MicroHorror

Pierson lay on the desert floor naked save long underwear, and he thrashed and gibbered under the afternoon sun as Roland attended him. He poured a few drops of water on Pierson’s head, and then he turned to Gail.

“That’s the last of it. He’s liable to die if he don’t get more water.”

Gail nodded. “Likely.”

Pierson had been riding sick two days, and around noon on the third, he fell from his horse and did not get back up again. He fidgeted and screamed in his delirium. On their first day’s ride out of town they had happened upon the thing–a rock half-buried and smoking in the dirt like an immense coal. Blackened. Shimmering green in the sunlight as if set with a thousand tiny emeralds. Pierson saw it first, and he rode over and tried to pry the shiny stones free with his knife while his companions stayed behind, cagey and impatient.

A posse pursued them.

Pierson was unable to loose a single stone from its mount, but when he rejoined the company there was something wrong with his head. He sweated as if his blood had been set ablaze, and he spoke madness and laughed like the chained occupants of padded cells. He drooled on himself and reeled in the saddle as if punch-drunk until finally he could ride no more.

“We best get movin’,” said Gail. “Posse, remember?”

“We need to get into town. Get Pierson to a doctor.”

“I ain’t ridin’ into no town. They’ll be after us with whips and guns and I don’t know what all. I’m ridin’ out. You comin’ or ain’t ye?”

“I’ll catch up to ye.”

“You suit yourself then.” And with that, Gail turned his horse and rode off into the sun’s declining.

Darkness fell like a thunderclap in that place, and sounds of screams roused Gail in the night. He leapt to his feet with his pistol drawn and looked east where he saw Roland dashing on foot across the desert floor and waving his arms about his head like a man beset with wasps. He was screaming at Gail to run, run for God’s sake. The thing’s coming. I cain’t stop it. More words indecipherable amongst the chilly desert winds.

Behind the fleeing man was Pierson. He ran across the desert with arms spread wide like a spectral Jesus Christ charlatan, and with each step he took, he seemed to cover the space of three. Roland was still screaming and gesturing when Pierson began to glow, and Gail watched slack-jawed as the light intensified and poured from Pierson’s skin as if the sun itself sat in his belly. The light engulfed Roland mid-stride and his screams ascended crazily in pitch as his body began to fall apart as if someone pulled loose the stitching of a scarecrow. It simply came to pieces, each running step jarring yet more hunks from his body until the screaming stopped. They fell to the ground awash with gore like morbid rain drops and then sat motionless and smoking in the blood-slaked dust.

“Oh my God.”

Gail raised his pistol and began to fire. Through the gray smoke, he saw the bullets disappear into Pierson’s vast body light, one, two, three, but Pierson never broke stride. He only quickened his pace, a nightmare creature emerging from the desert night like a runaway sun intent to burn the world. As he neared, Gail could see a smile stretched across Pierson’s face–elongated, clown-like–and the face itself was as pale and translucent like moonlit moth wings and his eyes glowed green like the stones that had cursed him.

The light was growing again. Gail mouthed a prayer to an unfamiliar god, and then he kept firing until the clicking of the empty cylinder sounded across the desert like an elegy penned by his own hand.