MicroHorror

The viscous world heaved violently as its two rulers flailed within the murky depths. Their bodies struggled against one another, striving to control the single life-sustaining tube that had wrapped about them. The stronger prevailed, bubbling in triumph. The weaker, desperate for life, clung tenaciously to his twin. There he waited and withered in quiet hatred. Their creator, oblivious to the titanic struggle, sighed in contentment. Eventually two heartbeats became one and, for a little while, peace reigned again.

Into the night he came, pushing and prodding, a great toothy mess, gnashing through me and the air I breathed.

He was a suffocater.

Chosen from birth by the great lungs he held. By the lack of consciousness his family had always possessed.

A death bringer, coming to you in your last breaths, when air had ceased to fill with life, but cut with sharp struggle, the gulp for survival.

He wore his title well. Loosely drawn in the clothes he wore, old tatters, of grey and black, like a shroud in dim light. His hair too was of old fiberglass stuff, long blackened in old attics. His walk was the most telling. A lumbering gait, a slow steady shuffle, as if he walked always as a pall bearer.

He came for me that night. Night of no moon, darkest of winter’s breath.

Ice cold, bone chilling fear came first. Like a slow stealing death, come on crutches, slowly moving, steady, a rhythmic limp. I had little left of life.

The curtains hung heavy in the old dwelling. Stone cold, wet wandered everywhere, cracked any exposed skin raw, red, running out life.

No light was in the room.

Just my frantic struggle after a long night of little breath. Fear was my only bedside comfort.

I smelt him first. A stale lingering decay of his foul breath on my check. A pulling, sucking draw on the last of my breath. The panic to suck one more breath, one more hour, second, from his deeply filled lungs. The age old struggle.

I lost. Lay limp, my eyes staring skyward, empty.

It smelt like old leaves composting.

The death bringer had come, letting me leave this world with mercy.

His was of the oldest family.

I smell the rain, and the soil that is wet. It is in my fur and between my toes. The moon is full and my heart is full of the moon. I can feel my blood flow around her. She is a stone in my chest.

Cold air bites at my lungs. I breathe in sharp gulps of October fog and I see it leave my nose in twin streams; in this way I split the night in two so that I may stalk my prey hidden in the cleft I have made.

It is through this cleft that I see her, bundled against the cold and shivering. She stands on two pale legs that cannot bear her quickly across the wood. She has no fur and I smell her blood through her milk-skin. It is hot and alive, and it calls at me like running prey. In my mind’s eye I can see it burst forth as from a spring, feel it spray upon my muzzle, steaming in the nightchill that gnaws at my feet and pricks the points of my ears.

I am near and she sees me.

Those eyes!

She has trapped day-sky in them and sees the world from within it, sees me, from above. I see her eyes and I know she is the one. I feel my fur rise and I know she will run with me in these woods when next the moon is full. But she too will be wolf, and her blood will flow around the moon. I will look into those day-sky eyes and cry to the moon for the way it tugs at my heart.

She comes to the ground, but she does not stumble. She speaks to me but there is no terror in her voice. She does not fear my bared teeth and my blooded eyes, though she sees them through the cleft I have made in the night. She is not frightened of me. She has come seeking me.

Oh, how I drown in woe when I remember her beauty. She would have been my mate. She would have carried the moon in her chest, a stone that pierces when the chase is long. But she had longed for the bite I prepared for her.

And so I could not give it to her.

I feel the moon tug at my heart when I think of the night I dreamt the dream of the she-wolf with day-sky eyes.

The snowmen were getting smarter. And their army grew daily.

At first, despite its strangeness, it was more of an annoyance than a serious threat. Snowmen, alone or in pairs, rolled up to people walking and accosted them, as best they could with their thin stick arms. A simple push bowled them over and left the snowman flailing on the lawn.

Eventually they discovered how to pull each other up. And they began collecting into groups of three and four, safety in numbers proving to be a good idea for snowmen too. Next they started using the brooms and shovels they were decorated with as weapons to harass people to stay indoors, keeping the citizenry isolated and barricaded against this winter enemy. At night they roamed the front yards like sentries, maintaining an ominous watch.

Later we discovered they were using the nighttime to build more snowmen. Soon snowmen wearing mittens learned how make and lob snowballs, actually ice balls, at passing cars and buses, cracking windows, and hitting any individual foolish enough to venture outside when a roving gang of them were in the neighborhood.

After a successful ice ball attack, as if in triumph, a faint, cold, wheezy sound came from the snowmen like some kind of otherworldly, demonic laughter.

Things got serious then. The town was under siege. That was when the snowmen upped the ante; they learned to use their carrot noses as knives, and throw, with amazing accuracy, their rock buttons. Top hats became boomerang weapons while brooms and shovels functioned as quarterstaffs and battleaxes, respectively.

No human was safe any longer. It was war–ironically, the ultimate Cold War. And the enemy could rebuild himself and make as many more troops as there was snow.

Snow. Right in the middle of this nightmare, it began snowing. The snowmen were getting reinforcements, and there was nothing we humans could do about it.

Then the snowmen got clever. While forcing us to stay inside, the snowmen disrupted the telephone system, disabled the electricity, and froze the town’s water supply and gas station tanks. Many melted that night in the attempt, but more snowmen were quickly created. All cell phones had been mysteriously in a dead zone since the snowmen appeared.

People starting dying, found frozen in the morning, mouths and lungs full of snow when they tried to escape. The snowmen were preparing for the final assault. The end was here, and it would be a cold one.

On Christmas Eve, a wind came up. Snowmen all over the city looked overhead at the dark sky in anticipation of new snow. Nature seemed to be supporting them. Our hope had run out.

But the next morning held a surprise. The wind turned out to be a warm one, blowing in from the west, and steadily raised the temperature. The clouds overhead were gone and bright sunlight streamed through, helping melt the ground snow and warm things up. The temperature climbed into the forties, and pandemonium erupted.

Snowmen rolled about in panic and various degrees of melting. Some had lost most of their faces, the coal eyes and carrots had dropped off, their rock mouths drooped in grotesque patterns, leaving them helpless. Many had no limbs left, the streets littered with flopping tree branches and desperately flexing mittens.

People came outside and stared, transfixed by the spectacle. In thirty minutes, the snowmen were gone, reduced to thick water, muddy ice and collapsed accessories. The reign of terror was over as quickly as it had begun.

No one ever spoke about those few frightening days, and people went on with their ordinary, everyday lives, putting the whole strange ordeal behind them, acting as though nothing unusual had ever occurred.

No one knew why it had happened, or tried to find out the reason, but silently, inside our safe, warm houses, we all wondered what would happen when next winter came. We hoped it would be a warm, dry one.

Maggie looked up from her book and realized the girls were gone. She scanned the empty beach and threw a panicky look toward her sedan. She saw no one.

They were here a moment ago. Maggie glanced at her book and flushed. She’d been so absorbed in it that she’d lost track of time.

If the girls had gotten bored… Maggie spun in the direction of the surf. She broke into an awkward jog.

“Lindy! Lila!” she called. Only the gulls called in response.

They’ll charge me with criminal negligence. Something bobbed in the surf twenty yards out. Maggie lost sight of it behind a wave. She splashed in deeper and broke into a doggy paddle. Her arthritis wouldn’t let her do more.

“Lindy!” Maggie called again. She choked on a mouthful of saltwater and began to flail. She’d gone further out than she had intended and felt disoriented. Maggie paddled on doggedly. Sorrow overwhelmed her. She’d lost the girls. If they find us all later, at least they’ll know I tried. I tried…

Maggie held onto this thought as she sank and the undertow swept her away.

The girls returned to where Maggie had left her book and looked around, perplexed.

“Where’s Grandma?” Lila wondered.

“I dunno,” Lindy responded. “I told her we had to go potty.”

The sisters sat in the sand and watched the sun go down. Later, it started getting colder so the pair crawled into Grandma’s sedan and waited for her to come back.

Jamie couldn’t believe how lucky he was to have a girlfriend like Beth.

Her blond hair shone like silk, cascading across her pale shoulders. Her eyes shimmered like chips of tanzanite beneath delicate black lashes, reflected in the wan candlelight. Her slightly parted lips were red and full, unconsciously sensual and hinting at undisclosed pleasures yet to come.

Her neck was long and slender, as smooth as an alabaster column, and her arms lay like willowy branches by her side. Her hands, unadorned by anything as vulgar as jewelry, were small and slight, the fingers of each ending in immaculately manicured nails.

Jamie shifted his gaze from her hands up to her sweet, round breasts, noting the pleasing way that they swelled above her ribs. Her toned abdominal muscles were just visible through the translucent skin of her stomach and her beautiful legs seemed to stretch into an ecstatic infinity.

Hair, eyes and lips. Neck, arms and hands. Breasts, stomach and legs. Each was part of a perfect puzzle.

Jamie wiped the tears from his eyes with a hand that was spattered with blood.

He wondered how he would ever put her back together again.

On Christmas Eve the Destroyer sweats blood through trenches millimeters wide scored by torturers down his back and sides. Goggles and headphones play to him each degenerate deed of his life: uncountable violations and rapes, awful bludgeonings and decapitations. Eviscerations and dismemberments unimaginably elaborate.

On the soundtrack of every scene, amidst the screams and imprecations for mercy, the Destroyer’s laughter booms.

Though his hands are nailed by spikes to snow-laden rock high above the ground, and though his legs have been crushed to pulp, the Destroyer, with a mighty effort, raises his head. He coughs and retches and regurgitates into his tooth-ripped mouth a balled envelope.

Pushing with his tongue he manipulates the paper. He thrusts it outwards in increments until the envelope hangs from his smashed lips in a straightened form. Across its surface saliva and blood run in zigzag courses. Fragments of vomit half-conceal the dense, black ink of an unpracticed scrawl.

The scrawl reads:

“Santa’s Grotto, North Pole”

The magnificent silver rocket descended on a column of fire and gently kissed the cratered plain of a rocky, windswept planet. Three astronauts emerged and took the first tentative steps on the stony soil to a nearby boulder field.

Crewman Stiles gazed at the lifeless landscape. “It doesn’t appear my services as biologist will be in demand. What desolation.”

Captain Adams nodded. “Reminds me of Mercury. Remember?”

Stiles nodded, wiping sweat from his forehead. “That sun is a beast. At least the air is good and we’re not confined in those damned suits. It’s odd, though; usually an oxygen-rich atmosphere goes hand in hand with vegetation.”

Adams shrugged. “We’ll leave that puzzle for the scientists back home. We only have half an hour on this unscheduled stop. Some bored geophysicist back home wants new rocks to look at.”

“Any rocks in particular?” asked crewman Jensen.

“One big one will do,” the captain replied, irritated their trip home was delayed and not in the mood to be overly generous to the pencil pushers back home. He pointed to a clutch of assorted boulders ranging from ten inches to two feet. “I like that little boulder right there.”

Jensen guessed the rock at two hundred pounds. “That thing? No way!”

“No, the medium-sized one with the blue banding.”

“It won’t fit in the container. I’ll grab one of the smaller ones.”

Adams shook his head and scratched thoughtfully behind an ear. “No. I want the blue one.”

“Any particular reason why?”

Adams shrugged. “It’s pretty.”

Jensen laughed. “It’s pretty?” He sighed. “Okay, you’re the captain. I’ll have to bust it up, though, to make it fit.”

“Do it. Make it fit.”

Six swings of a two-pound sledge did it and Jensen packed the pieces into the sample crate. “There, made it fit. Wow, it’s even prettier on the inside.”

Adams grinned. “I know my rocks. Stiles, got those soil samples?”

“Got them. Not much more than sand, though.”

The captain nodded. “Our time here is up. Can’t say I’m sorry.”

Ten minutes walking found them beside the rocket, gleaming proudly in the blazing sun. Stiles put one foot on the ladder, cocking his head to one side.

“Stiles?”

Stiles looked around quizzically. “Sorry, Captain. I thought I heard something.”

Adams listened. A slight breeze teased his golden hair. A low moan, barely audible, touched his soul. It was the saddest sound he had ever heard. He shook his head and said quietly, “It’s only the wind.”

Stiles nodded. “Yeah… the wind.”

The sound of sorrow rolled over the boulder-strewn plain to envelop the three astronauts. It was a desperate sound that demanded attention, like a baby’s cry. Adams could scarcely believe his eyes were growing hot and moist while goose bumps erupted on his arms. He dared to look up at Stiles and Jensen and saw them reacting the same way. The sound increased and seemed to be coming from all sides.

“Captain?” Jensen stammered. “It’s heartbreaking.”

“Has to be the wind, through the boulder-field. Has to be.” Adams nodded up the ladder. “Let’s get out of here.”

Minutes later tongues of fire licked the terrain as the silver rocket roared to life and streaked into space.

“Monsters, Daddy! Real-life monsters! You never told us monsters were real!”

“I… I never knew.”

“Real, Daddy!”

“I swear I didn’t know.”

“Daddy, did you see how fast they moved?”

“Incredible speed. Incredible!”

“Daddy, what about…”

“Sshhhhh.”

“But where…?”

“Gone. Just… gone.”

“You mean forever?”

Through waves of emotion he grappled with the impossible emptiness beside him, an emptiness that for millennia had been occupied by his mate. He remembered her cries at every blow of the terrible hammer. It was more than he could bear. In excruciating torment the ancient, weathered boulder vibrated in sorrow, setting up a sympathetic vibration from the other boulders. He comforted his children and cried tears of sand.

Mayor Crouch ho-ho’ed like Claus himself as he threw the switch that lit up the town. A million sparkling lights reflected off his chain, playing on his three chins. A sudden cascade of sparks enveloped him. They fizzled and zizzed and the mayor danced until he was blue and his arms hung limp at his sides. Women and children screamed in terror. Anyone who jumped on the podium was repelled by shocks. The mayor’s lifeless corpse lay singed on the marble floor and the tree twinkled just like any normal tree, innocent as you please.

Now, nobody liked the mayor. He was a mean- spirited exhibitionist, but public execution is brutal and that’s what this was. They put it down to a feedback surge but I was sure it weren’t no accident. It was me installed them circuits. Besides, I’d seen a mean look come over that tree… its green got real dark and its lights, livid bright just before… I was giving that tree a wide berth.

Some days later I caught sight of a tramp hanging around by the grotto. I didn’t need to smell him–I could see he hadn’t washed since last Christmas and since most folks was ignoring him, he decided to help himself. I had to hand it to him, he was subtle too! He snuck a hand inside this woman’s bag from behind and whipped her purse quicker’n you could say Kringle! Just as quickly the tree responded. A bolt of electricity laid him out colder than a leftover ham. I wasn’t the only one saw it, but nobody was saying nothing ’cos stealing from folks at Christmastime’s just plain nasty. Plus I didn’t fancy gettin’ the wrong side of that tree! Next day the newspaper reported, “Two More Christmas Tree Deaths.”

As Christmas approached the tree got bolder. It zapped four people in one day. One was a spoiled child who persistently made his mother’s life a misery because she couldn’t afford the particular toy he’d set his greedy little heart on. Another was a charity collector with real sticky fingers. The manager of one of the largest stores, “Now Offering Free Credit and Nothing to Pay until Next Christmas,” didn’t make it to work that morning neither. Its final victim was a Santa. I never found out for sure why he got it but you betcha he was up to no good!

By Christmas Eve it was obvious that these incidents were not the result of some electrical fault but I guess nobody had the guts to admit it and nobody wanted to try and switch that tree off. I pretended to have a look at the switches and wiring, which was my job, but I talked to the tree the entire time.

“I ain’t gonna hurt you, buddy. You just stay calm and I’ll say there’s nothing wrong, which there ain’t… but tell me, aren’t you Christmas trees s’posed to be all soppin’ over with good will to all men?”

That’s when it spoke.

“Good will to all men of good will,” it said (in a kind of a deep green voice, you understand).

There was something about its tone set my nerves a-janglin’. I could feel its bristling electrons all around me and my hairs stood on end. “I ain’t never wished no ill on nobody!” I urged, cursing my own curiosity and hoping all the negatives didn’t spoil my defense none.

Anyhow, I lived to tell the tale. The tree let me be. It set me down gentle as a baby on the marble floor and told me to step well back.

“See you ’round,” it said.

Then, so help me, it rose on a plume of streaky colored lights, right up through the roof of the mall and into the starry sky, just like a rocket!

‘See you ’round.’ It’s somewhere for sure! Could be in a mall near you.

Gee, thanks, straight bourbon, please. Cheers! And Merry Christmas!

The sea was angry and I, negligent. My thoughts were on my lady across the sea and the suitable attire I should don to greet her in port.

Immersed in thoughts of sinful vanity I too late became aware of the jagged spires of undersea mounts just visible in the rise and fall of the waves, tickling the surface like the crowns of undersea kings. My fevered spinning of the wheel proved fruitless, a desperate attempt born of panic to avoid the unavoidable.

The initial impact wrenched savage groans from every wooden seam an instant before Poseidon unleashed his fury. Wind, waves and jagged rock splintered wood, shredded sail and utterly destroyed what was a proud vessel only moments before.

Shrieks of terrified sailors were howled into the tempest. Then of a sudden I was cast with my shipmates onto unforgiving spikes of saw-toothed lava. Oh, Holy God! The screams of my mates gutted my very soul. I joined their screeching agony as sea and rock conspired to separate body and soul in the most ghastly fashion. Their screams subsided one by one till mine was all that remained to mingle with the crashing of the waves.

My own tortured cries continued as sea and jagged lava committed one atrocity after another upon my helpless body and then I, the cause of it all, borne by bits of hull and waves tinged red with the blood of my companions, rode the winds of fate to this deserted shore.

The sea has exacted a terrible toll. Arms and legs sprawl shattered with white spears of bloody bone protruding. Internal things that should remain hidden lie shamelessly exposed through jagged abdominal tears. Undamaged purple arteries pulse in plain sight, laid bare to sand, sea and sun. I marvel at the forces that permitted them to remain intact when the least damage would have ended this ordeal quickly.

The shock of trauma is wearing off. Agony is devouring me in huge gulps. Death, why do you tarry? Draw near, rest your hand upon my brow and still my anguished mind. Let not the night find me still coupled with this hideous pile of bloody flesh, bone and pain.

And yet in my mind a seed of fear sprouts. After death has claimed its victory shall I soar with angels in heaven? If so, praise God! But I recall my shipmates’ howls of terror and know I deserve nothing better than the eternal torments of Satan’s hell.

Dear God, choose between the two and be done with it! Aaaghhh! Christ! Stop tormenting me! My God, it is too much! Up through the sand damned vermin emerge to dine on my defenseless flesh. Flies and other winged demons alight on my face. They find their way into my nose and ears where they crawl, crawl, CRAWL! They seek the open wounds and–damn them!–deposit their eggs. With revulsion comes the knowledge that maggots will soon be devouring my mangled limbs. The damned hideous devil-crabs creep from the sea to find my immobile legs with shattered bone and exposed muscle and pinch off bits to eat and fight one another over scraps till the gulls catch them unawares and send them scurrying back to the sea. And the gulls, oh Jesus! One flies off with the ring given me by my beloved Cindy, flies off with the ring and the finger which it adorned! God of mercy, end this! Take me! Something please take me! Cindy, my love. You wait across the sea. Cindy… you wait.

What is this? A stillness? A curious peace and warmth envelopes me. The light of my eyes fades as the agony of nature’s predations recedes in the distance. The restless sea stirs uneasy. Lonely waves tumble ashore, stranding water that hesitates and swirls before returning to the sea, dragging my soul with it to the deep abyss.