MicroHorror

Will had only just talked with her a few moments ago. “Just a few moments ago,” his mind echoed. These were the same words that he had used when his brother called to tell him about the accident.

He still couldn’t process the information that his brother had given him. She was dead. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he told himself that that’s how it happens sometimes–a person is alive one minute, and a moment later they are gone. Yet, he still could not accept it. It was just too strange that he had only just spoken to her a few moments ago.

There was a knock at the door. While half of his mind still played chess with the logic of loss, the other half shot the necessary impulses to his limbs so that he got up, seemingly on autopilot, to answer the door. When he opened it, he saw his wife.

She was in a frantic state and mumbling something about losing her key to the door. “It should be on your key ring with your car keys,” Will said, blankly. He followed that up with, “Are you okay?”

“Do I look like I’m okay?” she asked. He had to admit that she did, considering what his brother had just told him. “I need my key!” she repeated.

“Abby, the door is open, you don’t need the key anymore,” he urged.

“Yes!” she insisted. “I do!”

“But you’re home now,” he reasoned.

“You don’t understand, Will,” she said. “If I don’t get the key, he will come and take me.”

At this, he became uneasy, so in an effort to put things straight in his mind, he started from scratch. “Jerry just called and said you were in a car crash. He said you…” his voice broke off and he fought against the onslaught of sorrow at the idea of losing her. “He said you didn’t make it.”

She looked him dead in the eye and responded, “I didn’t make it.” His eyes grew wide. “But you’re going to have to deal with that on your own… later. For now, I need the key, Will.”

“What key?”

“Please, Will, he’s coming!”

“Who’s coming?”

“I can’t explain, but you have to let me go…” she pleaded. “There’s a part of you that won’t accept losing me, and that’s the key–that’s what’s preventing me from going through the door.”

Everything got dark, like the sun was wearing sunglasses. Even though the sky was clear, and the lights in the house were still on, Will definitely sensed something weird was going on.

“I love you, Will, but you have to let me go!”

This was too much. A few moments ago he was having a “normal” conversation with his wife. A few moments after that, he was trying to make sense of the idea that she had been killed in an auto accident. And now, well, the shift in circumstances was quite a bit for Will to take in. His mind decided to put the situation on pause, while he sensibly went over all the details and either accepted or rejected this strange scene.

“Just calm down a minute, will ya?” he demanded. After all, since she was still standing before him, he was compelled to regard her in the same way he had in the past during one of her many “flustered-panicky moments,” as he called them. He turned and walked back to the chair he was in when his brother called.

In the doorway, Abby made a painful, groaning sound as he sat down. Her whole visage then became a glowing ember. Will’s eyes narrowed as he wondered, “What now?” She then started screaming and broke apart into a million tiny embers, which floated in various directions and then disappeared.

Will’s mind went back to thinking about the phone call his brother had given him just a few moments ago. He still wasn’t sure he could believe that his wife was gone.