MicroHorror

Cal no longer believed the “mongrel mud people” were inferior to his own Aryan race.

“I don’t hate nobody no more,” he mumbled before slurping his thin soup.

Raised on a Montana compound, home and temple for the Church of Jesus, White Christian Savior, Cal now knew all races were equal. Cal even questioned if there really was such a thing as “races,” plural.

How could he not reject the Church’s core belief after all he’d been through these past five nightmare years? The War savaged the world, killed near all things, left piles of dead to rot, the air thin and poisoned, with few left struggling to survive.

This nightmare time revealed to Cal how false the Church’s teachings really were. No race was “chosen,” nobody “inferior.” White people were no better. They taste like salty pork, same as everyone else. Just red meat once you peel away the skin, even that bony old Prophet.

The infected howled like beasts. They hunted him. He ran, dying, blood drip-dripping from a teeth-torn arm.

They howled. Only minutes before he would join those plague-enraged revenants and betray the survivors. He knew where they hid.

He knew when the infection overwhelmed his mind the bestial hunger would turn him upon his friends, his lover, his child, leading the howling mob to them.

He could not let that happen.

He ran. There was a place, the old courthouse, now a museum. Bursting through a side entrance, he stumbled up stairs. On the third floor he found the attic door–kicked it open.

Mind dying, he willed his spasming body up the stairwell to the steel cistern once used to collect rainwater. He climbed its ladder, heaving his palsied body into the twelve-foot depth. Bones snapped.

One thought flared–no escape–before his mind vanished.

Hunger burned–and he howled.

His wife liked to say he’d be lost without her.

She said it often: when a tax form confused him, at a church gathering as he fumbled to remember a name, when he missed a turn, those times she’d hand him his lost glasses.

Anniversary after anniversary, it was her standing joke. He’d give her a little kiss and a gift. And she’d say, “You’d be lost without me, dear,” patting his hand.

Day after day he heard it, year after year. It rambled like an echo inside his skull, between his ears, until he realized he hated the sound of her voice and those five demeaning little words: “You’d be lost without me.”

So, one night he killed her, drove her body far away, deep into a national forest. He carried her corpse some distance from the road, dug a hole, and buried her.

Eight months later hikers found what was left of his bones not far from the shallow grave.

Authorities concluded he got lost without her.

He called the planet Plentiful.

All forest and meadow, a creek was near the pod that rescued him from an imploding ship still orbiting. Another ship was coming–in time.

Rations would last days, but native food was plentiful. The mammal-like fauna found fruit, roots, and berries. Squirrel-things were unafraid and easily caught.

He ate well. Bland was the best he could call any of it but his belly was full and he felt safe.

So he was surprised when the headaches came. Gaunt and gray, his gums bled. Soon, he was too weak to leave the pod.

Not a biologist, it took time to understand. Plentiful truly was–for her own. But her alien composition was useless to him.

He scribbled a note stating he named the planet and held it in his hand.

Lying quietly, he waited.

Squirrel-things curled next to him. They slept, stealing his waning warmth.

Weary and spent, I return to my grave. A lovely place, covered in green, shaded by trees, a shiny monument still waiting for a final date.

I roam of late with duties to fulfill, obligations to complete, so many expectations to meet. And I am tired, so very tired of them all.

I sit on the grass, then lay my soul full length beneath the monument. The cool of the ground seeps deep into me until the chill reaches my bones.

I press against the earth, cleansing myself of duties, obligations, expectations. A darkness fills me.

I will my soul to melt and I sink through the grass into the sod. Down through clay and dirt. Pebbles pass through my softened heart.

I descend until I find the dark and silent place. I plan to stay this time.

But life has a way of keeping me from my grave. Duties call again, obligations re-emerge, and I remember expectations.

They call me even now.

They were extreme athletes from six continents, twenty-one of them, in an obscure corner of Hungary at dusk, listening to a white-haired man calling himself Baron.

From a terrace he looked down on his guests.

“Welcome to my challenge race. This will be the run of your lives, I promise you.” He motioned to three brawny men at his side. “My sons enjoy testing themselves against skillful opponents.”

“And the course?” an ultramarathoner shouted.

The baron pointed to the surrounding forest. “Thirty kilometers of trails in my woods. Follow them—or not. Run among the trees! Return at sunrise and win.”

“Thirty kilometers? That’s hardly a race.”

The moon crested the mountain behind the castle.

“There’s more challenge than that,” the baron said. Beside him, his sons trembled and groaned.

The sun vanished.

“Time to run,” the baron said.

Three wolf-like things leaped from the terrace—and the athletes ran.

A buzz filled the gray room as Clarissa folded a blouse, tucking it into a cloth suitcase. “Mother, I’m about done. Aren’t you at least going to say goodbye?”

Clarissa knew the stubborn old woman wouldn’t answer. She glanced at Mother’s silhouette in the wheelchair, facing the window where Mother loved to watch birds at the feeders.

The buzz reminded Clarissa of hummingbird wings, Mother’s favorite.

Another blouse folded. “After all these years—in this house—with you—” Clarissa trembled and bit her lip. “Well. I think I deserve a trip, don’t you?”

The buzz swirled.

“Don’t worry. You’ll be fine. I made arrangements.” Clarissa giggled. The suitcase snapped shut.

“Goodbye, Mother. I’ll send postcards.”

The storm door banged shut behind her.

Flies circled Mother’s head, landing on her face, her empty eyes, the slash in her throat where white things crawled.

The buzz filled the room.

Night things gathered on a ridge to watch the last human city burn.

“Our prey. Gone,” a werewolf said.

“The dead will feed me—for a time,” a walking corpse answered. “But then…”

A vampire slumped to the ground, head bowed.

“I can still hunt vermin,” the werewolf said. “But… humans sustain me.”

Head still bowed, the vampire spoke. “I think I will sit here and watch the dawn. It’s been centuries since I’ve seen the sun. I would like to see the sun one last time.”

The walking corpse turned to the werewolf. “What comes next? We’ll be gone, with the humans.”

A distant coyote yipped. The werewolf saw rats scurry from the burning city. Crows cawed nearby.

“Something new will come,” the werewolf said. “And someday there will be nightmares again and new night things will rise.”

“Little comfort,” the vampire said, and he wept bloody tears.

Meg gasped. “Michael! What happened? You look marvelous!”

She guided him into the party. “Brazil was good to you. How—”

“Eighty-nine pounds—in six weeks.” Michael smiled as he stroked his throat.

“What? Surgery? Stomach banding?”

“Nothing like that. I don’t eat like I did—little appetite, anymore.”

They stopped at the refreshments. “Martini?” Meg asked.

“Alcohol doesn’t agree… with me. Water will do.”

“You have changed. You found something, in Brazil, didn’t you. Appetite suppressant, right?”

“Something like that.” Michael nibbled an olive, swallowed and winced. “Amazonia is amazing. Mysteries… lost secrets. I found one. A… treatment. It’s permanent.”

Michael selected a toothpicked sliver of prosciutto and fromage, hesitated, then brought it to his lips.

Meg blinked and questioned what she next saw.

Michael’s lips parted; tiny jaws snapped at the meat and cheese.

“Little appetite,” he said.

A forked, black tongue slid across his lips, slipping inside a lopsided grin.

Paulie felt safe in the light.

He tucked Lego soldiers and himself within the squared sunbeam falling from the skylight crowning the Great Room. Around him, Mom and Dad carried and directed boxes and furniture into the house they wanted Paulie to call home.

The cave-like place frightened Paulie. All stone, timber and glass, boasting “a breathtaking view,” the house thrilled Mom and Dad. They did not notice the cold places like he did, or see gray things dormant in corners, waiting to be nourished in the night.

Paulie pulled sneakered feet closer, moving Lego soldiers tighter to him as light shifted with each tick of the wall clock.

Taffy the cat joined Paulie in the light. She did not purr, did not nap, but watched shadows reaching for them while the sunbeam well narrowed.

“Isn’t this exciting?” Mom said.

Paulie knew the truth.

Taffy hissed at the coming night.