MicroHorror

Here in this village, everybody knew to keep their fingers crossed, their lips tight, their gaze on the floor, their hands in their pockets, their dreams hidden. But then you came, with your flowers, your songs, the way you danced, the way you moved. Did you really think that love would conquer all? Did you really think they would believe you, just because you spoke the truth?

Here in this village, everybody knows what the truth really means. It was either you or me.

“Grandma, the other boys at school don’t want to play with me.”

“Did they say why?”

“They say I’m weird… evil.”

“Oh, don’t listen to them. They’ll want to be your friends once they get to know you better. Now go fly your kite; you can’t leave the newly departed souls without their guide to the other side.”

When a human woman becomes a witch, in exchange for eternity, her insides dry up and her womb becomes barren. There are some who will gladly pay that price so they may learn Magic’s darkest secrets.

But there are also those who can’t bear it. They grow angrier with each new wrinkle on their face; they become enraged when they see themselves in the mirror, looking older every time. That’s why they go out at night in search of children, younger and younger, so they can devour them and regain their own youthful appearance. That only lasts a few days, though. The younger the children, the longer the young look lasts, so in the end the witches eat nothing but newborn infants.

We have to hunt them before the humans decide to slaughter us all. Tonight we hunt Esmeralda.

My father doesn’t understand why I get so mad when he doesn’t come to pick me up after hurling practice. It’s because I don’t want to ride on the bus so late. I get scared. Sometimes a man gets on, the same age as my father, with a suit and a briefcase. He sits upstairs, always in a seat next to a girl my age who’s going home alone, just like me. He says something to her, she laughs, he shows her something inside the briefcase, and then they both get off, in silence, at the next stop.

Whenever a girl goes with him, I never see her again, but that wouldn’t even scare me so much if it weren’t for the way they go after him with those blank, white eyes.

Rey sat quietly in the living room sofa. Off in a corner, a stand fan hummed an unfamiliar tune, dutifully circulating the stale air. All the lights were off except for a small Morano lamp which threw long, dark shadows against the walls. A cigarette perched precariously between his lips. Rey raised a small flame to the tip and inhaled, turning the tobacco leaves an intense, angry orange.

The Zippo snapped shut with a sharp metallic clink. Pocketing the lighter, he drew another breath and exhaled a stream of smoke. He held the filtered Camel between his index and middle fingers, grayish white smoke rising like a charmed serpent.

His father died two decades ago when Rey was only seven. Lung cancer. Not a pretty picture. His father was a chronic smoker and consumed close to two packs a day. As seasons passed, Arnold Mayer had found it harder and harder to breathe. During his final year, he required a constant supply of oxygen, and it was necessary for him to wear a face mask attached to a portable oxygen tank. He had lost so much weight, he was hardly more than skin and bones, a living corpse.

Rey took a final drag and crushed the remaining stick in an ashtray brimming with ash and cigarette butts. He reached in his pocket for the lighter, lit another stick, and tapped ash in the tray.

He coughed. The fit lasted a few seconds, and he almost dropped the cigarette. When it was over, he cleared his throat and spat blindly in the gloom. Smoker’s cough. He had it big time. He put out the cigarette in the ashtray, laying it to rest among its carcinogenic brethren. His knuckles accidentally brushed against another cigarette butt, and it fell off the table and onto the carpet. It continued rolling as if its intentions were to flee. Finally, it came to rest beside an upturned palm.

The dead hooker stared at him, mouth gaping in a frozen scream. Her eyes were wide and bulging. The left one was bloodshot. The telephone cord he’d used coiled around her neck like black goth necklaces several sizes too small.

Rey stared at her eyes, that expression on her face. With trembling hands, he reached for the Zippo again.

Lung cancer was the least of his worries.

Everyone told me that Lara was poison. I didn’t know how right they were.

“But such pretty poison,” I joked. How could those perfect lips of Lara’s be anything but sweet pleasure? They were all jealous, I decided. They thought that Lara was just using her potent sex appeal to get close to me, so she could weasel company secrets out of me and sell them to the highest bidder. And they would go for a huge sum, in the millions most likely.

I gave her idle tidbits here and there, probably more than I should have, but really, Lara was erotic beauty personified. I was totally captivated by her, and our age difference only made the attraction stronger. And she knew expertly how to make me feel young and alive. It seemed like a good tradeoff.

Lara really liked kissing, doing it often during the work day when we could and constantly during sex. She was very skilled at it, and now I know why. The French kissing eventually built up the toxicity from her saliva inside me as she had planned from the beginning of our relationship.

One night, after a “working late” session at the office, I collapsed, feeling something burning all through me, paralyzing me. By then I’d revealed too much confidential company information to Lara, the lovely Lara.

Lara slowly got dressed, letting me watch her one last time, and it was always a good show. She had a virulent poison that coursed through her veins; it was part of her biology, she told me. Maybe some mutant gene at work, or the result of growing up near a closed secret government site where biological warfare had been tested back in the 1960s.

Lara had developed an immunity to the unknown, deadly strain of poison as she grew up. Much like a black widow’s poison doesn’t affect the spider itself, but it sure does her mate.

“Why?” I gasped, hardly able to speak coherently, my body rigid and rapidly going numb. “I… told you… what you wanted… to know.”

“Why not?” Lara laughed, and I knew the poison had affected more than just her metabolism. Then she bent over, took my face in her hands and gave me one last kiss.

Katie hurried into the kitchen. She tugged at her grandmother’s apron as she stood stirring soup on the stove.

“Grandma, I need bandages. Fluffy has hurt his paw and needs to go to hospital.” She waggled a scruffy pink rabbit back and forth.

“Okay, Nurse Katie. I’ll check the medical supplies cupboard and see what I can do for you.” Her grandmother turned the heat down and lifted the first aid box from one of the kitchen units. She took a seat at the table and opened the box.

“Hurry, Grandma! I think he’s slipping away.” She flopped the bunny’s head back for dramatic effect.

“Be patient, sweet pea,” she said, taking out a couple of plasters and cutting a length of bandage.

“But I’m not the patient, Grandma, Bunny is.”

Katie’s grandmother smiled. Katie could be so funny sometimes but now she was beginning to feel too old to keep up with her granddaughter’s imagination. She handed Katie the bandages.

“Quick,” Katie shouted as she skipped out of the kitchen. “There might still be time!” She hurried down to the bottom of the garden where her Wendy House-cum-hospital was situated. The bunny tossed around in her little hand as she ran, probably suffering from neck injuries by the time it arrived for treatment.

Katie had just finished dressing the rabbit’s paw and was putting him into his shoebox bed when the neighbor’s young boy peered over the fence and asked what she was doing.

“I’m a nurse and this is my hospital.” She stood aside so he could look in and see all of her patients.

“Cool. Can I play?”

“Yeah, but after my lunch though. Grandma’s going to call me in any minute now.”

“Okay. I just had my lunch.” He flashed a half-eaten apple at her for proof.

“Better watch you don’t eat a seed. My Grandma says if you eat the seeds a tree will grow out your belly.”

“Really?” He looked at his apple in disbelief.

Just then her grandmother appeared at the door and called her in.

“See you after,” she called to him as she ran up the path.

Katie got back to her hospital to find the boy from over the fence waiting inside for her. His face was puffy from crying and he held his stomach.

“I ate a seed,” he sobbed, pointing into his mouth. Two lines of snot ran down his nose and he sniffed them up again.

Katie put her plastic stethoscope to her ears and held the disc to his belly. She pretended to listen. “Ah, I hear it. Don’t worry, I can fix it for you. That seed will be out in no time.”

“Grandma! I need more bandages!” Katie waited at the open back door and called through the empty kitchen.

Her grandmother sighed, lay down her book and came into the kitchen.

“I can’t give you any more bandages, K–” Her words got trapped in her throat as she stared at her granddaughter on the back step, her hands and little white nurse’s outfit splattered red with blood. “What have you done?” She stifled, covering her mouth to stop vomit from rising out.

“It’s okay, Grandma. The boy next door had a seed in his belly but I mended him.” She held out a red hand. “Bandages, please.”

Ah you Heads cannot escape me in the dark you missing Heads because I’ve gotta big metal-black flashlight pointed all over this dark house with glass cabinets that flash-reflect at me and there’s a refrigerator purring and ceiling fans a-whirring around ’round ’round ’round. I’ll find you you hiding Heads you can’t hide from me you can’t you can’t ’cause I’m a-sneaking through the dark house with my flashlight aimed in front of me to help me find you Heads because I need to find you you Heads and

now I see a body on the floor filling up and irrigating the little little floorboard cracks with syrupy red and making a lake and this body isn’t moving and it doesn’t have a Head because the Head ran away and is hiding in the house and now I have to find it.

Oh you Heads you Heads I’ll find you I’ll find you I’ll find you wherever you’re hiding because I’m the one who’s it and I’m coming for you all because that’s the way the game goes yes that’s the way this hide & seek game goes and I have always loved to play this game so I’m stepping in the red lake and I’m leaving bare footprints on the floor because I took off my shoes so I wouldn’t make a noise when I walked no noise at all

but now my feet are sticking to the floor and they make a little Velcro-noise and they give away my secret position damn damn damn dammit damn. So I start a-running through the dark house to find you you Heads and I’m kicking down the door to this closet right here

and I’ve finally found one of you, one of you Heads. You’re a Head sitting at the shoulder-top of a guy who’s shivering and screaming in the closet and, ah, joy to it all, I found a Head I found a Head I found a Head and I’m blinding it with my metal-dark flashlight and I’m shrinking all the little black circles in your eyes and your eyes are on your Head the Head I found I did I did and I won’t let you get away you Head Head Head mother-effing Head. I’ll keep the flashlight aimed at you so you can’t get away you Head you can’t you can’t you can’t so I’ll keep the flashlight pointed right at you

even when the flashlight shouts and bucks like an angry bull and

suddenly I realize that my flashlight is attached to a 20-gauge gun and there’s buckshot in the wall behind you and chunks of red all over the place and now I’m so weepy and sad because I let another Head get away and hide and now I have to find it all over again…

I’ve forgotten what you looked like. I remember when we used to walk down the street in the evenings when the sun went down. The lights of the streets would just hit your face and it would glow reflecting my love for you. Those were good times. The streets were quiet, shops would start to close slowly and the crazies were just getting up. Of course, we’d be off the streets before the crazies got there. We weren’t into hanging around with the crazies because being crazy in love was enough for us. Your hair would whisper in the wind as it moved softly blocking your eyes and you would brush it away. Your hair was brown, I know that. I mean it still is though there are tinges of gray in it. Maybe the grayness came from me? I can’t believe I was all that trouble as we were married. And sure, eventually the sweet words from your sweet lips became sour. Not even lemonade. If they were bittersweet, I could live with those words. Just because I came home late, you said I was a cheater, being out with someone else. Who else wore lipstick but you?

You kept talking though and your voice increased in loudness. I couldn’t take it anymore. I remember telling you to shut up and wipe that smirk off your face. Of course you didn’t… so I had to wipe it for you. Goodness you looked at me with those ghastly eyes of horror that I had to cut those out as well. The blood from your nose just grossed me out that I had to get rid of that too.

I couldn’t just toss you in the garbage though. Those garbage guys might’ve suspected something. Having you in the kitchen was nice though, until those bugs started coming by, so I had to leave you in my closet. What I most regretted was that I had forgotten what you had looked like. So I went back into the closet to see, but your face was gone. I remember throwing that in the garbage. I should’ve kept it though. Just to remember you by.

I hold my girl to my body as if she were a fine treasure, for this is exactly what she is. It seems she is made of all jewels and sunlight. I smile as I breathe in the heady scent of a woman, love. I can feel her heart beat; it’s so quick in that little chest of hers! Oh, her smooth skin seems to sing with pleasure, the goosebumps rise gentle along her flesh. Her hair? It is made of silken gold, and I chuckle oh so gently as I run my fingers through it. She smiles at me with tears in her eyes, I hold her closer to let her know everything will be all right. “Shh,” I tell her. She tugs on my sleeve and I look into her eyes, those beautiful blue orbs seem to whisper to me. I know what she’s thinking, as she struggles against the rope but oh no, I can’t let her go. Not now, not when I finally have… my little treasure.