MicroHorror

The monolith was a frightening person, a looming figure flooded with rage and paranoia. Almost seven feet tall, he looked like a pro wrestler or NFL football or NBA basketball player. But he had no athletic ability. Fortunately, he was a gifted and prolific writer who wrote science fiction novels. One of his novels had been sold to MGM for seven figures. A commercially successful writer, he had enough money to see a top-notch shrink every day of the week if he wished. He chose to see Dr. Samuel Woods three times a week in his office on Ocean Avenue in Brooklyn, New York.

The monolith sat across from Dr. Samuel Woods, a tiny, balding man of eighty, with dark brown eyes and a weak chin. A gentle man with a soft, quiet disposition, the doctor possessed a cornucopia of compassion and emotional strength.

“Why do you want to kill me, Doc?”

“What gives you that impression?”

“Don’t know. Just call it raw, animal instinct.”

“Is that proof?”

“Maybe not. But you got me doped up on Risperdal, Seroquel, Depakote, and Ambien.”

“Are you taking the meds?”

“Sometimes. They make me sick. Guess I’m gonna go away for a couple of weeks. The Voices warned me about you and the others. Said you might be aliens.”

“Aliens?”

“Yes.”

“Did they command you to do anything?”

“Well, of course. They told me to kill you and my family. Don’t worry. I won’t. Not yet. Maybe never. Got to get away.”

“Where are you going?”

“Can’t tell you. You might follow me there and… Well, I’ll see you when I get back.”

“Take your meds. You’ll feel better.”

“Maybe.”

On August 1, the monolith drove off to Ogunquit, a small town in southern Maine. He left Brooklyn an hour before the hurricane arrived. When he heard the news on the car radio, he realized he had escaped more than a storm. The aliens had arrived, he concluded. The aliens were finally here.

He stayed in Ogunquit three weeks. He felt safe there, and thought of relocating. But he had to return to Brooklyn. It was his home.

He returned to Brooklyn on a hot, humid dog-day afternoon. When he got out of his car, the toxic, suffocating air assaulted him.

“Christ! They poisoned the air!” he cried out. Then he sauntered off to his two-story Manhattan Beach house one block from the beach.

Soon, he was home. The manicured lawn looked different, perhaps, too perfect. And the Voices whispered to him at first and then screamed inside his brain: Kill your wife and two daughters!

When he entered the familiar surroundings, that seemed eerily strange, he began to sweat. His heart beat rapidly–uncontrollably, like a runaway train without a motorman. His hands trembled and his body shook. Dizzy and faint, he felt an alien force sucking the life-force out of him, replacing it with the foul scents of human debris, death, feces, urine, vomit, and sweat.

“Anyone home?” he shouted.

Suddenly, his wife and two daughters descended the stairs. They smiled lovingly at him, but he knew they were aliens. He rushed to the door and scurried off.

The monolith sat across from Dr. Woods.

“They’re aliens, Doc–not my flesh and blood. They came in the storm, an alien virus that kills humans. They snatched their bodies.”

“What evidence do you have?”

“Pure animal instinct.”

“Did you hurt them?”

“No.”

“That’s good. But what about me? Am I an alien too?”

He gazed quizzically at the doctor who removed his human mask.

“What are you?”

“Death.”

Propelled by rage and only a trace of his life-force, he lunged at the grotesque creature that now possessed the little doctor’s body. The other took out a .357 Magnum and blew the monolith’s head off.

Grinning sardonically at no one in particular, it waited for the next storm and the arrival of its alien comrades.

• Copyright: © 2009 Mel Waldman