MicroHorror

I never listened to Ma in all my days, no, not once.

Oh, I been wishing I had.

They’re trying to make me come outside again: playing with my fire so I can’t get no heat, freezing the water so I can’t get no drink, running in the rafters just out of my sight so I can’t get no peace. They want me chilled, and half-crazed, and so thirsty I’m begging to drink what they do.

“Don’t go near them cabins, Ray,” Ma said before I left–after she spit on the money that I showed her–“It snowed there a thousand years already. Ain’t nobody comes out.”

“Ain’t nobody comes out of County after they kills two cops, Ma,” I told her. “You come too. Things’ll settle some here and we’ll go south.”

The fire burns blue-white with the heat they won’t let out for me; water drips from icicles along the windows but freezes before I reach it; but worst of all is that skittering noise they make with their claws and their tails as they dart across the ceiling and the walls.

I never could bear the cold. To live away from winters is all I ever wanted. I spent my life looking for a way out, a chance to find a place where I could sleep warm every night.

“I told you to stay away from that bank, Ray,” Ma complained, “and now you in piles of shit. Boy, you stay away from them cabins or you gonna wish for shit.”

But I had never listened to Ma in all my days.

They have trapped me here, sewn up the edges of my world with their teeth. I don’t know how long they have held me here; the sky has been the same snowy gray for all the days and nights since I came. I get so tired when I see the snow and the gray sky that I think sometimes I been here almost my whole life.

They keep me for their sport, for my blood and for tiny bites of my flesh. I don’t know what they are. They are cold, and fast, and sharp.

Cold: I aim the gun at my face. It freezes, the bullet don’t come.

Fast: I slash the knife at my throat. My wound ices shut before the smallest drop can spill.

Sharp: I drink the gasoline. They chill me still and slice me fine, wringing the poison out, taking sips as they go.

She loved me some, I guess. After all those years of beatings and yelling and making me want to die I will say she must have loved me some. She wanted me to stay with her, even though I was the one giving the beatings now…

They like to hunt, with all of their icy swiftness and all of their claws and teeth. They get under my clothes like the cold, or the wind. I have tiny scars all over.

…so she tried one last time: “Listen to me, Ray: it snowed there a thousand years already. You go in, you won’t never get free of cold.”

Wisconsin in February always feels like it’s snowed a thousand years. The money she’d spit on were in my hand. I spit on it too, and threw it on the ground as I left.

A fat deer stands dazzled at the edge of the yard. I know they will come before I reach it, and I will have to kill it and drag it back through the wave of their teeth.

Deer smell fills the air. Warm meat and hot blood call me to the door, knife in hand. They’re hiding now, waiting. I run, awkward in the snow.

From the pines explode a thousand white razored shapes.

They are coming.