MicroHorror

“Shh…” Seated on the edge of her bed, he held his four-year-old daughter, gently smoothing her hair. “Shh… There’s no such thing as monsters.”

“There are, Daddy!” she sobbed. “Mommy told Aunt Maria there’s a monster in the house.”

“No.” He laid her back on the pillow, cooed soothing words, and held her hand until she slept.

His wife stood at the kitchen sink washing the dinner dishes.

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” The flat of his palm slashed her cheek. “Where do you get off telling her about monsters?”

“I didn’t–”

“There’s… no… such… thing… as… monsters!”

His fists underscored each word.

“Can you gift-wrap that?” he asked.

The teen-aged clerk gaped at him. “This?” She swallowed. “Not really. We’re mainly a hardware store. Try the drugstore down the street. They sell wrapping paper.”

“Good idea. I can buy a card there, too.”

“Kind of an unusual present, isn’t it?”

He smiled. “It’s for Mother’s Day. Mother’s an unusual woman. Unique, really.”

“She must be.” The clerk rang up the sale. “That’ll be four-seventy-seven with the tax.”

She handed him the bag into which she’d put his receipt and the box of rat poison, and Norman Bates headed to the drugstore.