MicroHorror

I thought my best friend, Dr. Harry Harlow, was nuts when he told me he was going to Haiti to capture a zombie.

“Whadda ya gonna do if you actually find one?” I asked with a snicker.

“Bring it back to the university and run some experiments.”

Harry sent emails regularly from Haiti. Suddenly they stopped. After two months, I contacted the American Embassy. They had no knowledge of his whereabouts. Concerned for Harry’s welfare, I hung a CLOSED FOR VACATION sign on the door of my private investigator office and flew to Haiti.

Harry’s last email had mentioned Hotel Balzac and Bahody, an old native chambermaid who’d befriended and mothered him. I headed for the hotel to find her.

“I miss my white son,” Bahody said, eyes filling with tears. “Every full moon, I sacrifice a chicken, begging the gods to bring him back–even if it be from the dead.”

“I promise I’ll find him.”

“You’ll never find him. My sister speaks to voodoo gods. They told her he’s lost forever. Zombies stole him.”

Ignoring her superstitious comments, I asked, “Tell me about the last time you saw him.”

“The moon was full. The air was foul. The drums spoke of doom. I begged him not to walk to Café Blanc alone. He wouldn’t listen.”

“Why’d he go there?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where is it?”

“Don’t go there. You’ll lose your soul.”

“My soul? Stop talking nonsense and tell me how to get to Café Blanc!”

“No! It’s an unholy place. Even rats die when they get too close.”

“Then I’ll get directions from the concierge.”

“If you must go,” she said, “take this for protection.” She tried to push a small, black, red-eyed statue into my hand.

I called her a stupid, superstitious woman and stormed out.

A waiter at Café Blanc remembered Harry. “He drank much rum with a voodoo priest from Destrudo. A very dangerous man. They left together.”

“Where’s Destrudo?”

“In the jungle. A most terrible place with zombies and terrifying voodoo ceremonies.”

I couldn’t find anyone who’d risk driving me anywhere near Destrudo.

“Perhaps Mulu will take you,” someone whispered. “They say she’s from Destrudo. Some say she is a zombie. Others say she is wife of a white zombie. There she is now.”

I approached her battered jeep. “Take me to the white man who lives in Destrudo,” I said, waving twenty dollars.

“You… do… not… fear… to… ride… at… night… with… a … zombie?” she asked. Her breath reeked of jungle rot.

“Save the baloney for gullible tourists,” I said, boarding the jeep.

“You do not believe?”

“Nope. Let’s go. I don’t have all night.”

“Foolish… American,” she mumbled.

I snickered at her ludicrous words and slow speech.

Ten minutes later, I was on the verge of screaming. While driving manically through jungle paths, her skin took on a greenish glow. Before I could jump from the jeep, she slammed the brakes.

“There’s… the… white… man,” she said, pointing to a jungle clearing.

Something with a greenish glow approached. It had Harry’s face!

“Harry,” I called. “It’s me–your pal, Charlie.”

Moaning, he approached and touched my face. His fingers were icy. The stench sickened me.

As I tried to grab and handcuff him, his putrid teeth ripped flesh from my cheek. The pain was horrendous. I tried to get away, but tripped. Suddenly, both were biting my face like mad dogs.

I broke away and raced through the jungle like a madman until I blacked out. I don’t know how I got back to the city.

Since that horrible night in Haiti, my cheeks have dripped pus continuously. Modern medicines can’t stop the flow.

Many shamans have exorcised me. I’ve sacrificed countless chickens to voodoo gods. I’ve consumed putrid hoodoo potions. But nothing heals my wounds, or stops Harry and Mulu from invading my dreams and feasting while I sleep.

Yesterday, I woke up hemorrhaging. My right hand was gone!

I don’t wanna die. Please help me. I’ll pay anything.

“The saddest day in my life, ever, was when I saw a corpse without a head,” she said.

She told me that she was working as a maid in a hotel at the time, and it was she who found the naked, headless body that belonged to a girl who wasn’t even old enough to drive a car.

The head was sawn off with a brand new saw–$12.99 at the Ace® Hardware store. From the jagged remnants of the neck protruded muscles and veins that looked like an octopus’s tentacles; blood leaked out of it to soak the hotel’s linen.

I saw that corpse, too. But the saddest thing I ever saw was that same girl, crying, begging for her life, when that pretty little head was still on her shoulders.

“Die.”

“I’ve tried,” said Chastity with a smile. “Honest I have. It just doesn’t work”.

She stood atop a crate in an otherwise empty warehouse, looking down at Orion and the world. Her legs were covered by thick black stockings.

“What’s in the box?” demanded Orion.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“You lie! You’re a fucking liar!” Orion shouted with a level of anger she didn’t think he could muster.

“What!? I seriously don’t know!”

“You’re a liar! You lie about everything! You lie about being a woman!”

“I… I AM A WOMAN!”

“Your package is bigger than mine,” said Orion.

“No! YOU are the liar! Shut up!” insisted a distressed Chastity.

“What’s in the box!?” repeated Orion.

“I don’t know!”

“Open it!”

Chastity stepped down off the box and turned around to face it. She hesitated to open it. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she slowly reached for the lid. She opened it. There they both were, naked and dead. And it was true. Her package was bigger than his.

The second Orca show was set to begin in ten minutes. A thin stream of rust-colored liquid coursed its way down a handrail, over a small stretch of concrete, and was swallowed by a grate of the same hue. Kip, a bony malformation of a child, was pulling his mother to the splash zone when he noticed the curious liquid. He reached his hand out for it.

“Don’t touch that, Kip. You’ll get tetanus.”

He yanked his knotty arm back, unsure of what tetanus was, and seated himself next to his mother.

They watched the feats of the killer whale, applauding and laughing as they were covered in water each time the whale swam by.

“And now,” the voice pouring from the speakers above them said, “it’s time for the encore. For this feat the Orca will need a brave volunteer.”

The stadium exploded with the giddy screams of children and flailing hands.

“Mom, why don’t you go?” Kip pointed at the tank with one hand and held a camera with the other. “I’ll record it.”

Almost as quickly as she put her hand up a young man covered in acne scars wrapped his hand around hers and escorted her from Kip’s view.

The lights extinguished. Every child was pulled to the edge of their seat, their eyes fixed on the tank.

Kip removed the lens cap and opened the viewing screen. A light shot from behind them and steadied about ten feet above the tank. Something was being lowered. Kip focused the camera on the form as it fell into the orange light.

Blurred by the contrast, all Kip could see was the violent tugs and writhing motions the form was making.

“All right, boys and girls. Diotrato is going to need your help with the big jump. Let me hear some noise.” The voice was blanked out by the screams as the Killer whale circled, preparing for his encore.

Kip had solved the contrast problem and focused on the whale’s fin above the tank’s rim.

Screams began to issue loudest from the form above the pool, terrible screams, and Kip pulled the camera towards them.

His mother, bound and screaming, showed on the screen. Children clapped, their eyes wide, their mouths open spilling out cackles as the whale leapt from the tank.

The whale returned to the tank silencing the shrieks. The rope was empty and Kip dropped the camera, finally understanding what had happened.

The camera, fallen on its side, was nevertheless recording as the discolored grate hungrily drank the rust-colored fluid pouring down the splash zone handrail and over the concrete.

After three commercials, the TV host said, “Welcome back to Hedonist for a Day. Every week, we select a winner from three unfortunate men who’ve had lives of unspeakable misery. Each contestant gets eight minutes to tell his story. Meanwhile, everyone in our studio audience is fitted with tear-o-meters. As each contestant tells his tale of woe, our computer tracks the studio audience’s tear volume. The contestant eliciting the most tears is the winner. For his prize, we’ll put the winner inside our Pleasure Palace where he’ll enjoy incredible pleasure provided by fabulous women, machines, and pharmaceuticals. And now… let’s meet our final contestant!”

A dazzling model set a large glass jar on a table. The jar contained a severed head immersed in yellow liquid. Dozens of multi-colored wires ran from the top of the head to speakers mounted on the jar.

Removing the lid, the host spoke into the jar. “What’s your name, Sir?”

“Howard,” the head gurgled.

“Why do you want to be named Hedonist for a Day?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“Sure is. But there’s a devastating story here. Tell us about your unspeakable misery.”

The head told a tale so shocking, thousands of home viewers fainted. Several had heart attacks. Dozens in the studio audience had to be revived by paramedics.

“Phew!” said the host. “What an incredible story of tortuous suffering.”

The camera switched to a large computer loaded with blinking lights. A bell sounded, and a slip of paper fell into a hopper. The host removed the slip and held it to his eyes.

“Based on our computer’s measurements of tear output, I’m pleased to announce this week’s Hedonist for a Day is… Howard!”

Howard’s grinning head bobbed so violently, it almost flew out of the jar.

The show ended when a model carried the jar into the Pleasure Palace.

Entering the palace, the host told Howard, “This is the first time a decapitated head ever won. Frankly, since you don’t have a body, we’re not sure how to apply our mind-blowing pleasure techniques. Let’s try an erotic massage by three professional geishas and see what happens.” Pointing to a topless pleasure provider, the host added, “Take his head out of the jar and put it on the massage table.”

“No!” Howard yelled. “If you pull my wires and remove me from the fluid, I’ll die within three minutes. How about putting me on the pleasure machines?”

“That won’t work. If we immerse pleasure probes in your fluid, you’ll be electrocuted.”

“Dammit! I won fair and square. You better find a way to give me the intense pleasure you promised, or I’ll sue!”

The host took the show’s producer aside. “This guy’s a royal pain in the ass. Maybe we can say we had a computer error, and that he really didn’t win.”

“Good idea,” the producer said. “I’ll toss him a few bucks. Then we’ll get him outta here.”

When Howard heard the producer’s offer, he screamed, “Keep your freakin’ money. I want to feel every ounce of pleasure you owe me.”

After the host and producer conferred again, the producer said, “Howard, we think we found an answer. We’re going to put fish in your jar.”

“How are fish gonna give me a good time?”

“The kind we have in mind wiggle frantically when they swim. When they brush against your face, their wiggling will give you exquisite pleasure.”

“Sounds good to me,” the head said.

The host dropped six fish into the jar and replaced the lid.

“Mmm,” Howard gurgled. “Good choice. This is sooo nice.”

Seconds later, his screams could be heard for miles.

“Look at those cute tropical fishies,” squealed a pleasure provider, as she stared at the skull in the jar. “What kind are they?”

“Piranha,” said the smiling host.

Robert saw an ad in the paper. “Loved Ones Returned. Minimal Cost. Why Be Alone?”

The next day, he sat in Madame Majestic’s musty parlor.

“I want my girlfriend back,” he said, “but she’s dead. Can you bring her back?”

“Yes,” Madame said. “But I’ll need a hundred dollars and a piece of her finger.”

“I’d gladly dig up her grave right now and get it for you, but she’s buried overseas.”

“Then I need a piece of YOUR finger.”

“When can you do this?” he asked.

“Now. Do you have the money?”

Robert gave her two fifties.

“Put your finger here,” she said, pointing to a cutting board. “Bite hard on this sponge.”

He’d never felt such horrendous pain.

“Drink this whiskey,” she said, binding his wound. “It’ll deaden the pain. Go home, turn off all the lights, and wait for her in bed. She’ll come at midnight.”

Driving home, he noticed heavy bleeding. He rushed to a hospital.

“This is a nasty wound,” said a doctor. “How’d you cut off the tip of your thumb?”

“The knife slipped when I was slicing meat.”

“Frankly, this looks like a ritual cutting. I’ll have to report this to the police.”

Robert ran for the door, but slipped and crashed headfirst into a gurney.

Next thing he knew, he was in a hospital bed. Though dizzy, he got up and went to the bathroom. The mirror showed a bandaged head. Then he remembered: Sandy was supposed to show up at his apartment at midnight.

Scrambling into his clothes, Robert bolted from the hospital.

It was 11:35 when he floored his Mustang.

He managed to get into bed with only two minutes left. Trembling with sexual anticipation, he thought of the things they’d done so many times before she died. A year without her had made him ravenously hungry.

As the clock struck midnight, a glowing green mist appeared on the ceiling. It grew larger as it moved toward Robert.

“Sandy, my love,” he called softly when a face began to form, “I’ve missed you terribly.” Closing his eyes, he spread his arms.

When soggy, cold lips pressed against his, he gagged from the stench. Pushing her away, he was startled when realizing he’d kissed a rotted corpse full of leaking cavities.

“Get outta here! Go back where you came from!”

“It’s too soon, my love. I’m yours until daylight. The only way I can return before then is to bring a sacrificial offering to the Gatekeeper of the Eternal Pit.”

“What kind of offering?”

“Your flesh.”

“Take your piece of flesh,” he said, spreading the fingers on his good hand. “Then get the hell outta here.”

He shuddered when a cleaver appeared in her putrid hand.

Closing his eyes, he gritted his teeth and braced himself for the horrific shock. The chop came so swiftly, he didn’t feel the slightest pain in his hand. That’s when he realized she’d chopped of something more precious than a finger.

Joe assumed there would be some guilt. Nothing he couldn’t deal with, but a few pangs of remorse were to be expected. He was pleasantly surprised when there were none.

Forty years of incessant nagging. Forty years of Edna controlling every aspect of their lives, including their finances. Especially their finances. He had nothing. In the end she’d left Joe no choice but to get rid of her.

He’d smothered her with a pillow. He was doing her a kindness really. She’d been miserable while living, so she might appreciate being dead. No mess involved. “A bloodless coup,” was how he liked to think of it.

One hot night several weeks later, Joe stood beneath the cool spray of the shower, eyes closed in ecstasy. But, wait, what was that rusty odor? The water seemed cloying too. He opened his eyes and wailed in horror. His body was cloaked with something red and viscous. The shower stall was streaked with blood running down the walls and pooling about Joe’s feet. In panic he tried escaping the stall. His feet slipped out from under him and he fell, face first, into the puddle of thick blood.

The body was discovered by the cleaning lady. It was pink and puckered from hours spent beneath the shower. The authorities assumed that Joe had suffered a heart attack brought on by the recent loss of his wife. Of course, in a sense, the authorities were right.

Jack entered the corner shop to get his hangover supplements of Coke, milk and orange juice. Given the weight, size and quantity of items bought he asked politely for a bag; though he was slightly confounded as to why the shopkeeper had not instinctively offered him one given the gravity of his purchases. The shopkeeper rustled from under the counter a translucent plastic bag and placed the items into it. Jack lifted the bag from the counter, which was so feeble and impractical he may as well have given him a bag woven of gossamer. The plastic stretched so tautly around the items it looked as though he were carrying the limbs of a cancer patient who had become so emaciated that their skin was literally tearing over their bones. As he made his way to the door he heard a yelp that he was sure had come from behind the counter. Jack knew he should just leave as the sound was probably, like most things, a spark of his imagination, which would only cause a huge mental upheaval in his life if he were to confront the shopkeeper about it. Unfortunately there was the possibility that the sound was in fact very real, in which case if he were to leave without the certainty of this not being the case, he wouldn’t be able to enjoy his Coke and milk chaser to its full potential. Jack twitched and raised the back of his hand to his forehead, wiping away the moisture that formed within moments of him hearing the cry. He scratched a non-existent itch on the nape of his neck and turned around to face the shopkeeper, who in pathetic attempts at subterfuge began to cough intermittently whilst busying himself with the cash register. Jack realised he couldn’t just directly ask the shopkeeper whether he had some violated human being behind the counter and that he needed some subterfuge of his own to get to the bottom of this; after all, he wasn’t black-clad in a leather jacket and shades with a twelve-gauge for kicks.

“Excuse me, Mr. Patel.”

The shopkeeper looked up and gave Jack a crooked smile.

“Forgive me for the inconvenience, but could you change this for some pound
coins? My electricity meter is pay-as-you-go and there’s a Twin Peaks marathon on the Sci-Fi Channel this weekend.”

“Ah yes, a very good show,” said the shopkeeper coolly.

“Little bit of Bob in all of us, don’t you think? This shop of yours could be your own little Black Lodge; going to work every morning’s like hell, right?” said Jack with indictment.

“Oh certainly, Bob is everywhere. Though I must say I’m one person who thoroughly enjoys his job.”

The fluidity and insouciance with which the shopkeeper spoke baffled Jack, as he expected a more anxious reaction.

“What about you, sir. It looks as though work may be somewhat hellish for you today. Did you have a late night?” asked the shopkeeper with resolve.

“Did I… me…yes, last night seems a little hazy for me unfortunately. The best nights out usually are. Anyway, what…”

“Well, would you like a little clarity, sir?” interrupted the shopkeeper.

“Would I…?” said Jack with surprise.

“Yeaahhhhheeeeesssss… tihehehe.”

Suddenly the shopkeeper pulled a battered body from behind the counter. A blindfold was its only form of concealment, which meant that every bruise, scar, cut and wound–of which there were hundreds–burned their presence into the eyes of Jack, who fell to his knees with bloodied tears.

“Oh God… please, God. No. No. What did I do?” pleaded Jack

All Jack could see were flashes of white light spliced with fragmented moments of the night before. Images of a man with long curly grey hair and a blue denim jacket. Images of the young black-haired girl screaming for help who was now being mounted on the shopkeeper’s arm before him.

“God? Oh, no; no, sir. Bob. Bob.”

I’m sorry, cat,
I know that you were born free.
If only I had
equanimity.

***

As I approached the train tracks the siren triggered and the barriers lowered, indicating a train was about to cross. I stopped and stared into the azure sky so as to avoid any eye contact with those around me. Suddenly I felt something wet and slimy graze my calf, causing my entire body to jerk. I turned around and there stood an old lady… ha ha ha, no, it was not her who had made friends with my leg; she was walking her terrier and it was
that which had had a good sniff and a lick.

The lady was small and gracious, full of humility evident by the crinkle-cut ridges sculpted into her face, like a pre-kiln clay mushroom tightly bound with string. Her face showed the signs of a life lived conscientiously but disappointedly. She was the kind of woman who would make banal banter about the weather with a heroin addict who had just murdered their parents but a lady whose magnanimity would become subject to caprice if you even looked at her dog in any way less than amicable… leaving her with no doubts about pulling a Kalashnikov on your sorry ass.

They walked past, ignorant of the stink of death and failure that seeps from my pock-marked skin, and unbeknownst to me given that the barriers had come down and there wasn’t much further they could go. My surmise was that the old lady and her dog wanted a front row seat of the train passing by; a more practical form of trainspotting for the mature multi-tasking pedestrian, who likes only to have to cross the tracks to buy her loo roll and angel cake. Anyway, the dog must have become bored waiting as it began to jitter and then turned around and gave me a hard stare. Its eyes grew smaller and its legs started to move in different directions and I knew what was coming. I prayed that it wouldn’t; I closed my eyes and wished to the furthest burning star in the galaxy that the dog would not do what I thought it was going to do, in broad daylight, with people stood all around and on either side of the tracks. But it did…

…It barked and barked and jumped and barked and barked and jumped and barked. I am accustomed to humiliation but when you leave the house expecting to have a people/trouble-free run to the supermarket, the last thing you expect is this kind of embarrassment. Of course it could have meant nothing. Maybe the dog was on a daily dose of Valium and today his forgetful, nonagenarian owner had forgotten to sedate him. Or maybe it was like Magda’s dog Puffy, who just had an irrational dislike of certain strangers. I even developed a theory that the cats and dogs of Canterbury had conspired for the first time in history to destroy me; in this case the cat to suck out what little soul I was born with and the dog to expose the blackness that remained. However, the explanation that my obsessive, monomaniacal and paranoid excuse for a personality could not let go of…was evil. Fuck the persecution complex. I am evil. I have always suspected as much and now I have the confirmation. I am not a bad person, in fact I can actually be quite pleasant most of the time…but I was just born evil.

Jim thought: I wonder if the–

Wait a minute. How am I thinking? I’m supposed to be–

He began to claw feverishly at the earth above him and felt a scream rising in his throat.