MicroHorror

The saying is “when it rains, it pours,” and although it’s meant figuratively, now it is literally true. It has rained here in Kansas every day for a month and all day long, making one soupy, drippy mess out of the environment and civilization. What’s left of it.
 
Did I mention it was acid rain? No, not the kind you are probably thinking of, that hard rain full of acidic sulfur and nitrogen compounds, but a real acid rain. LSD. Mixed with the drizzle and pounding us, along with most of the rest of the US, daily. God knows where it came from, or how it is even possible.
 
Of course the problem is keeping it from dosing you, and that isn’t easy. Sure, you can keep your mouth shut and wear a surgical mask, but it can ooze through exposed skin in time, so you have to be covered head to toe in a makeshift bio-suit if you need to go out in it. And since the rain never stops, that becomes a necessity.
 
Some people on the still-functioning late night radio stations (TV towers shorted out the first week, and the link to communications satellites must be blocked by the heavy, omnipresent clouds so cell phones and computers are out) think it’s aliens. Softening us up for an alien invasion.
 
Not a new idea and not an unexpected one either, given how trippy everyone’s mind is. The conspiracy nuts on the radio say that aliens from some distant world have picked Earth for harvesting (whatever that means) and seeded the artificially created clouds with LSD, inundating us with it, so we are tripping and hallucinating most of the time and couldn’t mount a defense if our lives depended on it, which, to the conspiracy nuts, it does. First the US, then the rest of the countries in descending order of viable military threat. The radio stations will let anyone ramble on as they need to fill the long hours from dusk to dawn, and the DJs are high as kites too.
 
The other day I thought I saw a tall, seven-foot maybe, dark green alien with enormous black eyes and jagged mouth full of delicate fangs skulking around the little park at the end of our block. But it was, no doubt, an LSD hallucination fueled by the fantasies of those dosed dimwits on the radio. Aliens roaming around in the middle of Kansas. I’m losing it.
 
Of course, this acid rain would be an effective strategy; disorient the enemy so completely they couldn’t what is real and what isn’t. Then just round up the helpless civilians and, maybe, I dunno, eat them with those numerous and wicked fangs that I imagined seeing. Now I sound as crazy as those acid casualties on the radio.

Wait, something is finally happening to that massive cloudbank overhead. Dark shapes, round, saucer-like, hundreds, maybe thousands of them are floating down. No, not floating–flying; they’re vehicles, some kind of airplane or… spacecraft. The first few are landing already. I can see their metal tripod legs extending and pushing into the soggy ground. Hatchways are opening and tall green creatures are exiting in military formation. And it has finally stopped raining.
 
Wow, if I didn’t think this was just another LSD hallucination, I would be scared shitless right now.

Her skin is torn, bloody, some of her limbs. Her hair hangs so limply, so long and stringy, she’s like bones, so little flesh left on her body. Her eyes are sunken in and she makes odd sounds. She tried to bite him a few times but she’s too weak. That was before the virus fully turned her. 

Her jaw clicks sometimes, she’s so hungry. She hasn’t fed. It tortures him to see her like this. To him, her beauty seemed not to have faded, even in death. He’d made love to her rotting, undead body, longing to kiss her blackened lips just once. He’d sobbed in corners for days, as she stared at him with her empty, lifeless eyes, unable to comfort him as she used to. He would never hear the sound of her voice again, never again would she hold him when things got too bad. What was the point anymore?
 
With tears streaming down his face, he slowly releases her bonds. She drags one leg behind her as she follows him, no strength in her to lunge at him as she had at first, weakly moving toward him, practically crawling.. It had no longer been safe for him to hunt the night for the living, to feed her. There weren’t many left. He had been too afraid, but he couldn’t bear to see her like this any longer. Weeping, he runs his fingers through her hair, pulls her close and kisses her one last time. To him her lips taste as sweet as they had in life. He doesn’t even scream when she bites into him, barely feeling the savage tear of her teeth as she rips out his tongue, devours his lips. He closes his eyes, pressing her lips to his neck one last time, whispers her name as he dies in her arms.

“What the hell is that?” the Boeing 737’s first officer asked, spotting the wall of black storm clouds dead ahead.
 
“Looks like we’re flying into a nasty storm,” the pilot replied. “I wonder why we didn’t catch it on radar.”
 
“I don’t know, but it looks like we can’t avoid it.”
 
The Boeing 737 was cruising at 45,000 feet when the ugly storm cloud seemed to devour it. Sudden turbulence buffeted the plane violently, stalling both the port and starboard engines. The cockpit and cabin, as well as the interior of the plane, turned pitch black as all electrical systems failed.
 
The plane, however, seemed to continue on course in darkened silence without losing altitude. The pilot and co-pilot glanced at each other incredulously before the plane listed right and began what felt like a swirling descent.
 
Passengers screamed hysterically, and a few bent down in their seats with their heads between their legs, assuming the crash position. The flight crew frantically worked the controls, trying to re-ignite the engines and regain control. Suddenly, the plane leveled off, and all was calm again though still completely dark.
 
Then, the screech of crushing metal ripped through the plane as the bulkheads collapsed inward. Passengers heard what sounded like a loud belch, accompanied by a pungent odor that smelled like burning metal. Then, the plane and passengers began to disintegrate as acid ate away at metal and flesh.
 
Outside the plane, a black, gelatinous creature scraped a two-hundred-foot-long tongue across its leathery lips. After picking a slice of sheet metal from between two teeth, the alien creature maneuvered the cloud cover a few thousand feet lower to another flight path. It again opened its huge mouth to await a second course.

Vladimir Kopavich (Vlad “The Drab” to all his buddies, who were now all long gone) staggered down the road. He was dying. He had long thought himself immortal, his whole kind immortal, but starvation, it seemed, was the great equalizer.

The countless zombies that filled the streets paid him no mind, and he paid them none, even though to move forward he often had to shove one out of the way. They showed no interest in him, because he could not provide the food they desired.

And neither could they to him.

And so Vlad “The Drab,” the last vampire, fell to his knees and reflected on the irony of life. He would die of starvation, just as his brothers before him.

The zombies filled the city streets like liquid in a glass, swarming and moaning up and down each street, searching for the same thing Vlad needed.

But there were no humans left.

Just zombies. Millions of zombies.

People, people everywhere, but not a drop to drink.

Tammy knew her dad worked late since her mother died two years ago–in an accident her father blamed on the Army’s negligence at the nearby Dead Loon Lake Facility–but he still worked there, nonetheless. In the last few weeks, he started staying overnight at the government labs. At least he called and she was fine on her own at age sixteen and with a car.

Still, she felt things were getting weird.

Like the “medicine” her dad told her she must take every morning and night. He supplied her with a case full of new syringes, showing her how to administer proper doses into her forearms. Tammy felt anxiety whenever receiving injections or immunizations, but Dad gave her a topical anesthetic spray made from ethyl chloride and it took the sting away.

She’d been taking the medication for over a month now. Asking why she had to take the medication and what it was for, her dad replied with tears in his eyes, “You’ll know when the time comes. You gotta watch what you eat, honey. Food’s gonna taste different. Don’t ever tell anyone, especially our neighbor, Commander Calvin, about this,” Dad said and then added, “Also, don’t make out with that Finstein boy. No lip-locking or French kissing. Just trust me. I love you.”

Tammy trusted and loved Daddy, and he didn’t need to mention Tom Finstein seeing as she dumped his lame ass ages ago and she wouldn’t be making out with anyone for a while. Still, she found her dad acting strange, drinking at home and talking to himself about birthing, biological retaliation, and salivary glands. Also, the medicine gave her nightmares and it made her skin dry and rough and her teeth hurt.

Now her dad was home and she was about to serve him dinner. Something didn’t seem right. “Daddy?” Tammy said, looking at her father. “You okay?”

Daddy rested in his recliner after working at the government lab all day. He didn’t look good. He wore an expression of pain and Tammy noted his ample beer-belly appeared larger.

She dropped the tray of Sloppy Joes as Daddy screamed out in pain. He ripped his plaid shirt open, revealing his round and hairy stomach, now rippling like the waves of a turbulent ocean. Daddy’s painful cry reached a soprano’s crescendo and his abdomen exploded.

Tammy, shielding her eyes from erupting blood, looked toward Daddy and saw him dead in his chair. The numerous fat, coiled, and slimy yellow things spilling out of Daddy’s bowels reminded Tammy of those nasty lamprey eels she saw in science class.

The glistening eel-things wriggled across the living-room floor with surprising speed. They hissed together, coming at her. Without thinking, she felt an immediate sense of defense and her mouth began watering. She hacked up a loogie from the bottom of her diaphragm and spit it out on several of the eel-things just as they reached her feet. As soon as the wad of phlegm hit the parasites, they erupted in a bright and foul-smelling flame. They roiled, hissed and sizzled.

Tammy stepped back, and spitting again, she ignited the remaining eels exiting her father’s gut. The house filled with smoke and soon the living room was on fire.

“Daddy,” she said, crying out and running to her dad’s side. She found him stone dead. “I love you,” she said and kissed his cheek.

As soon as her lips made contact with Dad’s skin, his flesh melted away and then his body caught fire. Shocked, she walked backwards and watched her father burning with the recliner and the house. She realized she cremated Dad with a wet kiss.

Tammy left the burning house behind, walking a mile up the main road to the Dead Loon Lake Facility to see who she was going to kiss and spit on.

Childlike and pale in her hospital gown, Sarah cried out into the darkness.

Something answered.

A guttural growl rose up behind her from the dim hospital bed where her warm corpse still lay.

“I’m just a kid!” Sarah’s ghost shouted as she fled from the sound. “Please just give me a break!”

The grinding, inhuman voice escalated to a scream. She would not get a break.

Sarah looked around frantically for a doctor or nurse, but the halls were abandoned now, bare of the living. She charged toward the elevators.

Shouldn’t they be right here?

She saw only blackness ahead and didn’t dare look behind.

It’s coming.

Inhaling shakily, Sarah forced herself onward. She’d been on the high school track team for three years when she was alive, but that didn’t help her ghost body. She was weighed down by the dark, the noise, invisible heavy hands.

And the bad thing I did.

Then the hospital began to change around her. Paint peeled off the walls and tiles pulled up from the floor like she was watching a time-lapse movie of decay. She danced across the broken ground, terrified she might fall. Sarah choked as she smelled the rotting bodies of the patients who had inhabited the rooms she ran past. Blood pooled under the doors. She heard what she knew was a chorus of creaking bones rising to follow her.

Ahead, a white figure came into view, running toward her. She couldn’t turn around–the howling hit a crescendo and the bones rattled–

Abruptly, the noise stopped. Sarah shut her eyes and held out her hands protectively, and touched

Glass?

She had run into a mirror. She stepped back and looked at the collapsing hospital around her, and finally at herself.

Oh, God.

Her neck was black and swollen above the chaste white collar of her gown. She could see the marks from the rope. Her lips were tinted blue.

Sarah hesitantly raised a hand to the mirror and touched the reflection of her fingertips.
A black spindly claw reached out of the mirror and clasped her hand.

Sarah shrieked as she was dragged down, down…

She opened her eyes.

Before long, she realized where she had been taken. She last saw this place only days before.

The hospital’s nursery was lit with dirty, flickering fluorescent lights. The many cribs meant for newborns were barren, except for one.

In the center of the room lay a small figure draped in a black blanket. It shifted slightly as Sarah watched.

She realized there was no way out.

Sarah stepped forward. The shape twitched silently.

Again, she stepped closer. Closer.

Why me, why did they do this to me, why did I do this…

She grabbed an edge of the blanket and yanked it off. All at once, the memories flooded back.

The pregnancy test taken in a bathroom stall at the homecoming game. Positive.

The comments about her weight. The stares. The gradual rising horror as her belly grew round.

The senior prom night spent at home.

Graduation day, last week, in the labor room. She’d yelled and moaned and finally the wrinkly thing popped out.

“You wouldn’t stop crying,” she said shakily to the gray, hollow-eyed creature. “I had to shut you up. Had to.”

The hands, Sarah’s hands, had wrapped around the baby’s neck. Then, shaking. A sharp snap. Silence.

“I followed you, okay? I paid for my sin.”

The rope she’d taken from the garage. The chair she’d stood on, then kicked away. Mother and baby, broken, breathless.

The shriveled creature opened its toothless mouth and began to wail the same deep call that had brought its mother here.

Sarah picked up her dead child. She cradled and stroked it, and waited for it to take her.

First they fed him laxatives, and rubbed him in his own filth.

Next they clothed him in a well-worn trench coat, and poured liquor down his throat.

Then they showed him a dry-erase board with several words scrawled on it: bad words, not nice.

“What is this?” he asked.

“Your palette,” the man said. “These words will be your working vocabulary from now on. You’re free to use them in any combination you wish–if you attempt to speak others, we will rephrase them for you through microscopic implants in the whiskey you drank. Think of them as your paints, and downtown as your canvas. Now go out in the world and create your masterpiece.”

Then they stopped at the corner and shoved him out, and the black van sped away.

The kids were screaming. Swallowing, he took the scaly brown slit from the wall and held it under his nose. It squirmed, and it stung, and he felt its prickly appendages scratching at his upper lip.

“See, it’s just my mustache,” he said, mustering a smile. “I keep it on the wall.”

“But Daddy, you need a beard to go with it! A beard to go with it!”

They were pointing at the dead rat in the corner.

The boy lacked the patience to follow the book’s instructions on stamp collecting. And though he admired the pictures, he found making papier-mâché dinosaurs complicated and sloppy. Shadow puppets addled his budding fingers, rocks were boring, and his parents wouldn’t buy him test tubes and beakers.

Then one day he thumbed to a section he hadn’t noticed before.

He pored over the instructions, examining the pictures, mentally rehearsing each step. It was quick and easy, the way he liked it. “I just hope it won’t taste funny,” he thought, sneaking into his father’s study.

Then he reached into the desk drawer and grabbed the gun.

“That was ‘Fear of the Dark’ by Iron Maiden, rounding out another hour of all-horror, all-the-time. This is your master of the macabre, DJ Voyeur, coming at you with the Graveyard Shift, every night. It’s coming up on the witching hour, currently 2:51, which means I’m almost out of here.“But before I sign off, I want to send a special message out there to all those kids down by the levee. It appears local police have yet to catch what they are now calling ‘The Lovers’ Lane Killer,’ who has been responsible for killing more than a half a dozen teenagers in and around the Golden Triangle area. So, seriously, kids, lock those doors and hold that girl of yours tight, because you never know which night will be your last.

“I’ll leave you with ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper’ by Blue Öyster Cult. Keep it tuned right here to WGTR 96.6. I’ll be back tomorrow night, with a special recording of a classic tale of terror from Vincent Price’s own radio show. This is DJ Voyeur, signing off.

“And, remember, ‘someone’s always there.’”

The voice from the radio erupted in sinister laughter, which faded as the song began.

The girl hit the radio power button with the palm of her hand.

“Ugh,” she said. “Honestly, Dean, I don’t know how you listen to that stuff. That guy gives me the creeps.” She shivered slightly, drawing her arms around her body.

Dean unbuckled his seatbelt and slid closer to the petite blonde.

“Aww, that is so cute,” he said. “Is Trish scared of the big, bad boogeyman coming through the radio and getting her?” His voice had the mocking tone of a child’s nursery rhyme.

Trish swatted Dean away from her.

“No,” she said. “It’s not that…”

Her voice trailed for a moment. In the silence, frogs and grasshoppers could be heard chirping their nighttime song.

She turned to Dean. “You think it’s true?” she asked. “The killer stalking those couples at night?”

Dean laughed. He pushed himself closer to Trish, as close as the gearshift would allow, and put his arm around her. “I’ll be here to protect you, baby.”

Trish rolled her eyes.

“Besides,” he continued. “That’s just local legend. It goes around every few years, but no one I know has ever…”

The sound of breaking glass interrupted Dean. Trish screamed as someone pulled a mask over her face and pulled her through the window into the darkness.

“Welcome back, my minions of mayhem. You’ve just been listening to the Psycho theme song, composed by Danny Elfman. All in preparation for tonight’s special presentation, ‘The Price of Fear.’ If you don’t have the creeps yet, you will. So sit back, turn out the lights–if you dare–and listen to the artful storytelling brought to you by that tyrant of terror, Vincent Price.“Enjoy this next hour, commercial-free, only on the Graveyard Shift. And only with your favorite DJ, the father of fright, DJ Voyeur.

“The scream you hear just might be your own.”

He gave his best villainous laugh, before he reached out and flipped a switch on the computer board. He took the earphones from his head and placed them delicately on the table beside him.

Swiveling his chair around so he could face the terrified blonde girl bound and gagged on his floor, he stretched out his hand to caress her head.

She looked up at him, muttering something between teeth clenched on the blue bandanna that had been tied tightly around her head. Her eyes were wet with tears, streaking black mascara down her red and swollen face.

“That should give us plenty of time, my dear,” the man said. He patted her head once more, taking time to wipe her eyes with his thumb.

He looked over the tray he had set, fingering the blades of all sizes, newly polished. He chose one, holding it up to the light.

“Now, where shall we begin?”