MicroHorror

They have all been burned. Not a single book remains; libraries are hollow, barren and useless. I’ve been told they are to be closed and modified to make us forget about them, about them and about the books. To make us believe they never existed. Nevertheless, once a month we all meet down in the sewers below the town square to see–or should I say hear–little Cecilia read. We call her Hope for obvious reasons, as well as to avoid being discovered. Every night she relates to us different parts of forgotten books. Perhaps what keeps me coming back, despite the rats, despite the stench, despite the danger and the fear, is her voice, clear and crystalline. I don’t know how she reads the blank pages, being blind.

Just when I was about to lose the last of my strength, I arrived. Although I’d been told that the galaxy NGC 3660 was similar to the Milky Way, I’d never imagined how close it really was. Finally there after travelling a distance measured in years, I felt the déjà vu of my old life intermingling with the beginnings of a new one. I had been led by rumors of the largest stellar fossil fuel deposit ever discovered, and I knew that even though it would take me the rest of my days, the hope of that discovery outweighed any other passion.

I surveyed planets and explored moons, searching for any sign, documenting every discovery, dating and collecting every fossil. To my crew, I was nothing but a crazy old woman wasting what remained of her life by travelling. My only desire was to find the true deposit. If it was where shooting stars go to die, perhaps I could find one that was still alive. Weighing my options and the possibilities, even knowing that I was chasing a fantasy, I could not believe otherwise. I was risking everything on this trip, to find a living star and ask her to grant my wish.

I bet and lost. There is no place in this galaxy I haven’t explored. Everything has been in vain. I don’t have any fuel, crew, or air to breathe. All I can do now is fade out, little by little, as I and my ship become just another fossil.

The Mazda windows were fogged up. Christie and Matt were making out at full speed. When they had pulled into the Waycross, Georgia, cemetery and parked under a Spanish-moss-laden oak tree, the first thing Christie noticed outside the car window was a headstone that read June B. Higginbotham, 1909-1989.

“This place is creepy,” she told Matt. “I feel like someone’s watching us.” He just laughed. Then he spoke.

“Honey, this is the safest place in town, if you want to know the truth.”

“Maybe you think that,” she said. She couldn’t, however, resist Matt’s charms and candy breath and tongue. He was the best boyfriend she’d ever had and she didn’t intend to lose him. After they’d got in the back seat, he began caressing her top to bottom and she began dreaming of their idyllic life together in the future.

“What was that noise? Someone’s out there!” she said after a while. Her body tensed.

“It’s a tree branch, honey,” Matt said. “It’s brushing against the windshield a little. The wind’s doing it, nothing else.”

A few minutes later, both heard a thump on top of the car. They froze.

“And that?” Christie asked, poking Matt in the ribs.

“I’m not sure,” Matt answered. “Like a thump?”

Christie held Matt’s chin in one hand and looked into his Sinatra-like blue eyes. “I know it was a thump,” she said. “I’m asking what caused the thump.”

“I’d better get out and look,” Matt said.

“Maybe you’d better,” Christie said. “It wasn’t a pine cone, that’s for sure.”

Matt defogged the windows with a cloth he kept in the glove compartment then opened the door on his side and stepped out. He looked on top of the car. With the speed of something like a sleek impala, he jumped into the driver’s seat and switched the car engine and lights on. The Mazda backed out from under the tree and sped away. Matt noticed someone had half-closed the entrance gates when they approached them. Instead of stopping, he swore under his breath and drove right through them. Fortunately, they were aluminum gates painted black and not genuine wrought iron gates.

A relieved Christie, buttoning up, climbed over the front seat and sat in the middle near Matt.

“I told you someone was there,” she said in tears. “I was right, wasn’t I?”

When Matt pulled the Mazda to the curb in front of Christie’s house, she spoke again.

“I’m not getting out of this car until you tell me what you saw,” she said firmly. “What was it on top of the car and don’t say bird shit.”

“Okay, okay,” Matt said. His body still trembled slightly. He hugged Christie and caressed her face. “If you want the truth, it was a squirrel. A bloody, decapitated squirrel.”

Bobbie looked at the mirror and applied the lipstick slowly, making a slow kissing sound toward the reflecting surface. Lipstick was always the hardest to put on, you really had to sell it, force people to look at your lips, make them want your lips, make your lips make them want you. They say that first impressions are the most lasting. If it’s done right, it’s all they need to see.

This was especially true for Bobbie, whose lips were arguably his best assets. He had little going for him beyond his full lips and demure manner; the rest was carefully crafted to conceal in the most alluring way. He pulled on his black “bob” wig, his personal joke, and closed his right eye to begin applying the eyelashes.

He’d begun cross dressing several years ago, but he’d nearly given up his dignity several failed relationships before that. The women and men he’d paraded into his life back then had been a panacea for the ache in his soul, but never the cure.

All of them walked away in the end. Bobbie reached over and cranked the radio volume up as an old raspy voice asked him if the Moon was too bright, or the Chains too tight. Bobbie smiled and winked at the mirror. “Please…”

Of course the smile was faked; everything about Bobbie was faked though. Everyone faked it. Everything is fake now. Roses all come from drugstores. Love songs are sung sweetly by heartless bitches. Paychecks reward those that backstab their coworkers. Churches eat the innocent.

And the chaste look for Bobbie with discreet needful glances.

Everybody knows the End is coming, but they hide in their shiny houses, shiny cars, shiny clothes, shiny lives. Everyone knows the pain is out there and everybody hides from it in their own way. Bobbie was just playing the game better than anyone else.

He slipped on his dress, letting it slide down like a cloak, hiding him from the world; from the pain. Who was anyone to judge how he hid himself? Everyone is a Liar in their heart. How many promises hung broken and abused in the world? How many people gaped in shocked betrayal at their friends, their lovers, their family?

How… how could she?

He dabbed a hanky at his eye and pursed his lips as he grabbed his purse and coat and slipped out the door.

“Maybe I’ll get a Promiser tonight… Yeah, that would be the trick.”

Bobbie hit the bars with bashful eyes and a tight, almost inviting smile on his perfect lips. He found his lover quickly, the aging John promising sweet, sweet nothings, obviously trying a little too desperately to hide a pale band of skin on his left hand. He was charming. He was handsome. And he was so smooth, so faux earnest in his declarations. His words were as empty as he was, dead things shoveled out of a dead mouth. Bobbie’s lover was a dead man wanting to fuck a make-believe woman.

He was perfect.

The taste of Leonard’s cock still sat in Bobbie’s mouth like a diseased toad, dry and befouled. His lover was gagged and thankfully bound in the other room as Bobbie cried just a little while he rinsed his mouth in the bathroom. He didn’t dab the tears from his eyes as he slipped from the dress and stalked into the bedroom, eyes finally as cold as the heart inside his cold chest.

Bobbie pulled the wig from his head as Leonard stared wild-eyed at him. The illusions were gone now. He’d found the ring in Leonard’s pocket, but it didn’t matter. His own member stood erect, pointing at Leonard’s horrified gaze, but that didn’t matter either.

There was nothing to hide.

There would be so much to hide.

Bobbie held up the switchblade as his dead eyes moistened in anticipation.

“Baby,” shnickt “I’m your man.”

“So, are you ready for Christmas?” the teenage salesgirl said in a merry voice as she rang up my purchases.

What an annoying question. I hate when people ask me that. She really was a clueless little thing with her only-in-Texas teased blond hair and bubblegum lipstick. Grab it, ring it up and shove it in the bag. She hadn’t looked at a single thing I’d bought.

“Three hundred dollars and eighty-seven cents,” she chirped. “Somebody is going to have a nice Christmas this year.”

“Will they?” I said as I laid four crisp hundred-dollar bills in her childishly tiny hands. “Do you mind if I show you what I bought?”

She cocked her head to the side like a poodle and stared at me like she’d just woken up from a trance.

“Um… yeah… I guess… sure, mister.”

I carefully laid each item out on the counter. Four boxes of shotgun ammunition… two bowie knives… one hundred yards of double-woven rope… four padlocks… two boxes of razor blades… five thick wool scarves that make perfect gags… a gas can… box of matches… stacks and stacks of towels… two new mops for cleaning up the blood… and a large assortment of light pocket knives that could easily be thrown from a distance.

Disgust melted her Barbie-doll smile as she stared down at my purchases with dawning horror in her wide blue eyes. “Oooh.”

“Yes,” I said and chuckled. “I do believe I am ready for Christmas.”

The night was alive, creating light in flickers and flurries.

A toothy gale blowing from the lake had brought friends along and together they had decided to take over the world, devouring space as they went and smothering sounds in their ardor.

White specks danced, whirled and flummoxed, drawing the eyes in to suck out the souls as we all stood there, enthralled, looking up at the invader. There was an attack as they lashed and caressed, burning everything they touched, and we stampeded back to the safety of our homes, spying the advance from behind heavy curtains, hoping for the ballet to swiftly go through the place and disappear. We watched as the enemy claimed the bodies–and souls–of those without shelter, as our world morphed into a glittering coffin of white.

Lethal flakes hissing
Blanket of white flying in
The world holds its breath

A white substance covered everything, suffocating the world.

Under the purple light, the earth stood still. For the longest heartbeat. Then another. And another. We forgot we were alive, not daring to believe, yet not willing to disbelieve at the same time.

Then it started to move.

At first we thought the gale had come back and was pulling at its friends. Or maybe this was our hope. The white army would now rise again and leave our realm to spread death in some other corner, in some distant boroughs. We might make it through the night still.

When the snow spiders crept inside our houses for the final strike, they found us unprepared.

Their sting icy cold
A dose of rigor mortis
Life faded to white.

In memory of Edward Gorey (Sorry I can’t draw).

Arnold’s last words were: Antifreeze is syrupy and sweet.
Beatrice’s last words were: Bees! Bees! Bees!
Clay’s last words were: Cold… but they’ll find me.
Drake’s last words were: Don’t pull that lever.
Eileen’s last words were: Elephants are frightened far too easily.
Fredericka’s last words were: Fingers!? Where are my fingers?
George’s last words were: God, oh God.
Hildy’s last words were: How did the duck pull the trigger?
Ingrid’s last words were: I am not loved.
John’s last words were: Joking… please, please I swear I was only joking.
Kendrick’s last words were: Killed on my birthday; just my luck.
Liam’s last words were: Let me lick that.
Mona’s last words were: My head hurts.
Nathaniel’s last words were: Nobody knew me.
Oswald’s last words were: One last drink won’t kill me.
Philip’s last words were: Perhaps I am too reckless.
Quentin’s last words were: Quiet at last.
Rosalind’s last words were: Roses are red and now I am dead.
Sylvia’s last words were: Such a wasted life.
Trent’s last words were: That was unexpected.
Umberto’s last words were: Under here the seeker will never find me hiding.
Vincent’s last words were: Very funny.
Winifred’s last words were: Why didn’t I ever travel?
Xandra’s last words were: X-rays probably shouldn’t be this painful.
Yvonne’s last words were: You don’t have the guts!
Zachariah’s last words were: Zoos usually have the animals locked in, don’t they?

The churchyard was quiet but for the grunts and uneven steps of the undead. Father Paul barricaded the church doors and hoped his small cloister held enough wafers and holy water to last him through Armageddon. That’s when he heard the moans of the resurrected Silent Sisters stalking down the pews towards him. He made the sign of the cross and gave into what, he believed, was God’s will.

He is watching the news when he first sees the eyes staring at him. Not the anchor’s, but in the lower corner, two dark orbs that blink. The next night, there is a mouth below the eyes. The face he sees on the succeeding evening instructs him to murder.

He is convicted for his shooting rampage at City Hall. A reporter tells of the verdict. Another man, sitting at home, watches the broadcast. In the corner of his set, he notices two dark eyes staring at him.

Somewhere, in a place smelling strongly of medical alcohol, an old man named Jonathon Regal opened his eyes. His vision was blurry; a haze of fever and congestion. It took a moment for him to realize where he was. He was in a hospital bed, he thought, in a windowless room, surrounded by beeping monitors.

Coughing, he tried to sit up. Each deep hack felt like someone was punching him from the inside of his lungs. Mucus and blood came through his throat, making him feel like throwing up.

A tired, dizzy sensation filtered through his brain, making him feel lightheaded. Every joint in his body ached. Finally, he decided that there was no way that he could raise himself, and he lay back down on the pillow of his hospital bed. His mind fought the idea that he was going to die lying there, but it was a losing battle.

Near his bed, the door opened. A man in a white lab coat walked in, clipboard in hand. Thinking that he was a doctor, Jonathon tried to speak, only to find his voice choked off by the swelling in his throat.

The doctor smirked. “I know,” he said. “Hurts, doesn’t it?”

Confused, Jonathon struggled with another breath, feeling a crushing weight bearing down on his chest.

“You’re going to asphyxiate in about two hours,” the doctor replied. “Just sit tight.”

As the doctor walked out of the room, a tear ran down Jonathon’s fever-ridden face. Outside, he could hear the doctor laughing maniacally, and muttering something about a subway.