MicroHorror

I am far bolder in death than I ever dared to be in the monotony of my life as a certified public accountant.

Janet is every Matisse curve in motion, the type of woman whose aesthetics alone would have twisted my tender nerves into a coiled jumble in the black pit of my stomach.

That was before.

Now, I shadow her down the concrete sidewalks while she’s on her way to work. I place the tips of my bony phalanges in places on her that any moral-minded apparition would feel guilty about.

She shivers and stops walking when I do this, pulls down the pink edges of her skirt, composes herself, moves on.

“Stop it,” she says to the empty street.

I can feel the warmth leeching out of her body and into the whole of me, and I understand that she doesn’t really mean it.

I may even whisper a chill word or two in her ear. This inevitably causes her to cross her arms over her ample chest and make a mewling catlike sound.

I love it when she does that.

She steps up the pace to the office, the clickety-clack of her four-inch heels dodging the cracks in the walkway with marvelous dexterity.

When she reaches Lincoln Street, she turns down the final block and glances back over her shoulder. I catch a tempting flash of her thigh, and I reach down with one phantasmic arm motion and snip the garter belt free of her hosiery.

Her pink leg flesh ripples with goosebumps. She closes her eyes, snaps them open, gives a shriek, begins to run.

Such a sport!

I’m playing with the breeze now, lifting up discarded newspapers and scattering them in front of her face.

Temporarily blinded, she doesn’t see the checkered taxi until its chrome bumper has snapped her in half, leaving her ragdoll form scattered bonelessly across the asphalt tread.

I leave the scene and drift through brick alleys towards the WGC building, where her specter awaits. As always, she’s hiding her grim visage in the shadows of the stairwell four floors below her old cubicle, as if she’s embarrassed by her appearance.

“Bastard!” she burbles, unable to form a smile within the folds of her gray-green flesh.

Touched by her remains, I reach for her bleeding face and kiss that elegant shattered jawbone. She responds in kind, wordlessly grasping my skull and pulling me to her.

We’ve replayed variations of her demise for all eternity, and we never get sick of it.

Ever.