MicroHorror

Charlie had never heard the word malice, but he sure as hell knew what it felt like. His dad could get pretty mad, but Mrs. Kowalski topped him out. She was real sore and he was the focus of anger so hot it scorched his soul.

“You are wicket und bad boy. May you rot for vot you did, Charlie Brown.”

Thirteen-year-old Charlie staggered as though she had hit him. The energy in her spite was like a punch between the eyes. Behind her mother’s skirts, Ginny Kowalski watched and smirked. They both knew she was the wicked one here, but Charlie was no snitch, and anyway Ginny was a girl; who would believe him over her?

Even now over fifty years later, he could recall the moment perfectly. For right then, as Ginny’s mother glared at him, a tiny pebble of doubt was dislodged in the minds of those townsfolk who were watching. A pebble that started an avalanche of bigotry carrying him away from everything he had ever known and out into a world that made sure he never forgot he was an outcast.

Charlie had existed ever since on the edges of society. He had been used, abused and cast aside, time and time again, by whoever had found a temporary satisfaction in someone more wretched than themselves. Now he had fetched up in Indiana, or some such place. He wasn’t sure because he had never finished school, so he didn’t read too good. Couldn’t write or figure much either, and at his age even stacking shelves was a trial, so he’d just drifted, existing on road-kill and handouts. Now he had fetched up against this shack, a place even more derelict than he was, and here, worn down and weary, he had settled to await his fate.

The way he’d lived, critters of some variety or other were always around. Some had tried to chaw on him and in turn he’d chawed on a good few of them. He’d got snake bit a couple of times, but then he’d just heated up his skinning knife and burnt out the bad stuff, after he’d killed the snake of course. Then he ate the snake. Snake was good. Tasted like chicken.

But it weren’t no snake that had bit him on the butt yesterday. At least no snake he could find. He’d dug at his ass with the red-hot tip of his knife, but even so he could feel something working into his vitals and eating him up from the inside. He’d clawed at himself with his ragged, dirty fingernails and even got the skillet hot and sat on that, but apart from the fearsome pain it didn’t make no difference; he still sensed something nibbling away. Then he got bit again and this time he saw and killed the spider. It was a fiddleback and Charlie knew he could be in trouble. Fiddleback bites sometimes went bad and sometimes, very bad. Fiddleback bites could rot the very flesh from your bones and sure enough the bite on his hand was turning black. Charlie built up the fire and prepared for some cutting.

But it wasn’t till he tried to settle back down again, blood running over his fingers, that he got an inkling of just how much trouble he was in. He got closer to the ground than he should have done and there was a warm, wet squelching in his pants that wasn’t going to be good whatever had caused it. He pushed his jeans down, rolled on his side and stared into Hell. Most of his left cheek and half his thigh was black streaked with white, like a part-burnt log, and as he stretched a lump just fell off. A moment later blood began to ooze. Charlie had never heard the word necrosis, but he sure as hell knew what it felt like.

“Shoot, Mrs. Kowalski,” he muttered, “you cursed me real good.”