MicroHorror

A man and a woman are having an argument. Their voices can be heard throughout the empty subway station even before they enter it, ringing out like shots of gunfire in the open corridor.

The woman storms into the station, dragging a young boy by the arm. The man follows about twenty feet behind them. It’s quite late.

“You know you’re crazy, right?” the man says. “You probably don’t even know what you’re doing right now. That’s how crazy you are.”

“I know what I’m doing,” the woman says. “I’m leaving.”

“Really? Where are you going?”

“Somewhere else.”

“Let me know what it’s like when you get there.”

“I will.”

“Mommy, can I get a drink from the machine?” the boy says, gesturing toward the glowing soda machine against the wall.

“In a minute, Kevin,” the woman says.

“So why are you leaving this time?” the man asks her.

“You know why.”

“Is it because I keep leaving dishes in the sink?”

“Fuck you, David,” the woman says as she frantically searches the catacombs of her purse for nothing in particular.

“Is this about that girl?” the man asks. “Because I told you she was lying.”

“Yep,” the woman says. “That’s what you told me.”

“But you don’t believe me.”

“If she’s lying–”

“Mom, where’s my game?” the boy says. “I want my game.”

“I don’t know, baby,” she says to the boy. “If she’s lying then why have you been calling her?”

“What are you talking about? I haven’t been calling anybody.”

“I checked your phone, David.”

“Jesus Christ, Kimberly. Do you realize how crazy you sound? I think there might be something seriously wrong with you, babe. You think these things are real, but they’re not. This is all in your mind. You’re delusional.”

“I want a divorce. And I’m taking Kevin with me. How’s that for delusional?”

“Mom, I want my game.”

The woman reaches into her purse and brings out a tattered Nintendo DS covered in Batman stickers and thrusts it at the child without looking.

“You want a divorce?” the man says. “That’s fine with me. But Kevin stays here.”

“For what, David? You don’t spend time with him now.”

“Well, why should you get him?”

“Because I care about him.”

“And I don’t?”

“No, you don’t.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it. I care about my son.”

“Look, Daddy, the train’s coming. I see the train!”

“Yeah, buddy, that’s awesome,” the man says. “Kevin’s staying with me and that’s final.”

“How are you gonna take care of him all by yourself, David?”

“You think you can take better care of him than I can?”

“At least I’m around.”

“You’re full of Xanax most of the time, Kim.”

“I have a prescription.”

“Does your prescription say it’s okay to take six of them a day?”

“I can’t deal with this right now.”

“You can’t ever deal with anything; that’s your problem.”

“Goodbye, David.”

“Kevin stays here.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’re not taking my son, Kimberly.”

“If you think I’m going to leave him here with you then you’re the one that’s delusional. Kevin’s coming with me and there’s nothing you can do–where’s Kevin?”

Behind them the train screams as it tears along the tracks.

• Copyright: © 2011 Brian Durant

What a lovely cake! You baked it yourself, didn’t you? Didn’t you?

You smile and watch the children play. Erin is nine today; she’s got there so fast. Her feeble cry, her first, faltering step, they seem such a short time ago. Her eyes catch yours as she plays–thank you, Mummy, she blinks. You smile and watch the children play.

Tired, they stop to eat. Someone reads a story, a tale of ghosts in the forest. You worry that it will scare them but they only laugh.

Time for the cake now–you baked it yourself, didn’t you? Light the candles–one, two, three, all the way to nine. One more year and she’ll be in double figures. Frightening how fast it flies.

Watch her as she breathes in every last drop of air that she can, her little puffed cheeks pinkening with the strain, then whoosh, out with the air, out with the candles. Closed eyes for a wish.

The children start to play again as you cut the cake, begin to hand it out. You baked it yourself, didn’t you?

And you watch them reach down, greedy hands into the icing, lift each chunky slice towards eager lips and it is not a cake, but it is raw flesh, bloody, dripping, sinuous. You drop your knife and raise your hands to your face in horror. Look again and the cake is cake.

Breathing calmer now, you pick the knife from the floor, go to cut the cake again, and now you see tiny white maggots, dancing on the plate, writhing in and out of each other’s space. Step back, step back, away from it, look away, rest against the side for a moment. Breathe. Look back and the maggots have gone. The cake is cake.

You fake a smile and watch the children play. Watch their hands reach down to paper plates, grasp at the last remnants of sponge and cream. It’s not sponge and cream; this time, wasps, gaggles of wasps burst up from the plates and into the mouths of Erin and her friends. Wasps, wasps. Handfuls and mouthfuls of wasps.

You look away. You look back. You look away. You look back.

The wasps are still there. There is no cake. The children run and scream, their mouths swell up, their throats close in. There is no cake.

You baked it yourself, didn’t you? Didn’t you?

• Copyright: © 2011 Lizzie Boyle

One wall remained, barely visible, before the excavations began. Year on year the site expanded. From Càrn a’ Marbh the valley ran down to a loop in the river and the red fertile plain. Nothing grew up here. It was a dead place.

“So, why put a settlement on top of a barren ridge?” asked Hogan. He was a beardy first year, keen to impress. Doctor Dalbach brought three promising students up here each summer. The place was exceptionally beautiful, windswept, open and ever changing. It was easy to imagine all manner of illusions in the sudden mists that descended from the top.

“One might suppose some military purpose or religious significance.”

“People round here say it’s haunted,” said Cecilia.

Cecilia was already troweling away at some loose deposits round the base of the keystone.

Hogan eyed her tight buttocks peeking out beneath the puffy anorak.

“People will say anything,” said Dalbach. “Archaeological evidence is the only way to ascertain…”

Deirdre pulled a stray blond strand away from her mouth and exchanged an exasperated glance with the others.

“I think maybe I found something,” said Cecilia.

The doctor cleared his throat gruffly. “Remember, any finds, no matter how seemingly insignificant, must be properly catalogued.”

As Cecilia examined the object, Dalbach’s voice faded into the background. The fragment was miniscule: round, white and so very fragile–part of the orbit of an eye perhaps–a tiny eye. Another sound asserted itself subliminally, the sound of a child crying out in distress. Cecilia shuddered as the fragment dissolved in her hand. “I thought I had something, but…” she muttered.

“Well, a wall this size needs a firm foundation,” said Dalbach, “and it’s important to find out what that is. I’ll leave you to it now.” He strode off down the hill towards the local pub. Somewhat surprised, they watched him go.

Cecilia looked ghastly.

“Are you all right?” asked Hogan.

“Needs a firm foundation…” said Cecilia. “It needs a firm foundation. It needs a firm…”

Hogan took her by the shoulders and helped her to her feet. “Cecilia? What on Earth’s the matter?”

Deirdre came to help. “C? You’re gibbering.”

But Cecilia’s whole body was shaking and she just kept on repeating the phrase. “Needs a firm found…”

“Stop it, C.”

“Cecilia, you’re scaring us,” said Hogan.

“Is it some kind of fit or what? Hogan, do something.”

“I hate to do this, but…” Hogan slapped Cecilia hard. For one moment she looked straight at him. Then his expression changed from one of concern to horror. Cecilia looked at the trowel in her hand, raised it and poked Hogan’s eye out.

So shocked was he, he offered no defense but stumbled backward and fell hard against the wall. Deirdre screamed but Celia didn’t stop. She gouged at Hogan’s eye socket as he writhed helpless on the ground. The bloody eye slithered, still attached, on his cheek. His blood drained into the foundations.

Deirdre attempted to wrench the trowel from Celia’s grasp but she was a maniac. And that’s when Deirdre too saw. The face was no longer Celia’s face. It was that of an infant child: a face wild, hideous with glee and blood-lust, splattered with Hogan’s blood.

“Celia, no!” Deirdre lost her footing. Demonic chanting was all around. A circle of baying children closed in and trampled all three–mulched them into the foundations.

When Dalbach returned, something that looked like them awaited him on the cairn. A new section of ancient settlement stood proudly above ground. “Is it done?” he asked.

“It needed a firm foundation,” said one, “but yes. It is done.”

“Blood for blood. Bone for bone,” said the second. “It is done.”

“Our contract is renewed.”

“Then shall we go?” Dalbach led three more lost children of Càrn a’ Marbh to their resurrected life among the living. Gradually, as he’d agreed long ago, this settlement would be reconstructed in blood and the time would come when zombies stalked the valley once again.

• Copyright: © 2011 Oonah V Joslin

All around me lurks dark energy. It runs through me, roaring away toward the fringes of the universe. When I try to sleep dark energy throbs against the backs of my eyelids. As you might guess, I don’t get very much sleep. When I’m awake I have these crazy day dreams. It’s hard to tell what’s real and what isn’t.

For instance: I’m in my basement, standing in front of a mountain of Girl Scout cookies. The pile is enormous. Tagalongs and Samoas and Trefoils everywhere. I’m covered in chocolate, trapped in a pit of coconut peanut butter. I crawl out and open the furnace and start chucking the boxes in. The cookies scream for mercy. I’m laughing like a lunatic and then I snap out of it and I’m walking to the bus stop, giggling. People stare.

Don’t go out much anymore because God knows what I might do. Start throwing kids into the street as the bus pulls in. It’s enough to make a person cry, but I haven’t cried in a long time. Too much dark energy clogging my tear ducts.

I’m very tired.

I took enough Ambien to choke an ox. All I got was a twelve-hour blackout and an army of lumberjacks hacking at my brain when I came to. It’s white pain in there, so I wash down some Maxalt with a little vodka. I wait for the numbness. It’s like I didn’t sleep at all. I close my eyes, but it’s all dark energy, buzzing and throbbing.

I open my eyes and my mother’s sitting on the edge of the bathtub, a cigarette dangling off her lower lip and her bathrobe exposing her blue-veined chest. Her breath reeks of Thin Mints. Between swigs of Smirnoff she undoes my braids and tugs off my Brownie vest and my skirt and unbuttons my blouse.

“Bath time,” she mumbles. Behind her the water is running into the tub. I’m nine years old. I don’t want my mother to wash me. Again. I pull back and her palm slams across my face. I cry.

I snap out of it. The door bell is slamming into my brain. Holy good God. How can anything be that loud?

I pull open the door and she’s just standing there, the perky girl from down the street. She’s wearing a white blouse and a green skort with a green vest to match. Her mother must love her very much. Her insignia and badges are sewn meticulously. They tell me she is “Becoming a Teen.”

She waves a paper in my face, quite sure of herself.

“Would you like to buy some cookies, ma’am?” She waits for my reply. I ponder the implications of “ma’am.” I stare out the door, see the streams of energy surrounding her like dark fingers.

“Of course,” I answer. “Please come in.” She hesitates, then crosses over into the living room. I smile. I take her by the arm and bring her over to the stairs where beneath us awaits the furnace.

I’m very tired, but I feel a sudden burst of energy, lovely and dark and deep.

• Copyright: © 2011 Robert Meade

“You are so beautiful,” he said, running a hand down the curve of her hip.

“You think so?”

“Yes, of course. As I see you.”

She rolled over to face him. “How do you see me?”

“As Helen of Troy. I could make you so sexy.”

She sat up on the bed. “I can’t do this anymore. It’s too much.”

“No, please. Don’t go.”

She lay stiffly on the bed.

After a minute or two he said, “I’m a giver, Helen. I only want to do things for you. I want to bring out the beautiful girl inside of you, as I’ve already done with your face. Please don’t be upset.”

Helen looked at her doctor, her lover; she began to cry.

“Please. Don’t,” he said.

“But isn’t my internal beauty what’s important?”

“Of course. But I can make you as beautiful on the outside as in. I see you, all of you, and so should the rest of the world. What is love without the desire to uplift those we care about?”

“You don’t love me.”

He put his hand on her waist. “Please don’t go.”

***

She looked up at the doctor. She ached all over.

“You’re beautiful,” the doctor said.

She brought her hands up, running her fingers carefully over her bandaged face.

“Don’t worry. They’ll be off soon.”

She watched the doctor inject her arm with something. The pain subsided and she was flooded with warmth. She even smiled a little.

“There we go,” the doctor said, straddling her on the bed.

“That hurts, doctor.”

“Please. Don’t talk.”

***

“My Helen. There we go.”

She lay on the bed before him. The doctor smiled.

“I’ve been so lonely, Helen. Until you came into my life I thought I’d never find anyone to share myself with. You’re so beautiful. They come to you, demanding you fix their nose, demanding you fill in their wrinkles, demanding you lift them up, make their breasts bigger, make their butts stick out, but they never ask about you; they don’t care, they just want you to fix their flaws.”

Helen, lying relaxed on the bed, seemed to smile back at him.

“Oh, Helen, after my parents died what was I to do? I’ve been a workaholic, too scared to go home to my empty apartment, no one in the world to love me. But you love me, don’t you?”

The doctor climbed up on the bed. He kissed her.

“Now you’re as beautiful on the outside as you always were on the inside,” he breathed. He lifted her legs, smooth and firm. “I’ve made your breasts full and round and I’ve brought your waist in and your hips out; your butt is perfect; your lips are full; your skin so soft… I just want to…”

When they were done, he lay on the bed next to her. “You really are beautiful. Not as talkative with your new silicone brain, but I don’t mind.” He turned to her. “Oh, Helen, what do you think about children?”

• Copyright: © 2011 Keith Deininger

In the beginning it was the eyes, then it was the warts, but the warts came last and it was the warts that made it difficult. It was as troublesome to look into her eyes as it was to look into the sun but the warts and the sun were things you knew were there, and both were things your eyes avoided. It was natural to look away from the sun or to shield your eyes from its glare; it was expected and thought nothing of, but to avert your eyes from the sadness and fear in her eyes or to shield your glance from hers was thought to be, at first, unnatural and ill-mannered, but it was a necessary reaction in which nothing else could be done; instinct was to look away. In time, the sadness and fear in her eyes was replaced by confidence, and the confidence was as vulgar and troublesome as was the obscene tone her personality had taken.

She was neither Catholic nor religious, so later, after the fear, the wide collared nun’s habit she began favoring was as mysterious as the other changes in Abigail and could only have been a mockery to God.

I forget when she started the candle lighting. It was a subtle change in Abigail, one I hadn’t noticed before it became an obsession with her. She said it was to keep the evil things away. But that was in the beginning, when she was afraid.

Soon after I discovered her obsession with the candles, I found her one evening in her room, sitting on the edge of her bed, in the amber glow of a candle which she cradled in her palms. She was rocking herself and whispering repeatedly, “Dear Lord, lead me not into temptation, but deliver me from evil.” Abigail kept the lights out in her room but always a candle was lit. She said it was the only way, and she was afraid then.

When Abigail was no longer afraid and the warts had come in like organic pebbles, she began walking through the low growing ferns and into the forest beyond the house. At first she would stay away for hours, then days; now she returns only to creep around the yard like an animal or feral beast. A footpath is worn lifeless where she pads about after dark. A neighbor, an elderly woman, who was recently found lying in a crucifixion coma, arms outstretched and ankles crossed, now only sits and rocks–and trembles in fear. Abigail is blamed for the woman’s madness.

Before the fall of Abigail, when things made sense and nights were pleasant, a lit candle meant one thing only–that a candle had been lit. Now it means a thing that is deeper and darker than any I have ever known is near. Why I should sit here in this darkness and invite the evil in I do not know, but still I do it. I sit here now, warts and all, with my hands balled and clasped in my lap, rocking, fighting temptation to extinguish my good candle.

I miss Abigail the way a crying child is missed after the child is sent away to school or the way the sun is missed on a dreary day and realize now, when the sun was bright and high in the sky, I paid it no attention.

I know horror, now that things are bleak, and Abigail is lost to darkness. Oh, how I wish I did not know such terror, but I believe there is a wicked thing here in this darkness, and that I must go to it–to be with Abigail.

• Copyright: © 2011 Joseph Gilmore

September 5, 1890

It has been three weeks since Dora took to her bed. She continues to lie there, motionless and expressionless, as if in a trance. Her beauty, however, is unaffected. Her blue eyes still sparkle with an enchanting luster; her golden tresses are spread out lazily over the pillows; and her perfectly white skin and graceful neck are radiant, too perfect to disturb. I would not dream of moving her.

I have dismissed all the servants. They might have interfered and I cannot take the risk. No one will separate me from my precious Dora, from my beloved niece. I am vastly contented with just the two of us here in my great house, and I am perfectly capable of attending to her needs. That’s why I took the necklace.

“My soul is inside this ruby, Uncle,” she said to me one day, fingering the tear-shaped pendant.

“Then I must have it,” I answered.

“If you take it from me, I will cease to function and your life as you know it will become a dream.”

In spite of her warning, I stole the necklace from her lovely throat in the blackest hour of night. And she has not left her bed, or moved, or spoken a word since. But I do not regret my decision. I had to put an end to her involvement with Mr. Hope. His frequent visits as well as his blatant familiarity with my innocent niece began to take a toll on my nerves. I saw their secret smiles and sultry glances. I heard their flirtatious conversation.

Having been in love with Dora since she came to live with me a year ago, I could not endure his attentions to her. When her parents died I made a vow to love and protect her as a parent. I cannot help that I now love her as a lover! God forgive me, but I love her!

We will not be separated. I prefer to have here with me as a lifeless invalid, than let her squander her virtue on a man like Hope. I would not permit him to enter the last time he came. I told him that Dora is ill and she is not to see him anymore.

“She is not for you,” he said flatly. “No matter what happens, you will not have her.”

I slammed the door in his face, but he will return. I think I hear him now!

***

September 6, 2010

“Tell me what happened,” said the sergeant to the young officer sitting before him.

“I saw a light on in the abandoned house on Broad Street, so I went in to force out any squatters. When I reached the top of the stairs, that guy burst through a door and attacked me. We struggled on the landing until I wrestled him back into the room and knocked him unconscious with an empty wine bottle. After the fight, I realized a young woman was lying on a filthy twin bed in a corner of the room. Later I was told that the man’s journal was found. Apparently he believed that it was the year 1890 and he lived in a mansion with his catatonic niece. I tried to speak to the girl, but she did not respond in any way, even though her eyes were open. On a small table beside the bed, I found a ruby pendant on a golden chain. I can’t explain it, but I felt an overwhelming desire to put it around her neck, so I did, and she woke immediately.”

“What did she say when she woke?” the sergeant asked.

“She said, ‘Mr. Hope, I’ve been waiting for you.’”

“How did she know your name?”

“I don’t know, but she looked at me with sincere recognition. And I couldn’t take my eyes away from hers. Where is she now?”

“Well, Officer Hope, they took her down to County and she’s catatonic again.”

“What happened?”

“They lost the necklace.”

• Copyright: © 2011 Melissa Stanziale

He was mine, and now he is again.

I always thought I would lose him to another woman. In the end it turned out to be cancer, sapping his strength, withering his once bold personality, forcing me to watch him die despite all the money and medicine we’d spent to treat him.

There was no funeral. How could there be? He wouldn’t have to be dead for long. I was desperate; I’d tried everything fortune could buy… but I was demanding the impossible.

And the impossible was just what this man could give me.

He was a bokor, a black magician. He never gave his name; perhaps it was better that way. We stood in his cramped, miserable Miami apartment in the neighborhood of what the Haitians called Petit Ayiti. Rats scurried back and forth in the distance as my husband returned to life under the command of arcane incantations, his limbs craning and contorting in the darkly elegant zombi dance.

It’s a bit different these days, to be sure. His body went pale from the lack of flowing blood in his veins, and he’d rather sit at the windowsill and watch the moon’s journey rather than sleep at night. His eyes now have a milky white film covering their once emerald glimmer, but I don’t know whether to chalk that up to reanimation or the side effects of a twenty-five-year marriage.

He was mine, once, and now he is mine forever.

• Copyright: © 2011 Marlon Pierre-Antoine

I am a deviant.

A qualifier: I’ve never had, nor will I, anything to do with kids, animals, or the dead, but name the craziest, most obscene thing that consenting adults can do to each other, and I’ve been there. There’ve been seventy-two-year-old grannies who squealed like rabbits when they came, and amputees who tried to walk afterward. I’ve had the clap six times and gonorrhea an even dozen. My body is a map of minor scars. These are my trophies.

Am I a sexual addict? Perhaps, but my desires have never interfered with anything else in my life, and I don’t watch TV. Sex is my entertainment, and my laboratory. It’s how I learn who I am.

One thing that may surprise you is that when you take society’s stereotypes about beauty off the table, it’s incredibly easy to get laid.

So, when I saw the chance to push the borders once more, I took it.

The Craigslist ad read “Sexual Immolation. Serious inquiries only.” I’d heard of death by immolation, of course. Those fanatics that doused themselves in gas to protest for free speech, or against it… something. But what in the hell could this be? Those five words had me so excited I got a raging hard-on just dialing the number.

When I arrived at the apartment three hours later, a voluptuous, slightly homely woman answered the door without a stitch of clothing on. She introduced herself as “Ifritia.” A fake. Who cared?

There was no small talk. We knew what we were about. All there was between us was desire, and the willing flesh of a willing partner.

She lit some candles and began to dance to unheard music. In her movements I saw all the sensuality she would ever need. I wanted her as I hadn’t wanted anyone in years.

Though her movements were elaborate, it didn’t take long for her to conclude and pull me down to the floor, where she gave me all the welcome I needed. The first thing I noticed was how hot she was inside. It was a little uncomfortable, but the rest of the sensations more than made up for it. As we moved together, I heard thick, foreign chanting on her lips. The heat intensified, and so did the pleasure. I’d never been with another woman who reacted so naturally, so instinctively to every move I made. She sped up. I sped up. I felt the point of no return approaching, but something in the low quick words she continued to mouth was holding it off. I was on the perigee of climax for almost twenty minutes. Every muscle in my body was twitching. The spasms of my overtaxed muscles spurred her on to greater throes of her own. We were going faster and harder than I’d ever experienced.

And the heat. It had become unbearable. It felt like I was about to come apart. But stopping would’ve been tantamount to suicide.

Nothing in my thousand trysts had compared to what I was feeling now. Without warning, my back burst suddenly into flame. It spread out in to cover my whole body, as if my sweat were gasoline.

Ifritia was burning too. Her brow was licked with tiny tongues of flame which set her mousy brown hair ablaze. Her cheeks, still contorted with pleasure, were turning black. My nerves were on fire from the outside, and exploding from the inside.

The fire grew. The bed burned. We burned. And the final moments approached. Our skin was melting together in places. Still we kept on. There was nothing else.

Her breath in my ear quickened. We came together.

The climax was an inferno. The bed, the room, the world was fire.

The last thing I saw on this earth was the face of my lover, now a charred and peeling mask, still mouthing the words “love” and “love” and “love.”

The rest was ashes.

• Copyright: © 2011 Chris Allinotte

She watches over the steaming pot as the refugees file in, dirty and weary. Filling their bowls with hot stew, they speak to the cook as they smell the aroma. They say the food is incredible, the food that keeps them warm on these cold nights, and they ask what’s in it.

The cook shrugs and says, “Potatoes, carrots, and just a touch of love.”

They smile and move on.

A woman steps up. Haggard and red-eyed, she shuffles slowly up to the pot with her bowl in hand. Bags underneath her eyes the size of half-dollars, the woman looks lifeless with fatigue. The cook looks at her, saying, “Still no sign of your husband, Mrs. Love?”

The woman says no, fighting back tears. She says he must have left her for another woman, for he’s been gone a week with no sign of him. “We all know the kind of man he is,” the woman says, sniffing.

Telling the woman not to worry, the cook dips her ladle into the pot to fish out extra pieces of plump, pink meat. Dropping them into Mrs. Love’s bowl, the cook says, “I’m sure he’ll turn up eventually.”

Mrs. Love sniffs the food, smiling at the aroma. “You’re probably right,” she says, then walks to her seat to eat her stew, stew prepared with potatoes, carrots, and a just a touch of Love.

• Copyright: © 2011 Trinity Martin