MicroHorror

The noise never came in the daytime. Or was it that daytime sounds–like traffic and the homeless men who had recently encamped outside his apartment complex–obscured it? Anyway, every night for weeks, he heard it. And in the same way. He would be about to drift off and then it was there. Then he would be wide awake, trying to figure out if he was hearing what he thought he was hearing, or if it was just a dream. After several minutes, during which he could be sure he was awake, however, he would see that it was real, all right.

The sound was like a hum, he thought, but there was something else there. Like chattering. It had a metallic quality to it too, yet it also sounded… insectoid, if that was even a word.

Sometimes, when he collected his mail, and saw another resident, he would ask them if they heard it. But they always said no. Then they’d grab their mail and dodder off down the hallway, as if in a hurry.

One Monday, he ran into Don, the apartment manager, and asked him. Don said he hadn’t heard anything, which wasn’t unexpected. But something unexpected did happen. As he looked at Don, who had begun to say that it might be the nearby power plant, Don appeared to flash green. It was not the bright green of grass, though, but mottled and earthy–a disgusting color. Then, in the time it took for him to register this, Don was his pasty self again.

Feeling confused, he now doddered off with his mail.

That night, it was louder and, whereas before the point of origin was vague, it now came from a distinct spot outside his window. He turned on his stomach, stuck two fingers into the blades of his metal blinds and peered out toward the homeless encampment.

He saw a faint green glow emanating from what appeared to be a lantern. He then squinted as he could not believe it. There, where the bums usually drank, and sometimes fought, were three humanoid figures, as they could not be called human. The glow, he realized, was not from the light that one of them held, which was white, but from the reflection of the light off of them–these three things with beastly, elongated heads!

He also knew that the sound he’d been hearing was their speech.

He froze like that until he realized that the things had stopped talking, and the noise had stopped too, and that they were looking up toward where he lay in his room, looking at them.

Their eyes, yellow and shiny, seemed to glare back.

His fingers slipped from the blinds, and, in the dark, as he tried to calm himself, it came to him–how before, at his job, he had read the Internet conspiracy theories about the reptilian beings that hid beneath human skin and controlled the human world via machinations and deception. At the time, he laughed about it. But it wasn’t funny when he later got fired for what they called his odd behavior, which, now, he recalled, had to do with the feeling that his coworkers were scheming something bigger than their aeronautics work.

This was not funny either. Frightened, and in need of something, anything, he turned on his television and saw the tail end of an advertisement for mortgages. Then came the news, and the talking head, who was not human either, but also green and mottled and leathery. It spoke, this thing, and the noise came–tinny and ominous. Then the noise was louder, and it wasn’t generalized or specific anymore, but from all places. From outside. From Don’s room below. From other apartments. From the President, now on the news–and green too!

He wanted to scream, but he remembered what the things do to those who find out–if they didn’t already know about him knowing…