MicroHorror

They are all here, even the ones with bad breath and greasy hair that never come. They think I’m moving out today. I tried to speak but all that comes out is a pleghmy gargle. I’ve had a bit of vodka, though, this morning. I needed it. At my age who notices? It will make the pain better.

Martha is here bossing everyone about as usual. Picking up my ornaments and turning them over to see if they are worth flogging. Then comes and pats my arm and call me “her” and “she” whenever she speaks. “She looks cold,” “she looks pleased,” “ahhh, I think she’s smiling.” I feel like the family cat about to be put down.

I’ve lived in this house for sixty years. I brought up their mothers and fathers in this house. Now I have to sit day after day, the smell of myself rising up through the chair that I sit in. They think they hide their repulsed flinches as they bend in to kiss my old flesh. They think they can catch death by being near me. I see it. I can’t speak but I can see.

“She will want those,” Martha says, “because Bob made them for her.” I smiled at that, which they took as my agreement. They didn’t know how Bob had gone through every woman in the neighborhood. He could be a bit handy with his fists too when the urge took him.

They are like tramps rummaging through bins, their cold eyes resting on my jewelry. I’m not going anywhere. One for the road, nice cup of tea before we go, they always say. I couldn’t have done it on my own, it wouldn’t be nice. I don’t want to be on my own when I die. Sounds silly, really. But you hear such stories about smells, and cats. Not for me. This lot of bastards never visits me unless it’s worth their while. So they might as well make themselves useful for once.

Martha’s fussing about again. She’s got her hands on my silk wraps. They are from Tokyo, handmade, but it’s wasted on her.

“Oh, look at these, Chinese things,” she is saying, told you, Tesco’s more her style.

“Now dear, how about a nice cup of tea. Before we go,” Martha says. Predictable Martha. I got the poison last week from the rat trap. It took ages to crush it up. I’m not leaving. I told them that ages ago but they just said “yes” and arranged the home anyway.

I soaked the tea bags in the rat poison first. Martha is always going on about marinades so she’ll appreciate it. I hope it works. I put some in the biscuits too.

They are all going to have a cup of tea. How did they get so fat? They are shoveling my biscuits in their mouths like they’ve never eaten. It was going to be just for me but looks like I’m sharing again. I brought up their fathers and mothers in this house. So it’s nice that we’ll all be here at the end. They never buy coffee. I always hated tea. They insist on buying it. Tastes like poison anyway.

Two lovers walk hand in hand, fingers intertwined. Moonlight reflects their silhouettes on the still water.

Unaware, absorbed with each other, they pause in the middle of the bridge, the two reflections now joining as one. The silhouette of an arm holds up a small box and a gasp of joy echoes over the water.

The sound trickles through the planks, penetrating to the deepest recesses under the bridge where darkness becomes one with shadow. It resonates in the hollow of an ancient cauldron suspended from a rusted trivet.

Luminescent eyes snap open, instantly alert, and peer from the darkness, watching, the waiting over.

She would warn them if she could. Scream, if she were able. Instead, she trembles with revulsion–a rattling sound, like a wind chime of brittle bones.

Old it was. As old as the stone from which it rose. Druidic lore warned of it. Hushed voices round crackling fires told tales of the beast in the forest and chanted spells of warding, but time had stilled them while she was young and yet roamed the land. The breeze through the branches sounded the alarm in furtive whispers, but men had long ago forgotten how to listen.

Impotent, she watches anew as an ancient evil awakens.

Years of frustration and helplessness tear at her. Sinewy muscles strain at feet long rooted to the ground. Yet she remains frozen, immobile. It has been so long… too long.

She had thought it dead or gone when she had chosen this spot. Moved on when Roman axes cut down the forests that were its home, a sole consolation for the sacrifice of so many of her kind. She had sent her roots deep, delving through cracks and crevices in search of sweet, untainted water, shutting out the world in blissful isolation. Too late the realization that she is held fast, powerless in a trap of her own making.

Silently she screams. A rending from within sends a quiver through her. Needles rain from branches suddenly devoid of sap and form a red carpet at water’s edge as the troll emerges, blinking in the moonlight.

Two pairs of heavyset paws hauled their load over the steep incline. Standing on the lip of the pit, the beast’s breath billowed in clouds of stinking mist into the chill air. Its rough tongue lapped across its heavy muzzle, mopping up a thick layer of blood, blacker than the surrounding shadows.

A breeze whispered through the trees, carrying the scent of sweat and fear. The beast passed through dense foliage, a ghost flitting between the ancient trunks, and panted with effort. A wound in its hindquarters glistened raw and red, a single point of searing agony that radiated through its being in throbbing ringlets. The beast pressed on through the wood, forcing the pain away, tracking the last of the creatures.

The first had been dispatched immediately, its throat removed in a black cloud of rage and pain. For an instant–only an instant–the beast had frozen, facing its two remaining tormentors. The creatures were too far apart to risk leaping at either one and, besides, it had never seen them or their like before. They were thin and pale, lacking even the most rudimentary covering of fur to combat the cold and damp of the forest. Their skin was stranger still, comprised of ungainly flaps and folds of varying hues and textures.

No sooner had it taken in the strange appearance of these creatures than one of them had bolted for the tree line and the beast, driven by adrenaline and fury, had ploughed through the woods in hot pursuit. This second creature had fallen into a ditch that the overgrown forest floor had artfully disguised and the beast had swiftly moved in and taken its life, gorging itself on the creature’s warm, red flesh.

Now, pacing through its black domain, its muscles ached and its back legs roared their pain as it tracked the panic and fear coursing from the pores of the third creature. The beast had no perception of the need for revenge, but it understood the concept of territory well enough to know that its own had been invaded.

Suddenly, it stopped in its tracks. There had been a subtle change in the nature of its prey’s scent. The familiar odor of terror was still there, ripe and pungent, but now it was mingled with something akin to relief. More than that, the smell was no longer carried tight through the narrow channel of the trees but had expanded beyond the claustrophobic darkness.

The creature had broken free of the woods.

Springing forwards, the beast ran with renewed energy, tracking this new scent that blossomed within its nostrils. As it broke through the final layer of cover, the beast felt the cold air and driving rain whip across the length of its body, stinging its wounded hindquarters and forcing a guttural snarl from its lips.

The creature was high up in the branches of the nearest tree, although the beast sensed its presence before it saw it, perched there like some ungainly bird. The fear was palpable in the small clearing and was reflected in the creature’s eyes as the beast ambled slowly towards its nesting place. Placing both forelegs on the trunk, it walked up its length, extending its body until its claws snagged a thin branch just shy of its prey. The bough gave way beneath the weight of the beast, sending it tumbling to the ground.

Lowering its head, the beast pushed with its muscular forelegs, ramming hard into the slender trunk, getting nothing for its labors beyond an impressive swaying of the tree and a cry of alarm from the creature that sheltered within.

Afflicted by pain at both ends of its body, the beast snarled in frustration as the creature looked down, its eyes wide and staring. It circled the tree, confused and enraged, as the creature followed its every movement until it settled itself at the base of the trunk and stared up into the branches.

The beast waited.

“Can I take your order, please?” The disembodied voice crackled through the rusted speaker-panel.

Gareth eyed the faded menu board, its peeling plastic cover split leaving a water-damaged smudge of color where illustrations of burgers, chicken combos, soft drinks and ice cream desserts had once attracted the hungry traveler.

“Just a burger, mate.” It was late; he was famished and exhausted and still had another few hundred miles’ worth of traffic to contend with before reaching home.

“The Big Boy Burger or Flame-Grilled Mexicana?” The static-bored voice had said the line so many times it had lost all nonsensical meaning.

Gareth had forgotten they used to do the Mexicana–succulent one-hundred-percent beef with peppered cheese, onion rings, salad, jalapeño sauce…

“Mexicana with cheese.” He could already taste it, even though he hadn’t eaten one in more than ten years, back when this fast food chain went belly up. He thought it strange when he first spotted the weather-eroded hoarding, half-buried in bushes, along the motorway embankment; flashing light atop the slanted wooden post catching his attention from the monotony of the nighttime tarmac.

“Okay, drive round to the collection point, might take a few minutes.” A surge of static reverberated in his ears only to be lost again to the night air.

If it hadn’t been for the other car ahead of him in the queue and the other two parked up around the side of the building, Gareth might have doubled back out of there and drove on until he found a McDonald’s or Burger King, convinced the place was an abandoned shell.

Maneuvering around the tight bend, a dim light inside the restaurant cast a muddy aura over the kitchen area and out through the closed window; a stack of grey cardboard drink holders piled almost to toppling behind the frame.

Ahead, a steady breath of exhaust cloud flicked against the red brake lights of the car waiting at the collection window, driver’s door slamming shut as he braked behind him in line. Gareth counted his change out ready, dipping his head toward the open window in an attempt to catch a scent of that Mexicana burger they were preparing. But what he caught smelled more like the residues of a bonfire than the burger he remembered.

A purple-green-tinged privet hedge, to his left, buffeted the passing traffic as they sped on toward destinations unknown, while, in the middle distance, a car with foreign plates reversed from a parking bay and disappeared from view, its driver-side door badly dented.

He would park up there with his meal and be back on the road before long; Joanne would be waiting up for him like she always did, a tired smile on her lips, a table lamp left on in the hallway that would guide them upstairs to bed.

A piercing scream rocked him out of a daze and back to the queue, the car waiting at the window ahead dazzling him with two blinding reverse lights before suddenly rocketing back toward him. Before he could react, a jolt from behind splayed him forward, knocking the change from his grasp and down across the carpet. Slammed back by the car in front, halogen-bright brake lights ramping up onto his car.

To his right the stack of cup holders behind the closed window were swept away to be replaced by a face that would haunt his final moments on earth. In his rear view, another creature swaggered forward, and from the car in front.

When they attacked, Gareth could no longer taste that Mexicana but could hear a distant voice through the intercom, placing their order.

She said she was a shapeshifter, at which I laughed, attributing it to her slightly drunken state, then told her that she didn’t need to change at all, her present shape looked pretty good to me. She could have been a centerfold in any of the men’s magazines. A real knockout.

She said her name was Talbot, a funny name for a girl, but she made it work. I’m Cassidy. We had met in this dismal bar, seeking shelter from the rainstorm outside; one thing led to another, and soon we were drinking buddies, then before long, we were making out in the hallway to the restrooms.

Talbot was one hot little minky, and in a throaty voice through half-closed striking blue eyes she suggested that we continue this at her place, which wasn’t very far away. It seemed like a good idea.

We laughed as we ran through the rain, the full moon and streetlights of Portland providing just enough light to see by. Talbot suddenly turned down a dark alley, running with surprising speed and grace for someone balancing in high heels on slippery asphalt.

“I’m soaked,” she said in her little girl voice, peeling off her coat and ducking into a deep doorway designed for sheltered deliveries. I followed Talbot, noticing her thin dress was dripping wet, and that she was not wearing any underwear. Everything that counted was perfectly outlined.

“Kiss me, Cassidy,” she demanded, grabbing me with incredible strength for someone so small. Her kiss ended with a nip to my lip. Before I could react, Talbot licked the drop of blood from the cut, rolling it on her tongue.

“Let’s do it,” she cried, ripping her dress off, “right here, right now. Momma’s hungry.” She shivered in her nakedness, prancing out into the middle of the alley, in the still pouring rain, and when the clouds moved so that the moon was visible, she shook. Shook like a creature possessed. Her body changed, got larger, more muscular, hair, then fur, sprouted everywhere as her head elongated, a snout pushed out, ears shot up, fangs protruded and a howl, a werewolf howl, shattered the night’s quiet.

She turned to me, standing on her powerful hind legs, hand claws ready for my blood, muscle and guts. Of course, in the few minutes of her transformation, I hadn’t been idle. Or shocked. I’d pulled out my Azrael .666 holy revolver from its shoulder holster and flicked the safety off.

As she sailed through the air in her killing lunge, I fired an etherblast that lit up the alley and ripped a hole the size of a cherry pie through her chest. My second shot exploded into her open jaws, virtually tearing her lupine head off. I stepped aside as the dead werewolf hit the asphalt, killed in mid-leap.

Oh, did I forget to tell you, I’m a demon slayer? Always prepared, that’s me. I could smell the werewolf on her in the bar, full moon and all, so I decided I would be her prey tonight. Turnabout is fair play, after all.

I traced the cut on my lip with my tongue; it had clotted now. Luckily, Talbot had bitten me while she was still human, so no curse of the werewolf for me.

Talbot was starting to shapeshift grotesquely back to human, so I reached into my pocket, pulled out a nugget of Heavenly Host QuickFire, broke it in half and tossed the brightly flaring pieces onto the corpse. It disintegrated the body in seconds despite the rain which was still coming down hard. Just another day at the office.

A pair of heavily booted feet trod through the dark canopy of trees. Thomas was scared, almost beyond reason, as he inched his way through the claustrophobic blackness. He struggled to keep himself under control, aware that he was close to panic. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was covering the same patch of woodland in ever decreasing circles.

He told himself that he would be okay, as a whisper of wind flitted through the trees, mocking his optimism. His legs were numb and he felt the muscles tightening in his thighs, the survival instinct urging him to flee. He tried to calm his jittery nerves, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other, insisting that he was alive and well and that he would make it through.

The others had not been so lucky. He might live another eighty years, but he would not forget seeing Neil’s throat torn out with enough force to nearly decapitate him. He hadn’t run at once; he had been too stunned for that and not from seeing his best friend’s life ripped from his body. His mind hadn’t believed what his eyes were seeing.

They had taken it for a bear, escaped from a zoo and long since lost to the wild, or so the local story went. Jack had raised his shotgun and fired a round into the head of their slumbering prey, whilst Neil stood ready to capture the execution of the legendary Black Beast on his mobile phone. Jack was an excellent shot but a poor zoologist. The shell had hit the beast, but the roar of surprise and pain had come from the other end of the animal.

It had risen with a speed that belied its great size and removed Neil’s larynx with a single swipe of its paw. This was no bear; its snout was too long and its jaw too heavy. It had glared at its tormentors, thick saliva pooling around malformed teeth and had uttered a chilling howl from deep inside its throat.

Jack had dropped his gun and immediately ran for the woods. The beast had launched itself with powerful hind legs and taken off in pursuit. Thomas had run in the opposite direction, feet digging into the sodden earth as his heart pounded in his chest. After a time he had no way of measuring, he heard a terrible, desperate scream in the distance and suspected he would not be seeing either friend again.

He had forced himself to slow down and suddenly, the woods were filled with muffled sounds of pursuit. He couldn’t see more than a few inches in front of his face as he paced his way carefully through the undergrowth and around the treacherous tree roots, until the forest thinned out, gently melting into a small clearing.

The relief he felt was short-lived, as he heard the heavy pad of feet approaching at speed. This time, he trusted those instincts buried in his twitching legs and ran towards a sturdy-looking tree. He pulled himself three feet from the ground, then six, then nine. As he tried to reach the next branch, his hand slipped on the wet wood, nearly tipping him to the floor and he decided to stay put.

The beast was a sight to behold as it entered the clearing. Heavily set and thickly muzzled, layers of muscle rolled sinuously beneath its shaggy hide. An angry wound on its hindquarters glistened in the pale light and was mirrored by the thick red smear across its dripping jaws. As it strode across the open ground, methodically and with purpose, Thomas was suddenly aware of three certainties.

He had been certain there was no Black Beast.

He had been certain that a shotgun would deal with anything he met in the woods.

He was certain that beasts couldn’t climb trees…

He pulled out all his teeth and mailed them to his mother, who was disappointed. She had wanted a pound of flesh.

Each night, his shadow appears as an enormous bird. Terrified, he would take flight, if only he had wings.

Dr. Malcolm pointed the microphone stem at Danny, the quiet docile boy scheduled for his preliminary interview. Malcolm heard about the case largely sensationalized in the media and became intrigued by the seemingly normal six-year-old boy and the story of his doppelganger.

“Are you comfortable, Danny?” Malcolm said in that scripted tone he had tried to hone for most of his career. It still sounded contrived to his ears.

“Yes…” Danny replied, looking ruefully over the microphone at the strange man sitting across from him.

“Very good, Danny. Now…” Malcolm tapped the microphone stem. “Please speak as clearly as you can into this.”

Danny grabbed the edge of the table and pulled himself forward.

“So, your mother tells me you avoid mirrors still,” Malcolm continued as he opened the manila dossier and began scribbling in the margins. “Why is that?”

“Because,” the boy whispered, “that’s where I first saw him.”

“Saw who?”

“My double ganger,” the boy mouthed slowly.

“Yes,” Malcolm smiled, “your doppelganger. Tell me, when do you first remember seeing your doppelganger?”

“Ever since I can remember.”

“And how do you know what a doppelganger is?”

“Nana…” Danny rubbed his nose and continued to fidget on the large plastic chair.

“So your Nana used to tell you stories about one’s other self–their evil self, is that right?” He watched as Danny nodded in agreement. “And what did she used to tell you about doppelgangers, Danny, that they looked identical to you?”

“She said they look just like us, that they are bad signs. They are evil. Abraham Lincoln saw his before he died.”

“But you first saw yours long before your Nana mentioned them, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Aside from your Nana telling you, how did you know this ‘other self’ was evil–what sorts of things did your doppelganger do that led you to believe he was not good?”

“When I first saw him outside the mirror he was mean. He used to play with my toys when I did. When I would go to sleep he would be there. I would go to wash and he would be there.”

“Was there ever a time when you didn’t see him?”

“When I went to see Dr. Clark.”

“Yes.” Malcolm thumbed through the file, “your other doctor. A nice man, I suspect.”

“I liked him.” Danny smiled. “I felt safe. When I saw him I didn’t see my double ganger.”

“I see… So what else did your Nana tell you?”

“She told me that sometimes the double gangers would go away. But if they didn’t you would have to make them.”

“And that is what you did, Danny, you made your doppelganger go away?”

“I had to.” Danny cried softly. “He would hit me when no one was around.”

Malcolm reached into his pocket. “Danny, I want to show you something, if it is all right with you.”

“Okay,” he replied, shifting in his seat.

Malcolm placed the picture on the table and slid it past the microphone in front of Danny, watching the boy’s expression turn to panic. “Who is that, Danny, in the picture with you?”

“I want my mommy,” he began to scream, “I don’t want to do this anymore!”

“Is that your doppelganger, Danny?” Malcolm said quickly, tapping the image of the twin brothers. “Who is that?”

“I don’t want to see him again!” Danny was sobbing, his quivering mouth lined with spittle. “He used to trick Mommy into singing to him at night!”

Malcolm leaned into the table, waiting for the moment. “And how do you know you won’t see your doppelganger again, Danny?”

“Because,” Danny replied, smiling through tears, “I pushed him in the creek and haven’t seen him since.”

Shrinks. They sit in a chair that costs more than my car, with that smug, condescending smirk on their bewhiskered, bespectacled faces and drone on and on about inner children, sexual conflicts, obsessive-compulsive BS, etc., etc., and of course, etc. Oh, and let me never forget Dr. Burnstein’s favorite—“’somatoform pain.” They do love to hear themselves talk and it only runs you about two hundred bucks an hour for the privilege of listening to them.

The medical doctors gave up on me long ago. They could find no cause for the severe pain I complained about. They all wrote me off as an addict looking to get his hands on pain pills. But now doc Burnstein is getting desperate. Three years in with no results has him a little edgy so now he wants to try something experimental. He teepeed his fingers to rest his hairy chin on. “The first thing we’re going to do is eliminate that ‘pain’ (wink). With that out of the way we’ll dig down deep and discover the real you.” He reached over and tapped me on the chest. “The real you is inside there, Spencer. We just need to find you. So, a new drug, since you have proven to be so resistant to hypnosis. A new drug to eliminate that (wink) pain (bastard!). It shouldn’t affect your psychological state in the least, according to the latest experiments with lab rats (really? rats, huh?). It will get rid of that somatoform ‘pain’ (what, no sly wink? no mini-lecture on the nature of psychosomatic symptoms?) and then we’ll get down to finding the real you.”

Well, a week has passed and–I’ll be damned!–the quack was right. No pain! My next appointment is in six days but I can’t wait. I’m too impatient and excited. Ha-ha! Progress at last!

I had to do a little shopping first but now I’m ready. The first tentative cut was a breeze. Hey, doc, no pain! I probe deeper using a soldering iron from the hardware store to cauterize the bleeders (so many. the damn things are a nuisance).

Now, wait… what the hell is this? Good thing the anatomy book from the library has actual pictures of real innards and not just drawings because these things look different in real life. Oh, it’s my bladder! Piss bag. How cool is that? Looks like I should have taken a leak before I started this little operation. Oh, well, no time to stop now.

Doc Burnstein will be so proud of me. He’s says I’m in here somewhere and until I find myself I won’t stop digging!