MicroHorror

“Can you shoot it?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you?”

“That’s different.” The pair fell silent as a young woman walked by. She watched them with caged eyes. When she’d gone, Rich looked back up. “He bit somebody the other day.”

“Did he?”

“Yeah. On the bus. Nothing major, just a little awkward for me, as you can imagine.”

“Did you have your coat on?”

“Yeah, but I think he pulled the zipper with his teeth. He’s got a couple. He’s crafty like that. But it was just a bite. Maybe he’s calming down.”

“You really believe that?”

Rich didn’t answer. A man walked up and stood near them, reading a newspaper. He smelled like a mule. Rich and his friend stepped away to where the wind was less disagreeable. Rich looked around. No one was watching them.

“Let me show you what I bought the other day.” He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the smallest fedora his friend had ever seen. It was dark brown with a circumference of no more than four inches. It even had a tan strap going around the brim.

Rich opened his coat.

From his belly stretched a six-inch mass of pale gray flesh. It had a head that was as lopsided and lumpy as a rotten tomato, with one white eye the size of a pencil eraser that jutted out from its socket like the porthole of a submarine. It had one arm, and it stood out crooked and horrible like a compound-fractured leg. It had two tiny fingers, each with a cracked yellow nail. They were clawing at something invisible in the air. Blue veins lined the thing’s skin at every point. It was clicking its two teeth, teeth that protruded awkwardly from its tiny, slobbering mouth like unattended tombstones in a boneyard.

Rich put the fedora on the thing’s head. Perfect fit. He watched it. It was indifferent to the presence of the hat. It just hung there from Rich’s belly, drooling and clicking its teeth.

“Kind of cute, don’t you think?” Rich said. “Besides, he only bit the woman. That’s not a big deal.”

“You’re not going to kill it, are you?”

Rich scratched his chin. The thing wrenched its head up and looked at Rich, tilting the fedora rakishly on its dreadful head. Rich reached down and straightened it again.

“If it kills anyone else, I will.”

“What about the other one?”

Rich reached around and scratched his back. He could feel the grape-sized head of the thing that was growing there, lumpy and soft. It shifted slightly.

“I haven’t gotten that far yet.”