MicroHorror

“Are you sure that you wish to hear my story?” The old man’s voice rasped like a hinge in need of lubrication. He looked incredibly ancient, his skin paper-thin, scored with deep lines. The old-man odor of careless hygiene and stale pipe tobacco hung about him like a miasma.

“I didn’t come here to leave without the secret.” The young man shuffled in the deep, soft chair. He felt as if he were being engulfed by eiderdown. “I am willing to pay handsomely for the information if I can validate it.”

“And just how would you propose to do that?” The old man chuckled, although the sound he made was hardly mirthful.

“By gaining immortality just as you have.”

“Who told you that I was immortal? You have been listening to the loose talk of fools. What you are looking for does not exist.” The old man wagged his head back and forth, like a cobra transfixed by the music of its handler.

The young man shuddered at the image, shaking his head to clear it. “I know the year in which you were born. By all existing records you are at least 210 years old. That puts you far beyond the years of the longest-lived man who ever existed. You know that I have done my research. Would I be fool enough to come here on the strength of a mere rumor? I have been looking into the facts about your life for two years. All I want is the secret behind your longevity. I promise you that I can make it worth your while.”

“Perhaps you can make it worth my while. What do you have to offer for this gift which I might bestow upon you?”

“I have a cashier’s check for one million dollars, which I will give you when I have received the secret of immortality. Of course I don’t have it on me. It is in a safe place which I can access easily.”

“Oh, very well. You have overwhelmed me with your persistence. If I tell you the secret will you give me the money and go away?” There was a faint glint in the ancient one’s eye which his guest attributed to greed.

“You have my word, sir.”

“When I was a young man I dabbled in the satanic arts as an amusement. To tell you the truth, I was skeptical about such things, but I kept exploring further and further into the spells. On a dark, starless night I overcame one of the maidservants in my father’s house, wrapped her in a shroud and dragged her to a clearing in the woods. I had built there an altar of stone on a previous night. Removing the shroud along with her clothing I marked the sign on her body consecrating her as a sacrifice to Satan. Just as she began to arouse I raised my blade and thrust it into her breast. Ruby red blood flowed over the stone as a cloud formed above her. Satan himself appeared to me, grinning with an evil leer: ‘You have earned yourself another lifetime with the gift of this soul. You can continue to escape death as long as you provide me with one soul every year on the anniversary of this date. If you fail I shall come for your very soul.’”

“Have you done his bidding all of these years?” The young man seemed shocked at the number of killings that would require.

“Why, yes, of course I have.”

The old man reached under his chair to move a lever, causing two metal arms to wrap around his guest, rendering him helpless to escape. The last thing the young man saw was a hood as it was lowered over his head.

“Thank you, Gerald. Put him in the cellar. The dark of the moon is in three days’ time. That should be ample time for you to persuade him to divulge the whereabouts of the check.”

Come across a deserted birthday bash abandoned. Perished balloons hanging like shriveled breasts; moldering foods on delicate, lacy, disintegrating paper plates; cobwebs and rodent droppings everywhere–and dusty cardboard party hats, not worn: all in all, shades of Miss Havisham; a mystery, what the Dickens?

The function room was like a huge tomb: but no bodies, no dead here to pay homage to. Had they upped and run out of sight, to die–crawled, one after another, in a conga line to curl up and die, invisibly? Perhaps the air had been poisoned by chemicals, or a dirty bomb, dropped nearby, leaving things untouched, as such, intact–before crumbling away–rotting slowly. Perhaps the wine–still, and once bubbly, on the long cluttered, dusty tables–had been laced with slow acting poison, or worse–God knows what hadn’t happened. Imagined champagne corks popping–like shotgun–wedding–some kind of celebration interrupted; God knows what by.

The sullen visitor, with a mask on, entering into the spirit of things–low and morbid. And in a small, musty, dusty side-room, was hit by foul (foul play?) stink of corruption, stumbled upon–a huge fake cake on a trolley–finally falling apart. TARRAA! A once saucy young girl busting out, naked, showing little flesh now–much had been eaten away, or was hidden by parasites–feeding. Fast going hairless, scalp crawling, alive with maggots and flies squirming–heaving–a sickening sight. Her bony gnawed arms flung wide to expose flaccid, nibbled breasts, jaw dropping working loose as she tried to yell–grubs pouring out what was left of her mouth, “SURRRRpRIsE!”

Some people don’t know they’re born–nor when they’re dead: nobody to inform this corpse. “HhaPpy BbbirThdAy,” it said.

Pig’s ear made of the piercing–a cheap affair, cost him dear; ear infected–back and to the hospital–wept and festered–his resentment taken out on his girlfriend: had had it done for her, along with growing his hair long and getting tattooed in her name; they were both starving artists, well, skint art students, reason for getting it done on the cheap. At one stage, thought he’d lost the (right) ear–but thankfully had not; nevertheless, was a bloody mess.

Waltzed into the jewelers’ to get another piercing. There was a long queue at the piercing booth–he had more important things to do. He pointed at the jokey (old, unoriginal joke) sign on the counter: “Ears pierced while you wait”–plonked a dirty hanky on the counter and unrolled it to reveal the ear that was dead. Thought he’d lost it. Had not–just mislaid it. Had come to get it done professionally, this time–fragile cartilage two huge abscesses (if burst, just imagine the pus!) to be avoided.

“Do your best,” the student artist said to the salesgirl. “Want it gift wrapped for the girlfriend.”

The ear–going rotten, smelled unpleasant, looked bloody disgusting, on the turn–a deaf ear to. The sales assistant turning green, unleashing a bloodcurdling, ear-piercing scream–just before she fainted.

It is so easy.

Quite possibly the perfect crime–untraceable.

It is unimaginable that no one thought of it sooner. Then again, maybe someone had. That’s exactly it. No one would know.

How could they?

After all, no one pays attention to those stupid tags anyway. Not even the owner–not after they scratched out their name and address in neat block letters and attached it to their suitcase. By the time they board the plane, they had all but forgotten that tiny little tag.

And when it’s gone, it is a rare few who even notice.

And those that do? Fueled by a devil-may-care attitude brought upon by a week or two of piña coladas on the beach, most shrug off the event without a second thought. Must have been lost in transit, right? Caught up in one of those baggage belts. And who would ever think of reporting something as insignificant as a luggage tag to lost and found?

It’s only a piece of paper with all the information I need.

Names, addresses. Sometimes phone numbers. Even e-mail addresses. Everything I need to begin my work.

The bags I want are usually easy to spot. Sleek silver cases. Turquoise duffels on wheels. Once I got one that was pink with white polka dots. The best are the black ones, though. Black ones with pretty little bows tied to the handles to make them easier to see.

Of course, it isn’t the baggage I want.

Just a quick look at the tag.

Take this one, for instance.

Ginger Kampe.

Female, always good.

And single, by the looks of it. The married ones always like to write names in pairs, like “Tom and Ginger Kampe.” Or “The Kampe Family.”

And she most likely lives alone. See the address? It says “Apt. P-23.”

Most likely a big apartment complex, full of singles.

Of course, she could always have a roommate. But that is easily discovered. I like to watch before I act. Build up anticipation beforehand.

And roommates will eventually leave. They always do.

That is when I can get to work.

I always go in at night. Everyone’s asleep. Usually they don’t even see me, even when I’m standing right next to their bed.

Ginger only sees me for a split second, just long enough for me to put the needle in her arm.

My work seems to be done before it even begins. A little snip here, a cut there. A pound of flesh taken, blood and sweat spilled, mingling in one stream on the floor.

I hold on to the luggage tag for as long as I can. I’d like to keep it, a memento of our time together, but I know better than that.

As I lower her body into the ground, close to the others, I hang the tag around her big toe. Throw in about six feet of dirt and this one is gone–but not forgotten. Her memory will keep me satisfied for a while.

At least, until the next vacation season.

Susannah hated the grass. She hated it because it didn’t need anything other than what it already had. Some sunlight, a little water, soil–that was all it needed to live. Susannah needed far more than just light, water, and dirt. What she needed was someone’s arms to wrap around her waist. She needed the smell of her father’s cheek, the taste of real food. She needed the sight of another person. She needed the company of other people’s thoughts. Her own were getting weary and, she feared, a little too close to crazy.

She pulls her knees up to her chest and rocks back and forth on the dirt. Her scarlet red monk’s robe drapes all about her otherwise naked body. She tries not to look to her right, where a single arm lies limp on the ground. She does not want to deal with the blood and the grief, with the rest of the body and the fresh memories. It’s too much for her right now. Right now she needs to sit and stare out at the grass, those tall, hateful, smug little blades, so secure in their infinite company. She couldn’t even guess at the number of blades she’d laid eyes upon in her fifteen years of life. She could count on one finger the number of people she’d ever seen. She could count on a closed fist the number of people she’d ever see again.

The wind is picking up, and it is so cold and fast. Her hair whips around her, smacking her cheeks and eyes. The skyline is growing dark, another cold night is waiting, another hungry dawn. And for the first time ever, Susannah will be completely alone. Her father is dead behind her, his throat ripped out by the beast before it went back to hiding in the infinite field. She closes her eyes and listens for it, out there, somewhere, unseen and patient. She thinks she can almost hear its teeth, its tongue dripping blood and spit on the ground. If she holds her breath and gets very still, she thinks she can hear it hating her.

The sun is minutes away from setting. The wind is howling. Susannah wipes the last of the tears from her eyes and stands up for the first time since morning, since seeing her father’s dead body. She doesn’t look at it, not even now, now that she might be dead herself soon. As sad as she is, as weak as her grip on the world has become, she knows that looking would burn that sight into her mind, and she does not want her father to be a pile of blood and skin. She does not need that right now. Right now she needs to go out there, there among the hateful grass, and hide.

She stands up. She falls right back down. The muscles in her legs are weak from sitting so long, and the cramps that take her calves are horrendous. She cries out in agony and beats on them with her fists, bruising them in the process. Then she tries to stand again, and though her knees shake and buckle, at least she doesn’t fall down again. She puts one wobbly foot in front of the other and goes forward. She decides to just run in one direction for as long as she can, never looking back, stopping only to sleep briefly. Because the beast is stalking tonight. It will be angry. It will be waiting.

“Go, son, and fake illness no more.” Vernon Blast waved off the client, a twenty-something with a weakness for tequila and a proclivity for sleeping through his clock alarm.

The front door swished shut, and Blast handed three twenties to the object of his lust, his secretary Carlita. His chest still ached with grief for his wife, who died from cancer two months before. But his dick ached too, he couldn’t deny it.

“Why don’t you head out, Carly. I’ll finish up.” His mood was expansive: Despite Verisimilitude opening across town, Buy-A-Lie was booming. Carlita didn’t need to be told twice. Blast opened a drawer in her vacated desk, inhaling the lingerings of lavender perfume as he counted the day’s take. It was enough to make a man dance.

“When you’re lying, the whole world lies with you,” he warbled, sweeping an invisible Carlita across the floor. The door jingled. “You caught me, sir,” he guffawed to a man in a brown suit. “Appointment?”

“No.”

“No problem.” He motioned at the leather chair opposite his desk. They sat. “We’ve got two rules. Cash up front.”

Suit man fiddled with his tie. “And the second?”

“Same thing: cash up front.” Blast yucked alone. Geez, some clients were serious as cancer–strike that. “We offer complete confidentiality. No last names, make up the first.”

“Frank,” laconic no more, launched into a lengthy story about purchasing a cabin in the woods and discovering a cache of jewels and gold coins in the basement.

“Guy who hid them’s in prison,” Blast theorized. “What happens when he gets out?”

“I’m not worried. Just want to sell the stuff, and keep my wife from finding out. Joy’s got a big mouth.”

“I think we can help. Does three hundred work?”

“Hoped you’d take a piece of jewelry, maybe a diamond bracelet, in lieu of money.”

Blast imagined Carlita’s gratitude when he gave her the bracelet over a candlelit dinner, the stones’ gleam obscuring his balding pate and basketball gut.

“Deal.”

It was Blast’s idea to leave immediately for the cabin, to collect his fee and view Frank’s treasure trove. Lucky bastard. Frank drove, Italian baroque music playing fortissimo the whole way.

Walking up the gravel driveway, Blast noticed a bulldozer and a mound of amber dirt in the side yard. “Swimming pool,” Frank explained. “Check it out.”

The two men stood at the rim of a thirty-foot-deep hole. Blast peered down and gasped. “What–” he said, and Frank shoved him in. Blast landed on his back. He tried to move, couldn’t. An absence of pain told him he was paralyzed. He swiveled his head, and there lay the woman he’d seen from the top–her nose sliced off like an Islamic punishment, dried blood where her eyes should be. Obviously dead.

Even with her injuries, he recognized her as his longtime client, Joy.

“I lied,” Frank said, silhouetted above him. “How does it feel?”

Before Blast could respond, Frank was gone. Blast heard the car start and the engine’s rumble grow louder. Then it stopped. Next came the pop of a trunk opening. Frank reappeared, dumped something into the hole. Carlita hit the dirt face down. She tried to push herself up, but one arm was useless. With her good hand she yanked tape off her mouth. “What have you done?” she shrieked at Blast, her eyes gleaming with hatred.

“He’s been selling lies to my wife to cover up her affair,” Frank said calmly. “Seven years.”

“Not true, Frank,” Blast yelled. “I don’t know her, never met her. It was somebody else, man, not me.”

“You can quit lying now. It’s over.”

Frank circled the hole, pouring in liquid from a can. Gasoline dribbled off Blast’s body. His mind ping-ponged wildly, searching for the right words.

Frank ignited a rag with a lighter. “The truth hurts.”

Out of gamejoy one of them extends the hook to my mouth. My tongue darts out, tastes myself. Salt. Delicious. Must be the myelin. Must be why the dogs like it so much. I smile in sudden kinship with the beasts, licking at the wet stains on the ground far below. Again the hook is extended. I almost snag my tongue on its sinuously cruel end to get more of that taste.

“Enough.”

His voice is thunder. Even the dogs stop whining. My head is immobile, clamped between iron and stone, but I know where the voice has come from. Our Navigator. Him I have signed my contract with, ahead of many others, though now the line to be cut out stretches halfway around London.

They leave my eyes alone, so I am wide and staring as they walk us, shackled neck to neck, in rows towards their ships. My mouth is open, slack, my nipples hardening, as if they would reach out and touch. These ships have seen the other side of the Magellanic Clouds.

They refused to share. I was one of the loudest to rant and rage and protest. But they gave us access to the heart of their ships where the slaves toiled, lent truth to their assertion of immortality. And when their refusal was explained to me, I was one of the first to shave my head and kneel. What price starflight? I think my head-shaving amused them, the practical considerations of having your brain cut out for sport. Then my Navigator of the exquisite multicolored serpentine feathers made the offer. Come.

Favored slave. Prince amongst men. The nodules of the shipwall are digging into my knees. In front of him and me, in the hexagonal port, hangs my payment. They’ve left me enough to appreciate this, as I watch the blue and white swirl grow smaller and smaller.

“This is the best you are going to get, little one,” he says. I had wanted freefall, a gradient in the black, a fire in the sky; my grandparents decided that a sometime pilot and soldier was the best I was going to get.

“More.”

“More? What a curious thing you are.”

I shudder with anticipation. He always promises me things in that voice, and he always delivers.

With a sensual, cruel smile from his perfect mouth he puts a hand on my head, the healing stitches still tender, pushes me to my knees. He unwraps the pipes from around my neck, pulling their ends out of the metal-ringed orifices in my stomach.

Acid, blood, drips down the planes of my torso as the pipes are pulled free with a sucking sound. He tips my chin up. I know what is coming, and keep perfectly still as the razor-sharp ends are inserted into me, haloed in blood. It hurts.

He feeds me the stars, shivering down the pipe from his fingertips to my eyes. He is Navigator, and for him the heavens open, rain-fed earth to the plough. My body is too temporally fragile, my flesh too prone to rotting, for me ever to see like this for myself. He keeps pumping into me, filling the empty spaces inside my memory with the stars till I spasm, a little bit of me dying through the pipes.

“Enough.” His voice is grit and honey.

It hurts even more to take the pipes out. Everything is red. I think he must have dragged out pieces of my eyes with them. That’s okay. Two more holes for him to play with. He is my Navigator.

“Was it good for you, little creature?”

He doesn’t need to ask, he knows how good it was; I can smell the warm salt of his satisfaction as I crawl closer, lay my head on his thigh.

“Exactly what I paid for,” I whisper. My tongue darts out to taste more of the salt.

What is grown is a result of a burial. What is harvested is the beginning to an end. The seed is planted deep and the blooms stretch like prayers to the sky where they are duly snipped, declawed and vased until dead.

Dawn knelt in her garden, small green pad under her knees, and breathed deep of the bloom in front of her. Was it all truly so morbid as this? Little funerals and small, swift deaths and for what? So that she might have a reason to shoo the beetles and trim the reaching vines and put a glass vial of suffocating flowers on her table, the table where she will sit for hours, staring unblinking.

Dawn’s soft, flawless hands picked at the brown beetle before her and squashed it between thumb and index finger. She absentmindedly wiped the broken bug down the front of her khaki shorts, just above the knee, shorts revealing legs as tan and flawless as her hands, as the rest of her. Dawn was as beautiful and as soft as her morning name might imply. Just flawless.

Roses are poor company compared to what might be but, still, company compared to none is a blessing. And these were blessings taken with gratitude as Dawn daily doted on her blossoms. But this nagging thought, this feeling that their beauty was somehow nothing but a morbid cycle, had started eating at the edges of her mind a week ago. It was a Friday afternoon; the sky was that deep purple indigo it sometimes can be and there was just a single cloud in the sky. The sun fell warm and soft to Dawn’s shoulders and, as she pruned, one of the rose thorns caught the pad of her left middle finger. She sucked at the wound briefly when it hit her: this fiery red, this vibrant crimson compared to the blue-purple backdrop of today; the rose wore the color of abrasion. Of laceration. Of welts and cuts and scrapes.

Dawn, too, once wore these constantly. Dennis. He had been a dream at first, gentle and kind and so intelligent. When he spoke the air was music and his thought was law. Dawn was hopeless before him and positively electric when he offered marriage. She had no garden back then. Her world was Dennis. She doted on him then much as she does her roses today. She cooked, she cleaned, she did other things in the bedroom. She was a perfect wife. But Dennis, dream that he was, changed just as dreams often do. He did not drink or use drugs, so they could not be given as an excuse. And, of course, who could want for more than Dawn was as a wife and partner? Dennis simply changed. To be sure, at one time his wife must have been the very air in his lungs, but now she was a chain, a cage, a burden he was sickened to look at. At first, he would just push her out of his way when she would try to talk to him or reach to touch him. Then slapping, pinching, punching; beating Dawn was freedom. The more she cried, the more she hurt, the more Dennis could breathe again.

Dawn moved in a bruise world. Nothing was real nor did anything matter. What would come would come. Then they did. Hips. In the mail, on a Friday, rose hips in one of those yellow, padded mailers. She had not ordered these yet felt that resolution of anticipation as if she had been waiting months for them to arrive. A scab on her knee itched. She scraped it off and went inside. To show Dennis.

Her roses began with a burial. She planted Dennis deep and the rose hips on top. She felt her body sigh and she took a deep breath. Life is much sweeter with roses.

The car must have arrested, but James couldn’t tell for flames. Fingers of fire reached up to his ears, eyes and lips. Hell’s hounds barked and snapped and gnarled at his groin and stomach.

A catastrophic explosion had occurred without warning. Fire rushed through the foot-well. A failure in the engine had turned the reliable vehicle of a decade into a raging fireball and James knew that if he didn’t act at once, it was a date with the undertaker.

He tried to remove his hands from the wheel, but the enormous temperatures had caused it to melt and ooze between his fingers. He pulled his hands away, but ropes of molten rubber clung onto him. He thumbed at the belt release; he heard the familiar clicking sound, but the belt had stuck to his chest. He clawed at it, but the strands of rubber that was once the steering wheel made it difficult. At last it gave with a tear. Burning embers, formerly his shirt and a sheet of skin came with it. He may have caused irreparable damage to himself, but all he had to do to secure a future was open the door and tumble out. Too late. The plastic handle had dribbled down the inside of the door.

James sat back and observed the molten rubber that was still clinging to him, almost as though it wouldn’t allow him to leave. It had not only coiled around his fingers and wrists, but it was running up his forearms and gripping him by the elbows.

He was no longer in pain. Rather he was intrigued to watch the forest of flames rising up before him. They were hypnotic, almost soothing. He had half a mind to lean forward and allow them to caress his face, but the eel-like rubber of the wheel had taken him by the shoulders now. The curtain of fire parted briefly and he caught his reflection in the rearview. His hair had gone. So had his lips and much of his mouth, revealing his blackening teeth and jawbones. At least he wouldn’t have to buy another Halloween costume, he thought. Then his eyelids shrunk away and his eyes shriveled up. His sense of hearing was still keen and he heard the groaning expansion of the chassis, the popping of the upholstery and music. The radio must have been destroyed in the explosion, but James was certain that he could hear the unhurried notes of a Hawaiian guitar. The composition had arrived from nowhere and appeared to be heading in the very same direction. It didn’t matter; he had all the time in the world to listen. Then the passenger window imploded. Perhaps help had arrived at last. Too late. Too late; the fire had taken on a benevolence and he was reluctant to leave it behind. Even the liquid rubber entering his mouth was somehow pleasing. He decided to stay a while longer. He could hear human voices and the urgency in them, but he couldn’t make out what was being said. His ability to process information was fast diminishing, but that was beside the point. Whoever was standing by the car may have arrived with good intentions, but they were intrusive, irritating and downright meddlesome. James wished they’d shove off. He was reluctant to admit that he was dying–this was more like birth in reverse and he was loathe to think that anyone could spoil it for him. They could go and damn well help themselves. They were too late.

I tell the girl with the camel suede pumps and mild keloid scar on her left shoulder that I’m almost positive I’ve just seen Hermann Hesse in the men’s bathroom. I tell everyone I go out with that I think I see Hermann Hesse in the men’s room. It’s the sensibility, if any, of their response that will either preserve or sooner terminate their life. This particular damsel looks at me with eyes that should only pucker in such a way for a sleepy toddler. “Really,” I tell her. “I mean, it would make sense that he likes Thai, wouldn’t it?” She’s still a burnt-out infant, reaching for a word of acknowledgment that she can’t seem to find. The ones with the fancy lace and capital letters dancing patterns on their purses always look beclouded by the sagacity of humanity. “Well, that was an odd encounter,” I add.

I already know how the night will end with this one. “I don’t follow politics,” she finally mutters. As we are lead to our table I can feel my blood like glass, shattering its way through my system in crystal waves of splintered slivers. I nearly stumble as I sit. A wave crashes over my heart. The shards ignite my spirits. I think of Hesse and the fifty-plus years the world has been without him. The ambrosial mannequin seated across from me is a symbol of undoing. With every stroke of her black satin hair I can feel the thread of timeless insight unwinding, spinning to the floor like a spider in the wind, trampled by the high heel of consumer rubbish and mainstream traffic. She is the cause. Her and a million others like her. They are bacteria that degrade the land they grovel over. I must disinfect. I thirst to strike the heel that kills the substance of our realm. Unfortunately, there is no way to sculpt a crushed spider back to form. For this reason I lust for the blood of such commercial germs. Their insides spilled like lightning re-write countless pages of ignored text. Their convulsions, a million operas. This primped-up specimen before me is not the first, and will not be the last.

I adjust my tie and smile. It’s time for me to play the gallant date. The kind of exemplar she’ll want to go home with. The way she brushes her hair back kills brain cells, but I force myself to look. Her bat eyes coated black over a face of powdered cream. She rants about a movie, and how difficult it is to keep a healthy diet. She tells me what they say about exercise, and what they think about consuming red meat. I recite poetry in my head to keep myself from landing my shrimp skewer through her esophagus. I make sure to flash my watch in her direction.

The dinner is routine. She likes me, but had probably made that assumption the minute she felt the thread of my blazer. I walk her out on my arm and inform her of a fine Chardonnay just asking to be opened at my place. Her giggle is an acceptance of my invitation.

Back at my apartment I uncork the bottle. My fingertips vibrate with anticipation; I think I feel seams splitting. Her smile reeks of the elation she expects. As usual, when the woman starts to get close and touchy I get up to get her a sliver of cheesecake. However, the cheesecake is more like a steak knife, and for the next five minutes I carve at her face like it’s an ice sculpture. All the while I whisper to myself, humanity won’t recognize what doesn’t recognize humanity. Perhaps if I said it was Gandhi in the bathroom so many people wouldn’t have to die. No, that can’t be right. People will always have to die.