MicroHorror

“There’s something weird on the platform,” said Sonny. The homeless man had a voice that made it seem like he was always gurgling a little bit when he spoke.

Freddie the bartender was locking up the bar. It had been a slow night, his tips a mere forty-five dollars.

“I don’t have any money to give you tonight, Sonny.”

“I don’t want any.”

Stunned, Freddie turned to look at Sonny. His usually dark face seemed pale.

“You didn’t come here for a handout tonight?”

“No, I just want someone else to see.”

Freddie thought about it. Sonny was extremely poor and a little strange, but he had never seemed crazy. Freddie’s curiosity got the best of him.

“All right. Lead the way.”

The bar was on a mountain. The platform Sonny was referring to was at the end of the mountain’s only road and overlooked the city. The quickest way there was by car, but he was certain letting Sonny in his car would stink up the upholstery for a week. They took the trail through the woods instead.

“They said something about a mushroom.”

Freddie laughed. “They were probably talking about magic mushrooms! You’re taking me to see a bunch of junkies. I’m going to have to cut you off. No more peanuts or spare change. No more whiskey on cold nights.”

“I don’t want any of those things anymore. Seeing what I saw changes everything.”

Freddie had no response for that, but he was more curious.

He was getting winded, though. He spent too much time in a closed environment, sucking in secondhand smoke, and the climb was pretty steep.

It was a little while later that he heard something.

“What is that?”

“It’s them talking to each other.”

“It sounds like they’re talking over radios.”

“They’re not. You’ll see”

The voices grew silent a few seconds before Freddie and Sonny came out of the woods and stopped in their tracks. Several shadowy figures stood at the end of the lit platform. They were human-shaped, but didn’t appear to have a solid form, and when they moved, they seemed to distort the air around them. They appeared to be looking at the city below.

“What are you?” Sonny asked. “Why have you come here?”

“It doesn’t really matter that much for you,” a woman’s voice said. It was hard to tell which one of the things the voice had come from.

Freddie was silent. All he could do is wonder what this was. Was it a dream? Was it a trick?

Sonny walked up and touched one. His hand went through, though, and when he pulled it back, the silhouette reshaped.

“You’re not even here,” Sonny said.

“No. We are not. Coming here in corporeal form would be impossible, not to mention dangerous. We just wanted to witness an alternative history.”

Sonny broke down crying.

Freddie moved closer. “You’re from the future?”

“No, not from the future, but a future. We are definitely not from your future. Now be quiet. We don’t want to be distracted. We want to witness the beginning.”

“The beginning of what?” Freddie asked.

None of them answered.

“The beginning of what?”

Sonny spoke through sobs. “They’re not junkies, and it’s not magic mushrooms they were talking about. They were talking about a mushroom cloud.”

Freddie stood there silent for a few seconds. He thought about what had been all over the news lately, about several of the world’s leaders bickering and making threats. He had thought the threats were idle, until now. He turned and moved back into the woods.

“Where are you going?” asked Sonny.

Freddie ignored him. He moved as quickly as he could. He was just going to go back to the bar, get in his car, go home, go to bed, and forget what had just happened. That’s what he told himself, anyway.

But he was still in the woods when he heard the civil service alarms come on.

• Copyright: © 2008 Joshua Scribner