MicroHorror

Ben Parkins held a flashlight in front of him as he walked through the woods in back of his house that cool night. He had been having the worst nightmare for the past two weeks. A disheveled and scraggly man waited for him in the woods, but when Ben searched him out, the man had disappeared. Ben didn’t want to venture out into the woods but he knew he had to. The nightmares seemed so real.

Ben stopped when he saw the stranger across from him, in the exact same spot as in the nightmare. He stood by a tall birch tree that was deprived of leaves. The stranger appeared exactly as he did in the nightmare. He was tall with long, curly brown hair, which suggested to Ben that the man hadn’t been to a barber in quite some time. His beard stretched down to his chest. Besides the facial hair, the man wore torn blue jeans and his gray T-shirt was too big for his thin body.

As Ben slowly walked over to the man, the stranger took out a pair of scissors and began cutting off his beard. Now face to face, Ben thought the stranger looked oddly familiar. He reeked of body odor. Ben figured the man was homeless due to his appearance.

Snip… snip… snip as the stranger clipped his beard.

“Ben Parkins,” the stranger simply said.

“That’s correct. How did you know my name?”

The stranger did not answer. All he did was cut away at his beard. More hair dropped to the leaf-covered ground.

“Look, I don’t know what’s going on, but I want it to stop or else I’m calling the cops.”

“You should, Ben Parkins. You need help or you will do something terrible.”

As the stranger continued to snip away his beard, Ben stared in horror at the stranger… at himself, twenty years older than he was now. Ben shook his head. No, this can’t be happening. I’m not going insane!

“You’re not insane yet,” the future Ben said, reading his mind. “But you must fight the anger raging inside of you. If you don’t, you will do terrible things.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The rage will consume you. Ben Parkins will hurt so many people.”

The stranger, Ben Parkins’ future self, disappeared into the night, leaving Ben all alone to ponder the strange and unsettling omen.