MicroHorror

Linda watched the doorknob jiggle back and forth as her captive attempted to free herself. But she knew very well that her friend wouldn’t be able to escape. She had wedged a heavy chair up under the handle on the door.

“Linda? Answer me! I know you can hear me!”

Linda smiled to herself. “Don’t waste your breath, Marla. I’m not letting you out. Or at least not yet. And I think you know why, too.”

Marla continued to struggle against the door, but it held firm.

“Where’s Jason at?” she demanded.

Linda scowled. “You don’t need to worry your pretty little head about him. He’s not your concern anymore.”

“Did you kill him too?”

“Listen to me, little miss innocent,” Linda retorted. “You know perfectly well who the killer is here. You’re probably one of those things. I don’t think you’re even human! Jason told me he saw your eyes change. He said they were blood red!”

“Linda, it’s me, Marla. How could you do this to me? I’m not any monster. You know it and I know it. I didn’t kill Tommy or Ross or even the damn cat. When I found them they were already dead.”

A long silence followed.

“Linda, do you hear me? Linda, you bitch, listen to me!”

Linda stood up and sauntered over to the bed. Lying down, she kicked off her pink tennis shoes and stretched herself out.

“Jason will be here any minute, ya know,” she teased. “He told me we were gonna find out if you’re human or not. Oh, and he’s bringing Tommy and Ross with him too.”

Marla stood up and, rubbing her swollen eyes, concentrated on the door. Thin plumes of wispy smoke floated up from her head, filling the closet with its thick aroma. With one swift wave of her hand the closet door crashed to the ground.

“I do hope those bastards hurry up,” she grunted in a deep, guttural tone. “I’m starving. I haven’t eaten in months.”

At that very instant Jason, Tommy and Ross burst into the room.

“Hello, ladies, we’re here!”

Tommy and Ross fell onto the bed, flanking Linda, who was smiling from ear to ear. “What took you guys so long?”

Tommy snapped his hands back, releasing two-inch-long talons from their sheaths. “You know we had to wait till the right time. We couldn’t show up earlier.”

Ross was swinging his arms around his head as if he were doing some sort of bizarre ritual dance, his face a mixture of pleasure and pain. In a split second one of his hands swung near Linda’s head, slicing off one of her ears, which landed across the room in a thick bloody pile. Linda only laughed.

“Is he here yet?” Jason asked. “I’m getting hungry.” His eyes had become such a deep shade of red they were nearly black.

“You moron,” Marla spat. “Of course he’s here. Who do you think is narrating this horror story?”

“Could be a girl,” Linda giggled. The side of her head where her ear had been was thick with blood. It contrasted strongly with her smile. “They taste good too.”

Marla nodded. “I stand corrected. He, or she, fell into our trap perfectly.” Her elongated fingers clenched in excitement. “And as usual they don’t have a clue.”

And then the entire group, Linda, Marla, Tommy, Ross and Jason, all turned and looked at me. Their hungry, red eyes glowed with an evil hunger beyond description, content in the knowledge that I was doomed.

I had been foolish enough to fall for their ploy, to involve myself in their situation, to care about what happened to their characters. And now I’m trapped.

I can only watch helplessly as they advance towards me with grins too wide and teeth too long for any human. Hopefully they won’t see you as well.

I will ask a simple question: what do you see? Do you see another human being, a fellow insignificant speck on an insignificant speck that wanders aimlessly around a glowing orb in the cold arena of space? Do you see another living creature who like yourself is acting out the scene of life with only vague ideas and beliefs as to what waits beyond? One who can’t grasp the slightest notion of where life began or how long it will last? People who shut out the inevitable fact that all we do or say will be incinerated when the sun swells and engulfs the inner planets? Is that what you see?

Do you see another person full of thoughts, fears, desires? One who shares sunlight and rain and warmth and cold with all other living creatures whether they want to or not? Someone who strives to live each and every day to the fullest despite whichever path that may require?

Do you see an enemy or a friend? An accomplice or an opponent? Do you see a reflection of yourself? A mirror image staring back at you, similar and yet not so alike? Remember, mirrors distort images backwards; they do not reveal inside the person. They cannot expose that private little room inside of all of us where we hide away from the world’s probing judgments. Sometimes we even hide away from ourselves.

Do you see someone who embodies all that is bad in people? Someone who embraces and even displays every aspect of evil and cruelty despite the enormous undertaking of such a task given mankind’s long and storied history of evil?

Or do you see someone who glows with an aura of compassion and kindness? One who radiates love and genuine understanding? For that as well would be an enormous task.

So I ask you again: what do you see? Judging by the trickle of tears streaming down your face I can only surmise that you see something unpleasant. I do, however, hope that is not the case. Believe me when I say that. I truly mean it. I am, among other things, sincere.

But now I will tell you what I see. I see prey. I see a victim. I see a delectable morsel of flesh that my blade yearns to love.

There is an octopus in my bathtub. There is ink on the floor, bleeding over the white porcelain. I too will bleed soon, into the bathtub and on the floor and down the drain. This is how I am going to die. They must think me mad for of this, telling stories of sea monsters in old houses. There are monsters everywhere, whether they accept it or not. I could not blame them in any case; I could not accept this either, not at first, this notion of hiding beasts. They breathe under the stairs and behind the checkered cloth of the kitchen table, living in the shadows that flutter in the corner of one’s eye when he is not of mind. This is how the beast came for me.

He is waiting for me, the octopus, in a bundle of slippery leather. Like a sack with eyes and arms, his breathing is hard, the formless weight of his body spilling over on the floor in the hard wet slap of flesh and tile. I woke to find him there this morning, mocking me with eyes that are old and empty and black. If this makes me mad then the octopus is my insanity, my sickness divined, creeping over the wrinkles of my brain with heaving tentacles.

How he got here I neither know nor care; crawling in from the drain or through a slit of space an open window. He could have opened the front door with the spare key beneath the welcome mat and slithered in, all arms and slick flesh, or waited hidden in the bushes for me to return home and crept in behind me, down the hallway and into the bathtub. The details do not concern me; I am undone.

The octopus wants to see me dead. He has come to kill me. I know this, because he has told me so. There is a smile written crookedly in the jut of his beak, black like deep-ocean and the hollows of his eyes. He will snare me with his toothy suction cups, snarled by heavily muscled tentacles to feed me to his gleaming bill of a mouth. I will scream but no one will hear me, and I will run but there is no escaping the reach of the monster’s arms, dragging me back to the bathtub. There are no teeth to chew me so I will slide down his gullet, a piece of meat falling clumsily into the monster’s belly, useless to protect myself from him.

Falling into this pit, I will wander his labyrinth of a stomach, and know no other shelter. I will descend the crooked staircases assembled from misshapen steel and the spines of whale carcasses, snagging at my clothes and skin in harsh angles of bone and metal. I will wind down the wet and vacant corridors of flesh and fish skeletons, like living ribcages, breathing, sighing, and forever spiraling into empty depths. There will be no gods to help me here; I will be beyond all of that.

There is only the darkness and madness and the slosh of seawater around my ankles. I can only travel forward, never back, my body propelled by feet too fearful to stop moving. Until wearing through the soles of my shoes my clothing will follow and fall away, then my flesh and muscle, torn open and flayed by rough geometry, and finally my bones, my skeleton left as testimony to my existence in this pit.

This is where I will die. My blood will bubble up from the octopus’ beak, and bleed out into the bathtub and on the floor and down the drain and I will disappear forever. The octopus will simply smile.

A fire burned deep in the forest. Around it stood nine people, all of them dressed in black robes, eyes shaded by their hoods. They all stared at the fire, their gaze firmly fixed upon the flames, or at least it seemed that way–their eyes could not be seen. One of the robed figures was restless, and was nervously cracking his knuckles. The black figure to his right, without taking his eyes off the fire, spoke in a gruff old voice.

“Calm down, Serge; the process will soon begin.”

The man called Serge looked at him briefly and crossed his arms. He had heard the cursed creatures come and settle in the trees around them. He suddenly wished he had not come.

“Newcomer, approach and state the purpose of your arrival.”

It was a shrill female voice. The robed figure in front of him motioned him to come closer to the fire. Serge stepped forward. The flames lighted his face; his green eyes seemed ablaze in the firelight. He cleared his throat and spoke.

“I… it doesn’t matter. I think I’ve changed my mind. I’ll leave…”

A large black-clad figure to his left began rolling up its right sleeve, revealing a black, crisp burned hand. The group seemed to stir, as if displeased by Serge’s reply.

“You cannot leave now. The forest spirits have been aroused, and will not sleep until they have judged you,” the woman said.

Cawing sounds suddenly echoed throughout the forest, and two crows swooped towards the startled Serge. He turned quickly in an attempt to fend them off, but they were too quick. The crows landed on his face and sank their claws into his flesh. They stared into his frightened eyes with a curious look. Then, with blinding speed, the crows opened their beaks, stuck them into Serge’s eye sockets, snapped shut and pulled out. Serge was blind before he even realized what had happened to him. After a few seconds of panic, shock and terror, he cried out in pain as he pressed his hands against his bleeding, eyeless face. The group stood and observed as if nothing unusual had happened. The crows now circled the fire in a low flight. They flew to the ground, blood still dripping from their beaks, and swallowed Serge’s eyes. A change of mood then came over the black-robed figures.

The old man with the gruff voice spoke.

“Ah, this does not bode well for you, my boy. I believed you would be a worthy addition to our… group. Alas, you were not accepted. Shame.”

He moved closer to Serge, and the fire showed the old man’s wrinkled face, and dark eyeless sockets. All faces turned towards Serge. The large man with the burned hand stepped forward.

“Execute him,” said the shrill-voiced woman.

The large man dashed toward the pain-drunken Serge, and grabbed the back of his head with his dead hand.

“No, please!” Serge cried out.

The man did not heed his cry and began pushing him towards the fire, head first. Serge felt the flames licking his face and burning his skin.

“Don’t!”

But his executioner was deaf to his cries and now held Serge’s head completely engulfed in flames. His face was now visible in the light of the fire, and just like the old man, this brute too was missing both eyes. Serge flailed himself violently but the grasp of the burned hand was unusually strong. After failed attempts to break free from the death grip, he suddenly stopped moving and became limp. His executioner tossed him aside and resumed his place in the circle.

A fire burned deep in the forest. Around it stood eight people, all of them dressed in black robes, eyes shaded by their hoods.

Plasmo was a gift from the stars. Plasmo is the ultimate living textile.

The aliens gave us one Plasmo blanket, as a gesture of goodwill before they left. Plasmo divides asexually, and soon there was a stack of hundreds. The scientists were amazed. Plasmo is benign, and pliable, and responds to human thought patterns. They deemed Plasmo a miracle, and safe for the general population.

Every household got a Plasmo eventually, and those divided until there was one for each family member. Nobody “owns” Plasmo, so they were free for all.

Plasmo is the softest, most comfortable blanket you’ve ever owned. Plasmo is the most absorbent towel you’ve ever used. Plasmo flows over your body like water, and Plasmo can be any kind of clothing you can imagine. Plasmo even came up with new and beautiful fashions that we had never seen before. Soon, everyone in the world was wearing Plasmo.

Then, one morning, you can’t move your Plasmo blanket. Instead of coming off, it snuggles you tighter, and tighter. Your skin is burning inside the blanket, Plasmo pulses, and you suspect it is eating you. Finally, Plasmo covers your head, and you are encased in Plasmo–except for your eyes. You arise then, and Plasmo is making you walk. Plasmo is the perfect insulator, so nobody can hear you scream, but then you can’t hear their screams either, because they are covered in Plasmo too. Plasmo is bright orange today, and everyone is outside.

The aliens are coming back now. The ships descend through the clouds, and you remember your human history. You remember how once before, the path of settlers was eased–by the gift of a blanket.

“I’m scared you’re going to leave me when we’re older,” my wife admits. She’s restless beneath the covers.

“I’m scared you’ll try to kill me someday to keep that from happening,” I respond. She doesn’t say anything. The breeze hisses at us from the window.

“Better check on the boy,” my wife suggests. I fumble with the covers and trudge across the hall. The boy developed a sudden rash earlier in the day. Angry red welts still cover two thirds of his body. Toxic shock is heavy on our minds.

The boy has put a small tent up in his room and has chosen to sleep in it. I get down on all fours and crawl inside. For a moment I am convinced the boy is not breathing. I hold my own breath until I hear the air whistling out through his nose. I begin backing out of the tent. For just a moment I think I see a face through the back window. Not inside the room, but peering in from outside. I squint into the darkness but see only the leaves of the shrubbery bobbing in the breeze.

Back in bed, my wife brings up nightmares. She has dreamed of a cemetery where an angry man in shades of gray sprints toward her. “Bitch!” he growls at her before disappearing behind a tree. Then he’s back where he started, sprinting toward her again.

I counter with an old dream. An old man follows me from room to room in a funeral parlor. “Hello… hello… hello…” he drones. I duck into a darkened room to elude him and am dismayed to find myself staring into an open casket at the shriveled crabapple face of an old hag. I am convinced that she will open her eyes and scream in my face any moment. Driven by a maddening terror, I punch the corpse’s face until I wake up.

My wife stares at the ceiling and doesn’t speak. I crack my knuckles one by one. Lightning flashes in the distance. No thunder yet. I ask my wife if she smells anything funny. Something is burning my nose: an unpleasant blend of bleach and patchouli.

“Did you rinse the bathtub?” she asks. I toss the covers aside. In the bathroom, I run hot water down the drain, an hour after I should have. The drain still runs slow.

“I used half a bottle of clog remover,” I complain when I’m back in the bedroom. “And it’s still doing it.”

“Better check on the boy,” my wife suggests.

Back inside the tent I touch the boy’s cheek and he immediately sits up, rubs his eyes and stares at me suspiciously. I back out of the tent again.

I detour to the side door to check the lock. It’s been left open–a rare occurrence. I immediately remedy the situation and stand on the landing, gazing speculatively down the stairs into the darkened basement. Suppose someone had slipped into the house and was now crouched in the laundry room, biding their time?

I plod through the kitchen, creak down the hall and grunt into bed. I’ve decided against exploring the basement, at least for now. Lightning illuminates the room and thunder growls in the night. I try to crack my knuckles again but only get results from two. I grind my teeth instead. My wife tosses and turns.

“Better check on the boy,” she suggests again. I’m halfway out of bed before she’s finished. The boy is still breathing. Outside are only shrubs. I back out of the tent. The side door is still locked.

I collapse on top of the covers this time. Deep breathing from the shape beneath the covers means that my wife has abandoned me. Now it’s just me, alone against the night.

I grind my teeth and listen to the rain.

Gary dried the kitchen knife and returned it to its holder. As he reached over to turn off the light he noticed a large cockroach clinging to the wall.

He stopped his hand movement, slowly drawing it back.

He reached for a newspaper and folded it over, and slapped the arthropod with a quick direct hit. Repulsion filled his face.

Later that night, Gary heard noises. Hundreds of little legs in unison, as if in some large army. And the noise of them became closer. Gary clicked on his bedroom lamp. He looked beyond the foot of his bed and no longer saw the carpet, but a living, moving mass of cockroaches. They ascended his bedspread, amassing at the foot of his bed.

Gary’s body was still. Very still. His voice silent. His eyes filled with panic. His breathing shallow.

Then one cockroach stepped out from the others and stood before him.

“What?” The cockroach seemed to speak. “No respect for life?”

“Well, I…”

“A life for a life.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your infant son.”

“No,” Gary said firmly. “We’ll have to make another deal.”

“Well, then, we’ll need your whole house for breeding purposes and shelter,” the leader said. “And leave the garbage in the container; we’ll take care of that.”

What had he done? He thought. Killing one little cockroach, no big deal. Or was it? And here was a whole army ready to defend its death.

The following night, Gary ate a bowl of soup at the kitchen table. The kitchen was alive, decorated with moving cockroaches. Every crack and crevice was full of them. Eating, breeding, grooming themselves, whatever cockroaches do. He didn’t want to know.

Gary watched a mother cockroach and her three little babies scurry across the table near his soup bowl. His face began to burn with anger. He couldn’t live like this anymore, he thought. He slammed his fist on the table.

But something was wrong. He looked at his hand. Hanging off of the end of it was the third baby cockroach. Mutilated, dead. His eyes grew wide. It was a mistake, he thought. He didn’t mean it. The clumsy little thing just got in the way. His mind raced. Would such a small creature be missed out of hundreds? Gary closed his eyes tightly. Yes, he thought. The mother cockroach would know. She would report it to the others. But it wasn’t intentional, just an honest accident. They would have to excuse him.

The first death, yes, was intentional, but this one was an honest accident.

They would have to pardon him.

He sat there, frozen, waiting for the coming of them.

And come they did, covering the linoleum kitchen floor.

“It was an honest accident,” he pleaded, his face sweating.

“But this one,” the leader said, “was in the nymph stage, only a child.”

“I had no intention of harm.” His eyes welled up with tears of fear. “I was eating my soup and… it got in the way… by my hand and… it was an innocent mistake.” His voice quivered.

“But you cannot prove your innocent mistake,” the leader said.

Gary opened his mouth to speak, but no words were uttered.

Hundreds of cockroaches swiftly crawled towards his son’s bedroom.

“The fucking thing’s staring at me. I know it.”

Roberts hated being on guard detail with Jensen. The son of a bitch not only didn’t know how to keep quiet, he was also extremely paranoid. It was like he hadn’t been doing the goddamn job for two years. “I thought Army men were all supposed to be the strong, silent types?” she snarled, giving him a glare that told him to shut up.

But of course, for that to work, Jensen would’ve had to be paying attention. “I mean, shit… Look at it! No way that thing’s unconscious. Its eyes… fuck…”

The “thing” Jensen was referring to was what they were guarding. They hadn’t been told where it had come from or what exactly it was. A fossilized alien that had crashed to Earth back in the Ice Age… some horribly deformed circus freak from the Dust Bowl era… or maybe the rumors were true and it was an honest-to-fuck vampire.

Whatever it was, Roberts didn’t give a shit. She was here to guard the thing and that’s all. Make sure it didn’t wake up and walk away or, more likely, that no one shanghaied the goddamn thing. Occasionally a nerd would come by to do some kind of test on it, but aside from that, the job was standard guard detail. Boring as hell.

Roberts let out a sigh, reflecting on her situation. Crushing a superior officer’s genitals had gotten her a demotion and this shit assignment. The fact that he’d been attempting to sexually assault her hadn’t mattered much. Now it seemed the only way she was getting back into active duty would be if she went back to said superior officer on her knees… literally.

Fuck that, she thought. Better to be down here with the freaks. Even if it was slow and she had to deal with Jensen’s babbling like a superstitious pussy. Roberts blinked. Her fellow guard hadn’t said shit for nearly two minutes, which had to be some sort of record. She turned and looked at him.

Everything seemed all right. He was standing at attention. Eyes fixed ahead at the thing they were guarding. He was the poster child for a well trained military guard. And that’s what made it so fucked. Roberts turned to him and leaned in close. “Jensen.”

The man didn’t respond.

“Hey! I’m talking to you, Private!” she said, her voice growing louder and taking on the tone of a drill sergeant, which she’d been before the incident.

Again, no response.

Roberts was considering punching him in the arm to see if it’d snap him out of whatever state he was in. Then the man began to laugh. No, that wasn’t right. Cackle. He was cackling.

“Private, what the fuck is wrong with you?” she asked, feeling a trickle of fear.

It spiked as her fellow guard turned to her with a wide grin. His eyes were glowing red. “I can smell you, Jennifer,” he told her. Fuck, even his voice had changed. There was an echo to it. “You smell so good.”

Roberts reached for her sidearm. Jensen lunged for her. They fell to the ground before the mummified body they’d been guarding. Jensen grappled with Roberts, snagging her wrists and pinning them to the floor then opened his mouth wide and bit down into the side of her throat. Roberts felt his teeth dig into her and she winced as she felt her skin tearing. Jensen pulled back hard, ripping a large chunk of Roberts’ throat out.

Blood sprayed from her torn carotid artery, pooling onto the floor and flowing towards the guarded specimen. As the blood reached it, the crimson liquid began to flow into it and the creature started to look a whole lot less dead.

As Corporal Jennifer Roberts’s vision faded, she watched the creature blink… and then take a step towards her.

The bride was beautiful until she smiled. There was nothing wrong with her teeth; they were straight and white and strong, surrounded by roseate lips. It was the expression itself that was not right.

Victoria Dernt had a cloud inside her. It had always been there, rarely lightening and never abating. This cloud darkened everything she did. When she spoke her harsh words or screamed in rage one could almost see the gray vapors carried on her breath. A smile, as formed by her frostily exquisite features, did not lend her any brightness; it stretched tightly over her face, a façade in painful and obvious contrast with what lay beneath.

The only person at the wedding who could not see this was the groom. John Lokide loved this woman–maybe because no one else did. John had always been drawn to outsiders; he focused only on the good that he felt all people possessed. In Victoria he saw beauty and potential.

“I want to make something incredible one day,” she had told him once.

And though her vicious castigations rarely flagged, John–based on this sole statement of hope–thought only the best of her.

His family and friends were concerned that she would change him. They were not alone; her family felt the same. She had no friends.

Their first year of marriage passed in a whirlwind of screaming and tantrums. But John was undaunted. When others inquired about their well-being, he never faltered.

“We’re fine,” he would say. “How are you?”

On their first anniversary, though, Victoria’s ire was particularly fierce. Snapping in the face of John’s constant serenity, she abandoned her cruel tirade, wrapped her mouth around his right forearm, and bit down. She tasted flesh and blood; he felt the sting of vitriol enter his veins. In that bite, he felt at once what everyone else had always seen. When she let go, Victoria simply walked out of the house and did not come back.

The ugly wound took months to heal and, in the end, turned into an uglier scar: a pale circle of dense and lumpish tissue. But this was not the only lasting effect of that night. John’s temper turned; he grew snappish, then mean. Some thought it was because Victoria was gone. The more observant realized it was because of what she left behind.

John’s behavior changed as well. He stopped eating and his limbs grew thin; to some people, this made it look as if the unsightly scar was growing. He began to dress strangely, wearing long-sleeved shirts and heavy pants well before the weather called for them. John talked only about Victoria–surely she would return, he said. Others felt that this was unlikely–and fortunately so. Leaving his house less and less frequently, one day John stopped coming out at all.

But he was right: nearly a year later Victoria came back.

It was early morning and the house they had shared was dark. Victoria used her old key to open the door. She walked on whispering floorboards to the living room and turned on the light.

John sat in a stark wood chair in the center of the room. He was naked. A mass of flesh rose from his right arm–a pulpy stump in the shape of Victoria’s mouth. From there, runs of scar tissue spread like gnarled roots in every direction. Most were pale and gray but some were pink and some were red. These covered nearly every inch of his withered body but had left his forehead smooth. As Victoria watched, branches of scar reached from both sides and, pulsing slowly, moved over that as well. Untouched, his eyes and teeth shone in the light.

John spoke to her. His voice was no longer clear and pleasant. It grated, as if the scars had burrowed down his throat and were smothering his insides. He did not move.

“Come closer,” he said. “Come and see what you’ve made.”

Her kiss is extraordinary.

“One more?” I beg.

No resistance. She loves me.

“I will return,” I promise.

She doesn’t respond.

I close her casket.