MicroHorror

They’d been trapped in the elevator of a London department store for the past five minutes–trying not to make eye contact with each other–when it happened. Worst-case scenario. One of them farted. In an ideal world the Muzak would have been droning away in the background and the air conditioner running–but not today. Both were out of action, along with the rest of the lift.

“I say, old boy, you could have waited.”

“How do you know it was me?”

“Because I heard you let rip. I can smell it. And I saw your bloody cassock flapping in the breeze.”

“As the good Lord says, let he who is without blame cast the first stone.”

“Why, you priggish little snit. If you weren’t a man of the cloth I’d give you a good, sound thrashing. I boxed for my school and my regiment, don’t you know.”

The priest took a long, slow, deep breath. “Before I took up parishional work,” he said, pausing only to crack his knuckles, “I was a chaplain in the army. I know all too well what your class are like. But, as it happens, I also boxed for my regiment.”

If the lift’s CCTV had been working, it could have told us who struck the first blow. As it was, its two occupants were far too busy brawling to notice that the lift had started moving again–and was now descending very, very fast.

And so it was that the priest’s first task upon meeting his maker was to explain why his final moments had been devoted to beating the living daylights out an elderly gentleman. And that gentleman, a churchwarden at his local place of worship, had to explain why he’d been trying to throttle a priest at the very moment the lift was dashed to pieces at the bottom of the shaft.

Fortunately for both of them, their maker–a stout, laughing, shaven-headed Oriental-looking man in robes, with a pot-bellied stomach–had a sense of humor and promptly reincarnated both of them as kangaroos.

So when the cute Asian chick he’s been dancing with for the past five minutes whispers in his ear, “I think I know where there’s a better party, are you coming?” Max needs no further encouragement. She says her name’s Kelly or Carly–bit hard to make out as she has a strong Indian accent–she’s a postgrad from Delhi doing medical research. Tugging him firmly by the ends of his yellow silk scarf (vintage Armani, he picked it up for a dollar in a charity shop the other day) she leads Max down the corridor towards the elevator vestibule.

She presses the “Down” button on the elevator marked “No unauthorized use.” “This is the quickest way down,” she says. The elevators arrives, the doors open, they go in- and, before the doors are even fully closed, she’s pinning him against the wall with her body, with one hand down the front of his chinos and her tongue halfway down
his throat.

After passing several floors, Max is vaguely aware of the lift coming to a halt and of a medic–well, he’s dressed from head to toe in green scrubs–pushing an empty dolly into the elevator.

“Oh, Kali, you never could resist hot, fresh meat,” says the medic.

Somewhere deep within Max’s lust-engorged brain an alarm bell starts ringing–but it’s already too late. With the speed and dexterity of someone who’s done this many times before, Kali is twisting Max’s scarf into a garrotte and the noose is tightening.

“This can’t be happening to me,” screams Max’s mind before he falls unconscious across the waiting dolly. The doors close and the elevator continues its journey down, down to the basement- and the university hospital’s dissecting rooms.

On the Thirteenth Day of Christmas, my True Love sent to me…
Thirteen Witches dancing widdershins,
Twelve Ghosts of headless drummers drumming,
Eleven Wizards casting runes,
Ten Decaying Corpses dangling from a hanging tree,
Nine Keys to the Nine Gates of Hell,
Eight Virgins Maids for sacrificing–always a popular gift as the genuine article is so difficult to find at this time of year.
Seven Deadly Sins,
Six Hands of Glory,
Five Golden Pentacles.
Four Dragon’s Eggs,
Three Unicorn Horns,
Two copies of the Necronomicon–second editions, both bound in Cthulhu hide.
And a Cockatrice in a Pear Tree.

Hush, hush. Something evil’s on the stair. Hush, hush. There’s a killer at the door.

I knock once. I knock twice. I knock a third time. The great green iron door slowly glides open. Standing at the threshold is the Old Man. With a nod of his head, he welcomes me into his lair.

“You’ll take tea?” he asks, pouring me a cup from a small bamboo-handled oriental pot. The tea is green and has the aroma of roasted brown rice.

“Popcorn tea–Japanese genmaicha? So difficult to get hold of these days. Especially since the war,” I add. The Old Man smiles in acquiescence.

I take another sip, put down the cup and, palming Mother-of-Pearl in my right hand, flick the switch to unleash six inches of Damascened steel. In the palm of my hand, the switchblade’s handle feels warm, firm–and comforting.

“Do you keep the faith? Have you a god you’d like to pray to?” I ask the Old Man.

“Oh, yes,” he replies. “But I sacrifice to the Elder Gods. Ancient–and insane–deities, who still haunt dark forgotten places, to gibber and bay in the wind on moonless nights like this.”

I stab once. I stab twice. I stab a third time.

I pour more tea–it would be a pity to let it go to waste–and watch as a pool of blood seeps out from beneath the Old Man’s body. The blood trickles through a gap between two floorboards. I hear it fall and drip onto something far below in the cellar. How could the Old Man’s withered little body be filled with so much blood?

Hush, hush. Something’s on the stair. Hush, hush. Something’s at the door.

Mother-of-Pearl–its blade still slick with the General’s spent gore–sits waiting in my hand as the great green iron door slowly glides open.

“You cut it a bit close,” says Mikey, “when you overtook that BMW on the motorway. You sure we didn’t hit it?”

I laugh, get some cans from the fridge, pass one to Mikey and switch on the TV. Boring, just a local news bulletin bleating on about some road traffic accident.

“There’s something not right with the beer,” says Mikey. I take a swig from my tin, it does taste foul.

There’s also something not right with Mikey–he is starting to fade before my eyes. I look at my own hands–and look again.  Like some nightmare X-ray I can see the beer-can through my increasingly transparent flesh. I look back to the couch where Mikey had been sitting but he has already gone.