MicroHorror

The bride was beautiful until she smiled. There was nothing wrong with her teeth; they were straight and white and strong, surrounded by roseate lips. It was the expression itself that was not right.

Victoria Dernt had a cloud inside her. It had always been there, rarely lightening and never abating. This cloud darkened everything she did. When she spoke her harsh words or screamed in rage one could almost see the gray vapors carried on her breath. A smile, as formed by her frostily exquisite features, did not lend her any brightness; it stretched tightly over her face, a façade in painful and obvious contrast with what lay beneath.

The only person at the wedding who could not see this was the groom. John Lokide loved this woman–maybe because no one else did. John had always been drawn to outsiders; he focused only on the good that he felt all people possessed. In Victoria he saw beauty and potential.

“I want to make something incredible one day,” she had told him once.

And though her vicious castigations rarely flagged, John–based on this sole statement of hope–thought only the best of her.

His family and friends were concerned that she would change him. They were not alone; her family felt the same. She had no friends.

Their first year of marriage passed in a whirlwind of screaming and tantrums. But John was undaunted. When others inquired about their well-being, he never faltered.

“We’re fine,” he would say. “How are you?”

On their first anniversary, though, Victoria’s ire was particularly fierce. Snapping in the face of John’s constant serenity, she abandoned her cruel tirade, wrapped her mouth around his right forearm, and bit down. She tasted flesh and blood; he felt the sting of vitriol enter his veins. In that bite, he felt at once what everyone else had always seen. When she let go, Victoria simply walked out of the house and did not come back.

The ugly wound took months to heal and, in the end, turned into an uglier scar: a pale circle of dense and lumpish tissue. But this was not the only lasting effect of that night. John’s temper turned; he grew snappish, then mean. Some thought it was because Victoria was gone. The more observant realized it was because of what she left behind.

John’s behavior changed as well. He stopped eating and his limbs grew thin; to some people, this made it look as if the unsightly scar was growing. He began to dress strangely, wearing long-sleeved shirts and heavy pants well before the weather called for them. John talked only about Victoria–surely she would return, he said. Others felt that this was unlikely–and fortunately so. Leaving his house less and less frequently, one day John stopped coming out at all.

But he was right: nearly a year later Victoria came back.

It was early morning and the house they had shared was dark. Victoria used her old key to open the door. She walked on whispering floorboards to the living room and turned on the light.

John sat in a stark wood chair in the center of the room. He was naked. A mass of flesh rose from his right arm–a pulpy stump in the shape of Victoria’s mouth. From there, runs of scar tissue spread like gnarled roots in every direction. Most were pale and gray but some were pink and some were red. These covered nearly every inch of his withered body but had left his forehead smooth. As Victoria watched, branches of scar reached from both sides and, pulsing slowly, moved over that as well. Untouched, his eyes and teeth shone in the light.

John spoke to her. His voice was no longer clear and pleasant. It grated, as if the scars had burrowed down his throat and were smothering his insides. He did not move.

“Come closer,” he said. “Come and see what you’ve made.”