant his whole life, doing so much work for other people’s benefits. All that time wasted on his vile, burdensome family would be paid back in blood. He pushed his arms to the coffin lid. It wouldn’t give. Six feet of earth had some weight to it, apparently. Not to worry; the vampire could feel a new strength in his limbs, the strength of several men. He’d force the lid open, let his new self dominate the world above. He lunged at the coffin lid, to the best leverage a prone body could, and heaved at the lid with all his might. But the lid didn’t budge. Curse it, he had a new life to live on the surface, lives to destroy! He felt around the edge of the coffin, trying to pry it open an inch. The edges were welded shut. His family did this! They would pay for this! Their deaths would be slow, drawn out over days… if he could figure a way out.

The stars were shining bright last night. The cool air was soothing on my skin. I sat outside of my tent on a reclining chair, relaxing, as I gazed into the starry sky. The stars were all arranged in their own personal space, they were all positioned in the sky as if to tell a story.

There was no wind, the air was calm and peaceful, and the wilderness seemed so peaceful, at the moment. The fire that we had built earlier was still blazing strong, and the warmth was welcoming. My friend was off gathering some more wood, to feed the fire. He had been gone for quite a long time, now that I think about it. It shouldn’t have taken that long… gathering wood…

As I stood there alone, relaxing, watching the falling stars… wait, now that I think about it, they were more like shooting stars. And I remember there being so many of them. They were awesome, it was almost like watching a fireworks show… only the fireworks were shooting down to the earth, instead of up into the sky. I watched mesmerized, and I just remember thinking how much I wished my friend would have enjoyed the show with me…but where the hell was he?

I started to get nervous and worried about my buddy’s welfare. I got up and looked around the campsite; it was so dark that I could barely see 20 feet outside of the fire’s glow. I started to walk outside of the campsite. I walked through a little pathway that we came through to get where we were staying.

It was dark except for the starlight from the sky. I didn’t even grab a flashlight; how crazy that seems, who goes out on a search without a flashlight? Especially in the middle of the wilderness, with no light, except from the sky… that seemed to light up the world, unbelievably bright, which was unusual. I looked up into the sky… and I was amazed at how many stars were shooting down from the sky. This didn’t seem to be normal.

Then something really strange happened. I was looking at the sky, as I also walked along calling my friend’s name…then it seemed as if part of the sky had been blacked out, and it was in a circular shape. Wow, what the hell, I remember thinking to myself, this is too damn weird. Then I had gotten goose bumps and chills shot up my spine, because I had just realized that I was alone…

I panicked and started to run now, this was really starting to give me the creeps. I was running and I tripped, and I fell into a puddle, and the ground was hard and cold. But as I was pushing myself up from the ground, I looked down, and by my hands there was this insect-looking type of creature. It looked wormlike, but I knew that it wasn’t a worm. It had eyes and facial characteristics that didn’t seem normal. I even think that it blinked at me. Ewww… that really freaked me out, so I started to run and call out for my friend. And as I was running, I tripped over a mound of slime, and fell hard to the ground once again. To my horrific surprise, I realized that the mound of slime, was indeed my friend… all that was left of him was an empty sack of flesh.

My eyes widened with fear, as I became hysterical and ran screaming. I was not aware of my surroundings and had no reason to care at that particular moment. I just ran and it seems I ran out of luck. I tripped over a rock, and hit my head. Needless to say, I was out.