MicroHorror

Lying on her stomach by the cellar door, she hums tunelessly, her pale and spindly fingers carelessly wrapping a tendril of hair around the ribs of a dead mouse.

Mother is screaming and baby sister tries to compete. Father paces outside of the room where women come and go.

No one remembers little Bella.

She lies in the dying sunlight, her naked thighs dirty, knees bent and feet swinging. With a huff and a sigh, she flings the carcass into the high grass. She’s the cat in the cupboard and mice bore her now. She wants to see her mother, wants to study her face as she struggles to force the parasite from between her legs. Bella wants to rub her mother’s hair between her fingers and feel it against her tongue.

She watches the moths approach the flame in the open window, their wings purple in the gloaming. Thistles surround her and she wants to run into their arms.

The willow is where she could go. The tree will offer her the solace of silence and the view she desires. She climbs one bare foot and one hand at a time, the knuckles of the gnarled tree biting into her soft flesh. Blood wells from her many wounds and her mother and the screaming are forgotten. Tilting her head as her feet dangle yards above the ground, crimson swells and breaks on her hand, running down her arm in a ragged line.

Such a wicked little girl, she thinks as a smile plays along her lips. She feels no pain as she brings her arm to her lips, her tongue seeking and finding the river of red. Copper bursts in her mouth as the sun sinks beneath the horizon.

The wind whispers through the trees, branches floating towards her face before retreating under her gaze.

The bow in her hair untangles and gently flutters to the ground. Hair falls in her mouth, shafts grind under her teeth.

If she stands on this bough and steps off, would she fly?

The moon rises behind her and the screaming continues into the night.

“Remember; remember the fifth of November…”

“Shh,” she says as the ash falls from the sky, the lyrical sweeping prose of the poem loud in her ears. “Can you hear?”

“I can,” he calls and his voice is sweet music to her ears. She grabs his hand, and they run through the empty streets, until he stops and pulls his hands from hers. “I can hear her!” He kneels and grabs a handful of gray dust, throwing it into the air above his head. “She’s close, she’s coming. Annie! Momma’s coming!”

She’s distracted by the red ribbon tying her hair back, one end trailing over her shoulder. The string is bleeding. Her pretty white dress is ruined. The stain spreads slowly, crimson blossoming over her heart and down her breasts. “No, no,” she says, shaking her head, pulling her hands away from the bloody dress. Horror overcomes her as she pulls the skirt away from her chest, needing, wanting, having to get it away from her skin.

And still he dances.

She looks up at him, opening her mouth to ask for help and then she notices the black smear creeping out of his mouth, bruising the skin around his lips.

He twirls in the deluge, his hair lighting with tiny pinpricks of light. They catch and grow, engulfing him in an orange glow. His laughter turns to screams as she murmurs over and over, “Remember, remember…”

*

Strange, how easily she grows accustomed to the screaming.

Sitting in the middle of the white room, she can hear it seeping through the walls, the vibrations echoing all around her as the colors swirl and darkness looms. She pulls her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them and rocks back and forth, feeling them, their pain, their madness.

His voice is louder than the others, and her hands shake as she clasps them to her ears. She wants it to stop, prays it’ll stop, but she can still hear their screams.  The smell of brimstone and ash clings to the back of her throat. She’s afraid to close her eyes, afraid of what will come whispering in the dark.

Finally, it becomes too much and her own raw scream rips from her throat. She collapses backwards, landing on the large sheets of paper surrounding her, the crinkling noise loud under her state-issued pajamas. Crayons and markers lay scattered about the room, colors she doesn’t need bleeding onto the white cushioned floor.

Manic now, the only colors she wants are red, orange and black. The colors of fire and ashes.

Oblivion comes quickly in the form of a little red pill and a needle to her vein. Her rocking intensifies until she hears the screaming no more and when she climbs to her knees, she’ll have no recollection of her hands seeking papers, each one uncovering a horror worse then the last.

Black for the mist she draws swirling over and over again like a tornado over the wide open mouth.

Red for the scarlet blood seeping though the walls, pooling on the cold concrete floor.

Gray for the matches clutched tightly in her hand.

Orange for the fire licking up her brother’s legs, his guttural screams as it engulfs his entire body.