MicroHorror

Bear no illusions, you are going to die. You have no chance, the shadows are simply too dark. You fumble for the light but your hand is slapped aside. Forever enveloped in an unforgiving world, there is no escape. There is nowhere to run. Your unseen enemy gropes and tears and suddenly you fall, succumbing to the overwhelming fate that stands before you. You cannot fight it, you have no weapons. It creeps over you and slowly begins to suffocate you. The last thing you think of just before you breathe your last is that maybe you should have left your buddy’s girlfriend alone…

You’ve dressed up today. Nothing new, nothing fancy. Just a simple bed sheet draped unceremoniously over your body. You went on a search for treats last night. You weren’t dressed up like a ghost then. No, you’d gone trick-or-treating dressed up as a clown. You didn’t come home that night. Your parents wondered where you were, and the police told them. They had to. It’s part of their job. You were found in a ditch and here you are, lying on a table with a simple bed sheet draped unceremoniously over your body.

It’s dark. You know, that sort of dark where you can’t see anything in front of you, not even your own hand. The sort of dark where all sorts of images and dangers tend to crop up in your imagination. You start to imagine the shadows around you moving on their own volition. A creeping sort of horror invades your thoughts as you begin to imagine uninvited guests occupying your room with you. A thought strikes you. What if my TV turns on by itself? What if the alarm clock starts changing stations on its own? Maybe my books will suddenly fly off the shelves in a suicidal rage? These thoughts haunt you, depriving you of any sleep. Slowly wasting away any sanity left to you. A thin ray of hope shines in the darkness as you see another person turn on the hallway light in order to see where they are going.

And then it is just as promptly extinguished as they turn the light back off, drowning you in the shadows. Your attention is soon drawn to the movie you knew you shouldn’t have seen that day. Of course, there was no danger in the moment. It was 12 in the afternoon; friends in a semi-dark movie theater surrounded you, eating their popcorn. Who or what could possibly come at you in light of those circumstances? But alas, you knew that eventually you’d be going to bed.

You knew that sooner or later you’d have to stop stalling and turn out the lights. Suddenly a low, guttural roar nearly deafens you. Common sense or perhaps denial brings you to the conclusion that it was merely a car passing by your house at roughly 120 kilometers per hour. You curse softly with a laugh. Mocking yourself for your paranoia, your fear. But then it subtly and slowly returns. You begin to realize you need to get up at seven in the morning and try desperately to shut your fears away. But you can’t.

You know you’ll wake up in the safety of the bright morning sun, bleary-eyed and feeling foolish for your juvenile reservations the previous night. Or will you? That’s the question. “Dare I close my eyes when all around me there are things that go bump in the night? Dare I feign ignorance to my trepidation?” Finally you submit to your body’s objections. You cash in your chips. Did you make the right choice?

Will you wake up tomorrow morning?

Colors… So many of them. Personally, I’m rather fond of red. Such a nice, lovely color. It’s great for painting furniture but there’s only a certain shade of red that I like. It’s seen a fair amount. Car crashes, ski accidents… murders. You probably don’t wanna hear the details so I won’t tell you but… I’m rather fond of murders.

I’ve visited a few people in my life and they, strangely enough, usually wind up dead by the time I leave. It just might have something to do with me stabbing them multiple times with whatever I can get my hands on. Because you see… I’m rather fond of red. It’s such a nice, lovely color and of course, it’s great for painting furniture…

It is said that one can almost sense danger. Sort of a sixth sense, born most likely out of the early days of humankind where mere seconds would mean the difference between life and death. But now that sense isn’t quite so sharp, not nearly as “acute,” so when death approaches us with its design… that sense often comes too late.

It did for me. Now I wander this socially barren planet, striving to unlock the mysteries behind my death. My last memories consisted of a demise so horrifyingly, brutally violent that even in death I can almost shudder at the very thought of it.

Would you like to hear this gruesome tale? No? I’ll tell you anyway.

I was walking home one day from work. My job wasn’t very interesting, I spoke to people, I kicked computers in a futile attempt to fix them, I breathed, ate and drank just like any other man. I had parked my car in the driveway and walked into the house. Strange… The lights didn’t work. I remember cursing under my breath as I stubbed my toe on an umbrella stand trying to find the flashlight behind it. I turned it on and I recall that I immediately wished that I hadn’t. Blood. Everywhere. I closed my eyes, thinking it was some wild vision, that perhaps I was seeing things. I opened them and the blood hadn’t left. A hand print was painted on my wall and words were written in gruesomely red ink. I don’t need to tell you what the ink was made of. “Welcome home,” it said; needless to say I did not feel welcome at all and turned, ashen and pale to escape the house. But I couldn’t. A sneering man with bloodshot eyes in his mid-forties stood in the way. It was about this time that sixth sense I mentioned earlier started to kick in which, as I also mentioned, was far too late.

In his hand was a bloody knife. He started walking toward me, forcing me to go backwards. I peered into the living-room. The lights were working in there. What I saw caused a scream to escape my lips. My wife lay in the den. She was still alive, barely. She looked up at me and lifted a bloody hand, bidding me to make good my escape. I couldn’t. My legs would not move. With a mad laugh, the man lifted the knife. My last thoughts were that I recognized the knife as part of a kitchen set my brother bought me on my birthday.

You grope through the forests, struggling desperately to escape the harrowing terror that stalks you. Chalk-white and pale, your fingers stretch out into the expanse of the pitch black night groping for survival, for more time. There is none to spare, however, and you soon realize that as the hunter draws nearer. You can smell its rancid breath and feel it on the back of your neck. A terrifying rasping sound emanates from its orifice, lined with deadly sharp teeth bloody from the previous victim… your uncle. All it was was a simple hunting trip. Just you and your uncle; you’d been looking forward to it for a week. Night fell on the first day and with it all the amusement in this trip, all the joy and hope simply melted away like a popsicle on a warm sunny day.

Warm… sunny… day. Words that mean nothing to you at the moment, or even ever again. A mere echo lingering in the past as you fight desperately for survival. A great, guttural roar that would set even the strongest man in complete and utter trepidation echoed the promise that it would swallow whole all that you held dear. Shadows lashed out laughingly at your futile efforts as the creature bore closer and closer and then at last it caught up to you.

Thirst.

An enticing thing, is it not? It draws you forward, beckoning you nearer. Shadows flit across your eyes as you see your choice victim. The temptation looms forward; a thin smile slowly creeps across your lips as the desire and longing quickly build to the bursting point.

Thirst. Try to imagine, if you can, the slaying of another human being. An individual who walked, who talked, who breathed just as you do.

But no longer…

Imagine robbing a man of those simple, yet profoundly mundane tasks. Try to imagine, if you will, the feeling of sheer ecstasy as you bring a dagger down into a man’s sleeping body, crudely interrupting the rhythmic rising and falling of his chest. Until, at last, it simply falls as a last breath is drawn out. What then? Do you perhaps leave a mark of some sort? To let others know who it was that came to call upon this seemingly innocent man in the dark of the night? Perhaps fashion yourself into an elusive harbinger of death, pursued but never caught? Searched for, but never found? A delightful shiver crawls up your spine as you try to think of who your next victim might be…

And you think you know…