MicroHorror

I duck and weave my way through brush and undergrowth, between old hemlocks and pines. I feel a wave push me onward as I seek the source of this feeling in my chest, urging me toward some hidden source. I know this has worked for me before, this knack for finding, for revealing. I used to apply this craft often, in the times of my youth when my awakening was fresh and new. It once seemed so effortless. Now I doubt myself, wondering if this has all been in my head. Have I lost my mind to this fantasy? Luck might have assisted me before more often than I wanted to admit. But now, I wonder if this is all folly, if I am just playing the fool and wandering aimlessly. But as I crest the next ridge I feel it pull again, stronger now. The feeling in my chest explodes in excitement as I rush forward, hunting, preying.

How long have we been on this goddamned plane!? I can’t even remember when the Captain said we left the terminal! I swear if this kid behind me doesn’t stop screaming I’m going to… UGH! He’s kicking my seat again! I should say something to his parents. They obviously don’t give a crap. Maybe his father would care if I slammed my foot in his face! And I can’t tell who’s worse, sitting here stuffed between a yeti and a yuppie. Mister smelly, hairy wrestler keeps shoving his elbow in my gut trying to get his big melon low enough to look out the window. Then I have Biff the day trader yammering on his Motorola about his new Porsche even though the hostess asked us to turn off all cell phones and electronics. OH GREAT! Now the brat behind me is watching another freakin’ Barney DVD at full volume and Biff has just kicked it up a notch to show who’s got the bigger brass balls. My arms have fallen asleep because both of these jerk-offs are hogging the armrests in their assault on my sanity. I’d completely freak out but that guy in front of me has been giving me the evil eye since I sat down. He’s projecting the “don’t worry, I’m not an Air Marshal, make your move” vibe and imagining all the ways he’d like to punish me for bumping his seat even though it’s because Biff and the yeti keep knocking into it and I’m just trying to sit here and not lose my cool. I’ve had to use the bathroom since I got on this damned thing and I’m trapped. MAN! What is this fucking Sasquatch looking at out there!? There’s nothing to see! Wait… seriously, there’s nothing out there. Is that fog? It’s just perfectly white out the window. I don’t even see the wing. And now Porsche boy is talking even louder! How does a human voice get that loud!? It’s starting to hurt my ears and my headache is getting worse. Now Captain Howdy is telling us it’ll be another hour before we can taxi out to the runway and wait some more! GOD when will this end!? We still have a… actually I have no idea how long this flight is supposed to be. I think I have a connecting flight out of Boston or something I’ll most likely miss. I can’t even remember where the hell I’m going. Am I going to my parents’ in Florida or am I on a business trip? Will Biff please shut the fuck up!? I’m going to shove that cell phone up his ass in a minute. My iPod is dead, I lost my book, and I’ve read this stupid Airline magazine ten times already. I wish they would at least bring us some water. OOOFFF! “Hey, watch it!” Stupid Sasquatch guy just leers at me and keeps looking out the window at the nothing which is freaking me out pretty badly right now. Now that brat is KICKING MY SEAT AGAIN! And those sing song rhymes are driving me crazy! And Mister Air Marshal is glaring at me again because Biff kicked his seat while crossing his legs and kicked me in the knee to boot! My back is killing me, I just need to stretch or something. Where the hell are we!? How long have we been on this goddamned plane!?

It’s been three weeks since the infection began spreading throughout the city. It wasn’t like the movies, where the infection takes over in hours. This takes days, long, agonizing days. You can see the signs start to show very slowly. It sometimes starts with the eyes, sometimes in the veins near a wound. It doesn’t just spread through saliva. It can be breathed, rubbed, left on items like staph or just mysteriously contracted through no contact at all. That’s why it spread so fast; there was no way to tell how to protect from it or who might be carrying.

My wife contracted it earlier this week and she’s already starting to act strangely. I can see the first discolored spots in her left eye and the veins in her hands are starting to darken and swell. It looks like it must have entered through her cuticles by a hangnail. We’ve been stuck in an office building since we were turned away from the Quarantine border. They still think they can stop it but infected must have gotten out before they shut everything down. It doesn’t matter much now. We’ve been living off of snack food for more than a week and while there were ten of us originally holding up here after the riots, there are only five of us now.

The first to turn was a woman who was showing signs within the first day. Her eyes went pale and then took on a kaleidoscopic pattern. She started becoming easily agitated and angry with no provocation. We all agreed to use other floors for self quarantine. Once the veins start to swell, it’s pretty much a forgone conclusion. And as my wife has been clinging to my side since this started I can only assume I’ll be next. She’s been getting angry with me and knows what’s coming. I haven’t seen any signs in my own eyes yet or I would volunteer to go with her. Every time I pass the stairwell I can hear the others shrieking and clawing behind the security-locked fire doors. No one has said anything yet but we both know it’s coming. They are keeping their distance from us and eyeing me suspiciously.

The sun is setting now and I see helicopters in the distance evacuating what’s left of the border guards. Looks like they’ve given up. There is a television babbling about protocols and contingencies in the break room where we’ve set up a makeshift kitchen. And I hear the outraged voices of the others yelling “They can’t do that! What are we going to do!?” I am not much interested as my wife lies in my arms, asleep for now. I can almost watch the color of her skin changing. When she wakes she’ll be even less of the person I love. The word “nuclear” comes to my ears and I suddenly feel a little better. I think I will carry her up to the roof and watch the show.

God, help me. What’s a father to do?

Somehow I knew it from the moment we found out my wife was pregnant. The violent mood swings, the crazy accusations, the late-night fights all pointed to some malignant force. Friends and family told me it was my imagination… that and the fact that I married a bitch. Of course they tried to tell me so before we married but as many of you may have known the cold hard reality of an abusive relationship, it’s just not that easy to walk away sometimes. But when she told me she was… “late”… my heart froze.

Months later we stood before a Justice of the Peace, me in an ill fitting, hand-me-down suit and she in of all things a white dress. Even the county clerk smirked at her standing there like a scowling snow angel with swollen belly and fake daisies in her hair. My friend Dan stood beside me with the rings and whispered “Dude, are you really, really, REALLY sure about this?” Being the only person she hadn’t alienated, he was my only friend left. I wanted to tell him “NO NO NO NO NO, I’m not sure! Get me the hell out of this!” But alas, the “I do” was said and the papers signed.

Over the next few weeks we fought nonstop. We never even got a honeymoon. I was pulling double shifts in a copy center and a liquor store to make ends meet while she sat on her grouchy ass ordering God-knows-what off of QVC. The credit cards built and she just got meaner by the day. I worked my ass off to try to keep up with the bills but we were losing ground. I tried reasoning with her and she just spat venom in my face. These were dark times indeed. I knew this kind of negativity would influence our unborn child but what could I do? She refused therapy or counseling of any kind. I felt quite hopeless.

Just a few months further on, there we were in a cabin in the mountains, her in a tub with some cornflake in linens telling her to “let go” and “let him come out on his own.” It had been snowing for the better part of the day and it was looking like we’d be left with whatever consequences would come from doing this out in the middle of nowhere. There was no phone, no emergency techs nearby, and no real heat to speak of aside from a little bit of wood, which was quickly running out. At this point I had lost any control over our situation and she wouldn’t listen to reason.

When it finally came out, I thought it was just awash in blood it was so red. But when it latched onto our midwife and she began to scream, it all hit me at once. My wife had passed out and was sinking into the tub while the woman with my child attached to her face flung about madly, shrieking and spraying blood all over the cabin. I grabbed a piece of wood and tried to knock the child from her face but missed, hitting the woman on the top of the skull. She landed by the fireplace and her hair began smoldering. The red child thing looked up at me with orange cat eyes and actually smiled at me. I looked about the room and took stock of the situation. My wife was unconscious and laying on the bottom of a tub, probably dead. Our midwife lay by the fireplace, her whole head engulfed in flames now. And for all intents and purposes my child, the Anti-Christ, was now leering at me from the floor where it… stood. I collapsed onto the floor and lost consciousness.

The police claim I murdered my wife and the midwife and must have burned the infant even though there was no evidence.

A dull ache in Tom’s belly caused him to open his eyes. His thoughts were convoluted and all but the base urge to fill his empty stomach were insubstantial. He pulled himself up to his knees with some effort and oriented himself. Tom’s head swam and he could barely control his limbs, which seemed heavy and stiff. He managed to get his right foot out in front of him and pitched himself onto that leg nearly tumbling back. Flailing his limbs he managed to maintain his balance and start lunging forward awkwardly. He looked down to see his left leg was broken and he was standing on his ankle. Feeling no pain he forgot about it and managed to stumble forward. He was on a road choked with cars that were all stopped in haphazard directions. Some were turned sideways, crashed into one another, some were still idling quietly, and a few further up seemed to be on fire, belching black smoke into the air.

Tom approached a car with its door open and began to crawl inside but forgot what he was looking for. The ache reminded him that he was hungry and he began rooting for food. He tried to open the glove compartment but couldn’t quite get his fingers to work the latch. Giving up he stumbled out of the car and fell backwards bumping into a woman. They both tumbled off the road and into a drainage ditch. Spinning his arms wildly he tried to gain purchase in the slippery red stream that was flowing downhill. They both stood and stared at each other.

As if trying to remember a dream, the woman’s face almost touched a memory but was held just out of his reach. Her face though scratched and bloody was beautiful and a word came to his lips. The sound that emanated from his throat however was unlike any words he knew.

“Mmmmuuuuughhhh!” He groaned and smiled. Guttural and raw, the noise was like a moaning belch. She cocked her head and it nearly rolled off being only suspended by wisps of tendon and she merely gurgled through her torn throat. She reached up and propped her head back on her shoulders and held it there. They both began plodding across the field that lined the highway and he felt her hand grasp his. They looked at one another for a moment, then began silently heading west.

Six months ago, I was a graphic artist. I had a job with a firm downtown that paid me fairly well, an apartment only four blocks away in a pretty cool area, and I had lots of friends. Six months ago, I could walk out my door and within six blocks I had five favorite bars and I knew pretty much all the regulars. Every Friday I would go to one of these bars with my workmates and meet up with my friends and we would stay till after closing. Sometimes we would all go back to my apartment and commit all sorts of debauchery in the name of Fun. I had my bad habits and I was okay with them because I was happy. I had a pretty good life all told.

Six months ago I was walking home from one of my favorite bars and was passing an alley when a weird sound caught my attention. It was a gross, wet, nasty sound that made me think twice about stopping, but for some reason I didn’t listen to my inner voice telling me to run. I looked into the ally and saw a dark figure hunched over. I watched for a minute and tried to see what it was doing when it turned and faced me. It was a pale, dead face with a red smear down its chin. It looked at me with luminescent eyes and I felt it pull on my mind. I felt myself walking forward without realizing what I was doing and I started to panic. But even with fear urging me to fight, I had no control over my body. The face became clear as I approached and it was grinning with sharp teeth and gray skin. The figure stood up and as it did so, I felt my heart leap. This “person” towered over me by at least two feet. It held out a long, spindly hand… a claw really, with nails like talons, and against my will I held out my own. It’s grasp was like the grip of death, cold and clammy but strong like a vice. It pulled me forward and I was wrapped in darkness.

When I awoke, I was hit with a wave of fetid stench like feces and decay. I was lying in a dumpster next to two dead bodies. My head swam and I wanted to vomit but I was also hungry, very hungry. I pushed the top of the dumpster open and peered out when I felt a searing pain on my extended arm. I withdrew and the lid slammed shut over my head. In the dim light I could see blisters forming on my arm like a third-degree burn.

I used my other hand to open the lid again and as sunlight flashed on my face I felt the pain again and I screamed and fell back into the garbage. I touched my forehead and could feel blisters forming there too. My mind raced to figure out what was going on when it hit me. I felt along my neck when lo and behold, there they were, just under my jaw line, right at my carotid artery: two punctures. I had to wait for dusk.

Of course I eventually made it back home but that was six months ago. Now it’s 5:30 AM and I’m sitting on the roof of my building watching the sky grow lighter. It’s been so long since I actually watched a sunrise. I’ve done some sinful things in my life but all harmless enough. In the last six months however, I’ve done some things I don’t wish to remember. I’ve killed some people. Some were my friends. I tried to pretend nothing was different, but who was I fooling? I quit my job and I’ve had time to see a lawyer and get my affairs in order. I left everything to my mother. It won’t be long before the sun is up.

Mort checked his watch; 9:00.

“Three hours to go,” he said as he finished painting the last sigils on the pentagram, and whipped the goat’s blood from his hands. He then checked on the candles and the incense, and made sure the ropes were tight. Murielle began to stir so he placed the chloroform over her nose a moment and she was still.

“Shhhh… Don’t want you freaking out when we’re so close. It is Samhain, after all.” The arrangements of his instruments were meticulous. Every angle of every blade was part of a larger design, the Great Masterwork.

After weeks of his wife’s complaints and general nagging, Thomas finally brought out the ladder and decorations. He taped the skeleton to the front door and put the pumpkins on either side of the porch steps. He was just starting to hang webs around the porch, feeling satisfied that the new screw-in hooks would hold much better than the cheap sticky hooks from last year. He suddenly pitched forward, managing to thrust his head through the tangled mass, and the cotton threads held his weight. His feet kicked violently and gradually stopped.

“Great effect, hon!” Laura called from inside.

With a lot of cajoling, Tommy and Ray had convinced Joey to approach the creepy old house on the hill. He tried to draw a sense of bravery from his skeleton costume. He was a scary spirit, sent to do mischief. Nothing could hurt him. He stepped onto the rickety porch and reached for the huge, ancient door knocker. The door suddenly sprang open and he beheld a terrifying hag right out of a Halloween story.

“Ah! Another morsel for Nara’s winter stock!” she crowed, as her clawed hands gripped his shoulder and pulled him in.

Tommy and Ray ran.

For years, the old house on the hill stood, dark and austere amongst the tall maple trees. Its large porch seemed as skeletal ribs to a brooding bulk of peeling paint and rotting fixtures. On Halloween night, after all the trick-or-treaters had gone to bed and the porch lights had gone out, a fire could be seen reflected off the canopy in the back yard and strange howls and cries could be heard late into the night. And if one were to look into that yard, they would see blood-smeared bodies dancing about the bonfire.