MicroHorror

Are you afraid of ghosts?

If you are, I have a tip for you: move into the spookiest house you can find. Ghosts are just like regular people. They don’t like rats. They don’t like bats. They don’t like spiders. They don’t like cobwebs. They don’t like the dark.

A house like this is absolutely perfect for ghosts. It’s clean. It’s well lit. It has all the modern conveniences. I’ve been living here for five years, and I’ve never been happier.

You must be the new owner.

My name is Terry.

I was murdered in this very kitchen.

BOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

March 17: Hey, everyone. Thanks for supporting TheFontMonger.com; I’ve been getting some great feedback about the last few fonts I’ve made. Anyway, I’m sorry I haven’t updated in the past few weeks, but I’ve been busy working on a fantastic new font. I based it on a hand-written book I found way back in the university stacks; it was in Latin, I think, so I couldn’t read it, but I loved the letterforms. I’m really proud of this one, and I think you’ll enjoy it, too. I called it Ghastly, and you can download it from the directory right now. Check it out!

March 22: This is fantastic! Nearly a thousand downloads of Ghastly in only five days! I can’t believe it! I’m glad you’re all loving it so much.

March 25: I’m really sorry about this. I’ve had to take Ghastly out of the directory; I think it’s doing something weird to my system. Every time I open a new Word document, Ghastly shows up as the default font. It’s even been showing up in Internet Explorer. I’m going to poke around in the code and see what’s going on, and I’ll get the font back up as soon it’s sorted out. In the meantime, if anyone else has been having problems, please let me know.

March 30: Oh, jeeze. I can’t apologize enough. Please, if you’ve downloaded and installed Ghastly, delete it now! I’m starting to have these blackouts, and every time I wake up, there’s a fresh document on my monitor. I swear I’m not typing these; I can’t even read them! They’re in the same language as that old book, and of course it’s always the same font. I don’t know what I did, but frankly, I’m scared.

And speaking of those documents that keep showing up, does anyone know what Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn! means?

“Jesus, I really need to go to the bathroom,” Dr. Willy Nailstein said to his assistants. He’d been in surgery since 7:00 AM and had forgotten his customary stop to the bathroom before starting surgery. Now, more than two hours into surgery, his bladder’s need was superceding any need the eighty-two year old man on the table might have. You’ve done it before, he thought. Just go run in, take a leak, wash your hands and be back before the EKG prints out.

“I’m leaving to go to the bathroom.”

“Yes, Doctor. Go ahead.”

“Right.”

Nailstien ran out of the OR to the men’s room. He pushed the door open with his backside. He did his thing in the nearest stall. Halfway through his piss, Willy heard the code blue alarm.

“Code Blue Operating Room Four
Code Blue OR Four
Code Blue!”

With a bit of effort, Willy finished in record time. At a sprinter’s pace he raced to the nurse waiting with a fresh pair of gloves. With great skill, Will slid into the gloves a moment before bursting through the OR doors.

“What the hell? I was gone for less than a minute!”

“Patient flatlined because you didn’t look close enough at where you put your scalpel before taking a piss,” one of his brave assistants said.

“Shut up and help me save the old man!”

Five minutes of shocking his heart with no result. Willy gave up trying.

“I’m going to call it. You guys know the drill for this situation,” Willy said to his staff. This wasn’t the first time they had to cover something like this. Willy didn’t have a doubt about their ability to lie but they weren’t the ones that had to sell it to the family. At 9:42 am Willy Nailstein’s patient died. The official cause of death on the report would be written down as complications that arose during surgery. It didn’t help Willy as he made his way to the family’s waiting room.

The family was all there, prepared for the long haul. Monopoly and Scrabble boards took up two of the four guest tables. When Willy appeared, the relatives surrounded him. Gently, Willy took the new widow aside to break the news.

“What happened? I mean, how did the surgery go?” she asked.

“Well… there were complications.”

I hate the table arrangement. I got it from my boyfriend the day he broke up with me. I thought it’d last a lot longer, but it’s turned ugly.

It’s strange, you know. The flowers still aren’t so bad; it’s the vase that’s all icky and shrivelly now. Silly me, I guess I didn’t use enough formaldehyde.

It’s started to smell, and his eyes are all buggy. If I didn’t still love him and want some part of him
around, I would have thrown his head out days ago, I think.

“Don’t drink that!” he shouted. His stomach hurt, and it made him irritable. His son lowered his can of juice with a look.

“You gotta be careful what you drink in India,” he said angrily, grabbing the juice and tossing it out onto the ground. The vendor, an old Indian guy, shook his head.

“Yeah, whatta you lookin’ at?” he growled and rubbed his belly. He pulled out his canteen and offered it to his son, who refused it with a look of disgust.

He pulled off the cork anyway, took a plug. His belly was killing him. There were little chunks in the water, probably rust from the inside of the canteen, but at least he knew where it came from. He’d stored the water for ten years since his last trip to make sure it was safe.

He went to wipe his mouth and tasted blood on his fingers. His son was looking at him.

“What–,” he said, looking down. There was a hole in his belly, and a massive worm hanging outside with a circle of sharp teeth. It bit him and thrashed to pull itself out of his belly. The other worms were waiting to get out.

The snow-ice along the path was speckled with black-gray soot and grit, and melted on top like little mountains. It was March in Ottawa, and the wide Rideau river was thawing.

Nao stopped. The ice over the river was crackling and booming somewhere far in the distance. There was a musical question-response quality to the sound, as though it were coming from here, now there, and it was getting louder and closer, like the footsteps of some unseen giant stamping towards her.

She started to run, but much too late.

“It’s a bit sweet,” Harold said. He cut the cake with his fork, but didn’t immediately lift the piece to his lips.

“So you don’t like it?” Mary asked.

“I didn’t say that,” he answered and brought a small piece to his mouth. He tried hard not to grimace, and, after swallowing quickly, ran his tongue over his teeth. They felt grimy and horrible.

“Really?” Mary asked smiling. “You’re such a dear when you want something from me.”

Harold forced another bite and a smile. “So you’ve signed the papers?” His teeth felt sticky, like they were rotting. There was something hard in his mouth.

“No.”

Harold opened his mouth, and a tooth clattered onto his plate. It was brown. He heaved and more of his teeth were clinking onto the plate like a rain of Chiclets. Pink red dripping flesh from his gums trailed after, viscuously dripping from his mouth.

“I would never leave my husband.”

His throat was full of spit and dissolved flesh. He was choking.

“Unless he were to die and leave me–”

He hit the table with a gurgle.

“–his life insurance.”

Michael Rogan picked up the bottle of wine and held it close to his eyes to examine the label: a recent vintage Australian Merlot, with soft acidity, medium body, and hints of oak and black cherry. The price was right. He set it onto a cushion of frozen vegetables in his shopping cart. He was fifty-five and his eyesight wasn’t what it used to be. Neither was his taste in wine, for that matter; there was a time when any wine would do. In his younger days, Michael had paired White Zinfandel with fried chicken and Cabernet Sauvignon with salmon. Rookie mistakes. Over the years, however, his tolerance for poorly-matched wines and foods had diminished, much like his ability to spot it from arm’s length. Michael had what you would call a mature palate.

It was Saturday afternoon, and Michael’s red wine stock had unexpectedly run empty from so many nights of red meat. The supermarket was packed. Since he retired, he’d become accustomed to the relative lack of shoppers out and about on weekday mornings. The Saturday shopping traffic wasn’t a problem for Michael, who hung his wife’s handicapped tag from his rearview mirror and parked in the front row at the supermarket. What the hell, he thought. His wife couldn’t drive any longer, so someone had to use the tag.

In the dairy section, two twenty-year-old boys stopped him as he searched for a hard Parmesan cheese. “Mr. Rogan!” one of the boys said, snapping Michael out of his shopping daze. There were only two types of people that addressed him as Mr. Rogan: telemarketers, whom he hated, and students, whom he hated even more.

He recognized one of the boys as one of his art students from a few years ago. This was just before he had retired early to care for his ailing wife. “How are you boys doing?” Michael said.

“Good, good. Just pickin’ up a case of brewskie,” Jacob said, holding his case of Coors Light up for Michael to see. “And you?”

“Just picking up some wine for my wife,” Michael said. It seemed that he never stopped talking about his wife. There was the cancer that spread through her body like a spilled drink being absorbed into carpet, and then the long and painful bedside vigil that Michael held that required him to retire early. Michael had cared for his wife as the illness ravaged her body. After an awkward pause, he said, “Are either of you married yet?”

The boys looked at each other and laughed. Michael could see they were unshaven and untamed by the female of the species. They had no idea yet of the companionship that a spouse could provide as the years stretched on into decades. Right now, these boys just needed each other, beer, and take-out food. Neither of them could know the lengths that one could be pushed to facing losing someone forever. When the doctors had given Michael’s wife only three months to live, Michael knew that there was only one way to keep her with him as long as possible. That was two years ago; now he was still taking care of her and refused to let her go. His wife wasn’t in any condition to be seen, but he lined her room with the flowers and get-well cards that trickled in.

You’ll understand one day, Michael thought. “Take care, all right? I’ve got to get back to my old lady,” he said. The boys nodded goodbye, walking off with their cases of beer back to their bachelor-pad lives. Michael didn’t have the same luxury. Although his wife was no longer sick, she still required care. A tender filet of her right thigh was defrosting in the kitchen sink right now, and his wife tended to go bad quicker than other red meats. She would spoil if Michael didn’t get back to her soon, Michael thought as he picked up the perfect Parmesan cheese to complement his meal.

Snakes pelted me like rain. They fell upon my supine body in a tumble and slithered off to the dirt, swarmed about me in the narrow pit, as helpless and trapped as I was. The snakes were adolescent anacondas.

Paralyzed by something the Watupi had slipped into the welcoming drink they had given me, I could do nothing but stare. The anacondas were biting me, striking out in agitation. My vision wavered, my eyes filling with dirt and being obscured by snakes. Anacondas weren’t poisonous. But the banana spiders were highly venomous.

They were the last harsh rain to fall.

The huge redwoods loomed over the lumberjacks. They stood silently, staring at their ruined equipment. The trucks were broken at all the right places, engines torn to shreds, tires stripped to the rims. They were not surprised. Stories like this had been coming in from all over Northern California. Stories of camps wrecked, work huts burned, and vehicles smashed.

Suddenly, a cry from the depths of the forest.

“The night watch!” one of the group shouted. They cautiously made their way through the groves of giant trees to the source of the noise. The sight that greeted them filled their hearts with dread. The two security officers were tied to a great trunk, ropes binding them to the thick, rough bark. One was unconscious, slumping into the bonds. The other greeted the lumberjacks with a wild stare, perhaps not believing they were real. Three rushed forward, taking out pocket knives to sever the thick cords. The man began sobbing, crying out loud.

“What’s wrong? Do you need an ambulance?” They asked him, glancing around as if the answer was hiding in the undergrowth.

“My chest…” The guard managed to get out before he broke down again. They quickly pulled him off the tree and laid him on the ground, rubbing his limbs to bring feeling back. The other lumberjacks quickly untied the second guard and rushed the limp body through the woods to a car.

“He did it to me!” The first guard coughed, moving a numb hand to his shirt. The crowd of flannel shirts peered down in horror as the guard lifted his uniform, revealing fresh, black tattooed words spread in a ragged line across his abdomen…

“Once-Ler.”