MicroHorror

It’s Halloween now, and I’m ready to scare!
The neighbors all comment on my gray hair
and my coal black eyes–
“Must’ve cost a pretty penny for that disguise!”
“Sure!” I reply, and then shuffle off,
with my foot dragging and my wretched cough,
wondering just what they meant.
I hadn’t spent a cent!

I win costume contests in at least two places,
against the kids with the plastic or latex faces,
and get comments like, “Terrifying!” or “Outrageous!”
But I never correct them, I just accept the praises.
It truly is my favorite time of the year!

John sat at the bus stop thinking to himself if he’d like to have a sandwich or not, only to decide against it a few moments later. He played with his fingers, scrutinizing each individual cuticle, realizing that he hadn’t clipped his nails in quite some time. He had a lot to think about, after all. He was getting on this train to visit his mother.

A roaring locomotive steamed past, sending a flurry of debris into the air.

“What a mad, mad world,” John said to himself as he watched trash idle in the sky. Then he stood and took a step off of the platform, falling underneath it all into oblivion.

John worked at a factory where he assured the quality of rivets before they were sent out to various construction sites across the country. He stood in a line for eight hours every day and fingered several metallic objects for split seconds at a time. He had learned to differentiate between a good rivet and a bad rivet by touch alone, and thus slept his way through the day.

John knew the Anti-Christ was coming the day he ran out of rivets.

“What are you doing?” asked his supervisor as he walked towards the exit.

“I’m going to visit my mother,” he said, remembering the day she died ten years prior. “I’m not going to stick around for this!”

I knew a man named Mike who could squeeze a diamond so hard that it would revert back into coal. It was a worthless talent, but neat to watch. He ran on coffee, drinking at least ten cups a day. He said it kept his hands strong and his mind clear.

Mike was entertaining a dentist and a botanist at his condo on a Sunday morning when he thought to prove them wrong by performing his “magic.” He grabbed a diamond from the fruit bowl on his counter and gave it a squeeze. I sat in the corner of the room with the last cup of coffee in my hand, the last cup in the house. Mike hadn’t noticed, nor had he had a cup since the night before, and so I watched him bleed to death before my very eyes.

We buried him on a Sunday in an open field where they used to grow coffee beans. Coal Mike could squeeze a diamond into coal. It was a worthless talent–pointless and expensive as well. But still I chiseled a tombstone out of coal and wrote onto it, Here lies Solomon Grundy, in hopes that he’d return.

The sky was murky with the heat of a mid-August evening as I pushed my way upwards to the top of Baker Street. Lined with manicured lawns and infested by track homes that stood as monuments to the virus known as urban sprawl, this street was just like the others in the community. Potter, Blacksmith, Commonwealth; all of the streets shared the same characteristics, from the malformed court at the bottom to the blasphemous incline at the top. And here I was, traversing it like a sterile Johnny Appleseed, spreading my dog licenses from home to home.

But by four o’clock, I could feel the energy lagging behind, following me from half a block down the hill, forcing me to stop. Just a half-hour to go!, I thought. Keep on truckin’! What an expression! If I had a truck I wouldn’t have been this miserable.

My feet ached when I approached door number four thousand, or as they labeled it: 1027 Baker St. Sweat pilfered my forehead, robbing it of any nutrients required to keep a sun burn at bay. Heat from the road itself mocked me, pointing out my faults: my weak knees, the bags under my eyes, and the mess of hair hanging to my shoulders. When I knocked on the wooden door, I was shocked to hear life within. Probably soaking in the A/C, enjoying their wide screen television (HD-compatible), and having a better time than me.

I could hear the scurrying footsteps of children, or perhaps a small woman passing the door, and then, seconds later, harder, slower thumps. The father figure, no doubt; come to pay the tax man. The door swung open, and before me stood a massive figure, one straight out of Freaks. His rope-like figure wobbled in the light breeze while his hair seemed plastered to his leather-like parchment of a skin. His feet pointed in opposite directions while his toes danced; each individual digit seemed to have mastered rhythm and beat as they conducted a jazzy ensemble on the linoleum. His hands were not; that is to say, that where a hand should have been, there hung an orb-like mound of flesh that had been given the texture of a meat mallet, all ridges and flat pyramids. But strangest of all was the lack of a face; just a brown circular object on top of a Twizzler, with two large, irregular holes in the center, and a straight line for a mouth.

“Who is it, dad?” came the voice of a girl behind him. I ripped my eyes from the monstrosity before me and witnessed the child-thing born of his loins: this half-human, half-dog sin. Her body seemed to be that of a terrier, but all semblance of a dog ended at the neck, where, like Frankenstein’s monster, her head had been stitched. She had lovely blonde hair and a cute nose.

“Can I help you?” the father-thing asked.

I cocked my head to the side, curled my lips, and squinted before I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand.

“She have a license?” I asked, pointing towards his dog-ter.

“Oh, sure,” he said. He reached down, patting his preposterous knee–a hamburger bun on a rabbit, if you can imagine it. The girl came to his side. He folded in half, wrapped his clubs around the terrier neck, and retrieved a collar, which he then handed to me. I took it from him, looked it over, and nodded.

“Everything looks fine here,” I said. “Have a good day, sir!”

“You too!” As I walked away, he shut the door. From within I could hear the chatter of a family mildly interrupted from their daily routine. It sure was hot outside. I believe that I was still envious of their A/C.