MicroHorror

The part of Monday mornings Matt Burke hated most was the twelve-minute drive from their house on Pennsylvania Street over to Broad Ripple High School to drop off sixteen-year-old Josh. The junior, cranky and morose at the best of times, was downright truculent on Mondays, and Matt silently prayed they could get the kid out of the car without his wife, Allyson, making the mistake of coercing her son into conversation. But this morning even chirpy, perky Allyson seemed wary of Josh’s stormy glares.

Matt glanced in the rearview mirror of the 2009 Toyota RAV4 trying to figure what in the hell was eating Josh today. As usual, his son was slouched down with his bony knees jammed against the back of Allyson’s seat, hunched over his new iPhone 3GS, texting, his frowns almost masked by the hood of his oversized twill military-style jacket. Matt wondered if there was some kind of girlfriend problem going on, but God forbid he even get into that with Josh on a Monday. Just dump him out on Compton Street by the football bleachers, then double back towards downtown Indianapolis where both he and Allyson worked.

Matt had just turned right off of College onto Kessler Boulevard when Josh muttered, “I knew it. I knew it all along.”

“Knew what, sweetie?” Allyson said, craning around over the center armrest to look back at Josh.

Josh threw back his hood and stared at Allyson with an expression of utter frenzy. “Who the fuck are you people?” he thundered at the top of his lungs.

“What?” Allyson gasped.

“What’s going on, Josh?” Matt snapped into the rearview mirror.

“Who the fuck are you people?” he screamed again. He reached into the left pocket of his jacket and pulled out the tool he’d made for himself at 5 that morning, before anyone woke up. Wordlessly yelling, he flipped the .009 gauge phosphor bronze guitar string over his mother’s head and around her throat before she even registered what was happening. Josh crossed the two dowels to which the wires were attached behind his mother’s neck. Clenching a dowel in each hand, he pulled on the makeshift handles of the garrote apart with all of his might.

Now Matt was screaming as his wife’s blood jetted over him, over the dashboard and windshield, her arms convulsing into her lap, her body jerking and straining against her seatbelt. Wet, glottal noises bubbled up from her slashed tracheal cartilage as the wire dug all the way through to her spine. Her nearly severed head lolled over on her right shoulder as everything went out of her eyes.

Smacking Josh’s arms away, Matt lost control of the Toyota. He swerved into the oncoming lane, narrowly missing an oncoming black sedan, and rammed into the northern terraced abutment of the Monon Trail Bridge. Upon contact, the white powdery explosion of the airbags blew a tide of blood back over Josh, pinning his mother’s corpse and his thrashing father to their seats.

From his right jacket pocket Josh withdrew the one and quarter inch-wide Stanley putty knife. He wrapped his father’s tight brown curls in the fingers of his left hand and wrenched his father sideways over the middle console. He jammed the blade of the putty knife at a sharp angle under the knob in the back of his father’s skull, severing the spinal chord, driving all the way through the foramen magnum. He gave the wooden handle three complete twists and let go as his father’s body shook for a moment.

He sat back in his seat, blood dripping from his short-cropped hair, his eyebrows, the tip of his nose, and his hands.

Just two miles north on College Avenue, Allyson Burke’s boss, Charlotte Hibbard, was chauffeuring her son, Tyler, to Park Tudor High School. “I knew it,” the Harvard-bound senior snarled. “I knew it all along.”

They wouldn’t tell you the village. Wouldn’t even tell you the country, or the real name of the tribe. Even that would get you too close to this place, this Shangri-La.

Tim and Steve had hunted for meteorites since college, since the days of the X6 metal detector, with its pathetic whining beep seemingly emitted only when it was passed over an object the same size as a train track. They were like an old married couple, which was good, because they realized early on that they would never achieve union with a love interest.

Tim once witnessed Steve at the end of what should have been a dream date. He was like a fidgety helper monkey, unable to stop talking or fiddling with a half-drunk bottle of Coke.

That was okay. Give them a laminated map, magnetic anomalies, and rumors of a temple somewhere in the jungles of Indochina showered with stones from heaven.

Steve and Tim were expected. Arrangements had been made by the fixer, who accompanied them on the day-long journey through the mountains to the village wrapped in chilly mist.

An oversized radio, decades old, blared high-pitched nasal music that popped and fizzed with static. The village elder, a woman so old she looked like a child draped in adult skin that folded and hung loosely about her, exchanged words with the fixer in a melodious language punctuated with clicks. Outside the great hall, a boy danced with a soccer ball in the drizzle.

One of his arms terminated in a pointy stump.

There were no official permits. Just being in the area would land them in a nightmarish prison for several years. The resulting expense meant everything was on the line, a small fortune from a decade of hunting and trading. But they agreed it was worth it.

The next morning they set off, burdened like mules with detectors, probes, a pick, and supplies to last a couple of days.

When they saw the temple, a rectangular pile of heavy black stone choked with vines, they let out whoops that echoed through the jungle.

Those first hours passed in delirious joy.

The mood shifted to frustration as the hours wore on, the adrenaline wore off, and the sun began to set.

“I got one! Goddamn it, you won’t believe it!”

Steve ran. Tim was holding it like a baby, only the meteorite was bigger than most babies. Twenty-five kilos at least, black as obsidian. Big enough to pay for the entire hunt. And they were just getting started. Reenergized, they continued.

“Shit.”

Steve looked towards Tim, wondering what the problem was.

Tim was stooped over a probe stuck deep in the jungle soil. Next to him was his small pack with the meteorite.

“What?”

“A click. I heard a goddamn click.”

“A mine? Christ. Why way out here?”

“What the fuck do I know, man? What do I do?”

“Stay calm. I’ll get help.” Gingerly, Steve walked to Tim and stooped to take the meteorite.

“What are you doing?”

“Hey, look. It’s going to be okay. I mean, it is. But what good would it do if this was, you know, just blown up?”

“Fuck you! Leave it. I could use that maybe, to weight the trip on this thing. Maybe I could get out.”

Steve backed away.

“All right. Calm down. I’ll go. We’ll get you out of this.”

He disappeared into the jungle.

Carefully, Tim sat down, never taking pressure off the probe.

The night passed like an eternity. The jungle howled, snapped and chirped around him. And his arm was on fire from the strain. By the morning he was in despair. He wouldn’t be able to hold the probe for much longer. He’d have to try to wedge it against the meteorite, now, while he still had some strength and flexibility.

But when the sun rose, casting dappled rays through the jungle canopy, he could see with horror that the pack was empty.

There it is again, that beeping noise. I finally give in to it and wake up. That’s strange; my eyes are already open. I can see vague gray shapes in my field of vision but can’t quite force them into focus.

“Doctor, his eyes are moving. I think he sees me!” A far-off voice sounds like my wife.

“Yes, I can see you!” I yell. Nothing comes out, though, not even a peep.

“I’m sorry, Mary,” I hear a strange voice saying. “It is involuntary. Look, his brain wave activity is still essentially zero. The impact was just too much for his brain; your husband is gone.”

“Don’t believe him!” I try to shout. Nothing. My hands don’t respond either. I can’t even keep my eyes pointing the same direction.

“Doctor, I know he’s in there.” She is weeping as she says this. Good girl, Mary, don’t let this quack talk you into anything.

“Does he have a living will? Did he want his organs donated?” The doctor keeps up with his crazy talk.

“He did fill out his organ donor card,” she says quietly. “I know he didn’t want to be kept alive by artificial means. Are you sure…” Her voice trails off.

“I do want to be kept alive! Mary, I’m in here! Mary, look at me again!” With everything I have, I try to move something, say something, do something. Nothing.

“I’m sorry, Mary. I’ll give you a few minutes alone with him.” I hear the sound of the door closing and sweet Mary’s crying.

“Donald, how can I go on? What about the kids? How could you do this to me? I love you, Donald, and I’ll always miss you.” I hear her almost incomprehensible stream of anger and grief.

“Mary, I love you!” my strangely disembodied lips won’t say. After some amount of time I hear the door open and the doctor’s consoling voice. I feel cables being disconnected and much, much later that annoying beeping finally stops.

The dead arose from their graves as Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” came blaring on the radio.

I slammed on the brakes and watched the dead with astonished, unblinking eyes. Some of them looked as though they’d been in the ground for many, many years, while others looked like they were new recruits for the dirt team.

I glanced down at the clock. 3:33. Then an old memory flooded my brain. I remembered the story that my father had told me when I was just a kid. He had told me about how the Apocalypse would happen at 3:33 on a June afternoon. When I asked him why at 3:33, he simply replied because if you multiply 3:33 by two you get the Devil’s number. As I grew up I always thought about how asinine my father’s story was. But now, at 3:33 on this sticky June afternoon, I am beginning to think that my father might have been right, and I might have been wrong. Dead wrong, in fact.

I drew in a deep breath. If this was the start of the Apocalypse, I figured that I had to do something. Anything. So I grasped the steering wheel tightly and pushed in on the clutch. I smiled like the Grinch as the dead made their way in front of my massive truck. I cranked up Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” as I popped the clutch and commenced to run down the dozen or so walking dead. The bastards tried to run, but my full-size Ford with the oversized tires caught up with them quickly and turned them into mincemeat pie. I even backed over them a couple of times, making sure that I had completed the job.

Now, I knew that this was the start of the Apocalypse and many of people were going to die. But what can I say, I was having one hell of a time. That was… until my eyes caught the sight of a hefty-sized man flailing his arms wildly. At first I thought he was just another dead person. But then I realized that the man was normal even though he was yelling at the top of his lungs.

I drove over to him and rolled my window down.

“What the fuck are you doing?” the man screamed. His eyes flared, his nose snarled and his teeth were grinding.

I thought to myself about how ungrateful this man was. I had just saved him from being ripped to shreds by the walking dead. So I replied smugly, “Saving your life.”

That was six years ago. And, as you can tell, it wasn’t the start of the Apocalypse. No, as it turned out I had drove up on the filming of a new zombie flick. And the dead were nothing more than actors. But in my defense they were pretty convincing. Award-winning. Maybe even Oscar-worthy. Hell, the movie itself might have been the best zombie flick of all time. But, then again, I could have been wrong. Dead wrong, in fact.

“And I swear that stupid shit zombie was on the floor looking for its cock,” said Frank, and he and his friend Sam burst out in drunken laughter. “So what’s the funniest, most fucked up thing you ever saw a zombie do, Sam?”

“There was this one time outside Reno at this little nursing home,” Sam said, downing another shot of Crown Royal. “There were some kids in our camp that had gotten sick and needed some antibiotics. Hospitals are deathtraps, so we figured an old folk’s home would have what we needed with a lot less rot-bags trying to eat us, and if there were they’d be gimpy old farts. Well, no such fucking luck! By the time we got halfway in they came at us and in about three heartbeats I was the only one left. I blasted away with my shotgun and pistols till they were empty. There was one zombie left. It was this fat, bloated old lady. She wasn’t one of those lardballs that needed a scooter to get around Wal-Mart back in the day, more like a plump gran’ma. Anyhow, she comes right at me, and with no ammo and my back to the wall I kick her, right in the gut! As soon as my boot hits her she lets out the loudest, wettest, and chunkiest fart I ever heard.” Frank bust out in loud uncontrollable laughter. Sam was laughing too but at the same time shushing his friend. “There’s more.”

“What do you mean, more? Did she slip on it and bust her skull so you didn’t have to?” asked Frank as he lit another cigarette.

“No, man, it got kind of weird after that. The old lady, she grabbed her ass with both hands and I swear she looked embarrassed as hell. If she weren’t already dead I think that would have killed her.”

Frank took on a serious tone and asked “No shit, man?”

“Way too much shit! All out her ass,” replied Sam and the two were nearly on the floor in laughter. A few minutes passed and the two friends recovered and were wiping the tears from their eyes.

“Sam, when did things this fucked up start to seem normal?”

“Beats the hell out of me, buddy.”

The two friends got quiet and listened to the groaning mob that had gathered outside. There had to be a few hundred of them now and they all wanted only one thing: the flesh of the living. Frank picked up the .44 Magnum from the table and said, “If we drink too much more we ain’t gonna be able to do this, and I sure as shit ain’t gonna end up like them.”

“Well, who goes first?” asked Sam, taking another shot.

“I dunno. Tell you what. Let’s flip quarters for it and have one more round.”

“Sounds good, Frank. You pour. I’ll flip.”

And the night ended much as it began, with a couple of shots shared between friends.

“You’re back again.”

Will took his ticket from the woman at the museum admissions desk and said, “I still haven’t seen everything.”

“Knock yourself out, young man,” the tired-looking woman said, “but know that we close in forty-five minutes.” Her stare showed that she thought he was weird.

Will understood the judgment. After all, he’d only been coming weekly for the last year. The death of his fiancée had triggered the visits. As he descended the marble steps to the chilly bottom floor, he remembered that February night he’d gazed at Louise’s mangled figure on the train tracks behind the museum. Her distorted back and bluish skin made her look like a crone even though she was only twenty-eight.

“Why would she be here?” Will had asked the policeman.

The policeman shrugged and said, “Someone might have chased her or dragged her. Whoever it was wasn’t a robber. She still had her belongings in her coat pocket.” He handed Will Louise’s wallet, her keys, and a ticket stub from the museum.

Will was certain Louise had met her murderer in here. He wandered past the stained and chipped torsos of the Greco-Roman sculpture gallery the same way he’d wandered through the rooms upstairs–with an eye out for the sicko who’d perhaps spoken to his wife before getting her to the tracks. Yet Will was alone–just as he would be when he lay awake in his and Louise’s bed on this freezing night.

Warm air blew through a doorway Will hadn’t noticed before. He soon discovered another gallery, this one burnt-smelling and painted crimson. Small, black-and-white illustrations adorned the space. Each artwork featured a victim. Will saw a man with a broken wineglass protruding from his throat, a woman with flailing arms falling through the shaft of a stairwell. Presiding over every tragedy was a white-skinned figure in a black suit. The man–if that is what he was–had a face in the shape of a crescent moon and raisin-like eyes.

All the drawings unsettled Will, but the last in one row caused him to whimper. In the picture, a woman resembling Louise stood beside the moon man above train tracks. The man held her upright, and her head was turned in an unnatural position, as if someone had twisted it that way.

Will’s knuckles were white when he gripped the edge of the admissions desk. “Who’s the artist behind those works down there?” he barked.

“I don’t know,” the woman said, fingering her two-way radio. “They’re all dead and buried near the Coliseum or somewhere.”

“Not the sculptures,” Will said. “Those nasty drawings in the other gallery.”

“There’s only one gallery. We don’t have any drawings downstairs.”

“I can show you,” Will said, grabbing her sleeve.

She stepped back and spoke into the radio. “Security,” she said.

Minutes later, Will paused on the snowy sidewalk. He knew that by retreating home he would never learn what had really happened to his love. He waited until the woman left her desk before sneaking into the lobby. As he stepped over the chain link that signaled the museum’s closure, he thought he might be able to locate the artist’s name on the illustrations.

The gallery had become dim and hot. Will moved from picture to picture, searching for a signature but finding none. He reached the illustration containing Louise and gasped. This illustration was no longer the last. To its right hung a drawing of Will. He was prone on a floor, a chain link wrapped around his neck and his eyes blankly staring. The moon man crouched over him.

Will’s dread became panic when he heard the clinking of metal. He didn’t have time to turn around before the links pressed into his skin. He glanced at his image and then that of Louise. He remembered telling her that maybe they should forget wedding photographs and have a painted portrait instead.

Before Frank there was Muchka. Muchka was a lovely, blond, indigo-eyed poem of a child, whose smile dazzled like a white orchid. Speech came quickly to him, and by age three he could tell me the names of all the teas lining the kitchen shelf. But he grew cruel when brother Izzy joined our family, tormenting the newborn with what he called his devil faces–though when I thought of the seventeen hours of labor Izzy put me through, this sometimes pleased me. Still, Muchka’s bullying presented a problem.

Like his brother, Izzy disliked welcoming a new member into the family. When he was eighteen months, we caught him peering into the microwave window at Frank. Izzy was still in the babbling stage, and only gaped at us when we tried to explain why sticking Frank in the microwave–even with the power off–was wrong. With his lustrous black hair and eyes like moonlit water, Izzy played on our sympathies with even greater cunning than Muchka. But we couldn’t allow him to subject Frank to yet more morbidly curious experiments–I mean, we wouldn’t be very good parents, would we?

That was a year ago. Frank is now full-grown. And spoiled as a Turkish sultan! His purr conjures the song of the sea in your ears, his nose kisses the slightest brush with wet velvet. He sleeps between us most nights, though sometimes he perches on my husband’s chest, blinking in amber complacency. Frank likes to surprise us, a shadow pouncing with a ninja’s near-weightlessness in the middle of the night, according to his comings and goings. Unfortunately this must stop. Because Larry likes to chase Frank down the stairs if we leave the door open, and then we take turns running him down as he taunts us weaving in and out of furniture. Larry’s still a puppy, of course.

Larry came to us a week ago, from a shelter. When we got him he was emaciated, nervous, and terrified of the color white. It took three days before he stopped barking at the creakings underneath us, the sniffles and sighs that accompany our sleep. Now he’ll jump down and lick the hands that offer themselves from under the bed, stopping to shake himself as dogs do. This seems to annoy Frank. He crouches on my shoulder, lashing his tail, poised to strike. We fear Frank might try to turn Larry into a scratching post. And Larry’s eyes are so vulnerable, so exposed in that round, fleshy face, so grinning and ludicrous, like Falstaff’s.

We may have to get rid of Frank–unless he’s willing to sleep under the bed, like the others.

The hairdresser massaged Moira’s scalp as warm water ran over her head. Moira watched steam rise and play with swirls of spackle on the ceiling. Men, women and children with blank gazes and empty eyes stared back. They moved with the steam, lost souls in a rough sheetrock sky.

Moira flinched at a violent pull. She switched focus to feel the woman’s fingers, snagged in a tangle. A towel wrapped around her head wicked water and her mind felt unusually empty.

The hairdresser signaled she move to the stylist’s chair. Moira obeyed.

Scissor blades snapped together, danced over Moira’s head in a hypnotic blur. Within it, dirty pieces of her life played like a film. She glanced at the floor. Instead of a carpet of hair clippings a twisted mist of memories hovered. The hairdresser jerked Moira’s chin up and shot a fine mist of hairspray. It smelled odd: old and mold and oranges. The particles fell, then rose carried by invisible wind. They fell again and absorbed into Moira’s scalp.

Moira admired herself in the mirror. A familiar woman’s face stared from the ceiling.

“Like the new you?”

Moira smiled and handed the hairdresser a wad of cash.

Wish for more? Want to taste the divine? Experience the side that awakens after the sun has fallen? What is spoken of in whispers through the haze of cancerous fumes… the places we touch with our minds when we say such silly things like “How are you today?”… we never mean them. We spit forth the words like a salivating dog when all we really want is to taste their flesh.

Taste my flesh? You never will but I will sup upon yours. I will leave you hollow and bleeding from without. My blades cut far deeper than your shell, your emotional carapace. Your will shall be shaken, shattered and stir fried, ma petite.

Wear your pretty laces, your frilly things. Dress up for Daddy so that he may tear you apart. The fancier the candy coating, you know…

Carefully now… careful… remove the wrapping… untie the bow… be wary of the lining… feast. Santa grins as your wishes come true. Sit on my lap… let me brush your hair away… whisper in my ear your desires… this’ll only hurt for a moment.

And in the alley a rusted shopping cart squeaks as it rolls along, pushed by unseen hands.

I followed him in. I knew he was here. This is a very short tunnel. I would have seen him exit–only I didn’t. At the moment I entered, all sound of battle ceased. I stopped dead in my tracks because of the silence–the emptiness. It was the emptiness that stilled me.

A soldier does his duty. I had killed many times, had looked in the face of the enemy as I killed. I had never felt futility ’til now. Whoever was victor here, whoever perished, no one would ever know the truth, for we were in the midst of battle.

I cowered against the shadow of the wall. Perhaps he was lying in wait. I had come in from the brightness and so he would have the advantage. I held my breath to hear his. There was nothing. I crawled forward a pace, two paces, towards the grey parabola of light. Inched forward ever watchful, to where sunlight sliced the shadow.

There was no penumbra. I never in my life saw such a sharp divide.

I made to advance cautiously into the cobbled courtyard. I could see the ordnance-pocked red brick of the wall and the barrack with its blank windows. There should be weapons trained on me. There should be a defense–yet all was quiet.

I held my hand out into the light where it could be seen. Still the blank windows stared back in silence. And when I looked down my hand was not there. I snatched it into the shade and it reappeared, solid and cold to the touch. Gradually I protruded it again. Its disappearance caused me to retract sharply. I tried to step out but with the same result and quickly brought my leg, I hoped, back in.

I paced within the shadow, rested, paced again. I have seen others come and go in the courtyard out there but heard no sound but the sound of my own pleas sinking into nothingness and the pad of my own feet on the dank earth. Behind me there is only utter darkness, no sign of the way by which I entered here–nothing left of the pursuit or chase. Before me this seeming apparition of a place plays out a tale in which I have no part. Emptiness and silence are my doom.

Out there in the courtyard where time passes, soldiers have mustered, people walked, children played. Now visitors troop in and out in strange garb. The sun appears and disappears; the cobbles are washed by rain. Only here there is no time. I am cut off from all that moves on. I alone remain–questioning.

Where did he go, my mortal enemy, my best friend? Did he go to her? Did he go to Eloise–my Eloise? I used to hate it when I thought of that but now I am the houseguest of futility. I have learned all I can from anger and despair. I only know that I did not kill him and he did not kill me and for that I am glad. And now it is my hope that they lived long and happily.

Wait–is that a different shade of grey I see? A penumbra? Might I just reach out a little way into the light? Please, God, just a little way… just a little way into the light…