MicroHorror

Love me well, as I love you,
See my heart, know my soul,
Grant my wish.

Sally Manning sang as she left her house. It was less a song, actually, than a verse in sing-song. The young girl clutched a crude copper in one hand; with the other, she held tightly to her mother’s fingers. Her mother did not mind. It was a beautiful day and they were off to the well. Sally’s thoughts were of a new doll; her mother’s, of something more serious. Both knew that the well would hear them.

Laura Manning had recited the same words as a child, as did her own mother, when they made this trip. Generations raised in the village believed there was something in the water: something that protected them, something that provided. A spirit, some said. It didn’t always give everything that was asked of it, but it gave what was needed, and more. Like a knowing guardian, it kept the people safe and happy. The villagers did not draw from the well: not to drink, not to bathe. They would never think of it.

Laura hummed along as she walked. The thought of the well always calmed her. She did not know the depth of the water at its bottom, but it was still and clear and she could picture the glinting of countless coins dropped over the years by hopeful hands, in offering and in thanks. They all seemed to shine in the water, no matter how dull they had once been.

The two did not know that the water now roiled and spit.

No verse was said the night before, when a man from the city came to the outskirts of their village, the blood of his sins on his sleeves, and, craving a drink, found the well. There was no line and no bucket, but he did not care; his thirst was forgotten when he, too, saw the glimmer of a century’s worth of wishes, and he–the first ever to do so–shimmied down the shaft and stood at the bottom, in water to his knees. This man reached below and collected the offerings of the dead and living, the embodiments of others’ desires and destinies; he pocketed these and when the well’s floor was bare of them, he reached deeper, his fingers searching through the mud for more, finally coming upon something greater. This was no coin. He withdrew a knife, long and golden-hilted, plunged through the water and into the ground long ago by another man who said no words, but believed in his heart that the well would help him triumph rightfully over his enemies, as, in the end, it did. This modern man laid the sharp steel on his tongue and imagined how this purloined blade would cut through silk and skin. His pockets heavy, he braced himself to begin his climb back up the shaft. Before he did, he relieved himself, yellow and brown, in the water of the well. As he ascended, hand by hand and foot by foot, he did not notice the undulations starting beneath him, the water slowly beginning to rise; the water, which was now seething and dark.

At the road’s end, Laura and Sally Manning stopped, stunned. Sally’s hand opened, the copper falling to the ground.

The well water bubbled at the rim of blunt brick and stone that contained it. As the two looked on, it erupted into a black spire that reached toward the sky. Then, in a volume unimagined, the water began rushing over the top and out of the well. The lush green grass beneath it died instantly and turned to gray. Mother and daughter ran, wishes for toys and healing and redemption left behind with the girl’s forgotten coin.

The water flowed unstopping in all directions, a river of rage running not only to the city, but also to the village it once loved.

The only things on Mason Jansen’s mind were the water and the girl, and these in equal parts.

Amazing, he thought. He could die where he stood, or a mile from here, or ten, and he could not keep the girl from encroaching on his thoughts.

She wasn’t what he had thought she was. She had played sweet, nursed him to health when his heart betrayed him; she had him fooled. In the end, she took everything. And she had nearly killed him.

She didn’t, though. But his midnight ride into the desert to rid his mind of her might do just that. He–oblivious to the gas-low hiccupping of his truck until its final throe–had left himself surrounded by sand and dunes and waves of nothing else but thick, visible heat. It was now midday and over one hundred degrees, and he had nothing to do but walk, his body wracked with hunger and nausea, last night’s alcohol long ago absorbed, its next-day effects still strong.

He tried to walk back in the direction from which he had driven, but he had drifted. There was no road in sight; there was almost nothing.

Nothing but water. Far in the distance, or so he thought. He was not convinced, however. It could be a mirage, something else that was not what it seemed. Either way, something shimmered at the edge of his vision. If it was water, he would live; he was sure of it. If it wasn’t, but believing so pushed him further, possibly into sight of the lost road–or any road–then he would walk on, and believe that it was.

He just needed to keep the girl away. When he thought of her, he slowed down. Sometimes he stopped completely.

So he did his best. He trudged along and after some time he focused, by keeping his eyes on the water in front of him and imagining the rapture in just a mouthful of it. If only it were real.

Mason choked out a desperate, hoarse laugh when he thought again that it might not be. He would die from a trick on top of a trick, a vicious double-teaming by the girl and the desert.

As he walked on, though, he realized he was gaining ground. A mirage would sit on the horizon, teasing and always out of reach. But to this he was getting closer. His heart leapt when he finally reached the water’s edge. He had not been fooled.

The water was warm. Of course it would be; he was surprised it was not boiling in this heat. He cupped his hands and took the mouthful he’d dreamed of. It did not taste fresh but he drank anyway. Soon, his hands were not enough; he put his face to the surface; he submerged his head, his shoulders, his arms. He did not think of the girl, or the desert, or their cruelty. He came up for air and went under again. He would live.

Then the water, previously motionless, began swirling against him and a sudden suction pulled his entire body under. His heart raced; his hands clawed at the sides of the pool. They did not sink into sand, as he would have expected. Instead, he felt a sickening smoothness broken by countless rows of tiny points. These points pricked his skin and grew larger as Mason was drawn further down. Only at the end did he realize that they were teeth. His mind flashed one final time to the girl before he passed through the gullet at the bottom of this mouth. Rushing behind him and washing him down was the water that had lured him.

The desert was quiet again. The monster, though mindless, did not like being exposed to the scorching air. It began to regurgitate water into its now-empty cavity, filling it slowly. There the water would stand, still and shining in the sun, until the next time.

James stared at his reflection in the mirror. The face looking back at him was not a happy one; he could not remember the last time he’d smiled.

Even so, as he regarded his own round eyes and handsome features, he couldn’t reconcile this face with the awful thing that he was considering doing. The others would never expect it, and there would be so much blood. He had excused himself to the bathroom for just a moment more alone: one last opportunity to disperse these horrors that ran incessantly through his mind.

And, again, he found that he could not banish them; he would go through with it after all.

He looked down at the floor; between the white tiles, the grout was graying and green. He took a breath and readied himself.

When James looked up again, something was different. The face–his own–that a moment before had been reflected before him eye to eye and, had it been another person, would have been close enough to smell his breath, was now smaller, further. James moved his face closer to the mirror, as close as possible. His reflection did the same–of course it would–but, still, there was a distance between them: a space, unaccounted for and unsettling.

As James watched, the reflection began to recede, rising upward as it crept back. It gazed at him from the center of the frame that still surrounded it, but it did not look as confused as James himself felt; it seemed to regard him objectively, knowingly. And the space between them grew.

James looked away again, this time to the side; he shook his head. But as he turned back, his reflection did not. And into the open space between the two of them, from the left, walked another man. He wore the same clothes as James, had the same hair and build. James could not see his face.

The man stopped, mid-ground, in front of James’s reflection and turned toward it. Only then did the reflection turn back. It faced this man–James could see its expression still–and from that point on, they moved in concert.

The distance between James and these two continued to increase until they were out of sight. Before they were gone, James saw the face in the mirror smiling.

James raged; he slammed his fists against the wall and bit his lip until it spurted hot and wet. He spun and saw that around him the room was empty. The walls were smooth and blank; there was no longer a door or windows. His thoughts spun between what had just occurred–what could not have occurred–and the nightmare visions he had lived with for so long, those that he was now impotent to carry out.

James stood, gaping, as the square of the mirror closed in on itself and disappeared, and he was left alone in this white room with only his blackest thoughts.

The October sky was open and endless. The moon’s white light shined like a beacon, surrounded by the brilliant pinpricks of so many stars. Staring up, Eddie Savina felt a breeze on his face; he imagined that this very air had traveled from all directions–over oceans, through lush fields, and around northern glaciers–to converge above him, cool and clean, and nourish his lungs and mind.

So he closed his eyes and breathed deeply. Then he returned to the situation at hand.

Eddie had done his best to convince his friends that coming into this corn maze was silly and pointless. They had already wasted four dollars apiece on the fair’s “Fright House” which turned out to be neither a house nor particularly frightening. It was a small trailer decorated with hanging rubber spiders and construction paper covering its windows.

In truth, he didn’t care about the money; his concern was the corn stalks that towered far above him and seemed to stretch unbroken across countless shadowy acres.

But he relented when the taunts began. He could not afford those in the company he was in. No, in front of the girls, he would be fearless, or at least pretend to be.

So he went in; he even took the lead. Moments later, though, after running into his fourth dead end, he looked back and found he was alone. He heard his friends–voices and laughter distorted as they carried through rows of dark corn.

“Catch up with us when you find your way out.”

It was only the night above that calmed him. To the sides, the cornstalks menaced.

He yelled back. “Hey!” There was no response.

Eddie turned and walked back to the crossing that led him here, counting his steps to occupy his mind. He turned right–surely the way his friends had gone.

This path continued with no outlets on either side. Eddie’s breath quickened as the cornstalks began to lean overhead. Soon, they touched above him. Several feet on, the tops became entwined, obscuring the night sky. Eddie could not bring himself to go further.

So he turned around, wanting only to see clear space above. But as he walked back, the ceiling of leaves and tassels did not open. Confused, he turned again, but after only a few steps, the path ended. It had changed. There was no longer a squarely cut dead end; the stalks simply grew together like an arrowhead. A few steps the other way and the same thing happened; the trail had disappeared.

Eddie spun, slowly first and then in frenzy. The cornstalks seemed to grow closer with each wild turn. Soon, they were against him, chafing and cutting, leaving no space in any direction and descending from above. Eddie felt faint and grabbed onto the plants alongside of him for support.

As he stood, the corn pressed in further and leaves of black silk reached under his clothes, wrapped his limbs, and began to climb up inside.

Victor stood at the bottom of the stairs that had led him down to the basement moments earlier. He faced them, ready to scramble back up–he’d fly over them, if only he could.

The boy had accepted a lot in the months since his family moved into this house. He believed his mother’s explanation that the moans he heard in the night were those of the house settling in on itself (though even that image was somewhat disconcerting). He believed his father–mostly–when he claimed that the dancing faces on Victor’s wall were the headlights from passing cars, not mocking spirits. Victor didn’t even really mind the basement itself, unfinished as it was.

But now, in the airless days of August, the workmen had come. They were sweaty and noisy, but that was not Victor’s concern. The men had removed the existing stairs with the intent of installing new ones once the basement was complete. Meanwhile, they had put in temporary steps–planks of wood nailed into the boards that ran alongside them. Victor was not afraid of falling; no, they were sturdy enough. What frightened him was the space in between.

“You’re like the dog,” his mom said.

She was right; since the staircase had been opened, the dog would not go down. He tried once, but on the third step he’d looked below him, whined, and scurried back. Afterward, he’d cried for an hour.

“Because there’s something back there,” Victor told his mother.

Victor himself went down only when he was made to and though nothing else moved, he felt heat like breath seeping through these openings. He’d move quickly and, coming up, would not look at these empty spaces where there was once something.

But on this day he did. Peering into them for the first time, he swore he saw white eyes.

One mad dash later, Victor stumbled through the basement door and back into the kitchen. He’d made it.

“My goodness,” said his mother. She was standing at the window, arms stretched upward and smoothing a yellow curtain. Sunlight streamed in. She did not seem to notice Victor’s red cheeks or his heaviness of breath; she merely looked down to what he held.

“I said tissues,” she said. “Not toilet paper. Back downstairs.”

Victor had learned in science class about a mother’s powerful instinct to protect her young; his own mom could use a refresher on her Darwinism. Victor sighed and slowly turned around.

The thing behind the stairs rolled its head on its thin, corded neck. It blinked as the door opened above and the light–still new to this creature that lived for so long enclosed in the dark–spread before it. It had not expected the child to return so soon. Nevertheless, it was ready. And so hungry.

As the boy’s shadow fell and his scent drifted downward, the thing parted its lips and reached its hand through the open space between the stairs.

The first time Cindy Morgan heard the voice, it came up through the bathroom drain. She could not understand what it said, so she tuned out the playful crashing of her three children on the other side of the door and put her head to the sink. But she heard nothing more.

The voice came to her again in the car; it whispered through the air vents. There were words there, she knew, but again she could not make them out.

It was only later–as she jogged alone in an open field–that it came to her clearly. The voice was not loud, it did not sound malicious, but it enclosed her in its enormity.

“I am hungry,” it said. “You will see me and I will call you. Then you will come.”

Cindy stopped; she shuddered.

The voice continued. “If you do not, I will eat everything you love.”

From then, Cindy looked over her shoulder when she had to go out and held her family close. She kept her doors locked. She peeked through her curtains and–though she knew nothing was contained there–stayed away from the drain.

But weeks passed and the voice came back no more. She resumed the activities of her day-to-day. Sometimes she questioned if she had ever heard a voice at all; still, she listened and watched.

One day while the children climbed and spun around her husband, Cindy went to the grocery store. In the cereal aisle, a man walked toward her. He moved slowly but he did not falter. And he did not look away. He had no shopping cart and carried nothing. As the man came closer, she realized that he was tremendous; he seemed to grow with each step. When he was mere feet away, he made a noise.

It sounded like her name.

Cindy backed away. She pulled her cart with her; the front of it fishtailed, knocking over several displays. When she was out of the aisle, she staggered away from the cart and clutched her pocket book.

“Miss,” called the cashier. He was a teenage boy. “Are you all right?”

She walked over, all the while waiting to see what emerged from the aisle. She began, “That man…”

Then she stopped. She looked toward the boy’s face. His eyes did not move–they were focused only on her–but they changed. The irises turned red first, then the whites around them. Cindy looked lower. The boy opened his mouth. It formed a black O, his lips and skin stretched to the point of tearing. But the mouth did not stop opening. It only grew, and soon it was as large as her. It grew until on the other side of the register counter there was nothing else. In this gaping hole was a dark eternity.

This thing had been waiting for her here, or maybe it had been everywhere.

There was still light behind her–a combination of the fluorescents overhead and the sun shining through the front windows. She thought of running, until she remembered its threat. And as the darkness unimaginably grew deeper, she saw room for everything she loved indeed: her husband, her children, her house, her friends. It seemed as if the whole world could be consumed in that blackness. And for a moment, she saw the faces she loved, turning, crying, and ready to be swallowed whole.

She heard the words as she had on the wind. “I am hungry.” As it spoke, the mouth did not move, did not close, offered her no relief from her vision.

Cindy’s heart pounded. She raised her hand to her lips and kissed it softly three times, saying her children’s names after each. She dropped her bag to the floor and climbed over the counter that separated her from this thing.

Closing her eyes and leaving all that she loved behind her, she crawled into its mouth.

It had been less than an hour since the water had turned to fire; for Alan Massi it took only this much time for the world to end.

It started with the rain.

Alan had stood on his lawn in the early hours of the morning. He was looking at his car, how it shined in the summer sun’s light; he had no interest in the sun itself or the sky in which it reigned. He cared for the car even more than the newly purchased house that stood behind him. The house needed work–a lot of it. The car was perfect. Until, for just a moment, it was covered by shadow.

So Alan looked up. Directly above him there was only blue and the sunlight streamed undisturbed. He looked right. There was one small gray cloud, strangely alone; this had been the culprit and it made its escape quickly. Alan turned left. In the eastern sky was a massive cloud, roiling and black. This was moving toward him as quickly as the gray–that sentry it had sent ahead–was moving away.

Alan did not move. This divided sky was unlike anything he had ever seen. He gave a fleeting thought to the one umbrella he owned. His parents had given it to him, but he left it behind when he moved out here–on his own.

The cloud came upon him quickly, seeming to traverse the miles between them in no time at all. Alan heard the raindrops before he felt them–syncopated clangs against the cars and roofs on the block before him. These were big drops, unrushed. He noticed that there was no one else outside.

And then the first drop hit him. It was hot. So was the second. The third and fourth drops seemed to sear his skin. Behind these, endless more formed a dark curtain that threatened to close upon him. Alan, in blind instinct, squinted his eyes and hurried into the house. The back of his head and legs burned as he ran.

Inside, angry blisters rose in constellations across his body. Alan considered this ghastly rain. He went to his refrigerator and took out a bottle of water. He rolled it across his reddened arms; it offered little relief. Absently, he opened it and drank. The water was uncomfortably warm going down. Alan opened the refrigerator again and pressed his hand to the shelves, to the walls, to the jars. They were all cold.

He walked to the sink and turned the right faucet knob. There was no reason the water should not have been cold; there was no steam and no heat rose from the sink. Still, he could not bring himself to touch it.

With nothing left to do, Alan watched the torrents outside. His window framed a dark landscape; this cloud had turned the day to night. A trickle of water now ran down the window’s inside pane. Around the room, leaks sprang from the ceiling and the walls. Alan pulled himself close so that none fell on him.

Soon he could sit no longer. His body had begun to burn from the water within. Not just the earlier swallow that was now building to a boil in his belly, but that in his limbs, his lungs and his head. So he stood up. He moved slowly at first but then ran. He ran from corner to corner because there was nowhere else to go.

Finally he stopped. He did not bother trying to avoid the drips from above; they were inescapable. But now this outside pain felt mild compared to the anguish inside of him. So the water fell upon him. As the drops bore tiny holes in his skin, he only listened to the wall of sound as the house was battered from without. Its constancy was comforting somehow; it called to him.

His insides raging, Alan went to the door, opened it slowly, and walked outside and into the rain.

The first train was scheduled to arrive in the morning.

It was nearly midnight and the air was cool and clear. Bobby Jenkins sat on the town’s sole bluff watching the work crew laying track. He had been asleep on the coarse blanket that served as his bed, but the noise had woken him–that familiar clang of hammers against steel. So he snuck out as his father snored on and muttered in his sleep; his father often claimed to hear low voices in the dark.

Bobby thought the work had been finished; he had watched it progress for over a year, ever since he’d heard the first explosion. “That’s the ’glycerine,” his father told him, wild-eyed. After that, the tracks appeared, and the workmen with them.

The coming of the railroad was the most exciting thing that had happened to this town since he’d been alive–Bobby was born the day the war for the Union had ended. He read Andy Dibble’s newspaper as best he could and he was excited when they said that this was the beginning of a new age–that of the “iron horses.”

The boy preferred watching the workers to going to school: the iron men, the spikemen, the trackmen. They were gruff and strong, all, wearing hats and overalls, swinging hammers and picks. They smoked constantly and used words that his father spoke rarely and, when he did, prayed about for days after.

Earlier in the week, Bobby had seen the tracks finally meet the station–a barren patch of land with one spare but newly built cottage of wood and tar. The men let out whoops and hollers. Andy printed a front-page story saying that the tracks were operational and the first train would arrive in the early hours of November 1.

But now this night crew was working nearly a mile back from that station house. Bobby did not recognize any of these silent and disparate men. They were certainly not of the same rowdy group he had watched all year, though none of them had been locals either.

The railroad bosses had scouted the area before beginning construction. They knew right away that the townspeople didn’t have the strength or the numbers to do this grueling work; the population was a mere hundred and fifty, quiet and sad folks. It had started as nearly a thousand, but disease hit hard; Indian attacks, too. There were accidents, and so many men lost in the war. Now, it was nearly a ghost town. And so they called it Deadman. The water to the west was known as Deadman’s Sound.

But the tycoons saw money here, and with the lure of money comes people. Thus, the railroad.

Bobby’s father spoke against this. “The dead run this town. You can’t tell me otherhow,” he said. “And the dead don’t like the living–not us and certainly not outsiders.” Bobby was surprised at how many of his neighbors listened, as if they heard voices as well.

“Boy,” his father whispered to him alone, “don’t expect them to stand for this.”

But Bobby was happy. This first train was bringing in workers and families. It would be a fresh start for a place preoccupied with ghosts.

From below him, the only sounds were of tools splitting the tracks. Cutting them, turning them. The men did not rest; there were many of them and they moved fast. They were blue in the moonlight.

Bobby breathed in the rising mist and soon fell asleep. He dreamed of an empty town.

As the night wore on, the men continued to work. They re-laid the rails with great efficiency, leading them leftward, away from their original path. When they finished, just before dawn, the tracks ran to the water, with no stop and no end. The men disappeared in the light of the sun as the train sped toward town from the south.

It would arrive in Deadman as scheduled.

The shade of the tree once covered the entire world.

This is hard to fathom, but it is true. The tree’s trunk, many miles wide, rose up from the ocean and reached far into the sky. But what stood above the water’s surface was merely its tip; beneath the waves that lapped at its impenetrable bark, the tree’s girth grew exponentially until, upon finally meeting the ocean bottom, it covered all, extending from the base of one continent to the next.

The roots of the tree were countless. Some traveled in unending circles and wrapped around the earth’s core; some grew straight through to the other side of the world, rising through water and land, up and up until they touched the clouds. These roots were thick as today’s oaks and had branches of their own, reaching out until they became entwined not only with each other, but also with the limbs and leaves of the great tree itself.

And in these early days, the tree flourished. It bore fruits and flowers and nuts of all kinds. As seasons passed, these fell to the earth, brightening its fields and enriching its soils.

But, as with many things so big, the tree was not wholly pure. Through its width ran several dark veins. These culminated in branches of bitter leaves and sap as red as blood. Sometimes these grew fruit, but it was soft and rotten and misshapen. The insects–alone in this age–fed only on the tree. Mostly, they ate what was good but some were drawn to those dark spots. There, they became fat and black.

Then the oceans filled, and the skies. The fish and birds that came did as the insects had before them. Taking what the tree offered, there were those who consumed the vile fruit and gray buds. Some of them sickened and died; others lived long, but turned fierce. Often, these animals ate each other.

Over time, the tree shrank and opened up the earth to the sun. A million years will wither all, even what was once healthy and strong. And as this happened, the tree began to crumble, falling upon itself and into the waters. Dead branches drifted through the sky and onto the lands; in some places, the dark blood of the tree seeped into the ground. The fruits that dropped years before had long begun to grow wild. Now, among them, there was infection.

Even the earliest humans, however, knew to stay away from what was tainted–to avoid the dark ground.

But then came the famine. And the storms. So the tribes of men wandered. Some joined together, out of the barren lands, and these people of many villages walked, looking for food. They came upon a black and full field.

The two most elder argued as the sun set and the wind blew around them.

“We must eat,” said the first, his face stern.

“We must not eat this,” said the second. She gestured to the fruit in front of them, its smell nauseous. She had seen what happened to the animals that ate of it. “It will change us.”

“But we will live.”

“I must live!” cried a young man nearby. His hunger was agonizing and he waited no longer.

He entered the field and ate. And the people followed. Starting slowly, the night turned into an orgy of consumption as man, woman, and child tore into the fruit with abandon. They sunk their teeth into elastic skin and mealy bodies. Some raised their heads, mouths full, and spit the pulpy mash high into the air. This was not done in disgust, but in triumph. Later, in the coldest hour of night when little remained, some began to fight over what was left. Others lay on the ground, eyes rolled back and fingers picking at their own bellies.

By morning, nearly all were dead and the dark seeds were carried away on the winds.

The bride was beautiful until she smiled. There was nothing wrong with her teeth; they were straight and white and strong, surrounded by roseate lips. It was the expression itself that was not right.

Victoria Dernt had a cloud inside her. It had always been there, rarely lightening and never abating. This cloud darkened everything she did. When she spoke her harsh words or screamed in rage one could almost see the gray vapors carried on her breath. A smile, as formed by her frostily exquisite features, did not lend her any brightness; it stretched tightly over her face, a façade in painful and obvious contrast with what lay beneath.

The only person at the wedding who could not see this was the groom. John Lokide loved this woman–maybe because no one else did. John had always been drawn to outsiders; he focused only on the good that he felt all people possessed. In Victoria he saw beauty and potential.

“I want to make something incredible one day,” she had told him once.

And though her vicious castigations rarely flagged, John–based on this sole statement of hope–thought only the best of her.

His family and friends were concerned that she would change him. They were not alone; her family felt the same. She had no friends.

Their first year of marriage passed in a whirlwind of screaming and tantrums. But John was undaunted. When others inquired about their well-being, he never faltered.

“We’re fine,” he would say. “How are you?”

On their first anniversary, though, Victoria’s ire was particularly fierce. Snapping in the face of John’s constant serenity, she abandoned her cruel tirade, wrapped her mouth around his right forearm, and bit down. She tasted flesh and blood; he felt the sting of vitriol enter his veins. In that bite, he felt at once what everyone else had always seen. When she let go, Victoria simply walked out of the house and did not come back.

The ugly wound took months to heal and, in the end, turned into an uglier scar: a pale circle of dense and lumpish tissue. But this was not the only lasting effect of that night. John’s temper turned; he grew snappish, then mean. Some thought it was because Victoria was gone. The more observant realized it was because of what she left behind.

John’s behavior changed as well. He stopped eating and his limbs grew thin; to some people, this made it look as if the unsightly scar was growing. He began to dress strangely, wearing long-sleeved shirts and heavy pants well before the weather called for them. John talked only about Victoria–surely she would return, he said. Others felt that this was unlikely–and fortunately so. Leaving his house less and less frequently, one day John stopped coming out at all.

But he was right: nearly a year later Victoria came back.

It was early morning and the house they had shared was dark. Victoria used her old key to open the door. She walked on whispering floorboards to the living room and turned on the light.

John sat in a stark wood chair in the center of the room. He was naked. A mass of flesh rose from his right arm–a pulpy stump in the shape of Victoria’s mouth. From there, runs of scar tissue spread like gnarled roots in every direction. Most were pale and gray but some were pink and some were red. These covered nearly every inch of his withered body but had left his forehead smooth. As Victoria watched, branches of scar reached from both sides and, pulsing slowly, moved over that as well. Untouched, his eyes and teeth shone in the light.

John spoke to her. His voice was no longer clear and pleasant. It grated, as if the scars had burrowed down his throat and were smothering his insides. He did not move.

“Come closer,” he said. “Come and see what you’ve made.”