MicroHorror

Jonas knew they couldn’t keep the baby. No matter how excited his wife had been about conceiving again, he couldn’t ignore the voices that told him the baby wasn’t theirs to keep.

Jonas carried the small bundle to the outhouse. The voices were loudest here, a droning babble rising from the stinking dark hole. He could hear them calling for the child. Jonas held the bundle over the opening and the tiny body tumbled out. It sank into the muck amidst a handful of tiny yellowing skulls.

The voices were silenced, except for one. Soon it was silenced, too.

Two women from the auction house walk down the hallway, and the younger one speaks in a whisper as if people still lived there.

“Despicable,” she says. “His own wife. And he didn’t even attend the funeral.”

The older one shoots her a look, but she’s oblivious.

“They say…” she adds conspiratorially, but the other cuts her off with a raised hand. They pause outside a closed door.

“This will take some time,” the older woman says. “There are five hundred of them, many quite valuable. It’s really something to see.”

Only one boat leaves the marina after midnight, its lights off and its course erratic. The man at the helm barely notices the pylons and buoys as he slips out toward sea. Next to him is a plastic bag filled with some clothing and a letter; he intended to drop them into the water. But he seems distracted.

“Stop,” he mutters to no one, shaking and shaking his head, the boat veering this way and that. “Stop it.”

“She collected her entire life, but acquired almost a third of them–more than a hundred–during the last two years of her marriage. Those weren’t pleasant years.”

“Where are they from?”

“All over the world. She stacked them on specially-made bookcases that line the room. You might want to prepare yourself. It’s a bit of a shock, walking in and seeing them all…”

“I said, stop it!” the man shouts out in the wind as his boat zips by a reef. But it’s no use. People in the street. Mannequins in the storefront. Photos in the frame shop. None of them would listen. They were everywhere, and all of them, all of them…

They enter the room. Every space on the wall is lined with shelves, and every shelf is filled with dolls. Exquisite, porcelain dolls, their small faces expressionless. But something is wrong, because the young woman chokes and can’t speak. The older one looks around, seeing and not seeing, seeing and not seeing, until finally it strikes her, and she is just as dumb.

Each of the five hundred dolls stares from its shelf with a set of tiny black sockets, its eyes plucked out.

The man heads full throttle into the open ocean. But water is collecting in the bottom of his craft; he must have hit something back in the harbor. He doesn’t care, doesn’t even look down. The boat drives onward, thumping over the waves and catching great bursts of spray, until the nose slips into the surf and doesn’t come up. The whole thing turns on its side once and sinks, the man strapped into his seat and not struggling.

“Stop looking at me,” he says with finality before he’s gone. And down in the deep water his last thought is of the fish.

All those eyes, just like glass, hanging in the dark to watch him go.

Daddy says I need to be more careful with my toys. If I keep breaking them he won’t get me new ones. My old ones are no fun anymore. My last one stopped working after I sunk it in the pool. Daddy’s toys are much bigger and louder but, he says they are for grownups only. MINE ARE TO SMALL. I guess daddy knows best. I asked mommy when I would be all grown up, she didn’t talk she only talks to daddy. Mommy used to get mad and yell at daddy a lot, but daddy made it all better she never cries anymore. I have a pile of old toys in the garage that daddy says we need to clean up they are old and falling apart. The new kids won’t play with me. I have very few of my old friends left they keep leaving me. Only daddy talks to me.

Daddy plays with his different than me. He doesn’t bury them or set them on fire he just sits and pokes. Sometime he yells at them, or tinkers with there insides but that never works and he keeps having to “upgrade”. Yesterday I tried to play with his grownup toy. Move this… Poke this… I almost figured out what to do when I got caught. Daddy broke my arm. I told the doctor I fell down the stairs. Mommy won’t talk to me. One of my new friends is here so I broke her arm. I watched her and dad play grownup together.

I broke Dad’s new toy today. My arm hurts. My friend does not understand how to play grownup with me but I am learning from watching her and Dad.

Dad says he will me get me one of my own. Not a baby toy but one all grown up. I have been practicing with mommy and my friend with the funny arm. Girl keeps crying. My new toy arrived today all wrapped up like a birthday present. Dad has been showing me what to do. Adult toys are LOTS more fun and they make more noise. We burned all of my old toys today even the girl with the funny arm. Dad says I am a man now and don’t need to play with little kids. Black smoke. I like being an adult. Mommy looks thinner I think she is on a diet. Still won’t talk to me.

Grandfather’s wake, it was the most silent one I’ve ever been in. There was no crying. No talking nor whispering. Not even a slight creak of the wooden benches.

Grandfather, a few days ago, he just stopped breathing for no reason at all. Declared dead immediately.

I guess people are easily declared dead when they’re seventy.

Still silent. So silent.

Then, a slight tapping. Tap, tap, tap.

Tapping on glass. It kept getting louder.

All heads turn to the coffin. A scream. More screams. People running. Fainting.

Grandfather’s wake, it was the noisiest one I’ve ever been in.

1) Ebony clouds enveloped the coastal city. The sun disappeared and it rained all over the place. Muddy water gushed in gutters and drains. When gutters got clogged, and underground drains popped open their iron lids, the water spilled onto the roads, and roads too started carrying the rainwater like gutters. People stayed back, fearing getting carried away to the sea. When rainwater entered the ground floors people started living on cots, on desks, on dining tables, on kitchen platforms. When it surged still further, they moved to their first-floor neighbors, just to prevent the rainwater from entering their lungs.

2) A young man, his wife and four-year-old son moved to the stairs as the floodwater splashed their windows. They still had one stove with little kerosene and little floor. The wife cooked gruel on the stairs. When water covered the stairs, they cooked and ate on the terrace. When the young man saw the water all around he threw his wife and son and jumped himself.

3) A few survivors fled the city, hoping to find a dry place beyond the bridge. While crossing the bridge they stopped to see the partially submerged bridge, water overflowing at places. They leaned against the raised wall, stretching to see bloated bodies getting caught at the vents. “How lucky are we?” they said to each other. When a big wave lashed them they too joined the march of the bodies.

4) Perched on his home’s overhead tank, he writes in his son’s notebook with a fountain pen, some nice lines about the flood to propitiate rain gods. About his lost home, lost family. When he tries too hard about the rising water level, the tip snaps and the ink floods the poem.

Teddy liked to set fires. Everyone knew this. There had always been somethin’ wrong with that boy, and Ed, with sinewy patches of blistered skin over the left side of his face like cobwebs, knew it only too well. His left eye was a smudged, dull grey, but it used to be just as deep and blue as the right one. That is, before the fire. The fire that killed Teddy’s Momma. She was a beautiful, sweet, wealthy woman with one dead husband, one six-year-old boy, one huge prairie-style house and two hundred acres worth god knows how much. And Ed somehow found his way into her heart, makin’ himself husband number two.

But her goddamn boy! Some people say the crazies run in the blood like black hair or hazel eyes, but who knew for sure? Durin’ the summer of a few years back, when the cicadas covered the streets, the trees, the roof of the house, and every other patch that was just too damn bare, he saw what Teddy would do with ‘em. He’d torture the poor things, pullin’ out their legs and wings, and then crush ‘em under the garage door. Then, when that didn’t quite stir him anymore, he tried the runnin’ torch. That’s what he called it. He would catch stray cats and light ‘em up with some kerosene and a match, and turn ‘em loose in the yard to see how far they could run before finally stopping. Said he’d read how some Roman emperor had done the same thing to people in the olden days, for fun. Whoever that sick bastard was he sure put a buzz in Teddy’s bonnet, ‘cos it made him ask himself why not try that with a kitty or two?

All the town folk knew he wasn’t right, and all their kids were scared of ‘im. None of ‘em ever came over to play. His teachers would ask him “How’re things at home, Teddy?” They were always so damn nosy, and he would always tell ‘em what they wanted to hear. Momma and step-daddy have been fightin’ again, and this time step-daddy used the belt, he’d tell ‘em. For a while they made regular visits to the house, interrogatin’ Ed, and always believin’ Teddy. “Does he ever hit you, Teddy?” they’d ask him. And he’d tell ‘em “Nope, not me, just Momma.” Ed lost count of how many times he had to tell the boy to keep his fool mouth shut, but Teddy would still shoot it off like some damn ambassador of truth.

That worried Ed for a while, after the fire, after Teddy’s Momma died in the fire, but just Momma. Now he’d keep his mouth shut, and so would she! Finally! All it cost Ed was a little burnin’ on his face and one mussed-up eye.

Teddy always liked to set fires, and even more, he liked to talk about it. Ed asked him about it once, and Teddy turned out to be a damn expert on the subject. Take the gas can, make a trail through just the right areas of the house, drop the match in just the right room, and you can figure which rooms’ll go up first, and which’ll be next, and which’ll be next after that. The whole thing went up like a tinder box. She was finally gone, and all it cost was some burnin’ on his face and a mussed-up eye.

Would people suspect him? Or Teddy? I wasn’t even home, I was bicyclin’ through the woods, doin’ jumps on the dirt trails, Teddy said. But Ed assured ‘em all Teddy was home with him and Momma. They were asleep when the house went up, and he had just barely made it out alive. And when he got outside, Teddy was standin’ there, watchin’ the blaze, a big smile on his crazied face. Who wouldn’t believe that?

Teddy was the one who liked to set fires.

Everyone knew this.

With six months to live, Wendell visited the first house he lived in. A white Victorian in the style of French Second Empire. As a boy, he’d cut construction paper into spaghetti-like strips, glue glitter and sparkles to them, paste the ribbons to his bedroom wall. He did that to remind himself of rain, hoping that it would never stop. He liked the sound of it against the bay windows, the patter on the verandah. Coming in from the rain, his father always hung his Homburg on a living room coat rack. The father was a creature of habit. He always brought in the rain.

For weeks, he drove around the block the house was on. It was vacant. Over the years, he had approached the various owners, asking them questions as if expecting them to know him. With each one, he thought, “Are you the one who stole the rain?”

He broke in through the back door and became a squatter. Over the weeks, he furnished his old bedroom on the second floor. It smelled of lemon and dust. He thought: this room is a part of the house. Then, he began to cut construction paper into strips, leaving a trail of them from his bedroom, downstairs to the kitchen, the dining room and the living room, which was the most spacious. In this way, he could connect all the rooms.

When it did rain, he could hear the house breathe. At night, he thought about dark moist spaces like the one under the tongue.

Upstairs, in the house’s rounded tower, he watched as the last owner drove around and around, at first, getting out of his car, taking a few steps on the front lawn, then scurrying back. Eventually, he moved back in. Alone. He slept in the mother’s old bedroom, Wendell’s, never complaining about the chill. At night, Wendell heard him speaking to someone who did not answer back. Wendell imagined the wispy voice of his mother under the covers.

Then the first owner moved back in. And after him, the second-to-last. In the afternoons that lingered forever, the four of them would sit in the living room with dust on their tongues. Then the first owner broke the silence, offering to make some tea. The last one volunteered to order some new furniture. The second-to-last owner said they should get to know one another better, after all, he said, they’re now a family. They all nodded their heads in unison. They were just beside themselves.

At night, the last owner got the fireplace to work. The house grew warmer and the rooms shrunk.

One evening, the first asked why Wendell looked so pale. The second-to-last owner said Wendell reminded him of his son’s ghost. The last owner said that Wendell might have something contagious, the very disease that killed his wife and daughter. Wendell smiled and gave each man his prognosis. They would all die with various symptoms of fever and dehydration. Weakness. Confusion. A fast, thready pulse. The very pneumonia that took his mother. One by one, the three men moved out.

At night, Wendell listened to the rain leaking from the roof. The house was now his own room. This didn’t last long. The house expanded into something that was both his and not. The house had more connotations than walls. The house expanded while Wendell contracted. In summer, the house smelled of mildew and toasted air. In autumn, the house smelled of the absence of old strangers. By winter, there were three knocks at the door. Wendell couldn’t move. The rain had turned to ice.

As Jake trudged through the cornfield, he recalled the argument he’d had that morning with his Pa. “But they’ve only been up a month–they don’t need changin’!” he had yelled.

“Yes they do, Jake, every one! And I want that first scarecrow replaced by sundown!”

He shifted the heavy bag slung over his shoulder and cursed at himself for not thinking of something more clever to say. He clutched the stepladder in his other arm like a lance, and fantasized about different endings to the fight. “I do all the work,” he thought to himself, “and just once I’d like some say-so as to how and when things get done.”

Striding up to the stoic figure, he put the bag down and planted the ladder. “Damn things last almost two months with proper care,” he fumed as he stepped up. He pulled off the garish hood and was met with a chorus of buzzing horse flies. Jake had just enough time to see the boy’s glazed eyes, and the dried blood in his nostrils, before the head slumped forward.

“Huh…” he mused, “Pa was right.”

“It hurts,” Lindsay said, as she looked intently into Marla’s eyes.

“So?” Marla’s darkly perfect eyebrows arched quizzically, tossing the comment back, the pong to Lindsay’s ping. An old game they played incessantly, inevitably moving towards a very painful ending. But for whom?

“So?” Lindsay mocked Marla’s self satisfied taunt, the inflection, tone, timing, all perfect.

“T?” Marla called to their third player, Teddy.

Teddy always sided with Marla against Lindsay, who was better at the game than both of them put together. Lindsay knew they envied her, and that their envy was the reason why they ganged up on her.

Lindsay accepted this. She was used to it. Betrayal was expected, created if she had any doubt that it would not occur naturally. They would never win. She was the winner.

“It hurts,” Lindsay repeated, now to Marla and Teddy both.

Lindsay considered their naked bodies, now wrapped around each other, kissing, cuddling, cooing words of love.

Left out, Lindsay laughed out loud. She was better than them. She was alone. She didn’t want them, didn’t need any of it.

It hurts. The words did not come out this time. Lindsay shed herself, abandoned her disguise, her caring façade, and finally stated what she really wanted to say.

“Marla? Teddy? I love you. Please accept me. Love me. Include me. I want to belong to your love.”

Marla looked up from the long soulful kiss she was sharing with Teddy and focused her infatuated eyes on Lindsay.

“Fuck you, L. You are dead. Go ask elsewhere. You lose.”

Lindsay sank to the floor, weeping. She lost. She looked at the clock on the wall, loudly ticking the time away.

Marla and Teddy continued to kiss, smacking their lips loudly, melting into each other, symbiotic, and merging into a smudge of indistinct emotional vomit.

Lindsay stood up, continuing to stare at the clock wall. She was the tock to Marla’s tick.
The game continued.

“It hurts.”

Marla stared blankly, confused about her head, now placed on Teddy’s torso, a brilliant display of biological transgression. Marla was bleeding out, losing her devotion, her body oozing the sanguine of lost love from every orifice.

Teddy’s head dangled from Marla’s petite body, the straining against the weight of his manly skull. He convulsed, clawing for Marla with her own hands.

The clock alarm rang. Time ran out. Marla was the dong to Lindsay’s ding.

Lindsay laughed.

“It hurts,” Marla whimpered.

“So?” Lindsay countered, starting the game again.

“You are the ones I love.”

My senses inform me the extermination is almost complete. I have hunted down and destroyed nearly all the vampires on Earth. There is only one left, the big boy, the king of vampires. And he is close by. Really close.

The years have blurred together and I have long ago lost count of the number of vampires I have killed by various methods–stakes through the heart, exposure to sunlight, holy water baths, dismemberment, burning. What a gory undertaking it was, because contrary to the lies perpetrated by movies vampires don’t simply crumble into dust when they die. They die noisy. They die ugly. And no matter the overwhelming pain they happen to be in when a splintered wooden stake is pounded through their cold heart the only emotion that shows is rage, a terrifying primal rage that shakes you to your core.

But no more of that. Only one is left: me. Now I can start anew. I will raise my own army of the undead, a loyal army obedient only to me, the King of the Vampires.