MicroHorror

Everything stood still as he stared at that thing lying at his feet. The music blared one long and continuous note, mouths stood open in perpetual gasp, and glasses paused in mid-shatter above the floor. They were all staring at him. They couldn’t believe what he’d done but they shouldn’t be so shocked. He had tried to tell them what would happen; they just hadn’t listened.

He had told them, his “friends,” in the strictest of confidences that he was terrified of those things. “Those things;” he had used that exact phrasing because to him they had no names, they were not human, they were horrible, monstrous “things.” His friends had all laughed at him and told him how irrational it was, at his age, to have fears like that. He had tried to explain to them that he wasn’t just “afraid” of those things, he was terrified of them. It was then that he had told them, in explicit detail, what he would do to one if he ever came face to face with it.

They had thought it would be funny. They had probably thought that everyone would have a good laugh at him. They thought that they could make a fool out of him in front of all of his friends and his family but he heard no laughter among the frozen screams and gasps which swirled all around him now in his endless moment.

He just continued to stare. The world was frozen in a moment of pure chaos and he was no exception. He could only stare down at that thing lying at his feet with its big hideous smile. The smile. It was what he hated most about those things. They were fixed, their smiles were, fused unchanging to their face. Whatever the situation, whatever happened to them, those things would still be wearing that same smile. Even in death.

He had tried to explain that to his friends. It hadn’t seemed to bother them. They couldn’t understand about the smile, how unnerving it was, how terrifying. They had thought he was joking when he told them that if he ever had the chance he would stab one of those wicked things right through its filthy heart, stand over it, and watch it bleed to death on the floor.

They had thought that they were being so clever having that thing jump out at him just as he cut his cake. They had thought that it would be so hilarious to scare him on his big day. It had leapt out at him just as the knife sliced through the big sixteen in the center of the cake.

He had moved so quickly that at first nobody knew what had happened. He had taken that long knife, still oozing with frosting, and plunged it straight into that monster’s heart. Then there had been a second, as that thing fell to the ground, when the whole room
drew in a breath and the world had stood still.

The thing lying at his feet blew out its last breath, a small red bubble that stood out vividly against the paleness of its painted smile. He watched the bubble grow, slowly at first and then faster, until it popped and with that pop the world began to turn again. Friends and cousins charged at him and grabbed his arms. His mother rushed shrieking to the side of that pitiful, stricken thing. He just smiled a big satisfied smile.

He couldn’t help it. Even as he was pulled to the floor, he smiled. Even as his mother sobbed over that thing’s bleeding corpse, he smiled. Even as he heard sirens growing in the distance, he smiled. None of it mattered. He’d had finally had his chance to kill one of those evil things and he’d done it. He’d killed it. He’d stabbed that horrid clown right through its filthy heart and he would never stop smiling.