MicroHorror

Resigned and weary were the children of the modern world. The personal comforts and sprinklings of pleasure that had seasoned the lives of so many were no more.

From behind his badge, Officer Eaves watched crime soar and spirits sink into the cracked, scorched pavement. He watched his fellow officers vanish one by one, deserting the force or worse yet falling to the berserk rage junkies–or to the demons that dragged them along by a leash.

Eaves forced down his lunch without relish. Whether it was jambalaya or dry toast, it never mattered, because it all tasted like dirt.

Then the call came in and he was moving along the shoulder past the procession of red lights, the whirling blue lights of his police vehicle a contrasting beacon. In every vehicle he passed, he saw another person, or an entire family, who had been forced to question and redefine life.

The families who had stayed together clung to one another for support. Some people found religion. Others lost it. Many more plunged into vices of alcohol, drugs, and reckless behavior, and of course, there was the rage, and the wanton violence.

What did it solve? Nothing. Who was to blame? It made no difference.

Eaves accelerated along the highway toward the multiple vehicle pileup. He slipped a cigarette between his lips, a habit he had adopted after the tastes and smells faded, and the colors dulled.

Before he could reach his lighter, he saw the Mercury that had collided with a black minivan from behind. From his police cruiser, Eaves saw the giant man standing, a blood-coated pipe wrench in his hand, and his victim sprawled, battered and lifeless. In another time, the cigarette might have dropped from Eaves’ mouth.

The man saw the blue lights and froze. Slowly, he backed away. Officer Eaves set his cigarette aside, slipped out of his vehicle, and pulled his pistol from its holster.

“Stop,” he called, moving forward. “Police!”

The man paused. He studied Eaves.

“Police?” he said. “What police?” His lips curled in an ugly sneer, and his eyes were dark. The man hefted the wrench in one hand and began walking in Eaves’ direction. “There aren’t any cops left,” the man declared, “and there’s no more law. Shoot me, and you’re nothing but a killer yourself.” Before Eaves could respond, he charged.

Eaves squeezed the trigger. One blast, two, and kneecaps opened up to spray the pavement. The pipe wrench clattered to the asphalt, followed by the man who held it seconds before. Crippled and wailing, he toppled into the street.

“There are police,” Officer Eaves said, “as long as I’m alive. And since I’m at least somewhere near the top of the chain of command now, there is still law, and it happens to be whatever comes out of my mouth.”

The man screamed at him, clutching bloody, shattered knees and scrambling about in an absurd effort to stand. “You–shot my legs!” the man gritted in agony. His eyes squeezed shut, and a deluge of curses followed.

“Tell it to the judge,” Eaves said, “if there’s any such thing, anymore.”

Eaves returned to his police cruiser. He pulled away and drove onward along the shoulder, and left the man on his own, possibly at the mercy of another like-minded, blind fury-engorged predator.

That was justice, in Eaves’ eyes. He switched off the blue lights.

He placed the cigarette back in his mouth, lit up, and inhaled deeply. These days, he could no longer taste the smoke, but it still relaxed him. He would call it his reward to himself for a job well done. While the cigarette burned down between his lips, he drove on, up the broken asphalt of the ruined highway.

She was the kind of girl your mother warns you about and then throws you out over.

Slinky, hungry, fast.

Liable to pick your pocket just for the hell of it or to sleep with your best friend just because she can.

Never satisfied, always searching, eyes always scanning the horizon looking for the next big thing.

She was going to leave me, of course she was; girls like that do not stay around too long for anyone.

But what she did not count on was me not being willing to let her go.

I am still not willing to let her go.

“Come on, tell us where you put her, tell us how to find Mona,” they say and I laugh.

I told her she would never leave me and she never will; they will never find her and I will never tell.

“Give her family closure,” they argue and I just grin as they strap me in.

They can say anything they want. I am not telling.

Mona is mine in this silence, mine like she never would have been if I had let her live.

She was too hungry; girls like that always are.

They are predatory lips and feral eyes, sex that will leave your skin scorched and blackened while they pick through your bones.

Girls like that always leave, no mater how much you love them, because they are always starving.

Funny how no matter how much she ate, she herself was not very filling.

Lying, feeling like death–not suicide, as yet, but death warmed up. Lying alone in summer’s almost unbearable closeness, on the dodgy sun-lounger, in the non-flowering garden. She was suffering two kinds of hangovers: her mouth furred and stale and parched after a night on the dry wine; the other her pre-menstrual belly hanging over her cheap bikini bottoms–slack and shapeless.

It was hard work sunbathing after a night on the village, and she was browned off with everything. Feeling gross and delicate at the same time. She heard, instead of listened to, shrill birds–busy, feathery little fuckers–and horny bees and wasps buzzing her.

She felt she could lie here forever sweating. Not because she enjoyed it, but because she couldn’t be bothered to move, to sit up and beg questions. Lying red-raw, feeling like death, cold-blooded maybe again.

Somewhere, she heard a fat, slimy frog croaking. It could be herself talking, her voice bound to crack, if she dared to utter–utter rubbish, like the rubbish she had fed to her last night, by the prince of a man, turned into an odious toad, after the French kissing. She had told him to crawl back under his rock–then hit him with one.

She planned–if she ever moved herself again–to build a rockery: him planted under it, with Love-Lies-Bleeding and Forget-Me-Nots decorating it. The only headstone he deserved: the one that stove his brain in. Had his number all right–and his name on it. Such is fate.

Harvest time in Pine Hollow. The children gather around the new scarecrow. Every year, on the morning of October 22, they rise to discover this year’s raggedy figure bound to this same fence post, a tradition as reliable as gifts from Santa.

The scarecrow is so beautiful this year. Its button eyes and crooked stitched mouth almost seem alive. Covered in clothing donated by the men of the town, it wears the wide brimmed straw hat of recently departed and much beloved Zachary Olson, indeed a great honor to his family.

Jonas wakes in total darkness. Straining to open his eyes, he feels a painful tugging, like that of stitches after a recent surgery, and he eventually reasons that his eyes are sewn shut and covered by round plastic objects.

“Those bastards!” he tries to shout, only to find his mouth is sewn shut as well. All that comes out is a barely audible mush that sounds like “yose yasters.”

Widow Olsen herself stands before the scarecrow, knife in hand, the seven chosen children close behind, and the rest of the town chants their prayers for a plentiful harvest. She proudly makes the first cut and the magical transformation begins. The children are filled with glee and awe as the scarecrow begins dancing around, suspended in air, and blood begins seeping through the fabric. Straw has become flesh.

Pain sears through Jonas’ body as the knife begins to slash away. He tries in vain to pull free of his prison, but his bonds are so tight that his arms and legs are numb, and his muffled screams are overpowered by the celebration of the townspeople.

Jonas was not an evil man. He just came here looking for a few minutes of their time, to present a business plan that would benefit Pine Hollow as well as his own company. Why was that so hard for them to accept? And if he offended them so much, why not just run him out of town? Why this?

The seven chosen children have rehearsed this moment well. Tonight the raggedy man has come to life and real blood flows, but they must push beyond their horror or revulsion and remain steadfast in this honorary task so important to this annual ritual.

They drink until the blood stops flowing and the scarecrow grows lifeless again, not allowing a drop to fall on the ground. The litany of the residents of Pine Hollow swells to a crescendo. All those present witness the dutiful purging of the blessed flow, the dance of death of the miraculously animated straw man and the radiant full moon high above accepting their sacrifice once more.

That autumn harvest was their finest ever.

“How will we know if this works?”

“Patience is a virtue, Talbot,” said the Director.

The patient just lay in bed comatose, giving no indication if the procedure was working. He was more a prisoner than a patient, really. They sent these human guinea pigs over from death row so it technically wasn’t murder if something went wrong.

Then, without warning, as the two scientists stared at him, the patient became suddenly animated, writhing around in apparent agony, screaming, pus oozing from his horror-filled eyes.

“Ah, you see,” the Director stated with eerie nonchalance, considering the scene transpiring before them.

Talbot had zero reaction time as the infected patient broke loose of his restraints, snapping them with ease as though they were shoestrings.

The Director did nothing to assist Talbot as the patient succumbed to the virus as expected and fed his crazed hunger by feasting on Talbot’s neck. Blood spurted like a fountain and the Director took a small step back to avoid staining his jacket.

He picked up the shotgun next to the bed. As Talbot’s limp body slumped to the floor and the patient set his sights on the Director, one blast to his head from the shotgun killed him as well.

The Director was pleased. This horrific virus that swept the nation, leaving millions dead and a huge mess to clean up, was finally cured, and his own team had found the antidote. Just as importantly, at the small collateral damage cost of two lives, he now knew their synthetic version of the virus worked as well. The wealth already realized by the production of the antidote would now be at least doubled by the possible military applications of the artificial strain.

Smiling a malicious greedy grin, the Director was filled with conceit but his gleeful smugness lasted approximately eight seconds.

“Asshole!” he heard Talbot cry out.

“Shit!” the Director exclaimed. It never entered his mind this son of a bitch could be alive. He had focused all his attention on the infected one.

Talbot’s last act before he did finally die was plunging a needle into the Director’s arm. His former employer had no doubt as to the contents being pushed into his vein.

The Director was infected. Panic rushed through his body. He had to act fast. The isolation chamber! Rushing into that big tin can and closing the door, knowing it could only be opened from outside, he waited for the virus to claim him.

The others found him three hours later, bleeding out and gnawing on his own arm, yanked out of its socket.

You pull the bloodied gloves off your lily white hands and watch. The bulls are in frenzy. They are mounting the cows as if there is no tomorrow. And they are right, for their hour is nigh.

Funny how animals get their strongest urge to mate when they know they will be slaughtered. You smile at this thought. Your black hair billows in the wind; a stray strand kisses your ripe mouth. Your eyes are like sapphires in the dark. You arch your back, your tight buttocks deliciously squeezing together. The bulls arouse you. You love them most when you’ve just slit their throats and their warm blood pours out like a sudden waterfall.

When you come down, carrying drink and meat, you hear the clanking of my chains and laugh. How long has it been? How many moons? I don’t care anymore. The sight and scent of you maddens, but I don’t lunge. I wait.

Who knew it would turn out like this? Certainly not I. For once, I had misjudged, miscalculated; for once, I had met my match. No, more than that! I love you.

Now I am here. This space that you dug out for me, singlehanded, is cramped despite your best efforts. You know what I was used to. You try to make amends. I appreciate that, even though I care little for the past. Even though I know that I am living on the edge of absolute death.

We eat and drink together. You pull off my clothes, and we make love like this is the last and most glorious time. You take playful nips at my face and neck. But you never let me do that to you. And we never kiss. If you really loved me you would let me, I say. But I know your answer. We are not like the rest. There haven’t been lovers like us in the whole history of this planet!

But that is not the whole truth. Both of us know why you don’t let a whisper of daylight blight our little den, our private space. Why you keep my mouth gagged tight when we make love; why my hands and legs are chained always, though sometimes you do free my left arm, a bit. And you moan, oh how you moan when I hold you, pull you close with my left arm. Yet, even in the throes of passion you keep a wary eye on me. No creature alive, dead or in between can match your instinct for self preservation.

Darling, you are a strange and beautiful woman. We would have made an incomparable pair, but… Never mind that now. We are together, at least for now. That is the most important thing. I cannot trust myself to think beyond that, my love.

My sweet Selena. My moon maiden. Make love to me like there is no tomorrow, for we both know that one of these days I will surely break free.

One night in late winter we’re short-staffed. I am the sole deckhand aboard the last ferry leaving Surry County. Above me only the captain. Below sits one Lincoln, polished and black, with a thin-faced woman at the wheel. We three push off into the fog.

A quarter way across the river I hear her engine still running. Down onto the lower deck I go and knock on her window. She stares ahead, her eyes dry as glass. I check for a pulse in her neck and run up to the bridge to find it empty. The captain’s coffee is spilled out onto the instruments, and a police scanner is crackling some report I barely hear.

I race below, calling out to no one. And now the Lincoln’s empty too, its door hanging open like a mouth. Somewhere above me I can hear the click, click, click of high heels on the metal floor. The police scanner’s report. A theft. From a funeral home.

Click, click, click–something comes down the stairs. I see a hand grip the rail. Skin the color of old snow.

Now I am in the water, swimming away as fast as I can. Weeds tangle around my legs, promising bad things. But I make it to the wet bank and climb up. Then a hood goes over me, everything dark.

“We have to take someone across this river,” says someone holding me hard by the hand.

“You’ll do just fine.”

Lance walked into the dark theater. Though it was well past midnight, he saw about a dozen people were present for this screening he’d anticipated in near agony since Kyra mentioned it to him.

He was a bit of a sadist, that was true, always looking for the next rush, the latest extreme, barely legal or not if he could get away with it. Blame my upbringing, he always said, if you don’t like my obsessions. Dear old Dad beat me to a pulp so now I like to pass the pain along. It’s my only thrill in life.

There had been many victims. Now why did that thought enter his mind? Lance stopped halfway down the aisle. Kyra was waiting in the front row and he was to join her there. I never think about the victims, he reminded himself. Takes the joy out of it. They are merely instruments of my destruction.

The ultimate snuff film, Kyra had promised. A theater had been procured and the private showing would thrill him, she promised.

“Why are you so sure?” he had asked. Kyra was very kinky, but thus far had not seen the extremes of Lance’s desires.

“You know the victim.” That sealed it. Practically got his rocks off just to hear those words.

So he agreed, of course, to attend this illegal bit of cinema and arrived just in time. Surprised the lights were already out, he hurried to his seat, putting the thoughts of his victims aside. Not important right now.

The first sign something was wrong was the horrible smell. His guts heaved into his throat as he inhaled the putrid stench of rotten meat.

He was blinded by a bright light and then he felt bodies converging upon him. Though he could not see his attackers, he distinctly felt breasts on the bodies pressing against him. He was being assaulted by women.

His eyes adjusted to the light and he recognized the other patrons of the theater who were now piling on top of him. They were the victims who lost their lives when his sadism went too far. He never took any kind of tally and was shocked this many of them had died.

Yes, they were dead. The source of the stench. Reanimated corpses converging on him now, mouths open wide and eyes filled with rage.

The bright lights shone on and Lance saw someone in front of him holding a camera. His own image was projected on the screen.

“You know the victim,” he heard Kyra’s voice speak. She was standing on the stage now, grinning at him, filming the action.

Where had he met this bitch? He tried to remember. Obviously a setup from the onset of their brief relationship.

His vengeful victims began to feed and his last moments of life were spent watching himself as the star of the ultimate snuff film Kyra had promised.

Even in a world ruled by the undead, their relationship was considered perverse.

Madeline’s freshly dead body succumbed to the virus on that first fateful night now known as the Dawn of the Year Zero. She was barely nineteen that night and thus had lived almost as many undead years as living ones. That preposterous fact alone should have set enough precedent for the others in her clan to accept this union of woman and surrogate child, but the New World rarely entertained notions of things that “should be.” Instead, she and Ariel were pariahs.

Though long since dead and well versed in the ways of her clan, when Madeline found the child crying in the forest, left for dead, some lingering sense of humanity–the maternal instinct she never realized as a living woman–sprang forth within her. Madeline took the child in her arms and back to her hovel. By some miracle, her undead breasts were filled with nourishing fluid and she nursed the child to health.

For seven years, Ariel grew and seemed every bit human, and though Madeline remained an undead predator of Ariel’s species, she sheltered her surrogate daughter from direct contact with the unsavory aspects of undead life and provided alternative food for the child. Despite all odds against such a bizarre domestic experiment, they lived in harmony.

The clan forced the blasphemous family away, threatening to kill either of them if they ever crossed the imaginary line into the village that was the only home Madeline had known as one of the undead. When weather was unseasonably harsh or some catastrophe struck their village, the clan would blame the ostracized mother and daughter, hunt them down and punish them severely. More than once, Madeline and Ariel hovered at the brink of Second Death.

On Ariel’s eighth birthday, however, she began to change suddenly, and within three days was transformed into one of the undead. Apparently, some mutant strain of the virus was transferred from Madeline to the child but lay dormant for all those years. This new version of Ariel ate only human flesh and became a skilled and lethal hunter.

The clan, in awe of this miraculous mutation, abducted Ariel and raised her as one of their own. The child’s changed nature affected her memory and she soon forgot Madeline as she ascended to a position of power and prestige among the undead. Now, when good fortune came to the clan, they praised the name of Ariel and rewarded her greatly. The clan eagerly awaited the child’s maturity to womanhood, hoping her bloodline would produce offspring. If this came to pass, it was surely an answer to their prayers and proved that a higher power indeed cared for the undead.

Madeline was alone once more and wandered the earth in search of a new clan, but she wasn’t sure why she bothered. The undead had proven to be as derisive and cruel as the human beings they claimed to hate.

All Kimberly felt was cold. It went far beyond a normal chill. It was all-encompassing. No other feelings broke through the cold and she found it hard to think straight. When she’d woken, it was there. Kimberly wasn’t sure how long ago that had been. There was no way to tell time, wherever she was. She couldn’t move, not even a twitch. Why? She was frozen, that’s all she could think. How she could be, and still not only remain alive but conscious, she had no idea. More and more, she found it hard to remember things. Little by little, the cold was stripping away her mind. Where was she? Where could she be that it was this cold? She hadn’t been anyplace cold when she went to bed the previous night. Or had she? Where had she gone to bed the previous night?

The memory eluded her, like many other specific things she tried to think of. It seemed her mind could only focus on a single thing. Cold. Every inch of her, frozen stiff. She couldn’t tilt her head downwards to see, but she imagined if she could, her body would be ice blue. Maybe she was dead. That would explain a lot. If she were dead. Although it wouldn’t be very pleasant if this were the afterlife. Kimberly tried to think back on her life, to remember if she’d done anything to deserve being trapped like she was. She couldn’t recall anything, but at the moment that didn’t mean much. As far as she could remember, she might have been a serial killer.

Frozen timelessness. Kimberly decided she must be dead and she must have done something horrible. Funny how all those people thought Hell was comprised of fire. For her, it was comprised of cold. Never-ending icy restraint was her punishment for whatever she’d done. She waited for her body to go numb, but it refused to. If anything, the feeling began to increase in intensity. The more time went by, the more she could feel the chilly caresses. No longer content to surround her body, it now seeped into her. Every nerve ending was alive with the tingling of the freezing temperature that flowed through her.

Kimberly realized she couldn’t see. It wasn’t blackness, but white. Pure white. Maybe she’d been buried in the snow. That would explain everything she felt but why would she be in the snow? So little of her memory remained, she couldn’t answer. She felt as the cold invaded her head, freezing through her brain. In an instant, what remained of her memory blotted out. Even her name. A moment later, all of her thought processes were obliterated, leaving her mind a total blank. She could no longer ponder why it was so cold. She couldn’t even put a name to the feeling her body was experiencing.