MicroHorror

Edna couldn’t sleep. She opened one lazy, sleep-encrusted eye to stare at the prosaic brown paneled wall across the way. She thought she heard the drain beckon her again, this time more insistent. Edna tossed and tumbled about, searching for a position that offered rest, respite.

She raged a mighty struggle inside her head whether to answer the call, or remain where she lay, tormented. This instance was the third in as many hours and each time Edna denied the impulse to rise.

It was too direct, too detailed with its chatter. The scenes tumbled over and over in her head.

Angered, Edna swiveled out of bed and plodded to the bathroom. She plucked the light switch upward, drowning her eyes in light. She looked over to the bathtub, her eyes focused on the small oval beneath the spout. Edna felt her face changing, twisting with revulsion in anticipation of whatever new nightmare soon to be revealed.

Edna kneeled down on the square brown rug next to the tub. She rested her elbows on the edge, leaning in with an attentive ear. Tears beat at the gates of her lashes, threatening to spill forth.

She lowered. Angled. Stretched.

What would be this new thing, realized?

Information received: “He’s just finished. He crept into Meagan’s room while she was asleep. Well, dreaming, in fact; something about Polar Bears and meadows. What juxtaposition, right? The wounds from earlier in the evening were still painful, but lessening in their heat. She must have thought his attention would now be centered elsewhere, but no. He laser beamed his intentions toward her once again, his darling of all her eleven years. She looked too much like an angel. He loves her so much. He would do anything…”

Edna thrust herself backward, banging the left side of her head on the cold floor. She hoped to lose consciousness. She wanted to relinquish any responsibility that coherence and understanding demanded of her. It was not to be so. She processed the details, was bonused with a throbbing noggin and a heavy heart.

What could she do? She was forty-five years old, five-foot-five at 110 pounds. Foul language was the only offensive she had at her disposal. That and another important question loomed: How could any information transmitted via drain be trusted? She certainly wasn’t crazy. She knew, intellectually, that bathroom drains can’t send forth information.

Edna shuffled over to the opposite wall, resting her head on the sink. She glowered at the bathtub, silently cursing whatever it was that lived inside it. It was a disrupter, but was it malign?

Losing the internal debate on whether to hear more, Edna crawled back toward the tub.

After hearing the latest horror, Edna got to her feet. She went to her closet and pulled down the large metal box secured by a Master combination lock. It was the first time she had opened it since first storing it there two years ago. She just looked at it a long moment, finally bringing it down and setting it on the bed.

The drain was right.

Though she was about to do the right thing, what Edna didn’t know, could not possibly understand, was the source of the drain’s voice.

Sandra Thomas, mother of Meagan Thomas and next door neighbor to Edna Davis, was bound by leather straps, her ankles, thighs, and wrists restrained. She was lying naked, face down in her bath tub, the exit wound from the pile driving force of a .45 caliber shell blooming like a flower; her lips were so close to the drain, in this repose she looked prepared for the softest kiss.