MicroHorror

I love the moon–for its smile, the seasons and tides, but am saddened it is inching away every year and a moonless world is a fearful thing. But worse I fear the moon when autumn comes slowly and illuminates my garden.

It was in that garden of our new home that Charity and I frolicked throughout that spectral autumn. We never argued, and then the air filled with psychedelic blooms of peyote.

I do not remember if we dared taste that life, but my world changed when the moon illuminated our garden. Looking up, Charity was larger than life, but her anger obvious in the moonlight as we ran through scented gardens of many-colored dreams–I know she died.

Troubled, I ran down the hill to the end of the garden by the stream. At the stone bridge I watched the ripples of time flow across the water, saw it bubble and effervesce from the pull of another autumn moon. Unearthly currents formed, stopping me from running across the bridge. Unable to traverse the bank and reach the cave, where I dreamed a time machine might be to bring Charity back, I stared at her reflection in the stream, strawberry blond hair flowing so gracefully, radiant smile apparent in her blue-green eyes. Did she really drown after leaving me? Had I tried to find and save her or did I let her go?

I ran along the edge of the stream, caught between the beckoning madness of the moon and my garden. Twisted woods appeared, mingled with leaves that constantly shimmered and changed shape and size, forever pulsating purple, yellow, red and green. Whenever the trees vanished, Charity appeared, begging me to follow. Blindly wading the stream I left it and followed an endless plain filled with a sea of peyote, each reflecting Charity’s tortured face, whispering words of comfort and condemnation.

Tirelessly I crossed the plains, my body thirsty for truth until I reached the sea, and continued out into the stench of black muddied samphire flats. Twisted saltbush grew around a circular mud-pit and I ran into its center, sinking slowly into that hellish ooze where Charity had died.

The ground screeched from my guilt as writhing forms underfoot came alive. The black pit of my despair opened and tentacles arose from the mud, each one splitting into three. At the ends were pairs of eyes, Charity’s eyes, hungry, searching, changing in and out of this dimension, becoming mouths with stained red teeth, eager to feed.

As they grew and surrounded me, I felt a new chill and the autumn moonlight faded as life ebbed from me. Finally I looked upon the face of the tyrant who had caused her death, and beheld my neglectful tortured self. Plunging headlong into the stinking pit of gnashing teeth, I sought relief from abandoning her and I vanished into the darkness of my guilt-ridden soul that was so anxious to consume me.

Dan’s hands trembled uncontrollably as he searched for his pills. They hadn’t even shaken this badly when he’d killed his first victim. His heart raced, terrified he was going to die. All this because I couldn’t sleep, he told himself. That was why he’d seen the psychiatrist, why he’d taken the pills, on his shrink’s orders, all because he had insomnia.

Now he felt ill. He’d tried to cough up the medicine, but all he could manage was a few dry heaves. His intestines seized and clutched like a cold fist in his gut. If only that smug psychiatrist were here now, he’d have some advice, Dan thought frantically, recalling his delight at the doctor’s look of disgust when he’d heard the reasons for the sleepless nights, conveyed with bloody detail. Dan was smart, well aware of doctor/patient privilege, knowing his shrink was helpless to stop him. Head throbbing, his vision blurred as he finally found the medication bottle.

Squinting to read the label, realization suddenly set in. He staggered forward, reaching for the phone, falling after only two steps. Crashing to the floor, darkness encircling him, Dan thought of his psychiatrist, the bottle of pills rolling towards him, almost mockingly, the prescription boldly asserting: One pill daily. WARNING: DO NOT EXCEED DOSAGE- SEVERE INJURY OR DEATH MAY RESULT. As Dan made his final connection, he thought, the shrink had said, “take at least three.” He realized that perhaps the psychiatrist hadn’t been so helpless after all.

The Loved One had been sequestered for two days now. The basement was long ago fortified by blood, sweat and cement, yet still he could hear the pitiful murmurings from everywhere upstairs. The lone basement door had been assaulted by languished raps from the fists of those unloved and he wondered if they searched for blood, flesh, or just an attentive ear. The Loved One lowered himself down on his haunches and cradled his head in a net of fingers formed by his bloodstained hands.

The twisted, broken remains of an Unloved lay motionless in the corner. The look on its masculine face was one not of pain or horror, but of despair. Its features remained in death as they had been when animated with life. The Loved One concluded that the Unloved were not the same as the Undead; there was a different imperative at play here, it seemed. The Unloved had to be dispatched, though. He assured himself of that. It might have turned away from its presented nature and smashed through his bones with an unknown rage. The mallet partnered in delivering the crushing blow lay silently at the thing’s feet. The Loved One cast a defeated glance upward and suddenly heard the murmurings from beyond his confinement transform into words, then sentences; the eloquence of the new chattering pulled him up and moving.

The Loved One kneeled and listened: “You have it all, don’t you? The words and deeds of those held most dear, while we rot with the decay of indifference, cast upon us by all we’ve encountered.” There was a pause here, and the Loved One was frightened to respond. How could he? He had never known a loss such as this, bereft of everything so as to one day become–“Are you there?” it said. Its feminine voice clear like a glass of water, each syllable and every word, formed and delivered perfectly. He looked around the expanse of the cellar. He deduced that soon, without any presentment of a helping hand, he was next to become one of them.

She stabbed it several times with her silver fork, but she could not find any proof that she had succeeded.

What was the damn thing anyway? And in the salad? Did the cook purposely put it there?

She searched again, using her fork to separate each leaf of lettuce, tomato, cucumber, and crouton.

Nothing.

Suddenly, it was nowhere to be found.

Her eyes filled with fear, not knowing where it crawled to.

Was it still in the salad bowl? Or did it crawl out and escape? Was it under the bowl?

She anxiously observed her clothing and hands.

Where did the damn thing go?

She saw a glimpse of the thing. There were no words to describe it. It was something that should never be in a bowl of edible food.

It was there a couple of minutes ago.

She sipped her drink of water and quickly asked for the check.

As she left, she thought of the slice of lemon that floated in her glass of water. She fearfully realized that she did not check the lemon. But she would have definitely noticed if the thing had crawled up the clear glass.

But what if it was behind the lemon? It could have squeezed itself inside the sour fruit before she could have noticed because her mind was on the salad bowl! She covered her mouth.

She entered her home, throwing her purse and coat on the bed.

She grabbed a flashlight, went into the bathroom, and examined the inside of her mouth. She exhaled a breath of relief. Nothing was found.

As she lay there that night, she couldn’t forget the terrible experience earlier that day.

She put on her robe and went into the kitchen.

Maybe a nice cup of tea to relieve the nerves, she thought.

As she held the warm tea she became aware of every little thing she did. She found herself looking for that thing again. No, she thought, it couldn’t have followed her home. Or could it? She recalled that it didn’t seem to have wings.

But it could attach itself to something. Something that she could carry home with her.

She sucked in a deep breath.

Her coat and purse! She laid them on her bed.

She abandoned the warm tea and quickly ran back to her bedroom.

She lifted the sheets and explored every part of her bed. Then her coat. Then her purse.

Nothing.

She panicked.

Maybe it already detached itself and it was somewhere in the house.

She felt nauseous.

She would have to search the whole house now. That meant no sleep. And it would take hours.

She ran to the bathroom covering her mouth and began to vomit. She peered into the putrid toilet water, observing what appeared to be her salad. And something else…

She heavily breathed in and out as she stared at the full view of it. She had swallowed it. That’s why she couldn’t find it.

It wasn’t dead. It happily swam in the filthy water.

She held her throat, disgusted that the thing had been inside her.

Her shaking hand quickly flushed the toilet.

She was relieved to see it swirl down with the vomit and disappear.

She told herself everything was fine now, that it was over, as she climbed back into bed.

The next morning she stood in front of the bathroom mirror, her eyes frozen in terror. She could only breathe through her nose.

Her mouth bulged with hundreds of hatchlings that fell into the bathroom sink.

There was no room to scream.

“Edward, there’s something under my bed and I’m scared,” Jenny cried over the phone to her fiancé. “I called Daddy to come over, but he couldn’t help.”

Although her voice trembled with anxiety, he calmly replied, “Come on, baby, you’re twenty-one years old, and engaged to be married. You need to let those childish fears go.”

“I know, but it’s the same feeling I got when I was a little girl, except worse. I really need you to come over. Please, Edward? I need you.”

Edward rubbed his eyes and glanced at the clock. It was just shy of two a.m. He had slept a little over two hours.

“All right, if it will make you happy.”

“Thank you, honey,” she said. “I feel much be–”

The phone clunked as though it hit the floor.

Edward heard a commotion, followed by Jenny’s panic-stricken scream, “Oh, God, no. Please! Edward, hurry!”

The phone went dead. He scrambled out of bed and raced to his car in his pajamas. He sped toward Jenny’s condo, which was fifteen minutes away.

Edward reached for his cell phone to call the police, and then remembered he left it on the night stand. He ran stop signs and red lights, hoping a cop would stop him, but had no luck.

Scenarios of burglars and rapists played over in his mind. He had always warned her about taking a ground floor condo, as it was easy to break into. Then again, he thought, perhaps another emergency arose she couldn’t explain.

He recalled how Jenny once related her intense fear of the dark when she was a little girl. She swore she heard growls at night, and would wrap up like a cocoon beneath the covers.

“Daddy!” she would scream.

He would rush into her room, search it and then scream, as if some horrible creature was dragging him under the bed.

Then, her father would peek over the bed and laugh. That infuriated Jenny to the point she couldn’t control herself. After calming her down, her father would tell her a bedtime story and kiss her forehead.

“Nighty-night, princess,” he’d say, turning on a nightlight. “Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

Edward skidded to a stop in front of Jenny’s condo, and sprinted up the sidewalk.

“Jenny! Baby, where are you?” he hollered, barging through the front door, and running to her room.

“Oh my God!” he shouted, as he stepped into the room.

Blood splattered the walls and floor, and the furniture was smashed and scattered as though there had been a struggle. Jenny’s torn and bloody nightgown lay on the floor.

Edward’s voice trembled as he called out, “Jenny, where are you, baby?”

He glanced under the bed, and jumped back as a cockroach scurried out past him.

Something rustled in the closet, and Edward spun around. He thought he heard something like quiet whimpering behind the door.

“Don’t worry, Jen, I’m here, baby,” he said, cautiously opening the closet.

Edward stepped back, horrified and speechless as her father’s body lay on the closet floor in a mangled and bloodied heap.

“I called and he came, but he couldn’t help,” a guttural voice behind him uttered.

“Jen?” he said, and turned.

Jenny, however, had already lunged at him, teeth bared and growling. “And you can’t either!”

A grotesque mass of bulging muscle and tissue contorted her body. She contorted her face in a hideous scowl and snapped her jaws around his larynx. A vicious growl echoed through the room as she whipped her head back and forth, and ripped out a large chunk of muscle and tissue.

Through blood-smeared lips, she continued, “I always said something was hiding in the dark, but no one listened.”

A few minutes later, Jenny’s anxiety faded. She turned on a night light and crawled into bed.

After curling up in a fetal position, she whispered softly, “Goodnight, princess. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

Gill had no idea where the mice were coming from. Several weeks ago he heard their claws scratch at the wood as they moved through the walls of his bedroom. There were only ten, maybe twelve of them. They mated. Now at night he heard them like raindrops slapping the sides of his house. He heard their demonic chirping as they communicated. And an awful stench permeated the walls. The stench of droppings and dead bodies.

He would take no more. They interfered with his writing. Between each clack of the Royal’s keys he heard a tick from the mice in the wall. It disrupted his rhythm. Clack-clack-TICK-clack-TICK.

He bought a cartful of mousetraps at Lowe’s and a block of cheese from the local market. He spent several hours after his dinner of pasta slicing bits of cheese and meticulously loading each trap. He set them up on a flat piece of cardboard in rows like soldiers.

He found a power drill under the cascading boxes of rejected manuscripts. He held the traps in his left hand and carried the drill in his right like a gunslinger.

He decided to drill under his desk. He got down on his hands and knees and set the traps up. All of them converging on the spot where he would drill. And he drilled.

Specks of dust floated through the air as the hole emerged.

After only a moment he saw the pale pink nose poke through the hole. Then he saw the beady red eyes. And the head popped out like a cork from a wine bottle. He sneered.

After the first came a second, and a third. The mousetraps went clack-clack-clack as the metal bars fell on their heads, snapping their spines instantly. The hole grew bigger as more forced their way through, two came at once, then four, and then Gill feared the entire wall would give. The hole grew larger and larger and all of the sudden the clacking stopped but the mice kept coming. He stood up and said “No, no-no-no goddamnit no!” and he stumbled backwards onto his bed.

Gill saw them coming. Like a gray wave rolling along the carpet, they marched and meandered over their dead brethren. The moonlight reflected their red, beady eyes as they stared at him. They spread out, surrounding the bed. The room was bright with their red eyes and Gill realized he was outnumbered.

At first he felt small vibrations in the bed sheets. Their claws pulling them back and forth as they climbed. Then the sheet slowly started falling. Sliding off the bed, leaving his pale naked knees bathed in the moonlight. He felt the cool wood of the backboard against his spine as he huddled up against the edge of the bed. He tried to scream but something cinched his vocal chords.

The frayed end of the sheet slowly slipped off the bed into the ocean of gray. For a second he thought he saw it coming back, somehow, he wished. But then he saw the red eyes. They were so close he could see their whiskers wobble up and down as their noses worked to find his smell and their red eyes reflected off his pale skin, forming small halos.

Gil felt the first nibble on his left big toe. It almost tickled, like a light pinprick. Then he felt more. Over all of his toes and up the bones of his feet, up to his ankles. Thousands of pins poking into his flesh, and it didn’t tickle anymore. He screamed now. A horrible wail, rising in tone, spurted from his mouth like vomit. He flailed his legs, sending mice soaring across the room and into the walls. He smashed the mattress with his fists, squashing their frail bodies in his rage. But more filled their spots. And when Gil noticed the bloody stumps that had taken place of his feet he got lightheaded and passed out and the world went gray.

Kindel had waited until after dark as Sara had told him. Then he trudged through the ankle-deep swamp to the point behind the bait shack. He spotted a wavering glow beyond, among the vines and mangroves.

She had said she would signal him with a mantle lamp. And there, in the black undergrowth, was a faint radiance. Kindel sloshed forward, and the swamp light moved a bit. He followed it past the bait shack and the catfish pier.

Sara had ivory flesh and wore nothing but the finest lace and linen. She said her daddy would light Kindel up if he knew they were foolin’ around. But she had a rendezvous worked out for them to get together.

Here, at last, the lamp. He pushed harder through the muck to reach her. She stood all lit up and beautiful as he embraced her, the two of them going up in flames.

The first trimester was the worst. People frequently stared at my husband and me while in public, but he is my love and nothing really matters what happened on that day of conception. He even took care of my strange cravings for meat, which my vegetarian body instinctively vomited up.

During the second trimester, there was immense pain from the baby’s kicks. I also disregarded the amounts of discharged blood. Many people said we shouldn’t keep it, but we had tried for so long that nothing else matters.

Now, the doctor removes the baby because I am too weak to push from the loss of blood. Before they take my baby away, my husband bites the cord and lays the baby in my dying arms. Thank God I got to hold her for just a moment, but these are the sacrifices you make when your husband turns into a zombie.

He wasn’t prepared but it came naturally. He could tell she was into it. She thrashed back and forth, and up and down. Then, a moan escaped her parted lips.

He knew he had done a good job when she became silent as a doll and a glazed look filled her eyes. His fingers etched their way down her skin, reading her goosebumps like Braille.

“More?” he cooed into her ear. “You want more?”

He didn’t mind. After all, it would take some practice to get it down perfectly.

Moments later, he plunged the thick blade inside of her again.

He felt more confident already.

After school, Kelly quickly ran home, trying to escape from Chrissy. She ran into her grandma’s garden, hiding among the large fruit trees and vegetable plants.

She exhaled a deep breath, hating herself for being the new girl in school.

Kelly crouched down behind a tree. It was peaceful here, she thought. A place to get away from her troubles. She decided that Grandma’s garden would be her special place.

Suddenly, a patch of ground slid back, exposing what looked like a mouth with small rocks as teeth and a moving plant as its tongue.

Frightened, Kelly jumped back. She snapped off a tomato and threw it into its mouth. It didn’t seem to care for the fruits and vegetables that surrounded it. She saw how it peered at her leg. She sensed it preferred meat instead.

Kelly thought of something. She ran back to the house and sneaked out some raw hamburger.

She went back to where the thing lived.

Its mouth quickly opened wide, its frenzied tongue flailing for its long awaited meal. She was right. Definitely a carnivore.

Suddenly, Kelly heard footsteps approaching her.

“Hey, little shit.”

It was Chrissy.

She quickly tried to hide.

Then she noticed the thing had opened its mouth, as if helping her to escape.

No, she thought. She couldn’t trust a thing like that. It might devour her. But as the footsteps came closer, and scarce hiding places left, she desperately jumped in.

“Kelly?” The taunting voice asked. “Where are you, little shit?”

She remained silent inside her new hiding place. But for her enemy to come this far back into the garden worried her.

She waited for freedom as she quietly sat inside the darkness of its mouth.

Chrissy’s horrible voice fainted away into the distance.

Then the thing spit her out.

Her dress was drenched with its saliva, her matted hair soaked, but Kelly didn’t care. She was just relieved that the thing didn’t eat her.

The next afternoon Kelly didn’t have a chance to hide.

As she leaned against the tree in front of the thing, two arms grabbed her.

“Hey, little shit.”

“Stop,” she said loudly, as she struggled.

The thing opened it mouth, its tongue reaching for Chrissy’s ankle. She screamed as it pulled her in, then Kelly felt a pull on her ankle and they both fell inside of it.

They sat there, in the darkness of its mouth, sitting on its herbaceous tongue.

“Is this thing for real?” Chrissy fearfully asked.

“Yes,” Kelly said. “It’s my new friend and it’s not eating you because you pulled me in.”

“Will it let me out?”

“I don’t know,” Kelly paused. “You’ve been mean to me.”

“I’m sorry,” Chrissy said nervously. “Let’s be friends.”

They both shook hands on it and the thing slowly opened its mouth.

She noticed how quickly Chrissy scrambled from the thing’s gaping mouth, and then repaid Kelly’s kindness with a swift kick to her face.

A wrinkled hand pulled Kelly out.

There stood an old woman with a hoe.

“Chester, you better start minding your manners,” she said to the thing as she shook her stern finger.

Kelly watched as Grandma stabbed Chrissy in her sternum with the hoe and pushed her body into the thing’s mouth.

“And Chrissy,” Grandma added, “you have no manners.”

Kelly heard the sound of crushing bone.

“Grandma?” Tears flowed from her eyes. “She was going to be my friend.”

“No, child, she wasn’t. She would have said anything to get out of Chester.” She nodded toward the thing. “This is your friend now.”

They both stood there, hand in hand, as the chomping sound continued.

Suddenly, a low rumble was felt below the earth as Chester spit out an indigestible shard of bone.