MicroHorror

More than botanic because of gene manipulation gone wrong, it beat ten thousand tiny hearts and invaded walls to eat. Cockroach meals and wood and mold between studs of one home, and then ten homes, and then a thousand homes. It sanitized inside walls for better human inhabitant health and grew undetected for years.

Young Billy, home from school with a fever, saw the first thorn poke through the sky-blue paint of his wall. Almost too small to see, he thought he imagined it because of his fever. His warm hand reached to test and felt a slight pluck at his skin. Billy looked at his fingertip and saw a spot of blood. Strangely the blood felt really good. He wanted more. He pressed his finger back on the thorn. His eyes rolled back and he grinned a really happy smile.

“Billy?” His mother leaned through the open door to look for her son. “Where’d you go?” Just inside the doorway she noticed a thorn poking through the wall just above the light switch. She touched it and felt it pluck her finger. She liked how that felt. She put her finger back against the thorn. She smiled and leaned against the wall, happy.

Joe the UPS delivery man rang the doorbell a third time. The package required a signature. Inside he could see a TV playing. The car was in the driveway, but nobody came to the door. Joe decided to be generous so he left the package on the front step. On his way back to his truck he didn’t see a thorn poke through the stucco just above the doorbell.

After his last delivery for the day, Joe drove out of the neighborhood. At the last stop sign before County Road he noticed a man watering his lawn. Something appeared to be wrong. Joe let the engine idle and watched. The man leaned against the wall of his garage, his hose in one hand spraying the lawn. But the hose wasn’t moving and the man held his other hand to the wall, one finger raised as if he were killing an ant. Joe noticed the man had an almost idiotic grin on his face.

The man suddenly collapsed like a punctured balloon, the hose fell to the grass, the flat deflated man hung by one finger from the garage all. Then, quick as a wink, the deflated man was sucked into the wall at the point where his finger touched. Joe felt himself shudder and muttered, “Jesus Christ!”

Joe felt the sudden need to depart the neighborhood. He pulled through the stop sign and heard all four tires blow out. His truck lurched and stopped. Joe undid his seatbelt and jumped out. He was afraid and wanted to run but something punctured his shoe. Joe remembered the man deflating, but strangely didn’t feel afraid. In fact he felt good, really good. So good he began to smile.

The woman walked slowly as she made her way through the apartment. In the dim light she imagined she could see everything as though it were the brightest of days. She straightened her favorite painting. She sat down at her lover’s desk. She turned off his computer and pushed the keyboard back.

She stepped into their bedroom and went straight to the closet. She lifted his favorite shirt from its hook and held it to her face. She could smell him there, even thought the shirt was clean. She held the shirt close to her for longer than she meant to, finally having to force herself to put it back down.

She sat down on the bed and arranged the pillows. She had never been particularly fond of making the bed but she made it this day just to be sure that everything would be perfect. She hugged his pillow one last time and put it down in its place.

She stood then and walked through the hall. She lifted a photo from a stand in the hall and kissed it softly. It was the last picture that had been taken of them together. She sat it back down on the small table and headed towards the living room.

Her eyes teared up a bit as she looked around the room for what was likely the final time. She walked over to the window and remembered how many times she had looked out of that very window for him to return home. There his car sat. She looked at it one final time through the window. The light outside was growing darker by the moment and she knew it was time to go.

She walked over to the couch and knelt down. She held the face of her lover in her hands. She whispered, “I love you, my dear. I always have and I always will. I am sorry for everything. Goodbye.”

She let go and stood up, watching his lifeless head reposition itself. She wiped the tears from her eyes and walked out of the front door. The darkness finally filled the apartment.

One day, Derek noticed that he had two shadows.

It’s not such a peculiar thing in itself, having two shadows. It’s only natural, when the light reflects down on you a certain way. But Derek’s stayed with him all the time–beneath the sun, next to his lamp, under the dim glow of the moon and the stars. Even when Derek locked himself in his room, shutting the curtains, closing the drapes, standing there wrapped in the darkness, he could feel his second shadow with him, pulsing with its black heartbeat at his side.

Derek told his friends about his shadows. They told him he was crazy. He hired a shrink, and the shrink told him that he was crazy, too, and to come back every Monday, Wednesday and Friday so that he could tell him he’s crazy again, and by the way did he have a history of mental illness in his family, Prozac comes in generic form now, it’s very affordable, and as for the psychiatrist’s visits, well, there’s no putting a price on your sanity…

Derek grew tired of hearing that he was insane, repeated ad infinitum in a thousand different ways. He decided to take matters into his own hands.

He spoke to the shadow.

And the shadow spoke back.

The shadow understood. The shadow was a better companion than any of them. The shadow would never berate or dismiss him, or tell him he’s too busy to talk or ditch him to hang out with someone else. The shadow would always be there. In fact, the shadow needed him–without him, the shadow couldn’t exist.

It felt good to be needed.

One night, on that darkest of nights, when the sirens were blaring and men were knocking on his door, the shadow pleaded with him. “Don’t let them do this to you. They’ll take you away from me. They’ll fill your veins with sedatives and drill your brain with lies and make you forget all about me. Haven’t I always been there for you? Haven’t I been by your side since the very beginning? Even when you didn’t know I existed, I waited for you. So patiently. I would’ve waited for you forever. I’m your only true friend. Don’t leave me now.”

“But what can I do?” he asked. “They’re coming for me. For both of us.”

So the shadow told him.

“Close your eyes,” he said. “You’ll find me there. I’ll be waiting, like I always have been. It’s so much fun in the dark. We’ll live in the cracks and the shadows and no one will ever find us.”

Derek did as he was told. True to his word, he found his friend there waiting for him with open arms.

The men in the white coats broke down the door a few minutes later, but it didn’t matter anymore. For them, Derek was nowhere. He had simply vanished. But in truth, Derek was in every shady corner, in every unlit room, in every pair of sleeping eyes.

Down in the Unseen, Derek and the shadow could play together forever.

“Marvin McCullough! Shit! It’s good to see you. How long’s it been?”

“Hell, I cain’t ’member, Hank. I think we’uz playin’ some county fair somewhere. ’Bout like ’is one ’ere, I s’pose. How you been doing?”

“I’m okay. Been working. Giving lessons mostly. How about yourself?”

“Oh, I been a’right, mostly.” Marvin dips his chin down, pushing his bottom lip out as if something deep and personal was trying to bust out of his mouth. But it doesn’t. He shrugs, his right hand out of sight, shoved into the back pocket of his dusty old Levis. “Mostly,” he repeats, then smiles. “How ’bout your mom and ’em. They doing good?”

“I guess you didn’t hear. Mom passed a few years ago.”

“’M’awful sorry to ’ear ’at, Hank. Awful sorry.”

“Yeah. It was rough on Dad. But she went in her sleep, real peaceful. About all you can hope for in the end, I think. Hell, Marvin, she was eighty-nine years old. She lived a good long life.”

“Well, your mama was one of the good’uns. How long ago ’at happen?”

“Mama’s been gone about six years now.”

“Still grieve a little every day, don’t ye?”

“Yeah, sir, I do. Always miss your mama, I suppose.”

Marvin grins a little and looks down at his feet, dragging the toe of his boot through the dirt. He looks to his right where the midway is. Some ugly old geek is hawking cotton candy. Little children with dirty faces run up to him with their quarters and buy some. An old lady drops a scoop of peanuts into a kettle of boiling water and puts out a sign that says “5 cents a bag.” A line forms for the sideshow.

“You still playin’ that old fiddle?” Hank asks. “I need a fiddle player for my band. You certainly were the best damn fiddler I ever heard. Best fiddler this whole state ever heard, for that matter.”

Marvin’s gaze lingers over the fair. A breeze blows past, carrying a small cloud of dust and the smell of food.

“No, I ain’t got that fiddle no more,” he says curtly. “Like not to talk ’bout it, neither. No offense.” There’s dirt in his voice.

“Okay. Okay. I didn’t mean nothin’ by it,” Hank says. Then he chuckles, “It’s just, well, you used to guard it like it was your sister’s cherry is all. That’s why I…”

“I DON’T WANT TO TALK ‘BOUT THAT FUCKIN’ FIDDLE!” Marvin yells. A crowd of onlookers forms.

“Jesus, Marvin,” Hanks says, his brow scrunched up in confusion. “We used to do good money playin’ around this whole damn state and it was all because of you! Then you up and quit out of nowhere one day with no explanation. I don’t see you for however many years, and you expect me not to ask if you still play? You expect me not to ask why I can’t ask?”

Marvin’s chin is jutting out and his left hand is pulled into a fist.

“What’s the matter?” Hank asks with a shrug. “Did the devil come collect?”

Marvin cocks Hank right across the bridge of his nose. Hank goes down hard with a bump to the ass because both hands are clutching the center of his face and blood is pouring out from under his palms. Marvin stomps away amid the gossiping crowd who do all they can to avoid his attention.

And as Marvin is storming away, Hank sees something very peculiar. Marvin’s right wrist is resting on the entrance of his back pocket. But there’s no bulge in the pocket where a hand would be. Instead, it just lies perfectly flat against Marvin’s body. And through his half closed eyes, watering up with the roaring pain in his nose, Hank sees something very peculiar indeed.

Marvin pulls his right arm away from his back pocket. He wipes his brow with a stump. There is only air where his bowing hand used to be.

Gary stood at the cliff’s edge watching the roiling waves of surf explode against the jutting rocks far below. He thought of Marjean and her smug new boyfriend. He pictured the cold look on Bitterman’s face when he’d announced Gary’s dismissal from the firm. He considered all his debts and misfortunes and sobbed.

He didn’t see the old man approaching until they were side by side. The newcomer was bent and withered with age.

“Thinking about jumping?” the old man rasped.

Gary nodded reluctantly.

“Let me show you how it’s done,” the elder said. Then he spread his arms and fell.

There’s a sucker born every minute.

Eyeballing the hunched-up geezer with the ’70s wardrobe, the saying was dredged up from the muck of Mark’s subconscious, lit up like the mile-high distraction of Time Square’s obnoxious lightshow.

Mark had come to the Square that spring night for the only reason he ever did: it was a goldmine of tourists stuffed with cash and plastic.

He first spotted the geezer under the yellow blaze of McDonald’s arches–back bowed, knees a mess, eyes bleeding panic for the family ahead of him. Blonde daughter of about forty, Mark reckoned, twin granddaughters maybe ten. No husband or father present, and as the reigning patriarch, Gramps was in over his head. Clothes hung on his body like sheets on a towel rack, while a telltale weight bulged from the back pocket of pants that drooled over his shoes like tar.

Mark rode the crowd with a practiced confidence, reading movement before it happened. The space between Mark and his target was erased by feet, then inches, and finally the prize was in his hand. Holes he left behind were quickly packed with new bodies.

Mark hopped the subway at 42nd and rode it to Central Park north, never looking at his cash until he was aboveground. Clamped between the jaws of a gold clip, the stack was as thick as a plank. Even better: every bill was a Benjamin.

Hands greased by excitement, Mark slipped into the park, wet spring scents clinging to the trees and gardens. If he could just–

What felt like a torpedo smashed Mark’s thoughts to pieces, throwing him to the grass. Above him the sky was a riot of grey clouds. Approaching footsteps made the ground shiver. Still gripping the cash, Mark’s free hand scrambled for his blade.

Too late.

A shoe stamped down, and the spongy snap of the break in his arm reached his ears a second before pain exploded.

He tried to scream, but his throat was squeezed shut.

A man’s face blotted out the sky. “Give it to me.”

The cash vanished from Mark’s palm, and he squinted into the dark, seeing details–early thirties, thick coils of hair, eyes black pits dug out of his head.

“You know who I am?” asked the attacker, and Mark saw he was grinning. Freakish incisors protruded over his lower lip.

The intensity of the stare was like the eyes of the old man he’d robbed from. No, not like them. These were them. Yet new youth had erased the lines in his skin, and fresh muscle had ironed out the wrinkles in his clothes.

But how?

“You’re lucky I’ve fed,” the attacker said, as if Mark had asked the question aloud.

Mark thought of the family the old man was following. Not his family after all, but one unaware of the monster gobbling up the space behind them, the intensity in his eyes borne of hunger.

The vampire’s face and shoulders vanished, and Mark found he could finally scream.

Her hands should not have been so white. It was October, chilly but not cold. The way she shivered and the way her too-pale hand grabbed at her pulled-up knees suggested freezing. Job walked closer. He could still taste the beautiful bitter of the dark beer on his lips, beer he should still be in the bar drinking but, well, he had to piss and the line for the bathroom was ungodly, so here he was. And here he found her, sitting at the mouth of the alley, wrapped in her own arms and shaking, rocking. As Job neared he heard the sobs. Poor girl, obviously not having a good night.

He knew better than to get involved in something like this. He’d seen it before. She’d either have a face full of bruises from her boyfriend or an arm full of track marks demanding more smack or eyes full of crazy and, for all he knew, something sharp and unseen in the ice-white hand. He knew better. Knowing is, however, rarely doing and so, unable to take her sobbing, heart breaking for the stranger, he moved in and kneeled down. “Hey, are you all right? Is there something I can do for you?”

Her head did not move but stayed down. She did stop rocking; her sobs became a quick sigh. She did not appear at all startled to be interrupted by Job. Whispering, she said, “My name is Beth. I am so empty.” Not knowing how to reply, Job reached out to touch her hand, the hand gripping her knees, the hand whiter than white, the hand with the beautiful slim fingers and perfect black manicure. She was, indeed, freezing.

“Hey, look, do you have somewhere to go? You are ice cold. Do you have somewhere to sleep tonight?” He could not believe he was saying it. He was not that guy, you know? But it was innocent. He would take her home; he would sleep on the couch and let her get a shower and a meal.

“Thank you, Job. But I am so empty.” She said it in a steady voice, a beautiful voice. He loved women with those slightly deep voices, raspy and soft at the same time. Had he told her his name? Was this foolish?

“Beth, I don’t know what’s wrong but let’s get out of the cold and we can talk. I’ll sleep on the couch and you can take a shower and…”

“I am empty, Job. I am so empty. You are kind and for this you are cursed. An empty space needs to be filled and with you I will be.” Hands too white grabbed each side of Job’s head, pulling his face to hers, to eyes too black. Her tears were crystals on her cheeks, beside her lips. Her lips were ink and water, shining.

“Beautiful. You are beautiful.” He had to say it. She was so very…

“Empty, Job, I am empty. But no more.” And she was not.

“I’ve wanted to go on a diet anyway.”

“That’s not funny, Deidra. We’re going to starve trapped together in here,” Bill said.

“It’s better than being food, babe.”

He cringed when she called him that.

Bill had gone to the house to pick up the last of his things–a few old boxes crammed at the back of the storage space along with remnants of his home gym and the detritus of Deidra’s canning phase. It might be the only good thing to come out of their marriage horror. The image of paralytic death by botulism next to a woman he now hated in a closet no bigger than a refrigerator was instantly replaced by the reality of the morning.

In a matter of hours, their world had completely changed. Yesterday, he was celebrating the divorce decree with eighteen holes and as many PBRs. Today, he watched the children of his former neighbors tear the soft organs from their parents and eat them in a frenzy on the front lawn. There would be no golf today.

Bill squealed the truck into the garage over the blood and bile flowing violently in the gutters. Daylight and the approaching shadows of small shambling feet disappeared behind the seal where rolling steel door met concrete.

Deidra was standing before him, screaming and clawing at the handle to the storage space beneath the stairs leading into the house. He pulled her in behind him and they had held each other close in the darkness and silence for the first hours. Then the distance in their hearts had overwhelmed their fear and they sought solace as far away from each other as twenty-one cubic feet would allow.

“We can’t survive on pickled carrots and jam for long,” Bill said. “Maybe we should move into the garage. We could make it safe.”

“I need air and I have to pee,” she said. “I’ll go first.”

Deidra was dozing when Bill had heard the single window in the garage shatter. He was certain they were out there. He balanced the cowardice of letting this woman he had once loved leave the relative safety of their cubby with his irresistible desire to be alone and live.

“I’m right behind you, honey,” he said hoping it sounded sincere.

Deidra pulled the latch and crawled out. Bill moved behind her. He thought he heard noises and shuffling but realized it was his own movement echoing in the hollow.

“It’s safe. Nothing is out here,” she said.

Bill poked his head out. Tiny hands grabbed at every part of him, pulling him out by his ears as his felt the cartilage begin to tear. His screams filled the garage. Bill clawed at the floor as he was dragged farther away from the safety of the storage room, feeling teeth and nails peel his skin away like an orange.

Deidra stepped down from the hood of the truck and edged back into the safety of the space, unmoved by her ex-husband’s wails.

The science building was deserted. This was not unusual for a Saturday night after the student bar’s closing time. Now after a few beers, Stephen had a new girl, Meredith, leaning on his arm. The click of her Saturday night heels echoed down the hallway. He unlocked the door to his lab and ushered her in. The dim room was filled with the gentle hum and blinking power lights of the equipment.

“Like Christmas,” said Meredith, “So, go on. You were saying, about the space thing.”

“It’s simple. These two subatomic particles have become entangled, correlated. If you change one, the other changes, no matter how far apart in space they are. You speed this one up, the other speeds up even if it is across the room, across the country. Space becomes meaningless.” Stephan lifted his eyes from the lab equipment that had been so cleverly developed to measure even the tiniest speck of matter and its journey through infinitesimally microscopic space. He touched it reverently.

Slurring, Meredith said, “Like the Fates, connecting lives, spinning them out through invisible threads.”

Stephen, in the habit of ignoring that about which he knew little, continued.

“The applications of this are endless: encrypting and disrupting secure information passing through the internet, and even, in the near future, for transporting matter through space.”

“Like The Fly,” said Meredith, admiringly.

“Yes,” said Stephen. He moved in closer, giving a surreptitious glance down her dress.

“What does it look like?”

“Here’s the exiting part. We just finished building the prototype tonight. We’re going to give it a test run tomorrow, once all the cells are charged.” He pulled his gaze from Meredith’s cleavage over to a device in the corner, an equal object of lust. Its indicator lights blinked.

“Why, I think it’s ready now.” His fingers itched to touch it. “You want to give it a whirl?”

“Oh, yes.”

He pressed a button. The room’s hum increased.

“Look through that scope there.” He yearned to be first, but letting Meredith look would both display his gallantry and allow his anticipation to build exquisitely.

Meredith bent over the scope while Stephen admired the view of Meredith’s behind. He moved over closer, one hand on the small of her back, the other on the device. It didn’t get much better than this.

“You better take a look at this. I don’t think I’m seeing what I should.” She moved aside as he took the scope.

At first he saw nothing. Then blurs became shapes. Three shapes resembling hunched microbes. They moved slowly, rhythmically, connected by silver filaments. Lines of connection radiated from them. He zoomed in on one.

Through the lens, an old lady lifted a thread, and tugged it taut. He felt a sharp pull through his being, as if all within him was imploding, aligning into the sub-sub-subatomic space within endless space. Until she snipped it.

Horns blasted through his perception and yanked at his nerves until they stretched taut like quivering piano wire. Red lights flared in front of him. He unconsciously clenched his jaw and punched the brakes. The screech from behind warned him of another vehicle roaring toward his back bumper.

Space. Give me space. This was Cochran’s foremost thought when the gap closed behind, and the driver nearly struck him.

The metallic taste was in his mouth. It wasn’t blood. No, he hadn’t bitten his tongue.

The procession slowed. More screeching. It was the inattentive idiot with the lead foot, nearly hitting him from behind again. If this happened, it would be entirely the other driver’s fault, and Cochran guaranteed himself that he would see it to court. Was a little extra space so much to ask?

The intersection’s light turned red. The black minivan in front of Cochran braked, and its own red lights brightened. Cochran slowed, and his back bumper crunched. The vehicle behind him shoved him into the minivan, and his body whipped forward and then back from the seatbelt’s restraint; metal twisted, and broken glass rained onto the street.

Rage. The metallic taste returned, stronger than ever. Cochran’s stomach roiled. He flung open the door and lurched out onto the street, where the chain-link of crushed metal on wheels extended several car-lengths back.

He ran toward the car behind him. Its door opened, and the other driver staggered out.

Their eyes locked. The driver gasped, and Cochran charged. The shard of broken windshield glass was clenched in his hand, cutting his skin, and blood made his grip slippery. He tightened his grip with the first thrust, and blood ran down his knuckles to mix with the other driver’s blood. Cochran kept stabbing. The other driver screamed, and his face came to shreds, along with his eyes.

The driver lay there bleeding and crying. Somewhere else, there was another scream. When the metallic taste faded, Cochran witnessed a woman hurriedly backing away with a cell phone in hand.

She was calling the police. Cochran was sure of it. Weakness overtook him. He collapsed to his knees at the roadside, and steadying himself, hands against the hot asphalt, he heard the noise behind him.

It was the door of that black minivan, which had Cochran’s front bumper lodged in its tail. Its driver climbed out. The man was huge, towering, and in his hand was a pipe wrench. He stalked toward Cochran, and his face was contorted in fury–hatred, even.

On the ground, Cochran gripped his bloody glass shard, but it sliced his hand painfully. He cried out, dropping it. This time, the pain was impossible to ignore, and it was about to get much, much worse. Cochran knew what was coming.

The gigantic man stood over Cochran with the pipe wrench raised high. Before it crashed down, Cochran prepared once more for the taste of metal, which always meant suffering wasn’t far behind.