MicroHorror

“I’ll find you when you open it,” the haunt had whispered as Matt ran away. Home now, he stared at the box until he couldn’t resist. Sliding off the cover, he saw every secret, lie, treason, reason. The reason.

The haunt found Matt seventeen minutes later, curled up, laughing. It nearly took pity on him.

Every morning before work, Cinde met the troll in a warehouse outside the forbidden woods. Once, while undressing, she asked, “Don’t the city’s daylight eyes scare you?”

“No,” his trolley-brake voice answered, “it’s the forest’s day I fear, when the willows awaken. They cry themselves to sleep at dusk, guilt-ridden. Then it’s safe.”

Grasses underfoot, trees overhead, flowers in innocent golden hair. Seeds attach to the unwary. Thorns catch and tear. Spores float menacingly towards us, hayfever attacking our heads and lungs. Vines climb houses, try to smother, suffocate, kill. They leave trees alone to attack us, now.

If you’re not afraid of Spring, you deserve what’s coming.

The Stranger, my brother told me, is using your other hand, so it feels like some awkward girl’s jerking you off. I tried it yesterday, and it felt like little Laurie Smythe after gym. Until the migraine hit, and the vision. A beauty, translucent blue rubber skin and glowing purple organs. I woke up sticky.

Delia showed me last night why she wore those clothes year-round. The ring around her throat from autoerotic asphyxiation, the arm burns from cigarettes applied just so, the leg scars from razors. I showed her my two tiny neck marks. She screamed.

This morning, I showed Delia how to open the blinds. Just so.

I awoke wrapped in vines, remembering the meter-wide flower’s nauseating scent. A smaller version with petalled teeth was inches away, swelling. Agonizing minutes later, it scraped my cheek… then fell.

“They eat slowly,” said my machete-wielding co-pilot. “Ship’s this way.”

Following, I noticed a tiny bud growing from the base of his skull.

Remembering tiny Jack’s fir-tree eyes, I took turns with my husband watching Hope sleep, always on her back. One night, two shadows with scarlet eyes leaned over her crib. Frozen in my chair, I glimpsed another shadow, far shorter, reaching in. As it turned to leave, cradling Hope’s soul, two green eyes met mine.

“You see it?” my partner asked.

“Yeah,” I said, shaking sand from my binoculars. “Some priests around a scarecrow on a post. Wait, they’re removing something from the thing’s chest. A spear? The scarecrow has a strange hat, like a spiky crown… oh Jesus Christ.”

“Exactly.”

That’s when His arm turned to point to us.

“Don’t worry, Doctor, it’s good and dead.”

“It wasn’t alive,” I said. “Blots are machines.” I approached the exam table. It did look like an inkblot, liquid-black except for… “The dull red center’s the neural net?”

As I peered in, the Blot rippled orange-red and an ice-cold tendril snaked into my ear.

buy me a drink cuz the streets say they’re gonna eat Mike they ate my meds wife house buy me a drink the streets like me hate you hate everyone built too many they’re networked buy me a drink so the streets quit whispering who’s next I miss Mike thanks bye buy me a drink