MicroHorror

“But I didn’t bring a bathing suit,” Angie said. She sat between Jake and Chip in Jake’s truck. She glimpsed the lake as they drove past red-leafed trees. Something about that shadowy, brownish body of water made her squirm.

“No suit needed,” Chip said.

Angie became more nervous when she saw Jake grinning. She recalled her mother’s warning: If you meet a boy at a party then you can forget about a serious relationship. Just because you’re a college freshman doesn’t give you an excuse to be foolish.

“I thought we were going into town for burgers,” Angie said as Jake steered the truck into an empty parking lot near the lake. She remembered the one date they’d had, and how he’d seemed trustworthy. The night involved dinner and a scary movie at the theater where Jake worked. The night also involved Jake’s friend Chip and his girlfriend.

“Aren’t we meeting Susan?” Angie asked. The truck had stopped, and she clutched the water bottle she’d brought.

Chip stepped onto asphalt littered with leaves. “I’m over Susan,” he said.

Jake tugged on Angie’s arm and said, “It’s ninety degrees. This is what people do when they’re hot.”

Angie reluctantly followed him out of the vehicle, still holding her bottle. “I don’t like this place,” she said as they approached the lake. She saw a pair of weather-scarred smokestacks protruding from skeletal trees.

“They tried to build a power plant here in the ’70s,” Chip said. He walked onto a stony beach. “Some workers got into a horrible accident, and the project shut down.”

“They couldn’t keep this place from being wild,” Jake said.

At the water’s edge, he pulled down his shorts. Angie blushed when she saw him in white briefs. Chip also undressed until he wore only boxers with wolf heads on them.

“Now you,” Jake told Angie.

“I’ll stay here.”

Chip entered the water. “Why so scared?” he asked. “No piranhas in here.”

Jake nodded and said, “Nor water moccasins. The only snakes are rattlesnakes, and those are on shore.”

Angie folded her arms over her dress. She imagined her mother’s opinion: Go in that water and you’ll get a lot worse than wet.

“I brought my switchblade,” Chip said. He pointed at the handle protruding from the pocket of his shorts. “We’ll protect you if anyone gives us trouble.”

Angie studied their faces. She saw no sign of malice.

You’ve got to grow up sometime, she decided. What’s the harm in swimming in your underwear?

She lifted her dress over her head, and then she gasped.

Jake and Chip now waded in the nude.

Her face crimson from embarrassment and anger, Angie marched toward the parking lot. She scolded herself for being foolish. There was a part of her that knew better. It was the part that prepped for all her tests, that listened to her mother’s every sigh, that had her fill her water bottle at the rusty fountain near the parking lot so she could make the walk to the highway.

“Where you going?” Jake called. “Skinny dipping’s not a sin.”

Angie sipped water from her bottle, and her throat instantly burned. She grew feverish, then dizzy. She turned toward the lake, and she saw that it had gone black. The smokestacks were green and undulating.

She muttered, “There are other snakes.”

***

The first thing Angie saw was the knife in her hand. It was splashed with red goo, and its tip glittered in the sunlight. She recognized the red as blood, and she noticed it covered her hand and wrist. Sprawled on the beach before her were Jake and Chip, their bodies showing organs through the slash marks covering their torsos.

As panic overtook her numbness, Angie saw that she held her water bottle in her other hand. It was nearly empty, and the contents were polluted with brown specks. Those specks were wild and writhing creatures, and Angie understood with horror that they were in her as well.

• Copyright: © 2011 David Massengill

Wandering through the food hall of Harrods, London, Stephanie Wesley bit into an English Champagne Truffle and the burly security guard in dress jacket told her, “There’s no eatin’ and walkin’ in ’Arrods.” Stephanie went red and popped the rest of the candy into her mouth, which caused her to start gagging. Feeling like a no-mannered pig from Missouri, she stumbled up the escalator, in the opposite direction of the shrine to Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed (which she’d never even had the chance to photograph). Outside the department store, she rushed to cross Brompton Road and escape her shame. She looked left rather than right on this rainy July day, and that’s why a black cab slammed the ghost right out of her skin and into the entrance of Harrods, London.

Soon descending through the ceiling of the food hall, Stephanie did whatever the hell she wanted.

• Copyright: © 2011 David Massengill

“You’re back again.”

Will took his ticket from the woman at the museum admissions desk and said, “I still haven’t seen everything.”

“Knock yourself out, young man,” the tired-looking woman said, “but know that we close in forty-five minutes.” Her stare showed that she thought he was weird.

Will understood the judgment. After all, he’d only been coming weekly for the last year. The death of his fiancée had triggered the visits. As he descended the marble steps to the chilly bottom floor, he remembered that February night he’d gazed at Louise’s mangled figure on the train tracks behind the museum. Her distorted back and bluish skin made her look like a crone even though she was only twenty-eight.

“Why would she be here?” Will had asked the policeman.

The policeman shrugged and said, “Someone might have chased her or dragged her. Whoever it was wasn’t a robber. She still had her belongings in her coat pocket.” He handed Will Louise’s wallet, her keys, and a ticket stub from the museum.

Will was certain Louise had met her murderer in here. He wandered past the stained and chipped torsos of the Greco-Roman sculpture gallery the same way he’d wandered through the rooms upstairs–with an eye out for the sicko who’d perhaps spoken to his wife before getting her to the tracks. Yet Will was alone–just as he would be when he lay awake in his and Louise’s bed on this freezing night.

Warm air blew through a doorway Will hadn’t noticed before. He soon discovered another gallery, this one burnt-smelling and painted crimson. Small, black-and-white illustrations adorned the space. Each artwork featured a victim. Will saw a man with a broken wineglass protruding from his throat, a woman with flailing arms falling through the shaft of a stairwell. Presiding over every tragedy was a white-skinned figure in a black suit. The man–if that is what he was–had a face in the shape of a crescent moon and raisin-like eyes.

All the drawings unsettled Will, but the last in one row caused him to whimper. In the picture, a woman resembling Louise stood beside the moon man above train tracks. The man held her upright, and her head was turned in an unnatural position, as if someone had twisted it that way.

Will’s knuckles were white when he gripped the edge of the admissions desk. “Who’s the artist behind those works down there?” he barked.

“I don’t know,” the woman said, fingering her two-way radio. “They’re all dead and buried near the Coliseum or somewhere.”

“Not the sculptures,” Will said. “Those nasty drawings in the other gallery.”

“There’s only one gallery. We don’t have any drawings downstairs.”

“I can show you,” Will said, grabbing her sleeve.

She stepped back and spoke into the radio. “Security,” she said.

Minutes later, Will paused on the snowy sidewalk. He knew that by retreating home he would never learn what had really happened to his love. He waited until the woman left her desk before sneaking into the lobby. As he stepped over the chain link that signaled the museum’s closure, he thought he might be able to locate the artist’s name on the illustrations.

The gallery had become dim and hot. Will moved from picture to picture, searching for a signature but finding none. He reached the illustration containing Louise and gasped. This illustration was no longer the last. To its right hung a drawing of Will. He was prone on a floor, a chain link wrapped around his neck and his eyes blankly staring. The moon man crouched over him.

Will’s dread became panic when he heard the clinking of metal. He didn’t have time to turn around before the links pressed into his skin. He glanced at his image and then that of Louise. He remembered telling her that maybe they should forget wedding photographs and have a painted portrait instead.

• Copyright: © 2010 David Massengill

Sophie’s eyes widened when she saw the stylist pull the hideous jacket out of the cardboard box. She told herself, Don’t frown like a sour apple. You need to succeed in this show or it’s back to farmville and selling Snowshakes at the Frosty Cow.

But she couldn’t deny her fear as the clothing neared her body. The jacket had a high, unbending collar and consisted of layers of steel mesh. Threads of metal protruded from it like dangerous stubble. Sophie thought she spotted rust in the armpits.

“You really want her to wear this?” the stylist asked the designer. The stylist was a kindly, plump woman in her forties who reminded Sophie of the women from her hometown in Wisconsin. The designer, Ivan, was a lizard-like Spaniard who’d sported the same crimson spiky hair since he achieved global fame in the ’80s. He sneered when he smiled, and he called every model “bon-bon.”

“Girls are already hitting the runway,” Ivan said. “And this one’s incomplete without that jacket.”

“Ivan?” someone called. “Anna Wintour’s arrived.”

Ivan nodded and glared at Sophie. “Arms up, bon-bon. And don’t forget the zipper’s in back.”

The stylist frowned as she guided Sophie’s arm through one sleeve. Sophie’s upper body was bare except for a bra. Sophie winced when she felt metal points scrape her skin.

“I don’t envy you girls,” the stylist said. “The industry only gets harder on you, turning you into emaciated dolls and forcing you into impossible outfits.”

Sophie finished bringing her arm through the other sleeve. She glanced at her hand and saw a crisscross of red scratches.

“Sacrifices bring success,” she said in a flat voice. She felt a rash forming under the collar. She looked at the stylist and said, “Why wasn’t this jacket at last night’s fitting?”

The stylist shook her head and said, “Ivan ordered it last-minute. He wanted the show to have a ‘gothic’ feel. His friend mentioned these outfits being stored in a church basement outside Madrid.”

Sophie nodded and fanned her eyes, which were tearing from the jacket’s constant pricks. Techno boomed from the showroom, and models queued for their walks. Sophie looked at the stylist and said, “You haven’t zipped up the back.”

The stylist smiled and said, “You’re suffering enough, sweetie.”

As she approached the portal to the runway, Sophie tried not to grimace. Be a machine, she told herself. You’ve fasted for days without fainting and you’ve worn heels that should’ve broken your ankles. You can handle this metal monster.

She received the thumbs-up from the man directing runway traffic when she felt someone grab her.

“You’re as big as a pig with that jacket open,” Ivan said. “I’ll zip you up.”

Sophie heard the zipper’s rising, but she went deaf when pain dominated all her senses. As the jacket constricted, she felt hundreds of tiny hooks enter flesh from her neck to her navel. Her agony was so intense that she couldn’t scream.

Ivan pushed her forward and said, “Strut, bon-bon.”

Stumbling around the screen, Sophie felt her body turn hot and damp. She saw the returning model give her a horrified look. Cameras flashed, onlookers gasped, and Sophie’s upper body rained blood on the runway. Sophie tried pulling on the collar, but she realized the jacket wouldn’t release her without ripping skin. Dizzy, she sank with a whimper.

As medics pressed bandages against the jacket in vain, Sophie remembered the lamb’s wool sweater her grandmother had made her when she was a child. Hating its simplicity, she hung it from her windowsill for moths to devour. Weirdly, she desired that sweater now, thinking it would fit better than any set of angel’s wings.

• Copyright: © 2009 David Massengill