MicroHorror

The spaceship crashed onto Earth with all the subtlety of a drunken Stegosaurus getting horny on its wedding night.

It was a miracle that anything survived.

But something did.

Captain Ulysses Baxter blinked and coughed, fighting through cracked metal and burning fumes, his body and mind threatening sensory overload. Thousands of years in stasis in space would do that to you.

Still, he stumbled out into the world, quite unaware that he was about to become the most famous man on it. And amongst the most envied, too.

“Your family are all dead.”

Doctor Hess delivered this in a flat, dull monotone.

Baxter blinked.

“On the plus side, though–“

“There’s a plus side to that?” Baxter, whose memories had yet to return, could not even remember his family. But this seemed like the right thing to say.

“Oh, most certainly.” Envy flickered in the eyes of Doctor Hess, physician and surgeon–but never anything more than that–to the stars. “You see, you’re famous.”

“I am?”

Hess nodded. “Ridiculously so.” He nodded towards the window. “And all those glamour models outside, the ones that followed you here, want to sleep with you.”

“Is that what they are?” Baxter squinted. “Hey, why is that one’s skin all funny-looking, like that?”

Hess was about to answer the question. Answer it both honestly and fairly. But then two things happened at once–unrelated events combined to create an inflammable situation.

Firstly, Hess saw whom Baxter was talking about–saw a face that he recognized well.

And next he saw, as his heart fragmented into tiny pieces, something on Baxter’s medical records.

And a decision was made.

One that led to death.

Baxter was indeed famous, and his unexpected return to the world had a knock-on effect on just about everything.

Football and rugby players were out; now everyone wanted to date an astronaut.

They added a new section, set in deep space, to the TV show Britain’s Got Tragedies.

Amidst all this spectacle, the Doctor called Hess could do nothing but watch as his dreams–far-fetched ones, but dreams all the same–floated further away into nothingness. But there was always hope, cruel hope–for was it not true that the girl he loved had not caught Baxter’s eye yet?

It was indeed.

But he knew she would, sooner or later. That was why he hadn’t told Baxter about the thing he’d found on the man’s medical records. That strange allergy of his.

After a riotous but fun scandal in which he played all five members of the world’s biggest girl band off against each other (they still didn’t break up), Baxter was almost tired of the opposite sex. But he’d make an exception for the honey creeping up the road towards him.

“Funny,” he said as he squirted suntan oil onto Gillian West’s back. “I’ve not been out with a glamour model yet.”

“Oh?” It didn’t really surprise her, that she was his first; she’d also be the best. After all, no one else had what she had. Doctor Hess hadn’t performed the full-body procedure on anyone else. Shame he’d had to ruin things by trying it on with her afterwards… and then all that crank mail. Never trust a doctor.

“I remember seeing you, that day at the doctor’s, though,” Baxter went on, after coughing to clear his throat a little. “I asked him why your skin looked so funny.”

“Funny?” She fluttered her eyelashes. “Don’t you like it?”

“Sure I do. But what is it?”

“100% silicone,” she replied. “An operation totally unique to me.”

But as she said this, Baxter collapsed to the ground.

His throat closing up.

His face going purple.

His body attempting to fight off an attack.

And failing.

And in the office of the lovelorn and possibly insane Doctor Hess, a single tear fell down upon the medical records of Ulysses Baxter, almost, but not quite, obscuring four fateful words:

Highly Allergic to Silicone.

• Copyright: © 2010 Shaun Avery