MicroHorror

The clicking had been going on for a week–unmistakable in the hush of the night. The family decided to investigate together. It was too scary to go alone.

The office door swung wide as they approached and revealed Nana, sitting before a flickering screen frantically typing away.

“Nana?” said the youngest, full of hope.

His mother pulled him back. “It’s not really Nana,” she said. “It’s… Nana’s dead, sweetheart. Go back to bed.”

“She said she would be finished by Halloween. That’s tomorrow,” said Freddie. “Let’s leave her to it, Beth. Maybe then she’ll be at peace.”

Haitian zombies love chocolate chip cookies. When discovering Americans spent billions on Halloween treats, they assumed treats meant cookies. Consequently, 372,928 zombies hired Mexican coyotes to smuggle them into America.

Homeland Security found out. The President canceled Halloween. Congress provided chain saws to every household. Zombies didn’t know–they don’t watch TV or read newspapers.

Halloween night, zombies went trick-or-treating for chocolate chip cookies. All were destroyed by chainsaws.

Putrid zombie remains were collected, ground, packaged. Falsely labeled “Prime Ground Beef,” 20 million pounds were shipped to China. One pound for every poisonous toy China exported to America.

Mort checked his watch; 9:00.

“Three hours to go,” he said as he finished painting the last sigils on the pentagram, and whipped the goat’s blood from his hands. He then checked on the candles and the incense, and made sure the ropes were tight. Murielle began to stir so he placed the chloroform over her nose a moment and she was still.

“Shhhh… Don’t want you freaking out when we’re so close. It is Samhain, after all.” The arrangements of his instruments were meticulous. Every angle of every blade was part of a larger design, the Great Masterwork.

A graveyard seemed a peculiar location for a pumpkin patch. Tombstones, fresh mounds, wilting flowers, mourner’s remnants… and a small collection of orange orbs stands out from the drab landscape. Even from a distance you couldn’t help notice they were all the same size: average; none puny or gigantic, all just right. As if chosen. You had to get really close to notice the dripping orange paint, the stumps still bleeding into the earth, and the faces that needed no carving.

Joy Lane was anything but; it was the most desolate street in the whole of Benningfield and that was saying something. Ever since the mill had closed the place had just fallen apart. But the town still had its attractions.

The big house at the end of Joy Lane was haunted and therefore a favorite haunt of thrill-seekers on Halloween. An old man was supposed to have died in the house, of starvation, and kids went looking for him at midnight. But the only thing that was ever found was freshly gnawed bones on the stoop on November the 1st.

Geoff was good at ducking for apples. He had small teeth and a wide bite and he didn’t mind getting water up his nose.

He got up Petey’s nose though, big time. Petey waited for his chance and when Geoff went down for the third time Petey assisted him with a good grip on his ankles. Geoff tried to fight his way out of the tub, but Petey just shoved Geoff’s ankles up towards the back of his head. Then it was simply a matter of waiting till the thud, thud, thud, on the bottom of the tub died away.

It would be nice to wake up slowly and comfortably, instead of being jolted awake in a cold sweat wondering what could be hidden in the shadows. Sadly, that’s just a fantasy. So he sits, shaking, until his heart has slowed and his breathing has calmed and he’s able to reach out and flip the switch.

With so many things to go wrong, the rest of the day isn’t any better.

Especially this time of year, with the carved pumpkins and the horror marathons.

Why does fear strike when you’re most vulnerable? He’s sick of being woken up so rudely.

“Scary zombie costume!” Harry said to the trick-or-treater at his door.

“It’s not a costume. I’m a real zombie.”

The zombie jumped Harry and bit his skull. Inserting an ice cream scoop into the wound, he removed Harry’s brains. Forming the brains into bite-sized balls, he put them into Harry’s freezer.

When kids knocked, the zombie said, “I don’t have candy, but I can give you ice cream. It’s a new flavor. Do you want it in a plain or sugar cone? Single or double dip?”

Kids loved the chunky, gray-colored ice cream. Especially those who were real zombies.

Hurrying down the boreen homewards under a harvest moon Finuncane wondered, how long until midnight? Tomorrow was samhain, when the worlds collided and the dead walked the land.

A stranger fell in with him, a dark figure on the country lane. Finuncane said howyeh but the other stayed silent.

And Finuncane thought he knew who walked with him.

Hoping for two birds from a single stone, Finuncane asked the stranger had he the time at all? And the stranger, in a voice from behind the sky, said it had just turned midnight when he left Hell.

She was dying and she knew it. Her jaw moved uselessly back and forth, spitting out a ridiculous amount of blood. She called out for help, knowing that they could hear her. The crowd kept moving, ignoring her. They didn’t even look at her. Hysterical, she threw her mangled body at one of them. Her flailing limbs knocked a silver case out of his hands. It smashed to pieces against the hard, cold concrete. He grew angry and pushed her away in disgust.

“That cost me $499, you jerk,” he snarled, but she couldn’t hear him.