MicroHorror

It was a dream come true. All the hard work, all the effort, the schooling–it had, after all, been worth it.
He was an astronaut now.
He was taking his first space walk.
“Hey.” The astronaut stopped at the communication. “What’s with your helmet?”
The astronaut looked down to see something that seemed insignificant, a tiny bit of nothingness in the infinitude of space.
There was a small gap in the visor which kept it from closing all the way.

The three engineers who designed the helmet would be saddened and shamed if they knew what was happening–but at the moment they had their own problems.

One of the engineers behind the design of the astronaut’s helmet was having his own problems with space. He was on a date and quite nervous–the proverbial social skills-challenged brainiac.
The engineer was in the middle of a seemingly fifteen-point turn to successfully park.
“Just park away from other cars, I like walking,” the date said, trying to help.
“Oh… right…” the engineer managed with a weak smile and a nervous chuckle.

The second engineer had just parked and run inside a gas station.
His bladder had run out of space.
What’s worse–so had the bathroom.
After his quick knocks an angry yell from inside came out, “Gimme a minute!”

The third engineer couldn’t have been happier.
He and his girlfriend were “taking the next step” in their relationship.
He was a smart young man and of course used a condom. A condom that was designed, like the helmet, to not have any gaps.

The astronaut, full of panic and yet curious, said, “So much for that exploding head myth.”
While he chuckled and began looking to solve the problem at hand, his lungs ruptured.

The engineer on a date backed up to find a new spot, and hit a man.

The engineer in the gas station re-lived his worst day in second grade.

The engineer with his girlfriend became a father-to-be.

And some infinite being we can’t comprehend chuckled.

For Anne the car was just a box that came out of the garage on fine days for the rare trips into town. Yet here she was, a less than sprightly seventy-six years old, driving through the middle of a blizzard behind the wheel of her ancient Volvo estate.

Her little niece Lucy was strapped into the seat beside her, damaged and all but unconscious after a tumble down the stairs.

It was a good twenty miles to the county hospital and the lines were down. Anne wished they’d never moved so far out, or that she’d bought that mobile phone her daughter was always on at her about. Well, wishing didn’t pay the bills.

The snow made the driving slow and tricky, but the Swedish car was built for this weather, heated seats and fierce headlights keeping the cold and gloom at bay.

“How are you feeling, hon?”

“Hurts awful!” the girl whimpered.

Anne pushed a little harder on the accelerator, speeding through the enveloping whiteness.

The road narrowed, becoming darker as it began to wind through a vast forest.

“Going into the woods now, darling.”

“Where they live,” the girl moaned.

These were ancient trees, Anne reflected. She allowed her eyes to wander from the road, taking in the icy-white skeletal forms that rose on both sides of the track.

The price of inattention was swiftly realized. A wheel hit a root and the car rolled down the bank.

When she opened her eyes, the only illumination came from the red oil warning light.

Becoming accustomed to the dark, she started to make out tree trunks. Raising a hand to her pounding head, she found splintered bone, fingers coming away gelatinous.

Neck twisted, she could just move it enough to view the seat next to her. Lucy was gone, the passenger door hanging from its hinges.

It took an age to unfasten the belt, but finally she slipped to the floor of the car before flopping out into the snow.

On her back she looked up toward the vast vaulting forest roof. The blizzard had stopped and she thought she could pick out faint stars caught between the branches, though she fancied they could equally be pairs of icy eyes looking down on her.

“Lucy!” she called through shattered teeth. “Lucy girl!”

Strong hands lifted her to a sitting position.

“Lucy?”

Anne’s eyesight was dimming as a white form knelt close.

“Lucy’s with us now,” the creature said.

Anne was past hearing.

Victor stood at the bottom of the stairs that had led him down to the basement moments earlier. He faced them, ready to scramble back up–he’d fly over them, if only he could.

The boy had accepted a lot in the months since his family moved into this house. He believed his mother’s explanation that the moans he heard in the night were those of the house settling in on itself (though even that image was somewhat disconcerting). He believed his father–mostly–when he claimed that the dancing faces on Victor’s wall were the headlights from passing cars, not mocking spirits. Victor didn’t even really mind the basement itself, unfinished as it was.

But now, in the airless days of August, the workmen had come. They were sweaty and noisy, but that was not Victor’s concern. The men had removed the existing stairs with the intent of installing new ones once the basement was complete. Meanwhile, they had put in temporary steps–planks of wood nailed into the boards that ran alongside them. Victor was not afraid of falling; no, they were sturdy enough. What frightened him was the space in between.

“You’re like the dog,” his mom said.

She was right; since the staircase had been opened, the dog would not go down. He tried once, but on the third step he’d looked below him, whined, and scurried back. Afterward, he’d cried for an hour.

“Because there’s something back there,” Victor told his mother.

Victor himself went down only when he was made to and though nothing else moved, he felt heat like breath seeping through these openings. He’d move quickly and, coming up, would not look at these empty spaces where there was once something.

But on this day he did. Peering into them for the first time, he swore he saw white eyes.

One mad dash later, Victor stumbled through the basement door and back into the kitchen. He’d made it.

“My goodness,” said his mother. She was standing at the window, arms stretched upward and smoothing a yellow curtain. Sunlight streamed in. She did not seem to notice Victor’s red cheeks or his heaviness of breath; she merely looked down to what he held.

“I said tissues,” she said. “Not toilet paper. Back downstairs.”

Victor had learned in science class about a mother’s powerful instinct to protect her young; his own mom could use a refresher on her Darwinism. Victor sighed and slowly turned around.

The thing behind the stairs rolled its head on its thin, corded neck. It blinked as the door opened above and the light–still new to this creature that lived for so long enclosed in the dark–spread before it. It had not expected the child to return so soon. Nevertheless, it was ready. And so hungry.

As the boy’s shadow fell and his scent drifted downward, the thing parted its lips and reached its hand through the open space between the stairs.

My love disfigured me.

“You won’t be able to hold on to me,” she said after we’d make love. Her eyes turned blue when she came. Sweat flashed to steam on her reddened skin. “No one ever has.” I told her I would never let her go. She’d smile and say, “You’ll burn to a cinder. They all have.” Then she’d fall asleep as I listed all the ways I planned to keep her around. Blankets and the heater were never needed when we shared a bed.

It took six months. I came home to an apartment empty of any evidence of her existence. Except for her on the couch. Tears steamed on her cheeks. Singed tissues littered the coffee table. “You have to let me go,” she said. I said all the desperate, impotent words everyone says when losing someone. That didn’t work, so I screamed. Accused. Threatened. Our pictures wilted and bubbled in their frames.

She tried to walk out. I told her she was never leaving and grabbed her wrist to pull her back in the door. My hand came away blistered. She ran, I chased.

In the thirty feet to the stairwell my shirt became drenched in sweat. In the lobby my hair set off the sprinklers. On the sidewalk, the rubber soles of my shoes melted into my feet. A block from our building I fell in the street. My skin ran with the melting asphalt. Oxygen combusted in my lungs when I tried to scream her name. Before my eyeballs burst I saw her look back to me. Her eyes were blue.

She came to visit in the burn ward. Infection set in and I thought I’d finally die. “I was wrong about you,” she said. “You made it further than all the others. I’ll always love you for that.” Her words burned the infection away. I heard her kiss the plastic bubble keeping me alive and promise she’d be back. I love her.

The minute the customer goes out the door with his books, Miss Abigail is hounding me to restock. “Roberto hated empty spaces on the shelves above all else,” she says, dabbing her nose with a folded tissue. “He was very particular.”

She’s still moping over the recent death of Roberto Cavelli in a freak gardening accident (I didn’t ask). The day after his funeral, she hired me to work in his bookstore, Shelf Life. From the way she’s carrying on, I suspect the two were lovers, though God knows what he saw in her. She’s a buttoned-up old raisin, no fun at all.

Times being what they are, I put up with her. Fortunately, I’m about to get a break. Miss Abigail is going away for the weekend, and I’ll be in charge.

“Are you clear on your duties, Stu?” she says, donning her long wool coat.

“Yes, Miss Abigail.”

“You’ll keep up with the restocking?”

“Yes, Miss Abigail.”

She leaves, and I’m tingly with anticipation. I sell several more books–to hell with restocking–and check the clock. Two more hours, and I’ll be with Frieda, the fabulous, freewheeling Frieda. Except here she is now, holding a paper bag.

“My roommate’s staying in tonight.”

My face falls. I live with my parents.

She gives me a sly grin. “What’s the problem? We’ve got this place to ourselves, don’t we?”

Indeed we do. I lock the door. Frieda extracts a bottle of wine and two goblets from her magic bag. I turn out the store lights, and she fires up a fat scented candle. We go in the back, where there’s a reading area. In lieu of a coffee table, Frieda pulls some picture books off the shelves and makes a stack, setting the candle on top. She pours the vino, and we get cozy on an antique sofa.

“I’ve never made love in a bookstore,” I say. “Do we have to do it by the book?”

“You idiot,” she says, and pokes me playfully.

I hear a rumble and everything starts to shudder. The wine bottle topples over. The candle goes out. Earthquake? I look up and a massive volume is falling from a high shelf, heading straight for me. My last thought is: “The Complete Miss Marple.”

On Monday morning, Miss Abigail perceives a difference, an anomaly. As she surveys the shop, her heart bangs. It would appear that, interspersed among the tomes, are various body parts. On one shelf, next to A Farewell to Arms, hangs a woman’s bare forearm, dripping blood. On another shelf is a head, Stu’s if she isn’t mistaken, wedged between Brain Drain and Look Ahead.

Softly, she chuckles. “Ah, darling, I see your sense of humor remains intact.”

Certain items must be disposed of immediately, others rearranged and tidied–and a new clerk hired–but it is ecstasy that courses through Miss Abigail’s being. For Roberto is back.

The ground opened up beneath me and I cascaded into a void, smashing into an unrelenting barrage of rocks that tore my skin and cracked my bones while I tumbled helplessly. The final insult was the snap of my ankles when I landed on a stone floor.

My legs were useless and to move just a fraction caused exquisite pain radiating from my feet to my pelvis. Panting, I lay in bewildered and blinded agony, wishing for death to take this unholy ordeal from me.

But I had survived.

I lay there for perhaps hours before I summoned the courage to stretch an arm to a pool of fetid water just feet beyond my grasp. Inch by inch and scream by scream I crossed the floor and got that foul water to my mouth, drinking it down in desperation, before vomiting it back to great waves of pain.

I was weeks in this pit before sufficient healing had taken place for me to sit upright. By now my wounds were black with stinking necrotic tissue, but my bones were stronger so I was able to walk again. There were birds and small mammals which I managed to trap and eat, keeping me alive in this private hell, but in the end nothing could prevent me from edging toward a tormented madness from which no mind could be expected to recover.

And then I woke to find it had all been a terrible dream.

But I had lived every day, every hour, every minute of that dream, feeling the pain and isolation as acutely as if I were awake. Even now, two weeks later, I keep breaking down, sobbing at the ordeal I’ve been through. Sometimes I begin to shake so terribly, so profoundly, that I think I’ll never stop.

Yet I can cope with all of that. What I truly can’t cope with is the thought that if not tonight, then one day, I will have to go to sleep again.

The surgeon finished scrubbing up, and turned the tap off with his elbow.

“Should be a real harvest today, son,” he said, glancing across at his assistant. “We don’t often get them this young, and an athlete as well, I believe. There’ll be some happy bunnies out there tonight.”

“What happened to him?” the assistant queried, tying on his mask.

“Difficult to say. One minute he was jogging along the sidewalk, and the next, wham, fell stone dead. Our paramedics were patrolling, luckily, and saw it happen. No output whatsoever. We were lucky to get him before the medical examiner did; otherwise he’d be in pieces in the mortuary by now.”

“I don’t like this,” said the assistant. “There’ll be trouble one day, hijacking corpses like this.”

“You like the bonuses at the end of the day, though,” said the surgeon, his eyes narrowing.

The assistant flushed.

They began work, carefully making an incision down the chest to lever the rib cage open and remove the heart. Then they would harvest the kidneys, the liver, the lungs and hopefully the corneas. Several coolboxes were lined up outside the operating theater, and a number of express motorcyclists were waiting out on the carpark. A good haul was expected.

The assistant suddenly stopped dead, staring wide-eyed over his mask into the exposed chest cavity.

“There’s nothing there!” he exclaimed. “There’s a space where his heart should be.”

“Nonsense,” said the surgeon, elbowing him aside. “Let me see.”

The two men stood there, gazing in amazement.

Thirty minutes later, the once perfect, unscarred corpse lay gutted on the operating table. The surgeon and his assistant had opened the entire torso, and found nothing but empty spaces where the organs should have been. There were tissues, membranes, even blood vessels and arteries, but they were all finite, sealed systems, leading nowhere.

The medical team sent for the paramedic who had been on hand when the victim had suddenly collapsed whilst jogging. They waited in the recovery room for his arrival, neither of them speaking to each other.

The paramedic entered nervously.

“Tell me what you saw when you arrived at the scene,” barked the surgeon.

“Just saw him collapse. He was running past a gang of people, a real bunch of weirdos, and then suddenly he collapsed. They all gathered round, rubbernecking. I pushed my way through, tested for vital signs, found none and loaded him into the ambulance to bring him here.”

“Did anyone ask where you were taking him?” said the surgeon.

“Well, the funny thing was, by the time we’d got him into the ambulance, the crowd had just disappeared. In seconds. Nobody in sight anywhere on the street.”

“Was there blood or anything on the sidewalk?” asked the assistant.

The paramedic scratched his head.

“Nope. No blood. There was this odd piece of equipment though, bit like a small cylindrical vacuum cleaner. Silver. Warm to the touch. God knows what it was. The weirdos must have dropped it.”

The space between us at this moment is just about six feet. That’s a lot closer than we’ve been during the last couple of years, though on this occasion that six-foot space is packed with cold, damp earth.

I miss you.

We were inseparable, you and I. Soul mates, that’s what people called us.

But then the spaces started. At first it was just the spaces in our conversation, those few seconds during which you realized I’d spoken, and tried desperately to remember what I’d said.

Then came the space in your head: that absent gaze, seemingly looking right through me. You began to forget birthdays, anniversaries, meetings.

But I really hated the space in our bed. Oh, your body was there; well, at first it was, but your soul could have been on the moon for all the union there was between us. I was so lonely then.

And finally there was the space in our home. After you’d gone. You needed space, you said.

To be with your new lover, your new soul mate. Sharing her space.

Divorce, you proposed. Leaving a space where our marriage used to be.

I thought not.

That was when I knew you would have to die. If I were to heal… if I were to pick up the threads of whatever life I could scavenge for myself, there had to be a space where you used to be. There was no way I could survive as long as you still did.

I spent weeks planning your murder. It had to be perfect, and I had to be certain that I could not be implicated. What good would derive, if I were to languish within the claustrophobic confines of a prison cell for the rest of my life? No space to breathe.

Poison, I decided… for I couldn’t bear to mark your perfect form in any way.

But things never go according to plan, do they?

Like the true soul mates we were, you too felt there should be a space where I used to exist.

So tonight, or maybe tomorrow, I expect you’ll open that special bottle of Puligny Montrachet, the one I gave you that day, just before you pushed me off the bridge. You and your new soul mate will toast to my passing and your newly acquired space.

Your death shouldn’t be too painful, my love; I did my research very carefully. I never wanted you to suffer. And you always loved a good Montrachet.

For the moment we are in different places, occupying difference spaces. But when I bought this plot I made sure to reserve a space beside me for you. The least I could do for a soul mate.

I’ll see you soon, sweetheart.

It was midnight when Michel trudged across the bridge over the Midi, in the center of Carcassonne. His dog, Luc, followed nervously, a safe distance behind, aware that Michel was in a fit of rage. Kicks could land unexpectedly when his master was angry.

Michel was heading to the other side of the canal basin, where there were two or three benches, hopefully unoccupied. He should have been comfortably wrapped up in his sleeping bag in his usual space, the doorway of the gift shop, opposite the boulangerie. He should be waking tomorrow morning to the aroma of freshly baked bread, to a couple of warm croissants thrown across the alleyway to him by the kindhearted assistant working the early morning shift.

Instead, a Moroccan clochard, all dreadlocks, brightly colored scarves and jangling silver jewelry, had usurped his space for the second night running, no doubt relishing the croissants meant for the Frenchman.

“Bloody immigrants,” swore Michel, turning onto the quayside the other side of the basin. A number of smart white yachts were moored against the quay and Michel took pleasure in urinating on their mooring ropes. He motioned to Luc to do the same, and the dog sheepishly obliged. Michel would enjoy watching the boaters coiling their ropes in the morning as they prepared to depart. Small pleasures.

To his dismay, the benches all hosted men hunched beneath dirty duvets, whilst beneath them an assortment of dogs dozed peacefully, reassured by the rhythmic snoring of their masters above. Every clochard had a dog. It was a symbiotic relationship. The dog was a source of warmth, and an insurance against arrest, since the gendarmerie didn’t relish dealing with stray dogs. And the clochard shared food with the dog.

Michel turned back, making his way back up the main street, towards the Moroccan, resigned now to having to deal with the usurper.

As he reached the doorway, the space he called his own, he drew a long thin blade out of his boots. The Moroccan was asleep, amongst crushed beer cans and empty wine bottles, probably dead drunk. Michel raised the blade. He hadn’t once worked at the abattoir for nothing; he knew where to place the blade for maximum and silent impact.

Without warning, the Moroccan sprang up, seizing Michel’s wrist and applying just the right amount of pressure to force him to drop the blade. As the steel rang on the cobbles, the Moroccan snatched it up and neatly eviscerated Michel with two strokes. Blood and guts spattered onto the pavement. Luc whined in anxiety as Michel slumped silently to the ground.

The Moroccan leaned over the Frenchman’s body.

“My space, Frenchman,” he hissed.

He turned to the cowering dog and held out a filthy hand. The dog cautiously approached, sniffing, tail between his legs.

“Eat, dog” he invited, indicating the mess on the cobbles.

Luc sniffed, and obediently began to eat.

He needed a new master.

The Moroccan needed space. And a dog.

All was well.

My children, draw close by the campfire for there are things you must know. There are sounds and smells about us tonight that portend his presence.
 
It was a bloody dystopian abyss. Malignant infected maggots screamed in agony.
 
Kraken’s festering canine cavity, that space, surrounded by slime and gore, alive with decay, acidic drool, and larval writhing parasitic pariah, lay open to his jaw.
 
It was a Monday as I recall. It was unthinkable and yet it was done, as though this man, a dentist, his mind a vast empty space, atrophied, devoid of any wisdom, surrounded by all manner of ignorance, on a journey to vote for a national leader, a champion, had better to do with his last carefree day. And yet, it was true, the fair buxom maiden sent to engage him was skilled in the arts of persuasion and future promise, a politician seductress.
 
Enraged, in oral spasms, Kraken shook the earth.
 
The very same cringing Stygian dentist was brought forth, confused by poetic rhetoric, terrified, to say the least, he knew he must add a filler; nothing came to mind but endless television tropes, reality absurdity, and talking heads. Momentarily, he was enchanted by the Kraken’s sweet and sulfurous nasal breeze, and relaxed, and then with the next flutter of his heart–he was overwhelmed, nearly drowned by spittle, alive with decaying half eaten avian spawn. The torrent of excrement abated to a mist as he inserted his rapier-like instrument and probed, a glaring iridescent eye dripped a caustic tear onto his eyes, nose, and mouth, cleansing him, a momentary relief before he reached further in, his head lying now upon the monster’s throbbing tongue.
 
It was at that instant he touched the tender, tiny, inflamed, exposed raw nerve; the suicidal beast inhaled enough air to fill ten castles, all manner of debris, and the dentist, sucked into a vortex, screaming into the windpipe of hell.
 
The last words to be heard before his ear canals thankfully filled with earwig-infested soft scaly offal: “Release the Kraken!”
 
It was later that day in battle that events reached their cataclysmic, and very nearly cosmic, climax.
 
The blow to the Kraken’s underbelly was as though Krakatau’s eruption itself had driven the ram. The dentist, now a flaming projectile, anally ejected, indeed landed in this kingdom, in yonder pumpkin patch.
 
Some still believe in jack-o’-lanterns, named after the phenomenon of strange ghostly light, flickering over peat bogs at twilight, called ignis fatuus, but now you know the truth: it is not ignis fatuus but ignis fartuus that is the real story.

His name was Jack, and jack-o’-krakens celebrated with exploding firekrakens are with us to this day. He is honored as we eviscerate, removing everything of substance from any pumpkin skull brought forth. Symbolically, we insert our sharp instruments into the demonic eyes, nose, and mouth of each pumpkin in fond memory of Jack and empty spaces.