MicroHorror

The echoes.
I hear the cries of a thousand men.
Or is it women?

I guess it really doesn’t matter.
I too am a victim here, in this hellhole, suffering from excruciating pain.
I cannot help them. I cannot escape.
Oh, the torture.
And the echoes…

It’s a symphony.
A never ending song of misery that I am forced to hear.
Every day.
Every day I’m trapped in my dark chamber.

I wait.
I’m waiting for my chance. One chance. To slip away.
To elude their vicious grasps.
But the time never comes.
I am stuck here.
Hidden by the dark.

No one will be able to find me.
I do not know where I am.
I barely know anything anymore.
But there is one thing I am sure of.
I am a captive.
A prisoner.
And I am never going to set my eyes on light again.

• Copyright: © 2009 Chelsea Lynn Charters

Diane read in the book of Judges, “When he reached home, he took a knife and cut up his concubine, limb by limb, into twelve parts and sent them into all the areas of Israel.”
 
She closed her Bible and pushed it away. Man was made in God’s image, how could he allow this grisly action? God could have found another way. Her mind became disillusioned, something was wrong.
 
Diane remembered the horrible nights when the small black figures would appear in her bedroom, encircle her, and raise her above her bed. They stretched out her body so tight that she couldn’t move any part of herself, arms or legs, and she felt some evil presence above her.

She was so frightened that she could barely utter any words.  
 
“In… the… name… of… Je… sus… Christ,” she struggled.
 
She repeated it three times. By the third time, she felt her body being slowly lowered back onto the bed and the sweaty bed sheet that was wrapped around her had loosened.       
 
Another night the small black figures would come again and gather around her and she could feel their limbs slide underneath her body.
 
The next night she would feel them tugging at her right arm. What did they want? Her mind was traumatized by the events, that’s when she started using a nightlight before bed.   
 
She realized that when these events happened she believed in them.
 
The Devil and his demons.
 
By her belief in them she created an open connection to them. She was terrified by this thought and she had to find a way to end these dark traumas.     
 
Diane started to do research on her faith because these horrible experiences made her efforts more immediate. 
 
Her research became a horror in itself. The murdering of human beings for the sake of religion. The crusades, the inquisition, the witch hunts, the Nazi Holocaust, the Jonestown genocide. 
 
Diane sucked in a deep breath.  
 
David Koresh, the Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres, Northern Ireland, public beheadings of blasphemers.  
 
Tears of fear streamed down her face.
 
September 11th, Heaven’s Gate, abortion clinic bombings, suicide bombers, children dying because their parents’ religion didn’t believe in medical treatment.    
 
Her breathing became uneasy.  
 
There seemed to be no end to her discovery, it was everywhere.   
 
Diane was shocked by how religion divided people, murdered people, controlled people, poisoned their minds to kill for the sake of God Himself, and it still continued to this day.
 
She shook her head.
 
After all these years it still continued. Her stomach became nauseous.
 
Has man truly matured after all these years? Did he learn anything about his past mistakes? No, she decided. Man had matured very little and he did not use his brain at all. Then man is doomed. She leaned her forehead against her hand. Man is doomed to repeat the past.
 
If this was religion Diane no longer wanted to be involved. She was repulsed by being a part of its inhumanity and being linked to its insanity. 
 
She wiped away more tears from her face.
 
Diane stopped attending church, stopped reading her Bible, stopped praying, anything that was spiritual she ended it.
 
What about the demons that terrified her? She had made a final decision to stop her belief in them. By doing this she found that she closed the connection that had tied her to them and because of that decision she never saw the black figures again.
 
She was relieved that her own horror had ended but it gave birth to another.
 
She still had to witness, to watch, to see, to hear about its poisoning of other human minds and the horror of what religion made people do to each other in the name of God. And for the rest of her life that horror never left her.

• Copyright: © 2009 Lorella Mascot

I retched hard and the man spewed forth and crawled away. But that was days ago, on the beach in the moonlight. I can remember raising my eyes to look at him. I had been bent double, my hands at my knees, a line of saliva hanging from my mouth like a silver thread. I could see the hate in his eyes as he turned to look back at me: this man, this man who strangely, staggeringly, I had sicked up there in the sand. He had always hated me, but now he hated me more. He did not like this air, this wind. He stood shivering, looking at me spitefully as though to suggest that by ridding myself of him I had dealt him some injustice. The whiskey bottle still in my hand, I tossed it after him and he fled into the dark.

Now he had returned. He was standing on my doorstep. If only I’d known that it was his shadow floating up my garden path. If only I could have heard in his knock that which I knew in his voice: that slow, sinister quality that so revealed him. But I had thought him gone for good and hurried to answer the door. “Coming,” I even called, brightly.

Opening the door, I stood for one moment completely still. I stared at that face, that grin, before impulse told me to slam the door, bolt it, and step away. I stood in the hall, my hands pressed to my face, my eyes fixed on the shape that moved beyond the door’s mottled glass. I started when the letter box opened with a rattle, and looking down I saw two cold eyes peering at me through the gap. At first they were lit with pure hate, but this gave way and turned to something pleading.

“Brother,” said a low, childlike voice from the other side of the door. “Let me in. Please let me in. I’m cold.”

“Go away!” I said. “I don’t need you!”

For a few moments the eyes peered in at me, again with a weighty hatred. Then the letterbox was dropped shut. I saw him upright beyond the glass. He was going away.

Falling back against the wall, I stood shaking with relief. What he wanted I could not imagine; I was only glad he’d gone. But thinking this, I jerked suddenly upright. What if he hadn’t gone away? What if he’d gone, in fact, around the back, to the kitchen door that I had left unlocked?

I ran. I ran down the hall. In the kitchen I flew to the door, seized the key already in the lock, and turned it. I was laughing as I rested my head against the wall. A silent demented laughter that shook my whole body.

“Too late, brother.”

All humor sank in me. Turning, I saw him perched on the work surface beside the cooker, there in my white, bright kitchen. In one hand he held a whiskey bottle and he was drinking straight from it the way he’d always liked to. I looked into his eyes. These eyes. These eyes so familiar, for they were my own. Here was a face I saw every day in the mirror. Here was my own smile, twisted with menace.

“I’m not your brother,” I said.

The man across the kitchen cocked his head. As his grin broke apart in a laugh, he reached forward and plucked a knife from my rack on the wall.

“Where are they?” he asked. “The wife you beat? The kids you terrorized? The dog you kicked? Have they all left you, even poor Rover?”

“THEY ARE OUT!” I almost screamed. “It was you that did those things! All you! I am better without you! I am good! I am kind! I am reborn!”

“No,” he said, sliding down from his perch and showing me the glinting blade in his hand. “I am.”

• Copyright: © 2009 Tim Jeffreys

“I’ll always love you,” he tells her.

Of course, there’s no reply. He wonders what has brought about this confession. Maybe it’s the noise he hears, a shuffling sound from all around. He reaches in the dark for his matches and, with trembling hands, strikes one off. What he sees in the moment before the flame burns low and dies he does not like at all.

“Help me,” he pleads with her, knowing she can’t.

As he tries to shift position, pain shoots along his leg. He has to bite down on the scream. The things he saw were sleeping. He does not want to disturb them. For a few seconds he rolls, his knuckles pressed against his lips. The ground beneath him is hard and slippery. He can hear another sound: drip, drip, drip.

Stilling himself as the pains subside, he listens again for that first sound, that sound like the fluttering of great wings. He knows from what he saw in the match light that he is surrounded. They cover the walls with their bodies. Do they dream? He finds it ludicrous to be thinking such things. But what would they dream of? And what could inhabit the nightmares of something apparently born of his own?

He does not know. All he knows is that he must stay still and be very, very quiet.

Suddenly he hears a voice. He hears his name called to him from above. It echoes down the throat of the well to the place where he lies. It’s her. She’s back. He knew she would return. He feels a wave of relief go through him, but then he’s aware of an increase in the shuffling sounds that surround him.

They stir.

Silently, he pleads with her. Please be quiet, love. Get me out of here, but don’t make a sound. You don’t know what’s down here with me.

Unknowing, she hollers that she’s brought help.

A flock twitches its wings.

A man’s voice joins the girl’s, louder still. There’s humor in it. If only they knew! The man asks, laughing, how he managed to fall into a well. The man tells him they’ll have him out in no time. The man has too much to say, too loudly, and the creatures are waking now.

His hands scatter to the ground in search of matches. He finds the box, is about to light one when he halts and freezes, turning his head slowly in the dark.

Very close to him, he can hear their breathing.

Voices from above tell him they’re throwing down a rope.

It’s too late. He wants to tell her he loves her again, despite this, despite everything, but he doesn’t even have time to scream.

• Copyright: © 2009 Tim Jeffreys

The monolith was a frightening person, a looming figure flooded with rage and paranoia. Almost seven feet tall, he looked like a pro wrestler or NFL football or NBA basketball player. But he had no athletic ability. Fortunately, he was a gifted and prolific writer who wrote science fiction novels. One of his novels had been sold to MGM for seven figures. A commercially successful writer, he had enough money to see a top-notch shrink every day of the week if he wished. He chose to see Dr. Samuel Woods three times a week in his office on Ocean Avenue in Brooklyn, New York.

The monolith sat across from Dr. Samuel Woods, a tiny, balding man of eighty, with dark brown eyes and a weak chin. A gentle man with a soft, quiet disposition, the doctor possessed a cornucopia of compassion and emotional strength.

“Why do you want to kill me, Doc?”

“What gives you that impression?”

“Don’t know. Just call it raw, animal instinct.”

“Is that proof?”

“Maybe not. But you got me doped up on Risperdal, Seroquel, Depakote, and Ambien.”

“Are you taking the meds?”

“Sometimes. They make me sick. Guess I’m gonna go away for a couple of weeks. The Voices warned me about you and the others. Said you might be aliens.”

“Aliens?”

“Yes.”

“Did they command you to do anything?”

“Well, of course. They told me to kill you and my family. Don’t worry. I won’t. Not yet. Maybe never. Got to get away.”

“Where are you going?”

“Can’t tell you. You might follow me there and… Well, I’ll see you when I get back.”

“Take your meds. You’ll feel better.”

“Maybe.”

On August 1, the monolith drove off to Ogunquit, a small town in southern Maine. He left Brooklyn an hour before the hurricane arrived. When he heard the news on the car radio, he realized he had escaped more than a storm. The aliens had arrived, he concluded. The aliens were finally here.

He stayed in Ogunquit three weeks. He felt safe there, and thought of relocating. But he had to return to Brooklyn. It was his home.

He returned to Brooklyn on a hot, humid dog-day afternoon. When he got out of his car, the toxic, suffocating air assaulted him.

“Christ! They poisoned the air!” he cried out. Then he sauntered off to his two-story Manhattan Beach house one block from the beach.

Soon, he was home. The manicured lawn looked different, perhaps, too perfect. And the Voices whispered to him at first and then screamed inside his brain: Kill your wife and two daughters!

When he entered the familiar surroundings, that seemed eerily strange, he began to sweat. His heart beat rapidly–uncontrollably, like a runaway train without a motorman. His hands trembled and his body shook. Dizzy and faint, he felt an alien force sucking the life-force out of him, replacing it with the foul scents of human debris, death, feces, urine, vomit, and sweat.

“Anyone home?” he shouted.

Suddenly, his wife and two daughters descended the stairs. They smiled lovingly at him, but he knew they were aliens. He rushed to the door and scurried off.

The monolith sat across from Dr. Woods.

“They’re aliens, Doc–not my flesh and blood. They came in the storm, an alien virus that kills humans. They snatched their bodies.”

“What evidence do you have?”

“Pure animal instinct.”

“Did you hurt them?”

“No.”

“That’s good. But what about me? Am I an alien too?”

He gazed quizzically at the doctor who removed his human mask.

“What are you?”

“Death.”

Propelled by rage and only a trace of his life-force, he lunged at the grotesque creature that now possessed the little doctor’s body. The other took out a .357 Magnum and blew the monolith’s head off.

Grinning sardonically at no one in particular, it waited for the next storm and the arrival of its alien comrades.

• Copyright: © 2009 Mel Waldman

A rumor went around that Holly threw her fetus into a wastebasket on prom night. The kids at Jefferson H.S. recognized similarities between what they’d heard about Holly and a news story that had really happened, like, four years ago, but rumors have a way of embedding themselves, surpassing all else.

After Homecoming, Holly got heavy overnight and gossip named it post-baby fat. Her acne doubled, which seemed impossible unless you considered less conspicuous areas such as her torso and legs. In the halls no one even bothered hiding their stares, their scorn and identity-butchering. “Wait it out,” Holly’s mother advised. “It’ll all blow over.”

Holly had seen something comparable happen the year before with Emily Rosedale. Gossip had Emily making love to her own thoroughbred. Things got so ugly that Emily quit school midway through and the Rosedales moved to Montana, which is half a continent away.

Holly had never been popular to begin with. She had always seen high school as a burden to get through, coincidentally much the same as she imagined the brutality of childbirth. Now the make-believe fetus-in-the-garbage-bin story bloomed and tagged her as irretrievably damaged goods, so it was nothing for Holly to burn down the school one night and do what she did to her mother the same evening, her mother being the one that had started all this by giving birth to Holly in the first place.

You might even say she was bored, waiting for the police to show up, because Holly had seen this movie before and she knew how it would end.

• Copyright: © 2009 Len Kuntz

She called me that, curling the word around her lips the way a fox unfurls its tail. I kept my eyes on her, afraid she’d disappear or leave me for good. It felt old-fashioned and real the way our love broke through the nasty crust of this world.

She said, “Can you get me a drink?”

When I returned from the kitchen with an exquisite mojito featuring crushed peppermint leaves she was gone.

I spent the day awaiting her return. I read every magazine on the coffee table, even her pornographic copy of last year’s Cosmopolitan.

I fell asleep on the couch, rubbing the spot her ass had sat on. The fabric was no longer warm, but still.

I couldn’t force myself to leave, even when the urge to urinate overwhelmed me. What if she came back to retrieve some inconsequential article?

I might have dreamt of her. At around three in the morning I started having visions. The phone rang several times but there was only dead air on the other end.

I waited until noon to call the police, which is harder than you think, getting a living breathing human on the phone. I suppose I could have dialed 911 but as I said, I wasn’t thinking too clearly.

I told them I needed to file a missing person report but they said I’d have to come down to the station. “There’s a protocol. We take that kind of thing very seriously.”

“So do I! Why the hell do you think I’m calling?”

“Sir,” the female officer said.

She went missing last Tuesday. The press started showing up yesterday when someone leaked the fact that Stacey’s blood was found in the trunk of my car. What kind of idiot do they think I am? That I’d kill the woman I can’t live without and then stage her disappearance?

My lawyer says it’s all circumstantial and our case is strong, but he tells me to start taking better care of myself, grooming and bathing. He says the press is portraying it as a ploy, a stunt so that I come across as burdened and tragic.  The gamesmanship involved in this kind of ordeal is extraordinary. If I wasn’t living it I wouldn’t believe it.

So, Stacey, she was the love of my life. You’re probably wondering why I said “was,” aren’t you?

An expression I hate is when people ask you a question and then they answer, “I could tell you but then I’d have to kill you.” It’s trite and overused but in this case it fits. I’ve done it once, I could do it again.

Now you’re wondering, “What first time?” aren’t you? My lawyer’s advice is to keep mum. He says if I play my cards right there could be a book here, or a movie deal. Maybe Stacey isn’t around anymore, but I’ve got some ideas for who’ll play her. She thought she could leave me. Stupid bitch, she should have known better.

• Copyright: © 2009 Len Kuntz

“You’ll see,” the old man says. “Yours will come for you, too.” His eyes wild and clothes stained with blood, the man circles the small cell.
 
“What’d he do?” Kara asks.
 
The officer sighs. “Not even sure… The CSU is still working the scene. We just had to get him out of there.”
 
“A body?”
 
“Yeah,” the officer says. “If this guy didn’t kill him, then he better have a damn good explanation for why he was clawing at the corpse’s face.”
 
Her stomach churns. Kara isn’t on the homicide team–computer crimes are just her speed.
 
“Well,” Kara says. “Good luck! I’m headed home.”
 
The old man in the cell faces Kara and grasps the bars. “Don’t go home,” he says. “It’s started… the worlds are coming together… it’ll find you!”
 
Every shadow threatens Kara on her trip home. What was the old man talking about? Something spooked him… probably drugs.
 
Alone in her apartment, Kara and her cat, Moses, check every room. As Kara crawls into bed, something bumps her bedroom door. Moses stands and eyes the dark doorway. Goosebumps erupt across Kara’s neck and her heart thumps. Did she lock the door? Yes–she always did.
 
Hands trembling, Kara reaches for her pistol in the nightstand. Moses hisses and darts from the bed just as the door bursts open. Flailing hands and hair careen forward. Kara freezes for a second, long enough for the intruder to jump on the bed. The woman mumbles and tears at Kara with her nails. The stench of blood and urine fill the room. Kara pushes the attacker to the floor and rolls out of bed. With her pistol in hand, Kara flips the light switch.
 
To Kara’s surprise, her own face stares back from beneath a knotted mess of hair. The duplicate’s eyes are sunken and her movements jerky.
 
The intruder lunges forward and Kara fires. Bang! It’s over.
 
“What… was that?” Kara asks herself. The sounds of gunfire, screams and sirens rise in an ever-increasing cacophony below her window. 
 
The door to her room bumps again–and Moses hisses. Another duplicate with disheveled features enters the room and stares at Kara. This time, the duplicate pauses, as if unsure about the cat. Kara uses the time to open her window and slip onto the fire escape. The duplicate pounces on Moses, but the cat escapes under the bed. Without looking into the room, Kara descends the fire escape. What the hell is going on? Is this related to the old man at the station? He mentioned something about worlds colliding…
 
“No–there’s gotta be a rational explanation,” Kara says to herself as she drops from the fire escape into the alley. “Just… get a hold of yourself.”
 
Kara’s body disobeys and she retches in a dumpster. Is this a dream? Did she kill herself a few moments ago? How can duplicates exist? After spitting and wiping her mouth, Kara resolves to discover the truth of the night’s events by questioning the old man at the station.
 
“You can do this,” Kara says.
 
Then, she hears shuffling and the duplicates come into view–several dozen of them. Kara’s heart quickens in revulsion over the thought of a duplicate version of herself. She needs to kill them. Kara raises her gun, but forgets how the device functions. The weapon lowers. Shaking her head, Kara attempts to hold herself together despite her primal urges.
 
“No,” Kara says, struggling with her words, “this isn’t right…”
 
The closest duplicate cocks her head to the side, a puzzled look on her scarred face.
 
Kara raises her gun again. “I’m not going to end up like you,” she says as the duplicates move towards her. This time, however, Kara presses the gun to her temple while she still has the clarity to realize her fate.
 
The duplicates reach towards her.
 
Kara wonders if there will be anyone left to care for Moses.
 
Bang!

• Copyright: © 2009 Matthew C. Plourde

It started one February after midnight. Tall, with an athletic build, he paced back and forth, until finally stopping under an old railway arch. There he remained for an hour, the burning tip of his cigarettes marking the spot where he stood.

From her bedroom window Kim watched his nightly pacing and her head spun with all kinds of fantasies. One Monday night he didn’t appear and she fretted, amazed that she missed the nightly visits of a complete stranger.

Tuesday he returned, but his pattern of movement had changed. Now he stood in the doorway of a butcher’s shop opposite her flat with only the occasional flare of his cigarette lighter to show that he was there.

Watching, she hoped to catch sight of his elusive features as trails of smoke thickened like a solid rope that twined its way across to her window. While she watched, she’d have mental chats with the stranger, and his soft answers seemed to echo like love songs in her mind.

Always, after he left, insomnia dogged her and her thoughts raced with romantic scenarios. “Why not go out and talk to him?” She asked herself over and over, but remained behind the shelter of her Venetian blinds.

***
 
This summer’s night he appears and walks up and down the pavement as usual. Then he stops and bright moonlight etches a handsome but tragic face gazing up at her.

“Why not?” Kim asks herself, grabbing up a packet of cigarettes. Now she’s hurrying down the flight of stairs from her flat, unbolting the door and stepping outside.

Opposite, his smoke snakes out, its heady smell of herbs and something else wafts from the dark confines of the shop’s doorway. “Hello, there,” she calls out. “I was wondering if you had a light?” She waves her cigarette pack as a silent invitation, but receives no answer, only his smoke drifting in a straight line towards her.

Kim takes a few steps back. “It doesn’t matter,” she blusters, now embarrassed by her rashness and, as she speaks, the smoke thickens and curls around her neck and her body.

Shocked, Kim’s fingers scrabble at its strength but the smoke twists, reeling her in, like a fish on a hook, towards the shop doorway. She tries to scream but the smoky rope tightens cutting off her terrified agony.

“Didn’t you know smoking kills?” a harsh voice whispers into her ear. “You should’ve heeded those warnings.” He laughs a devil’s laugh and a rotten stench breathes into her gaping mouth as he bends his face to kiss her.

• Copyright: © 2009 Jennifer Walmsley

“You know you hurt me.” He glanced over at Julie. Nothing.

He sighed and looked out over the small wooded glen. He’d known that she wouldn’t say anything, that she wouldn’t try to explain.

“I’ve done everything I could to please you, to be the type of man you could love.” He looked down, voice soft, “but it was never enough, was it?”

She still didn’t answer. He watched brightly colored leaves dance across the ground. Long strands of blond hair blew across his eyes and he combed them back over his balding head. The wind was picking up and it would be night soon, not that he needed to hurry. He’d been out here often enough, he could find his way back in the dark.

The first time he’d seen Julie, she’d been leafing through glossy women’s magazines at the grocery store, absently pushing a curly red lock of hair out of her face. His mother’s hair had been red. He’d liked the way her freckles stood out against her pale skin. She’d made him smile and it was in that moment that he’d known he loved her.

The more he learned about her, the more he knew that they were meant to be together. He wasn’t good in social situations; but he loved watching her at work, seeing her soft smile as she greeted customers. He loved her laugh and the way her green eyes crinkled. When he found out her family lived out of state, he knew she was alone like him; they were meant for each other.

Now, as silence pushed in around him, he understood that he’d moved too fast, pushed himself on her too quickly. He understood that he’d scared her with the intensity of his need for her, he’d expected too much, too quickly. Still, he felt a bitter disappointment that she hadn’t given in to her true feelings for him. They were meant to be together.

He hunched his shoulders against the cold breeze. She had pushed him away, said hateful things to him. She hadn’t wanted him. He looked over, “Why couldn’t you have loved me half as much as I loved you?” She still didn’t answer, and tears sprang to his eyes.

A bright yellow leaf blew up against his shoe. He held it in his hand, staring at it closely. He could see the dark brown decay already starting on the leaf’s edges, marring its perfection, destroying it. He dropped it to the ground.

Picking up a clump of dirt, he turned it over in his hand, trying not to look at Julie. There was nothing he could say that would make all of this right. Nothing he’d been able to do to make Julie love him. He closed his hand and watched the red dirt slip between his fingers. He wasn’t ready to let her go; he couldn’t let her tell everyone about him.

He felt his anger rising and he looked at her. “Did you think you were too good for me? Too pretty? Too special? Well, you’re not.”

“You’re mine, Julie. You’ll be mine forever.” He bent over, picking up yet another clump of dirt. Tossing it, he winced at the sound when it struck Julie’s lifeless body. He didn’t have any more time; he needed to get her covered.

Gently he pushed the rest of the dirt over the pale form lying at the bottom of the shallow grave, patting dirt over her like a warm blanket. Finally he arranged the brightly colored leaves on top of the grave, moving a leaf here and a leaf there until he had it just right.

He looked out over the small glen once more. She’d always be here for him now, she was his forever. The ground lay nearly flat; you couldn’t tell that anyone lay beneath the leaves. This was the best thing for Julie. Unlike him, she would never be lonely; there were plenty of others here to keep her company.

• Copyright: © 2009 L. M. Stauffer