MicroHorror

Before the butcher knife comes down, I try talking with The Monster.

“Please,” my whisper is like fingernails shredding on cement. “Don’t do this.”

This time, The Monster talks back.

“Do what?” She says. Her face is right against me–the bone-white of Her flared cheekbones sunken into the milk of mine; the gleam of horns and fangs my crown; Her eyes everywhere, eating my vision.

“Don’t hurt.”

“Hurt is inevitable, Ava.” I feel the caress of Her breath beneath my hair.

“Why?”

“Hurt makes the world go round,” She tells me. The knife seems that much heavier. “Hurt informs appetite. Appetite creates action.”

“Why this, though?”

“Why what?”

“Why kill?” I swallow. Is it my shivering that makes the knife shine so? Is it Hers? Is it something else?

“Because the hurt has to end.”

“End?”

“There has to be an end to all that hurt.”

“Through murder?” It sounds insane. Or maybe I just wish it was. The Monster is as clean and smooth as the butcher blade as She answers.

“So long as there is life, there is pain. There is the lie of self-definition. There is the injustice of appetite. There is suffering.

“Suffering?”

“Loss. Loneliness. Longing.”

And She is so right. I felt so alone. Among my peers, under my parents, against the gulf of my future.

Not now, though. Not in this moment–in the perfect neatness of this ending. Not with Her.

I don’t even bother to claim I don’t want this.

“Is this the only way?” I ask Her.

“This is not just the only way. This is how.”

There is so much trembling now. The Monster soaks it into Her sidereal calm. There is no distance between us. Her face is not just in mine. It is mine. Her breath; my breath. Her eyes; my eyes. Her way; my only release.

“I just want the hurt to end,” I whine.

“Yes,” She says, soft and certain as any mother ever was.

“I just want it to end for everyone.” I feel so much shivering now but the knife is smooth and easy and still as fate.

“Yes. Everyone.”

“Everyone?”

“Everyone.”

She means it. She is certain. Her breath blows through me like that of stars. She is certain.

I am too.

I bring the knife down. It enters the neck of the girl I have pinned below me and it goes through the base of her skull as smooth as an exhalation until it exits her mouth.

I don’t know her name. I just know it doesn’t matter now. I know that’s all that matters.

I know my name. I am certain.

I am The Monster now.

• Copyright: © 2010 Matthew C. Funk