MicroHorror

Allswald Clarot stared at the image in the mirror. No guilt. No shame. He grinned. It was how he liked it.

A loud, steady voice came from the next room. “She’s sorry.”

Allswald rushed from the bathroom and saw his subject still quartered to the bedposts. Her eyes were wide open, not frantic, just energized, and her lips were straight.

“How did you get your gag out?”

“It wasn’t hard. And once I knew that Bella Transon was sorry, I had to tell you.”

The name sent shivers through him. He backed away and steadied himself against the wall.

“You didn’t know it, but you were looking for a certain image while sitting in that bar. I assumed a form close to that image, so you would follow me out, and then I let you capture me.”

“Shut up, slut, or I’ll end you right now!”

She shook her head. “Poor Allswald. All those girls you killed, trying to prove to yourself that she couldn’t make you feel shame anymore.”

He pulled his switchblade from his pocket, but just held it, folded in his hand. “How do you know all this? And how do you know my name?”

Her expression still hadn’t changed. “It’s right there in your mind, with all the rest.”

He flipped out the blade. “You lie!”

She didn’t even look at the knife. “No, it’s true. I saw what you saw in the mirror a little while ago, saw what you wanted to feel. I went deeper inside you, to the places you don’t look at any more, to the root of what you’ve become, and I found Bella.”

He stepped closer. “I swear I’ll cut your head right off!”

“In the fifth grade, Bella used to tease you. She humiliated you daily in front of the other children. You felt it then, the terrible shame.”

He stuck the knife to her throat.

Suddenly, her skin seemed to melt. He backed away and watched her body become smaller and her face became that of another person. He resumed his posture against the wall.

The woman that had become the child Bella Transon melted again and reformed into the woman that just resembled Bella Transon. “When someone becomes such a significant part of you, they leave a trace of their soul. I used that to find her. And she is very sorry. She not only hurt you; she hurt many others, and the guilt eats at her every day. She has crippling depression.”

Allswald barely felt the knife slip from his hand. He felt something unfamiliar burning inside. “Really?”

“Yes, Allswald. Really.”

Tears formed in his eyes, and he sat on the floor.

“You’re welcome,” she said, though he hadn’t thanked her. “I wanted you to be free of that, Allswald.”

He looked up and saw her skin was melting. She slipped from her binds and became an amorphous blood of gray gook in the middle of the bed. That blob became a person with a giant anaconda head.

She spoke in the same voice she had before. “I still have to eat you, though. I mean, a shape-shifter has to feed, and I don’t feel much guilt when my prey has been a predator.”

She was on him before he could move.