MicroHorror

I call Michael over to us. He looks nervous as usual, and that’s a plus. It’s better when they’re scared.

“Cute glasses,” I say. Seconds later I yank them off and drop them at my feet. The others laugh when he tries to find them, his fingers searching the ground. I nudge the glasses with my foot, moving them in different directions whenever he’s close.

“Guys, this isn’t funny,” Michael complains. But it is. I toy with him a little more, then my shoe pushes down on the material and I feel it crunch and shatter. “I’ll get you for this!” he promises.

We all laugh at the threat–he tells us the same thing every day.

***

I didn’t think it would come to this. So many years had gone by that the memory of Michael had been easy to forget. I didn’t believe the promise… no one did.

The room reeks of death, a repulsive smell so strong it takes everything I have not to hurl. It takes even more strength to watch the violent deaths of my classmates as I wait like a prisoner, hands tied tightly behind my back. There’s no sign of an exit, none within my view.

“Wait,” I beg when Michael faces me. “We were kids. We didn’t know any better.”

His eyes are dark, an expressionless face. As he gets closer my body tightens and I become immobile. My heart beats fast, making hard knocks against the wall of my chest. I wonder if he’ll take that away from me. I wonder if I’ll die the same way the others had.

I consider my chances as he closes the space between us. All of them slip away when I register the weapon he holds like a prize in his hand. Only it takes me too long to react and move. The knife slashes deep into my leg, hitting bone. My scream pierces through the air–tears drain my face.

“And now we’re adults! This is where we get even!”

The pain is agonizing, a burning feeling so powerful I feel myself losing consciousness. “I never stabbed you,” I manage to shriek out.

“No,” he whispers. “But this is what it felt like.” My voice escalates as the dagger makes a U-turn into the wound. Hot liquid pours out, spilling over my leg. I close my eyes and feel the bloody knife crawl its way up my body.

“Do you remember how many years you picked on me?”

I don’t open my eyes but I whisper, “Three.”

“Correct,” he tells me. Then there’s a long silence before he adds, “This may take a while.”

• Copyright: © 2010 Cabrina Collesides

“Ohm… nah… dur… tich.”

The student spoke with assurance. The teacher smiled with her student and clapped.

“Very good!” the teacher remarked. “You learned all of your consonant sounds for the week.” She put a gold star sticker on the corner of a sheet of paper and handed it to the child. “Learn these for next week, okay?”

“Yeth, ma’am,” the child responded, bounding happily out of the classroom door.

The teacher smiled thoughtfully, then walked to the wall at the back of the classroom that stood covered in bulletins, drawings, and photographs. One brick, near the center of the wall, was bare. She tapped the center of the brick with one knuckle as if testing its strength. She laid her palm against it and felt its warmth, pulsing. She then placed her cheek against it, as a lover would, sweet and inviting.

These innocent children. Filled with words.

Words of power.

Soon, my lover… You will be free, and we will be together.

You will be free.

• Copyright: © 2010 Nicholas Pry

My wife moaned as she tried to bite me. Handcuffs held her fast to the bed.

I still loved her, and couldn’t bear to kill her. She’d begged me to when she was bitten. We had almost made it. I’d dropped the keys when the dead attacked. We retreated. Too late.

“Jake,” she’d said, her arm bleeding. “Don’t let me become one.” I promised–the first lie I ever told her. I loved her too much to let go.

“Till death do we part.” Was this death? Maybe sickness?

“I’ll protect you. I’m going to find you someone to eat.”

• Copyright: © 2010 Scott D. Hughey

“I love you,” he whispered. Her heart was throbbing like madness when he threw it in the jar of formaldehyde.

• Copyright: © 2010 Daan Kogelmans

Blud Fountain dominates the harbor. It’s strange and iconic. An amphora six feet high set upon a plinth of granite, girded about with a rill which overflows into a basin ten feet in diameter. Slits in the sides of the vessel ripple water into the rill. The black basin is deeper than it looks and engraved with characters around the base: sea serpents coiled, sharp-toothed bloaters, wild-eyed mermen that stare out to sea like lost souls. A great gibbet-type arm, articulated, used to hang over the open mouth of the jar. No more.

Benjamin Bentham Blud was the mayor’s son. That happened when he was thirteen–just at the age when it was the un-coolest thing that could happen to any boy. So on the first day at his new school he’d introduced himself as BB and started building a reputation as class clown and “Bad Boy” Blud which was ice, right? He made sure he was always in some kind of trouble and, as much as he could be, an embarrassment to his father. It was mostly kid stuff–stealing sweets, getting into fights. True, he stole a car once, but the ride didn’t last long and he lost two teeth in the crash.

I remember the day Mr. Masters whipped a Playboy out of Jif Jensen’s hand before he could pass it round the class, Godiva Reigns scrawled across the bottom in BB’s hand. Bill Gantry giggled.

“Usual suspects. Gantry, Jensen, Blud, have you been drinking?” He was not amused. “Your ancestor might have been a pirate, Blud, but you certainly can’t hold your rum.”

There was the usual scene but BB got off the hook. He was the mayor’s son.

“You’re going to come to a sticky end, lad. Remember I said that.”

Jensen and Bill Gantry were suspended.

Some say Blud Fountain caps a sacred well but no survey has ever found evidence. Others say it was where they executed Captain Blud for piracy. Story goes they sealed him in a vat of his own rum ’til his very bones dissolved. Doesn’t seem very likely, wasting good rum.

Anyway, Blud’s Cove is deadsville at New Year. So New Year’s Eve, Gantry, Jensen and BB had been drinking, walking the ledge, staring down at stars reflected in the deep, black pool and breaking off icicle shards that festooned the fountain. The gibbet arm swung and moaned woefully in the wind so they kept leeward.

BB had drunk most as usual. “I need to take a leak,” he said, unzipping.

“You ain’t going to piss in the fountain?” said Jensen. “Go down to the harbor, man.”

“It’s my fountain,” protested BB. “It’s my bluddy fountain so I’ll bluddy piss in it if I bluddy want, see.”

“Don’t be an ass,” said Gantry. “Something bad will happen.”

“Ooooh, get her! ‘Something bad will happen,’” mimicked BB and he peed.

As the stream hit the water there was an almighty blast of icy wind from the sea. The gibbet arm swung into action. It came down and hooked BB’s coat. Gantry turned deathly white. Jensen screamed like a girl.

It lifted BB high above the fountain, still laughing. “This is great!” he shouted. “What a ride!”

His laughter echoed as the arm lowered him into the amphora. Then he stopped laughing and started screaming. Ice knives pierced him through the slots in the amphora, slicing through until his body slumped like a rag inside the monument and lay inert. His blood flowed and trickled through the slots into the rill below, into the dark basin.

Jensen and Bill Gantry fled the scene screaming. Always stuck to their story. People suspected foul play but there’s no evidence. Some said it was fated, that somehow that fountain was a family curse.

Bill and I lay a wreath every New Year and tell our children the story. Thing is, Bad Boy Blud never really was all that bad. I loved him. He was my twin brother.

• Copyright: © 2010 Oonah V Joslin

The Doctor was well pleased with himself. They’d not only successfully found a new subject, but an extremely unusual one. It had been alone and naked in the woods, covered in blood. Samples taken scrubbed from its skin suggested several domestic fowl and at least one other human. It had been in an extremely agitated state, and had responded unusually slowly to the pacification frequency in the live-capture apparatus. In fact, it had quite nearly thrashed free of the live-capture beam.

He had not yet decided whether to request an extended captive study, or tag and release it as soon as possible to watch its movements.

The human was now strapped to the biopsy table. They didn’t normally use physical restraints, but this amazing subject still wasn’t reacting fully to hypnosis or sedation. It had seemed prudent, though it looked horrendously unprofessional.

It wrenched at the restraints and made a peculiar whining noise he hadn’t before attributed to humans when one of the students burned the tracking device into its arm.

As the standard biopsy got underway the vessel passed Earth’s moon, reflected light filling the operating theater as it aligned with the window. The silver light caused a reaction in the human as even relatively invasive procedures had failed to so far.

“The subject’s heart rate is accelerating rapidly,” one of the students said as several instruments started to react.

“We’re seeing unprecedented hair growth,” another recorded clinically. Then with more concern, “And its muscles seem to be expanding.”

The Doctor leaned close over the subject, examining its heaving chest, which was indeed stretching with increased musculature and developing a dense fur. “Just what is happening to this human?”

The restraints snapped.

The research vessel was found adrift two days later. In the carnage on board, they found only one survivor. A naked human, covered in blood.

• Copyright: © 2010 Brett Saunders

The ghosts of Shady Suburb were lonely because nobody had died in years. So they started a whisper campaign. For thirteen hours straight the ghosts whispered into each parent’s ear, until they persuaded them to start a new Halloween tradition–giving out handguns to trick-or-treaters.

On Halloween, the children ran about pretending to shoot one another. The ghosts were devastated as they drifted back to their graves, until the littlest one spoke up.

“Why not persuade the parents to start another new tradition–bullets as Christmas stocking stuffers?”

On December 26, the ghost population tripled.

• Copyright: © 2010 Jimmy Calabrese

Rick stared out the sliding glass door at the first snow of the year. Goosefeather-sized snowflakes blew across the recently shorn wheat fields, stubbly and sparse like an old man’s beard.

Mama was in the kitchen, cooking like it was any other Thanksgiving. Like a normal year, surrounded by family. As if Pa would wander in with a jug of homemade peach brandy and three glasses, one for himself and two for the boys. Football would be on the TV. The glasses would be smudged. He’d offer Mama a taste, but she’d say, “No, none for me, thanks.” The three men would drink maybe three short glasses of the fiery stuff, toasting each time to something good about life.

But this year was different. The last time Rick had seen Pa or Mark was fifteen months ago, when he’d climbed into the back of the red pickup to fetch grain from the feed store. Mark sat up front with Pa. The pavement was dark and slick with rain.

Rick remembered pain, finding himself on the ground, blood running down his face, and everything appeared double. The pickup was wrapped around a tree, the front exploded into a metallic rose. If he tried hard, Rick could visualize their crushed bodies, grotesque puppets twisted and lifeless. He didn’t try.

Rick was proud of Mama, how she grieved but kept on.

Now the dinner was almost ready. Rick pulled down the chipped china–bought forty years ago with coupons from the K&D–while Mama stood at the stove, tending to gravy and green beans.

Rick watched her, thinking how she was like a character from the Old Testament meeting an unjust curse with nobility and strength, when her back suddenly jerked up like she’d received a shock.

“Set two more places at the table!” Mama yelped, still staring into the steaming pot of gravy as she spoke.

“What?” Rick turned toward her. “Mama?”

She looked frozen, unable to stop looking at that pot.

“Oh, baby, they are coming home. Coming home. I’ve got to find my coat. Where’d I put that thing? Oh, forget it. Forget it, I’ll do without.”

She dropped the wooden spoon into the gravy and walked out of the kitchen.

Rick followed. Mama was stooped by the staircase, tugging on a boot.

“Mama, what are you talking about? Come back here and calm down.” He touched her on the shoulder. Her eyes were welling up in a crazy way he had never seen, even at the funeral.

“Rick, baby, they’ll be here for dinner. You’ll see.” She opened the door and stepped into the frosty air.

“Come back. You’ll catch something.” Rick held open the creaking screen door, its metal frame stinging cold. She waved dismissively as she walked down the front steps and toward the dirt road.

He watched, not sure what to do as she trudged down the crunchy frozen ground. Angry whirlwinds of snow danced around her. When she reached the road, she turned towards the family cemetery, the burial place of Pa and Mark and five generations of Smithfelds, and kept walking.

Rick closed the door. He’d have to go after her.

Rick went to the kitchen and turned off the oven. It made a metallic pop and a bang, startling him. Old house, old appliances, he thought.

Bang.

He moved to the stove and reached for the dial to turn off the element under the gravy, but stopped. There was movement in the pot.

Something was in there. Something struggled pitifully in the hot liquid. His brain searched frantically for an explanation that made sense, an explanation that put the lie to what he was seeing.

A frog? A mouse? How would a frog get in there?

He stirred the spoon and fished out the spasming gobbet, dripping with coagulating cream: a weakly palpitating, spitting, turkey heart.

Bang.

They were coming home.

• Copyright: © 2010 P. Magnifico

Snow fell throughout Christmas Eve, and next morning a group of young children began building a snowman on the green in the center of the retirement complex. All dressed identically, in black coats with hoods, they worked in silence, with none of the exuberance associated with children at play. In fact, Emily thought, from some angles, they didn’t particularly resemble children at all.

When the snowman was complete, they stood for a moment in silent contemplation, before trooping off in single file, leaving no footprints in the snow.

From her window, the snowman’s head was in profile, facing old George’s bungalow. There was something decidedly unfestive about the glittering coal black eye Emily could see, and she shivered.

The following day she saw a stretcher being carried towards a waiting ambulance. Later she learned that George had slipped on ice, and had died, alone, in his garden during the night. No one knew why he had ventured outside.

The next morning Emily noticed that the snowman appeared to be facing in the opposite direction, towards Thea’s house. She rang Thea to ask if she had noticed any change in the snowman’s position, but Thea laughed and suggested Emily should take a bit more lemonade with her nightly sherry.

Emily was embarrassed, and went to check on the sherry bottle. Still half full.

Two days later, another ambulance was waiting, this time for Thea, who appeared to have slipped on a puddle of water in her kitchen, and had fallen victim to hypothermia overnight.

“Hmph,” grunted Emily. “More lemonade with the sherry, huh?”

More snow fell on New Year’s Day and at nightfall Emily looked out to see that the snowman was now facing her house, his coal black eyes glittering malevolently, and his pebbled mouth forming an evil grin.

Horror clutched at her heart as the lights suddenly went out and the bars on the electric fire turned from orange to red, before fading away altogether.

Emily wrapped herself in a blanket, and sat down to wait for her caller.

• Copyright: © 2010 Sandra Crook

“Murder one,” the voice cries in your head as you stare through the window at the stripping girl. “Take just one person’s life.”

Shivering in the cold, cradling the knife to your body, you remember that day. Remember the surprise you felt when the man calling himself Robinson walked into your house.

“Just one,” he told you, before reaching in his jacket. You gasped, thinking that he was reaching for a weapon. But what he produced was even more hurtful.

Pictures of your wife and two daughters.

It was the closest you’d come to them in weeks.

“Just one,” Robinson repeated. “And we’ll leave you–and these–alone.” Then his eyes met yours, seemingly seeing into the depths of your soul. “Maybe we can even help you win them back.”

“Nothing can do that,” you said.

“You’d be surprised what we can do.”

“We?” you countered. “Who’s we?”

His eyes gleamed. “The Murder One boys,” he declared. “All of those that came before you.”

His words made as much sense as the rest of your life had since Martina left: none. But his words struck a chord in you, and after Robinson departed, you couldn’t stop thinking about them. It was like something had been released inside you, and this was all you needed, the feeling that something was forcing your hand. Freeing you of all responsibility. Like maybe Robinson would be the one really doing the killing–you’d just be the middleman.

As you thought this, you saw the girl.

But you no longer saw her as a person.

Instead, you saw the reason you lived in solitude.

The reason your three lovely girls had left.

You’d tried to tell Martina that it wasn’t your fault, that she’d come on to you. But that no longer mattered–not when she’d caught you in the act.

“In our bed!” she’d screamed. Then launched a slap at you that nearly took your face off.

So now you’re alone. Alone and watching as Jess, the girl across the road, strips.

You walk in as if invited.

Robinson’s words ringing in your mind.

“Murder one. Just one.”

It’s all you need to hear.

Jess seems to be expecting you.

She lies back in her bed, purring, “I knew you’d come back for more.”

Looking like the cat that got the cream.

But when you mount her and unveil the knife, she gets something else entirely.

Next day, you feel good.

You even stop wondering if Robinson is watching you. If he even existed.

But you forgot to call in sick to work.

Cue the arrival of Hutchins, your boss.

He barges into your place, shouts into your face, “Where the hell were you, Cooper?”

You begin to tell him. To scrape and beg and apologize like so many times before.

Then you think, why the hell should I?

After what you’ve done, after getting away with murder, why let this bully grind you down?

Thinking this, you lash out at him.

He falls down.

Bleeding.

Which surprises you.

You can’t quite remember when–or why–you picked up the knife.

But it’s done now, and there’s no going back, so you continue to use it. And when you look through the hole in his flesh, you see Robinson opening the door.

A crony with him.

Robinson is handing money to the friend.

“I though you’d be different, man,” he says, shaking his head sadly. “I thought I was onto a winner this time.”

You look at him, confused.

And notice that his friend wears a police uniform.

It’s this man that says, “When will you learn? The losers I pick out can never stop at one.”

“Am I… under arrest?” you ask.

They look at each other, than laugh.

“Not yet,” the policeman says. “Not if you can keep up your payments.”

You look down at the knife in your hands.

Robinson laughs. “He’s thinking about killing us now!”

He’s right.

You were.

Welcome to Murder One.

• Copyright: © 2010 Shaun Avery