MicroHorror

An Appalachian apple bitten to the core rested in the palm of Percy’s pretty teen daughter, Missy, who wore a pink party dress and blue flannel shirt. She sat on a discarded sofa, using a cushion for a boot-rest, while his three boys searched for bonfire wood. They were gonna burn it all at sundown–cremate their Mama’s memory with a blazing mountain of broken remains, until the preacher walked up the path leading to their two-room crippled shack, slumped in the dimple on the hill–like it was ashamed.

“Howdy, Percy.” Preacherman tipped his sweaty straw hat, half expecting to catch expletives spat from the drunkard’s mouth, but Percy had a morbid mellow malaise holding his tongue in check and he just grunted, “Hey,” with a back throat growl.

Missy tossed the apple to the ground and a worm slithered out onto the pine-straw path. She moved closer to the chopping block, finger-combing her dirty hair ‘til her palms were greasy, then rubbed her bare knees, making them shine like her Daddy’s bald head. She didn’t make eye contact with the preacher, but she didn’t take her eyes off him neither. She studied his muddy loafers and frayed tweed trousers, looking for signs she was too young to read, but her Daddy knew what lies were embedded in the man of the cloth’s clothing. He’d smelled the odor of her Mama on the preacher many times before; this day was no different. Missy caught the scent as well and one whiff was too much.

“I come to talk to you about Bonnie. She’s worried sick about the younguns and wants to see ’em, if’n you say it’s okay. It ain’t right to deny children their mother’s love. Even if she ain’t all there, she’s still their mother. Can’t change that.”

“I know she birthed those babies, but that don’t mean she’s their mother. She ain’t fit for mothering; you know that better than most.”

“Now, Percy, I came up here and tried to shake those demons loose, the one’s that got hold of her, but she was too far gone by the time you called me. She’s doing some better these days and she calls for her kids every evening, as soon as the sun goes down.”

“She does a lot of thangs soon as the sun goes down. That’s why I don’t want these kids around her. She needs to be kept under lock and key, like you promised.”

Preacherman took a deep breath then turned his attention toward Missy. “Missy, wouldn’t you like to visit your Mama?”

Missy sat silently, choking her shiny bald knees with her bare hands, digging her nails into her pale flesh until it looked like teeth marks, then she raised one eye brow and said, “What d’you thank?”

“I don’t know; that’s why I’m asking you.”

She looked over at the chopping block and had a flashback of her mother decapitating a chicken, grabbing up its feet, while it flapped bloody feathers ‘til its blood drained out. The next vision she had was of her mother holding up her baby sister by the feet, while her lifeless head sat on the block staring at Missy, who had been the one to sharpen the blade.

Percy turned up a jug of moonshine to his mouth and chugged a big swaller, then said, “Might as well take Missy to see her; she’s just as sick as her Ma.”

That’s when Missy’s eyes rolled back. She sprung up from the sofa, gripped the axe, and split Percy’s skull like a pumpkin. At the scent of blood, her brothers scurried out of the woods, arms loaded with twigs, eyes like boiled eggs–glossy and white. Preacher saw the family resemblance for the first time.

Missy grabbed Preacherman by the ankles. The boys tied him to a pine log and hoisted him over the fire. At sunset, they roasted his marshmallow ass singing Appalachian campfire songs their Mama taught them.