MicroHorror

The doorbell rang. “It’s about time. The groceries must finally be here.” Harold cracked the door and peered out at the delivery boy with one eye. “You’re late. You weren’t out kissing any sluts, were you?” The boy didn’t reply.

He threw the bags down on the doorstep and hurried away towards his truck, looking back over his shoulder as he fumbled in his pocket for the keys.

The wheels kicked up small stones as the truck tore out of the driveway. Harold opened the door and picked up the plastic bags. “I think I would have made a superb delivery man,” he said as he headed toward the kitchen.

Harold’s reluctance to go outside happened slowly over time.

At first he’d hurry home from work. Mother always waited at the door.

Next, he quit his job, only venturing into town when absolutely necessary. “You weren’t qualified for that job anyway.” She tossed his briefcase into the garbage.

Eventually, he stopped doing errands such as grocery shopping or going to the bank. “You can do that stuff online.” She smiled, revealing yellowed teeth.

Finally, he couldn’t bring himself to step outside of the house at all.

Mother hired Billy from down the street to cut the lawn, and trim the shrubs twice a month. Billy only charged $10.00, so Harold left the cash for him inside the mailbox. “Billy does a better job with the yard than you do anyway.”

Harold loved talking to Mother while he unpacked the groceries and prepared for the evening meal. He’d always considered himself a master chef.

“Good morning, Mother,” Harold said as he opened the freezer and retrieved a frozen chicken to defrost for tonight’s supper. Mother didn’t answer him, just stared back at him with her filmy blue eyes. She never answered him lately. Over the past year, he’d learned to accept her silence along with her judgmental glares.

“We’re going to have a wonderful supper tonight: chicken with mashed potatoes and green beans.” Harold placed the chicken into the kitchen sink to thaw.

“You’ve become so pig-headed in your old age,” Harold said, as he positioned the television so she could see it better. He knew Mother would refuse to eat the chicken or anything else he’d cooked for that matter.

He began peeling the potatoes. Mother was beginning to sweat. He turned on the overhead fan for her.

Feeling good about himself, he showed her the items he’d gotten especially for her. “I bought you those popsicles you love so much. I also got you some ice cream sandwiches. The frozen yogurt was on sale so I couldn’t resist getting you a little something extra.”

The bitch didn’t even crack a smile.

Harold placed the frozen goods on a big block of ice inside the freezer. “I’ve had enough of you for one day.” He moved the box of ice cream sandwiches just enough to cover Mother’s frozen face. “Sorry, but I don’t want the yogurt to melt.” He slammed the freezer door shut.

The flagellum has done its work and the man’s back is a single open wound. What is left of the muscle flexes and tears itself afresh as the wretch writhes and twists in agony. Two soldiers of the duty Century cut him down from the whipping post and throw him onto his back on the stony ground. A thin shriek like steam from a kettle is all the sound a throat raw from screaming can make.

The man’s arms are pulled to either side and lashed to a roughly cut timber weighing over a hundred pounds, the patibulum. His head and neck are now forced forward by the baulk lying across his lacerated shoulders. The soldiers kick him to his feet. Half crazed with pain he staggers this way and that under the crippling weight as the soldiers drive him, like a beast, along the path to the place of execution.

Unprotected, his bare feet are lacerated by sharp rocks and leave a bloody trail in the dust. A few idlers follow the group and throw stones at the man’s back, causing clouds of insects to rise briefly from the mangled flesh. One youth runs forward with a goatskin of water to tempt him, but the Centurion in charge of the detail knocks him aside, breaking the boy’s nose with his fist.

After an interminable time laboring under the morning sun the group arrives at the stipes, the vertical post to which the patibulum will be fixed. The man is thrown on to his back once more, but already half-dead and delirious from his injuries he barely stirs. Soldiers cut the ropes binding his arms to the cross-piece but then drive thick, square nails through his wrists and into the wood. Fierce new pain runs from fingertips to neck and the man’s eyes bulge in horror.

It takes eight soldiers, four on either side, to lift the patibulum and its burden into position on top of the stipes where dowels locate it centrally in place. As his weight tears the sinews and nerves in his pierced wrists the man vomits and thrashes about tormenting his bloody back against the rough timber and dislocating his shoulders and elbows. So extreme is his suffering his tongue protrudes between his teeth and he bites it in two; blood pours over his lip as he howls.

The soldiers step to either side of the stipes to avoid staining their tunics with the blood and bile and from this position force the soles of the man’s feet against the post and nail them in place. A square of wood under the nail’s head ensures he cannot pull his feet free. Desperate to relieve the agony in his arms the man pushes down on to his spiked feet and then flops back again with a wail. There is no relief.

Now begins the slow, hideous descent into death. Hung from the arms, air can be drawn into the lungs, but not easily expelled. Each breath is won at a terrible cost as the arms or the legs or both must lift the body and move it against the rough wooden post to which the blood and serum of the raw flesh has clotted. The sun beats down relentlessly on the naked skin and the dehydrated body tortures itself still further with blinding headaches and crippling cramps. Flies gather to feast on the blood running down the back and legs and become a heaving black mask over the man’s face where such sweat as remains is mixed with blood from burst vessels in the eyes and nose and from the ragged and swollen remains of the tongue. Eventually, the body stops moving and the dreadful torment is finally over.

The soldiers march away. There is nothing for them to do and they have no interest in such a familiar spectacle.

One man, nearby, squats and waits. After dark, he will release his son, Dismas, and take him for burial.

Not everybody gets to be a ghost. It requires strong motivation and iron determination to haunt whatever it is you intend to haunt possibly for centuries. It is certainly within one’s power to frighten people but that is not usually the sole purpose of the uneasy spirit. It is considered bad form. Such souls are shunned by those of us who truly walk the paths of shadow. This is not merely my lot. I remain by choice, as does every ghost. The Powers allow us to linger only at extreme persuasion.

I am–was–very much attached to the house. Generations of my family had been born there; lived, loved, died there. The fabric of it was infused with the history of our lineage–our “house,” if you will.

Randal, Randy, my great-great-grandson by all accounts, had a different view. He inherited just few years ago. I was at his father’s bedside as he passed over, as I have been there for all my sons’ sons. Tried to persuade him to stay here with me–not to abandon our heritage to his wastrel son–but he would not listen.

“I’ve always known you were there,” he said to me.

I knew then he could see me and recognized my presence. He’d been an affable child and I used to pay him visits in the night but I’d never shown myself openly. Sometimes when he was older, he used to stop and listen intently when I was in the room and I felt he knew me and I, him.

“My parents thought I had an overactive imagination,” he laughed.

“So stay with me now. Help me protect the house.”

“Sorry, Great-Grandfather,” he said. “I want to be at rest. Don’t you?”

And his spirit departed.

Well, this Randy started knocking walls down, renovating, rebuilding, putting windows where they had never been. Something called a loft conversion. He destroyed my attic, threw out my things and moved some harlot into my home. I could hear them knocking about at night. Disgusting brat! Whore! There was no sanctity of wedlock and no promise of legitimate heirs in this… this… My house had become a brothel!

I tried to scare them–something I abhor. It didn’t work. He thought a ghost would “put value on the old place.” There was practically nothing of the old place that I could recognize. Anyway, when, by his words, I knew he intended to sell, I took the ultimate step. I showed myself. I took corporeal form and summoned my gravest tones. “You will not sell. You will die before I let you sell!”

I don’t know why I said that. I couldn’t bear his smug expression a moment more. He looked vaguely alarmed for a moment, and then do you know, he looked at me and said, “Are you a genuine ghost, old fella?”

“I am.”

“Ooooh, not half scary!” he said and he guffawed.

They both laughed at me–laughed! That was when I knew I meant it.

Now I preside over charred remains.

It gives me no great satisfaction to have put an end to the family line. I lost control and with it, everything I valued. The Powers recalled me to review my spiritual status. I asked to remain a while, to contemplate what I have done and its consequences, though it torments me. I have been lessoned by young Randal, his father, his father’s father. I see now what I should have seen long ago. There is perhaps wisdom in letting go of the past.

Randy saw me clearly as his soul departed. I made sure he did. And I can tell you–he looked frightened then. But that is not the image that haunts me. No, what I can never forget is the confusion in his eyes. Why would anyone choose this living death?

There is nothing left for me to cling to. Yet I cannot let go.

Something wasn’t right; Gwendolyn knew that much. She couldn’t describe the feeling precisely. In her young, six-year-old life she had never felt anything like it. Although you knew in your heart that something was wrong it could still feel right. Feel oh so right… Her cheeks blushed as the October wind stirred her pretty blond hair. Brown leaves twirled and blew across the lawn as if they were disturbed by some invisible force.

Over the horizon dusk had approached like a grizzly hand. Gwendolyn always had a strange feeling in the dusky hour because it seemed as if the world went into cramps and closed in on humans like narrowing walls. The world simply produced a far more intense scale of claustrophobia when darkness fell. At least to Gwendolyn… She shivered standing there on the porch-steps listening to the brushing sounds of the crops in the field near the house. It wasn’t just the cold wind that sent chills through her bones; it was also these husky sounds from the wavering crops. And, oh, my God, that voice…! Twitching and laughing and shrieking.

She knew she had to act fast if she wanted to avoid getting caught in the process by her dad. Gwendolyn turned around on the porch where the white paint had crackled and looked at the jack-o’-lantern. It stood there with the lit, looming grin beside the front door. The light inside it flickered and carved unsteady shadows on the wooden beams.

The attraction it had on her was indescribable. As soon she locked her eyes on the sharp-toothed, grinning face some transparent power field sank upon her and blocked everything else out. She gazed long into the pulsating, triangular eyeholes. The voice which had only been a whisper before intensified into a deep, blurring roar like fire catching on.

She remembered the day before when she and her dad carved the pumpkin in the kitchen. It had been fun and a late afternoon filled with laughs. At that time this… thing had only been a… pumpkin; something completely natural and safe. But now it was something more… something dark. Gwendolyn looked at her toes, embarrassed at her own thoughts. Even though it had this dark, intense magnetism it was all the same so… beautiful. The most beautiful thing she had ever seen. For the first time in her life she truly loved someone besides her mom (who died when she was three), dad and their dog, Sully.

Her dad was still not in sight. Quickly, she picked up the jack-o’-lantern and ran towards the cornfield. With the orange sculpture in her arms she rushed through the cornrows without looking back. The warmth from the surface of the jack-o’-lantern oozed into her palms and sowed an unknown, almost surreal, calm in her body although she ran along.

By the far end of the cornfield the old Ferris wheel at the abandoned carnival ground rose to the gloomy sky like a sad, forgotten iron mastodon.

As the cornrows ended she rushed into the carnival ground where nothing much was left besides the rusty, creaking Ferris wheel and a battered shed. Trips to the carnival came into her head like echoes of the past.

At the foot of the Ferris wheel she stopped, still holding the grinning head in her hands, and looked up at the big wheel where the gondolas swayed on their hinges. She knew she had reached her destination. A short gasp escaped her as the Ferris wheel began turning slowly. Flakes of rust fell to the ground; the gondolas cried out in high-pitched tones. The wheel stopped and she saw the black shape sitting in one of the gondolas.

“I’ve been expecting you,” the shape said in a strangely moist and musk-like voice. She climbed into the gondola and the wheel began turning.

Gwendolyn sensed a smell of burnt coal and sulfur. Below the old Ferris wheel the cornrows cackled.

“And the Lord banished Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, and did set an Angel with a fiery sword at the gate. And the serpent looked at the Angel and said, “So, what do you want to do now?”
–Genesis 3:23(½)

Quaestor Godwin sat back in his padded chair and sighed. He really would have to be getting on with his day. The coffers of the church would not grow themselves, after all. The monk took a deep breath, and squeezed his eyes shut. He exhaled slowly, and smiled.

“That was exquisite, darling woman. Inform your husband that his slights against Mother Church have been forgotten, and in fact…” He gave a shudder of pleasure. “You have procured for him one less year of atonement. Does that please you?”

In response, the young cook’s wife just raised her streaming, red-rimmed eyes, and said nothing.

“Leave me. I have the work of the Lord to do.”

She needed no further coaxing, and ran from the room, as though Satan himself might be at her heels. Godwin allowed himself a small chuckle. It was a dreadful burden being the town’s sole link to the Almighty, but he thought that there were some benefits. He rose then, and straightened his cassock. Time to do his Good Works.

His first visit was to Duke Geoffrey, a man as infamous for his wickedness as he was for his fear of Hell. Godwin had collected an enormous sum from him over the years, and as long as the farms kept producing, he could count on a steady stream of income from the “Duke of Sodomy.” He’d often thought he might like to try that act himself with Anabella, she of the cheeky husband and chaffed kneecaps.

It was to his great surprise that the Duchess Felicia met him at the gate herself.

“Dear Lord in Heaven, you heard our prayers.”

Godwin tried to keep his air of aloof power, “We had planned to meet on this day, did we not, milady?”

“Indeed, Brother Godwin, but something has happened. It is horrible. Words cannot describe; you must come.”

Were it any other family, he would have refused, but to turn his back on the family that had built his fortune would be foolhardy to say the least. He made up his mind. “Lead on, Duchess.”

The Duchess opened the way, and Godwin entered the house. The door slammed shut, crushing her nose, and barring her from entering.

“Hello, Brother Godwin.”

A man’s voice, but not the Duke’s, seemed to be coming from everywhere, and nowhere. The house was freezing, though it was midday outside.

“Come to hear my sins?” There was a gleeful malice in the tone, and the monk looked behind him. Hanging in midair like a macabre puppet was the Duke, eyes rolled up to the whites, blood running from a dozen self-inflicted wounds.

“Welcome, holy man.” The thing mocked him.

“I… I cast you out, demon.” Godwin had to take control. Was he not the servant of the Almighty? “The Lord God of Hosts commands you!”

Braying laughter was the reply. Underneath, Godwin thought he could hear the screaming of the damned. “I think not, Quaestor. Remarkable as it seems, I am closer to God than the likes of you. God requires evil to give himself purpose. I serve that purpose, and who, pray, do you serve?”

The monk felt hot piss soak the front of his cassock.

From the top of the stairs then, a new voice. “Go AWAY!”

The Duke-thing growled in surprise. A red-haired girl, tiny in stature, looked down at them. “God HATES you. Go AWAY. Give me my DADDY back.”

The demon shrieked. The walls shook, and pottery shattered. “God wants you GONE.”

The Duke collapsed to the ground, trembling. In a minute, he was still, breathing heavily. Godwin turned to the girl. “My darling child…”

She snarled back, “He doesn’t like you much, either.”

I.

William Crouchley stood outside the crumbling wall marking the entrance to St. Sepulchre-Without-Newgate, watching the last of the workmen pack their tools for the evening. Crouchley was clutching his own set of tools: wooden ones, not metal, so the sound wouldn’t alert the night guard. The sun had almost set over London. The church and the workmen were only shadows, their long, black figures set off by the gaslights which had been set around to light the renovation.

Crouchley listened as the voices got farther away, their heavy footsteps fading into the night. Without the lamps, it was almost completely black now. The only light was a dim glow from the nearby prison. He took a look around one more time and then ventured into the graveyard. It took him most of the night, but his spade finally hit something hard, making a soft thud as wood hit wood. He pried open the lid of the coffin. The stench was strong, and he tied a kerchief around his mouth and nose to keep from fainting. The woman’s body was soft in his hands, and she oozed thick liquid, which he wiped on his black trousers.

Crouchley stuffed the swollen corpse into his long bag, quickly tying up the end. Not a bad night’s work, he thought. This body should fetch good money for the surgeons needing a dissecting dummy. He heard footsteps in the distance. Peering over the edge of the grave, he saw a policeman walking with another man, presumably on their way to Newgate. Crouchley held his breath for a moment. The two men did not even pause at the cemetery gate. He let out his breath and began the walk to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital.

II.

Mr. Booth had not been happy.

“Wha’ is this coopered old thin’?” he demanded, after opening the sack. He pulled out the woman’s hand and waved it around. It flopped back and forth, making a sickly slapping noise. “I can’t ’ave this, take ’er back,” Mr. Booth said, shoving the lump to Crouchley.

Two burly men came through the door, smelling of strong liquor. One of them snarled at Crouchley.

“Got a new one fer you,” he said, thrusting out a dirty sack, remarkably smaller than Crouchley’s load.

The other man smiled. “It’s a baby, fresh too,” he said, in a deep, lazy voice.

Mr. Booth took the sack and looked inside. He smiled briefly, before closing the sack. “Al’ight,” he said. “Sack-’em-up, gentlemen.” He took some coins from his pocket and tossed them to the first man. “That’s two pounds each.” The men nodded and left the room.

Crouchley stood, sheepishly holding out his hand.

“Well, you ol’ codger, ge’ out of ‘ere,” Mr. Booth said, dropping four shillings onto the floor.

“Four bob?” he asked, looking at the small coins. “’S that all? I brought ye a missus, just buried today, like ye wanted.”

“Ye brought me un that’s good ’n rottin’,” he said, turning his back to Crouchley. “Bring me a fresh un, and I’ll give ye more.”

III.

Crouchley stood close to the window, just beneath the open latch. Thank the stars it had been a warm night. The young woman inside blew out her candle. Crouchley put one hand in the window and then the other, pulling himself up quietly.

She barely even made a sound as he crept past her bed, his spade raised above his head.

He peered over the edges of the whitewashed cradle. The sleeping angel had the same red curls that framed her mother’s face. She opened her eyes and cooed at him, stopping Crouchley in his tracks, but only momentarily. A fresher one, he thought. He shook off his terror and brought the spade down quickly and aggressively.

It made a sick crack against the infant’s skull.

The mother stirred in the bed beside him, but did not wake up.

Crouchley clutched the warm bag against his body. Mr. Booth will be happy tonight, he thought.

I.

It had been a difficult winter. The biting cold had brought famine and illness to Roanoke, but the wind was perhaps the worst of it all. The hard, fast gusts of air destroyed any will to live. The sickliest died first, their corpses turning blue-black with ice. Those that were left–the once-burly men and the stronger of the women–now looked pale and dangerously thin, their features drawn long with hunger. They had no strength to bury their dead.

II.

They call me many names. Yehasuri. Widjigo. Wisakedjak. Skin Walker. Some call me Trickster or “The Flatterer,” as if these happy little monikers will protect them from my true nature, my avenging spirit. I am not the jolly little gnome they portray me as in their dances and songs. I am something much, much worse.

III.

The Croatan boy, at thirteen hardly a man–though they named him one–heard the wail first, a sound so loud that it could rattle your brain inside your skull and so terrifying that it would haunt you the rest of your days. Then came the footsteps breaking through the brush in the woods, coming closer and closer every day. The tribal leaders met, and needing to pacify their increasingly terrified people, they put the boy out of their lands. He would be a good sacrifice for the wood spirit, they said, since he heard the cry before anyone else.

It was not long before the boy heard his name whispered from deep within the forested land.

The transformation was quick but not painless. His limbs grew long and thin, and grey-white fur covered his body. Sharp yellowed fangs descended from his gums, hanging over his dark lips. They ached in his head; he bit his lips in agony, sending a deluge of blood from his mouth and streaking his matted fur with gore.

IV.

A young woman saw him first. She was clutching her half-dead child in her arms, desperate to give him the warmth he needed, if she could give him nothing else. She was too weak to resist the yellow-eyed monster hurtling towards her, though he was too quick for her even if she had been strong and healthy.

The rest of the hunt was just as easy. An entire village–men, women, and children–gone in less than half a day.

The nearby tribe waited and listened to the cries of the pale-faced colonists with a resolute indifference, knowing this was the price of the sin of cannibalism.

The boy, satiated, used his razor-sharp talon, now dripping with meat and tendons caught underneath his fingernails, and carved a single word into the tree to mark his victory: Croatoan.

The news is on in my bedroom, and from where I sit in the library I can hear the reports streaming just about as fast as the anchors can read them. Reykjavík, Warsaw, Bucharest, Khartoum: Rio de Janeiro, Tegucigalpa, Milwaukee, Iqaluit. On both sides of the Atlantic, investigators scramble to identify the terrorist group responsible for so many and varied attacks.

Plane crash, suicide bomb, hotel fire, all have played out over the last twenty-four hours. I bury my face in my hands so I don’t have to watch, but I can still hear. What can it be, the reports ask, that traces a bloody line through Greenland and Turkey, the Congo and Peru, the Yucatan and Hudson Bay? I have spread a world map out across my coffee table, and every shrill cry from the television earns another red dot. There are more coming, but I can already see the shape on the paper before me; I turn off the news. I can’t bear to hear it.

Tonight is Esbat, the first full moon this year. My moon candle sits on the table beside my map, and a bowl of cool water rests on the floor. I should fetch the mirror, I know, and begin the rite; but every time I move, I can hear the screaming of the victims, see the fiery reds and blues shoot up into the sky. Lines drawn in blood are strongest, my grandmother always said.

Tonight, it is my turn to lead the World in the Rite of Esbat, the greatest and most powerful magic I have ever performed, the greatest and most powerful anyone has ever dreamed to start. Begin it now, I tell myself, go fetch the mirror and begin the rite. But with every cell of my body, I know; the rite has already begun.

The first step, Grandmother whispers, the first step is to draw the Circle…

In the poor soil atop the ridge scrub pines grew twisted and deformed, making an eerie silhouette against the darkening sky. Upon the ridge was the beast.

Warm breezes wafted up the heavily forested slope carrying telltale scents of what lay hidden in the river valley below. There was the musky scent of deer. An overwhelming urge to hunt moved the creature down the slope when suddenly there was a new odor, one of burning wood mixed with another tantalizing scent–that of flesh being charred. It sniffed audibly with flared nostrils to locate the source. It moved toward it.

***

Through the steamed-up windshield Sue gazed up at the crescent moon, thinking, “How many hands does he have, anyway?”

“Todd,” she said, “do you realize there are Americans on the moon? I mean right now,
this minute?”

Todd glanced upward. “Groovy. Now where was I?” He unsnapped her jeans.

“Todd!” The AM radio was playing “Hey Jude” again. Sue wanted to just sit back and listen. She sighed, “The Beatles, men of many talents; Todd, man of many hands.”

“Come on, Sue, they invented that pill for a reason.”

“Uh-huh. The hamburgers are burning.”

“Hamburgers?”

“You know, the 69-cents-per-pound hamburgers. The ones you made a scene about to the store manager.”

“It was robbery! And gas went up to 32 cents!”

“But I’m worth it. Now check the burgers.”

Jerking upright when the windshield caved in, Todd caught a two-inch-long claw in his forehead as four gigantic fingers clamped the base of his skull and squeezed unmercifully. The beast pulled and swiveled, jerking Todd through the shattered glass, sending his shredded body cartwheeling across the river, his crushed skull spewing blood and brains.

Sue barely had time to scream. A monstrous back and massive shoulders silhouetted against the night sky were all she saw. Glass from the shattered windshield continued to fall, sparkling proudly in the faint moonlight. The thing turned. As its eyes met hers she mercifully fainted.

***

Flashing lights and radio chatter filled the picnic area.

“Eaten,” a deputy said. “Flat eaten!”

Sheriff Harris barked, “Deputy Riker! Get a blanket and cover that… that thing!”

“It’s not an ‘it,’ sheriff. That’s Sue Erving, or what’s left of her. The car is Todd Posner’s. Wonder where he is?”

The sheriff fought to keep his supper down. “Grizzly attack, maybe. Probably dragged the boy off somewhere. But hell, there haven’t been grizzlies around here for decades.”

“Maybe one just passing through?”

“No. Check the spacing of the claw marks on the roof. No bear has a paw that big.”

Another deputy shouted from near the river, “Sheriff, look at this!”

He looked where the deputy indicated with his light. There in the riverbank lay a trail of enormous human-like tracks sunk into the rocky soil.

The deputy nodded. “Whatever it was went into the river. Bear looking for salmon, maybe?”

Harris shook his head. “No. Whatever made these walks on two legs and has a seven-foot stride. Get casts. Good God, they look twenty inches long.”

The deputy had a very uneasy feeling. “God in Heaven, Sheriff, what happened here tonight?”

He shook his head. “Other than the obvious, I don’t know.”

“The obvious?”

“Yeah, whatever it was was huge and powerful… and hungry.”

They felt a sudden chill while gazing into the dark undergrowth on the other side of the river.

The Earth continued on its endless journey through the icy cold of space. The creatures of the night resumed their calling. One of the most momentous days for America was about to pass into history, leaving in its wake three very confused law officers.

Sonny and Karen walked down the boulevard in the lovely glow of the yellow streetlamps that dotted the landscape. Mosquitoes didn’t bother them; those pesky bugs stayed in the sky, buzzing loudly around the bulbs on the metal poles. Occasionally, Karen slapped her arms, but just instinctively. Sonny held her hand tightly, waving their arms like pendulums. He smiled like a teenager who left his house after curfew with his nubile lover.

With a headshake, Sonny looked at his bride. “I invited my brother to live with us. I assumed that he would look for a job.” He said, “I didn’t think that I’d have to feed him for three months. Willy thinks about himself and nobody else. I shouldn’t have expected normal behavior.” He said, “He just doesn’t realize the burden that he puts on people. Willy couldn’t care less that everyone else lives independently. And they work like animals to live independently.”

Karen said, “We didn’t leave college so we could drink and oversleep; Willy did and he brought those problems to our house.” She said, “With him, small tremors grow into massive earthquakes. I just didn’t understand before.”

Sonny said, “I’d tell him to leave, but I have to repair holes in the drywall anyway. He could help. After all, he put them there.” He said, “How do we tell him to behave normally? Whatever we tell him, he misunderstands, just like a baby.”

Walking down the street, they stopped. Another person waddled past them. The burly body behind the black shadow appeared blind or mentally numb. He didn’t notice Sonny and Karen and probably wouldn’t have if they were walking without clothes. After he bumped Sonny absentmindedly, Sonny yelled. He said, “I think you just took my wallet. I want it back.”

With a shake, Sonny loosened his hold on the female hand until her arm pulled him back. “Please,” Karen said. “He didn’t hurt you, and he won’t hurt me, either.”

After they passed the corner, Sonny yelled to Karen. Instinctively, she jumped into her husband’s arms. With a push, he put her behind a truck. He looked at the body on the blacktop. It lay motionlessly, with massive legs dressed in bloody jeans. The corpse held its hairy arms over its head. The eyelids fluttered; a hefty wind touched them, but no life inside the body did. Sonny yelled at the man who had passed them. A lengthy shadow still oozed around the nearby trees. Splattered in blood, he had probably killed the man for money.

“When that man bumped us, did you recognize him?” Sonny said, “I think he recognized us. He walked by us too quickly.” Karen lifted a narrow eyebrow.

Karen said, “Shouldn’t we notify the police?” She shook like a chilly breeze just blew through her body. With a nod, Sonny agreed. When Karen dialed, she heard static on her phone. No police answered; her phone just bleated. Karen said, “We’ll find out the truth when we get back home.” Quickly, they traced their steps back to their small house.

On their porch, they lay like dolls dipped in paint. All of their possessions had vanished. Their house looked like a bankrupt museum without any artifacts. Sonny blinked; chrome sparkled below his spiritual body. Lifelessly, Sonny held his handgun tightly. Finally, it occurred to Sonny why the burly man had looked so familiar.

He said, “We lived with Willy for three months. We should’ve forced him to leave earlier.” He said, “Obviously, Willy killed us both before I could shoot back. I assume that he jumped into the road, before that truck.” He said, “He took his own life after he took ours. We just passed him on our way to eternity.”

On their porch, a jagged scrawl marred the rustic wood. I couldn’t live without help. Sonny didn’t argue. “He couldn’t survive without us.” Karen nodded slowly yet firmly.