MicroHorror

Delia showed me last night why she wore those clothes year-round. The ring around her throat from autoerotic asphyxiation, the arm burns from cigarettes applied just so, the leg scars from razors. I showed her my two tiny neck marks. She screamed.

This morning, I showed Delia how to open the blinds. Just so.

I awoke wrapped in vines, remembering the meter-wide flower’s nauseating scent. A smaller version with petalled teeth was inches away, swelling. Agonizing minutes later, it scraped my cheek… then fell.

“They eat slowly,” said my machete-wielding co-pilot. “Ship’s this way.”

Following, I noticed a tiny bud growing from the base of his skull.

Remembering tiny Jack’s fir-tree eyes, I took turns with my husband watching Hope sleep, always on her back. One night, two shadows with scarlet eyes leaned over her crib. Frozen in my chair, I glimpsed another shadow, far shorter, reaching in. As it turned to leave, cradling Hope’s soul, two green eyes met mine.

“You see it?” my partner asked.

“Yeah,” I said, shaking sand from my binoculars. “Some priests around a scarecrow on a post. Wait, they’re removing something from the thing’s chest. A spear? The scarecrow has a strange hat, like a spiky crown… oh Jesus Christ.”

“Exactly.”

That’s when His arm turned to point to us.

“Don’t worry, Doctor, it’s good and dead.”

“It wasn’t alive,” I said. “Blots are machines.” I approached the exam table. It did look like an inkblot, liquid-black except for… “The dull red center’s the neural net?”

As I peered in, the Blot rippled orange-red and an ice-cold tendril snaked into my ear.

buy me a drink cuz the streets say they’re gonna eat Mike they ate my meds wife house buy me a drink the streets like me hate you hate everyone built too many they’re networked buy me a drink so the streets quit whispering who’s next I miss Mike thanks bye buy me a drink

I was brushing my teeth when I noticed my automatic toilet’s red light was blinking irregularly. Why? I’d programmed it very, very carefully. Maybe too elaborately, but it shouldn’t be malfunctioning. Blink. Blink. Bliiiiink blinkblink. Eyes wide, I went for my code book. D-M-E-F-E-E-D-M-E-F…

“Feed me.”

“Happy Mother’s Day,” Norman said.

“Thanks, son,” Norman replied, smiling.

Julie looked at Ben and frowned. “For the last time, I am not going to have sex with you.”

“Why not? You said that on our one year anniversary we would give ourselves to each other. You promised!” Ben’s eyes were wide, pleading.

“I said no, Ben.” Julie crossed her arms, looking stern.

“Baby, I came all the way back from Ivywood for you!”

“Ivywood is a cemetery, Ben! You came back from a cemetery!”

“Exactly! I came back from the dead for you, Julie. Doesn’t that mean anything?”

“Yes, Ben,” she replied curtly. “It means you’re dead.”

Ben sighed. This was all very frustrating. It had taken him days to crawl out of that casket and back to Julie. Thank God his father had been too cheap to pay for anything better than a leaky pine box. When he finally did make it to the surface, Ben had passed out for a few hours. He woke up to find some mangy dog sniffing in his tattered pants.

“Julie, please. I don’t want to die a virgin.”

“You already did die a virgin, you doof! And I’m not a necrophiliac. I don’t care if you did get resurrected by some undead hard-on.”

“Julie!” Ben sounded hurt. “I did not come back because I wanted sex, I came back because I love you!”

Julie fidgeted. Ben had been begging for over an hour and she really just wanted him to go away. It was nice that he was back and all, but enough was enough. The thought of getting it on with a dead guy was pretty sick, but it wasn’t like he was regular dead. Maybe if she just put out he would go away and she could go back to flirting with the cute guy on the football team.

“Fine. We’ll do it.”

“Great!” His hands flew to his belt, pushing the pants down. “Just give me a second to…” Ben’s face fell. He looked like he was about to cry. “That fucking dog stole my cock!”

Once upon a time, near the edge of a very old forest, sat a tiny village. On the edge of that village, very near the old forest, was a run-down house. In that house there lived a family. They were Mr. and Mrs. McCrowley, and their son William. There had once also been another member of the McCrowley family living in the run-down house on the edge of the tiny village–a baby named Angela.

The year that William turned thirteen, the baby had been killed near the edge of the old forest. William had been watching her, and according to him, he had hit his head on a branch while running, blacked out, and when he woke up a few minutes later she was dead. A policeman from the tiny village investigated, and decided that an animal had attacked poor little Angela while her brother was unconscious.

There was a funeral with a tiny coffin, and everyone in the town tried to move on with their lives the best they could.

William never forgot about his sister’s death, though. He started going into the forest every day and setting traps. Sometimes he’d catch an animal in one of his traps, and he’d kill it purely for spite, remembering how he’d found Angela that day, torn and bloody. Soon, he began torturing the animals before he killed them. He never felt any better about his sister’s death, but every day he still went into the darkness of the old forest to reset his traps and kill any animals in them, from wolves and foxes down to tiny squirrels.

This went on for several years, until the day William turned eighteen. On that day, as usual, he left his family’s run-down house in the tiny village next to the very old forest, heading to the first of his traps. When he arrived at his first one, he got a shock. A little girl, about six years old, was sitting next to his trap. “William,” she said, “this has to stop. Until today you’ve been sheltered because you were still a boy. If you continue, though, you will be punished; you are now a man.”

William was shocked at seeing this little girl next to his trap. Before he could reply, though, she turned and fled into the trees.

Unsure what to do, William sat stunned for a few minutes. Then he decided that he must have imagined the whole thing. So, William decided to move onto his next trap. When he got there, though, the little girl was waiting for him.

“Why didn’t you turn back, William?” she said.

“Who are you?” was William’s reply.

“For years now, you’ve been coming into this forest every day and committing acts of evil. You’ve been seeking revenge for my death, and it has warped you. The forest had no recourse while you were still a child, but it sent me to you now that you’ve grown.”

“Angela?” said William, stunned.

“Even after my warning, you continue, so there is nothing I can do to protect you. The forest has decided to show you the truth before you die.”

The forest around William shimmered, and William was watching himself as a child, the day Angela was killed. He looked on as he hit his head on a tree branch and fell over. Then, his child self sprang up and howled like a wild thing. The boy-thing ran to the baby playing in the grass and grabbed her. Then, he began to tear at the baby with teeth and nails until she was dead. Instantly the boy-thing toppled over, unconscious. When he woke, he saw the baby and immediately gathered her up into his arms and ran to the rundown house.

Back in the forest now, William sobbed and sobbed, and the animals of the forest closed in around him.