MicroHorror

The first time Cindy Morgan heard the voice, it came up through the bathroom drain. She could not understand what it said, so she tuned out the playful crashing of her three children on the other side of the door and put her head to the sink. But she heard nothing more.

The voice came to her again in the car; it whispered through the air vents. There were words there, she knew, but again she could not make them out.

It was only later–as she jogged alone in an open field–that it came to her clearly. The voice was not loud, it did not sound malicious, but it enclosed her in its enormity.

“I am hungry,” it said. “You will see me and I will call you. Then you will come.”

Cindy stopped; she shuddered.

The voice continued. “If you do not, I will eat everything you love.”

From then, Cindy looked over her shoulder when she had to go out and held her family close. She kept her doors locked. She peeked through her curtains and–though she knew nothing was contained there–stayed away from the drain.

But weeks passed and the voice came back no more. She resumed the activities of her day-to-day. Sometimes she questioned if she had ever heard a voice at all; still, she listened and watched.

One day while the children climbed and spun around her husband, Cindy went to the grocery store. In the cereal aisle, a man walked toward her. He moved slowly but he did not falter. And he did not look away. He had no shopping cart and carried nothing. As the man came closer, she realized that he was tremendous; he seemed to grow with each step. When he was mere feet away, he made a noise.

It sounded like her name.

Cindy backed away. She pulled her cart with her; the front of it fishtailed, knocking over several displays. When she was out of the aisle, she staggered away from the cart and clutched her pocket book.

“Miss,” called the cashier. He was a teenage boy. “Are you all right?”

She walked over, all the while waiting to see what emerged from the aisle. She began, “That man…”

Then she stopped. She looked toward the boy’s face. His eyes did not move–they were focused only on her–but they changed. The irises turned red first, then the whites around them. Cindy looked lower. The boy opened his mouth. It formed a black O, his lips and skin stretched to the point of tearing. But the mouth did not stop opening. It only grew, and soon it was as large as her. It grew until on the other side of the register counter there was nothing else. In this gaping hole was a dark eternity.

This thing had been waiting for her here, or maybe it had been everywhere.

There was still light behind her–a combination of the fluorescents overhead and the sun shining through the front windows. She thought of running, until she remembered its threat. And as the darkness unimaginably grew deeper, she saw room for everything she loved indeed: her husband, her children, her house, her friends. It seemed as if the whole world could be consumed in that blackness. And for a moment, she saw the faces she loved, turning, crying, and ready to be swallowed whole.

She heard the words as she had on the wind. “I am hungry.” As it spoke, the mouth did not move, did not close, offered her no relief from her vision.

Cindy’s heart pounded. She raised her hand to her lips and kissed it softly three times, saying her children’s names after each. She dropped her bag to the floor and climbed over the counter that separated her from this thing.

Closing her eyes and leaving all that she loved behind her, she crawled into its mouth.