MicroHorror

The wanderer had been riding muleback for two days through the worst dust storm he had ever seen when he realized he had lost his way. He rode on through the night, praying for a break in the swirling dust clouds so that he might take a reckoning by the stars. But as the hours elapsed, there was no break in anything save his spirit. He rode on.

The country was as lonely and strange as the landscape of another world, and upon that dusty plain rode no soul save he. He squinted, he coughed, and his throat ached, as if he were not traveling across a desert but across a snow globe, filled not with water and snowflakes but with dirt and thirst absolute. So when the dust cloud broke finally and he saw the boy, the wanderer stopped immediately. Even the mule seemed taken aback. It watched with its sleepy eyes.

The boy was sitting on the steps of his ramshackle house with his head in his hands as if posing for some western renaissance sculpture, and indeed the whole of the scene looked surreal, perhaps the sight one might encounter after peeking behind the reefs of a dirty and abandoned fish tank. The boy’s hands were tucked between his legs, out of view. He was not moving, and the only sounds about were the whipping of the wind and the boy’s sobs. The wanderer contemplated riding on, but his thirst compelled him to dismount, wipe the dirt from his eyes, and walk over with his tired mule in tow.

The boy did not look up until the wanderer called out to him, and when he raised his head, tears lined his dusty face like brown veins. The boy licked his lips. The wanderer looked down at him and smiled, his white teeth standing in such stark contrast to his dirty face as to look almost cartoonlike in the dusty darkness.

“Evenin’,” said the wanderer. The kid licked the salty, dirty tears from his lips again. He sniffed.

“Howdy.”

The wanderer smiled down at him. “What’s wrong, son?” He chuckled nervously. “Yeh look like somebody’s done killed yer dog.” He stepped closer, and now he saw drops of blood on the kid’s face mixing with his tears.

“Naw,” said the boy, “but I wish somebody would.”

That was when the door behind the boy creaked open and the dog came out. It was huge, prehistoric-looking, and blood drenched its body, and from its teeth swung a severed human head. A woman’s head. The head’s eyes were wide, bloodshot and sightlessly staring out into the abyss where her soul had gone, and her mouth hung open, as if in the middle of saying “Oh” when she lost her head. It appeared to have been chewed off.

The beast held it by its hair as it swung with each step like a bloody pendulum with blood dripping from its neck stump. One, two, three dark red drops of blood fell through the dusty spume that wasn’t real and plopped onto the porch. Two circular, smoking holes were above the dog’s reddened eyes. They oozed blood. The animal dropped the head upon sighting the wanderer, sat back on its haunches, and growled, its teeth gleaming red as if painted.

The wanderer’s jaw fell open as he peered first at the dog and then into the darkened recesses of the makeshift house beyond. Most of what he saw within was drenched with darkness; the rest was drenched in red like a slaughterhouse basement. The dog moved forward again, each step leaving a bloody pawprint upon the dusty porch. The animal was shaking as it stood, as if engulfed by sickness, rage, or some other third ailment yet unknown.

The boy picked up his hands. He was holding a revolver. Two bullets were missing from its chamber. The boy stared at the weapon glumly.

“I tried,” the boy said, “but it ain’t worked yet.”