MicroHorror

What are the things that come out at night? Well, I’ll tell you! They’re the true thoughts, the thoughts that you won’t have at any other time of day. The real possibility you’ll never find true love. The distinct fact that the person you’re married to is not the person you dreamed of. Your job isn’t what you thought it would be, your family is a dysfunctional wreck and your spouse may be sleeping with another. These are the questions that come out after the sun goes down. This is what everyone means when they say “I’m scared of the dark.”

When the first Demon came the world knew darkness. The last battle against us Angels was fought with the demons driving us out. The world knew peace. The Demons lived and breathed building their monuments and writing of their deeds. We Angels tried to take back the world. Inevitably the Demons always beat us back. The world belonged to the Demons for countless forgotten ages. Then the apes came.

They first crawled out of the jungles. Then they wandered the plains. They brought down the same great beasts the Demons did. Then they stopped wandering and grew from the ground. Some Demons spoke fear about these new arrivals. The Demon King told them not to worry. They’d ruled this world for countless generations; their mastery of this world was unquestionable. The Demons’ confidence came from believing they were the only ones who could shape iron with fire.

Then one day the apes’ arrows came. They charged over the hill with the sun shining off their armor. The Demons ran for the safety of their black walls. After the Demons shut their gates the apes hurled great rocks to smash them open. When the apes charged in the Demons fought them long and hard. When the third day dawned the Demons started to go back from whence they came, leaving behind the world they’d called home for countless generations. From on high we Angels watched the apes burn all the Demon works to the ground.

While we watched the apes change the world one of the younger Angels asked to go and meet them. I as Elder Angel told him that any Angel that went down there would meet certain death. I told him that they weren’t in the grand plan. They were an accident, the result of a botched experiment. Capable of more cruelty, hatred and violence than even Demons could muster. I told the young Angel that the world we watch is now ruled by a group of soulless monstrosities. I showed him that even before the ashes of the Demons’ city had cooled the apes had already started killing each other. The last thing he asked was their name.

I told him Man.

I am old; I’ve existed for so long I can’t even remember where it all started. I was here long before Father Time wrote the first words in his endless book. I taught Death how to send his first soul through the great loop. I raised Mother Earth from infancy into womanhood. When she bore her daughter Gaia I helped her plant the stream of life.

But I grow tired; it’s hard living so long. I hope that one day it might end. I’ll be ready long before that day reaches me. I’ll be around long after the one God goes away and all the others after him turn to story. I’ll see Father Time make his final entry and close his endless book. I’ll be the one to send Death through the great loop. My hands will lay Mother Earth and Gaia to rest in their precious soil. I often wonder who will lay my remains to rest after I’m gone because I am certain of only one thing. I am old.

I didn’t mean to kill her.

I didn’t think she’d break so easy.

She was laughing until I broke her.

I saw her in a bar; we had some drinks and started to laugh. I liked her and she started to like me. Her red hair flowing down her back and the sides of her face nice and straight. Her green eyes looking at me with that shimmer women have. Her shimmer was there even in the low light of the bar. She didn’t need any makeup but she wore it anyway. Her lipstick tasted good when her lips met mine.

I didn’t mean to drink her blood.

There was just so much of it.

It wasn’t the first time I’d talked to her. I originally met her through the dating service I run. After she shot her tape I told her that I’d call her with updates on potential matches. I didn’t show her tape to anyone. I called her and told her that there were no takers. I made a joke to make her feel better. I can’t remember what that was now, but it made her laugh.

I didn’t mean to cut her.

She said “Just a little.”

I never know what a little is.

I offered the bar outing after the second phone call. She seemed happy at my invitation. Strange a woman as beautiful as her should be so lonely. She arrived before I did, frantically looking around. I think she was afraid of getting stood up. Hard to believe.

I didn’t mean to enter her when she said stop.

I thought it was part of the game.

I never know when to stop.

After several rounds I happily paid for, she started to advance her feminine wiles on me. Her hand started to go up and down my leg. It went from my leg to my man muscle. Our lips pressed together and her tongue went in my mouth. I said “Let’s go back to my place.” She followed me home matching my swerving.

I didn’t mean to enter her after she stopped breathing.

I thought it would bring me closer.

I’ll never be close.

I led her in my house. She let me be the aggressor tearing her clothes off. I let her pick the toys: the whip, gag and the razor blade. I tied her to my bed good and tight. I told her to shut up when I put the gag in her mouth. With her eyes she motioned where she wanted the blade. I ignored her when I saw the blood come out.

She didn’t make too much of a sound when the blade made its first cut. She looked like she liked it. I took the gag out of her mouth and entered her the first time.

I didn’t mean to eat her.

I didn’t eat much.

Only a little.

After I was done I got off of her and stood by my bed. Looked down at the smears of blood all over her body. She looked like she was ready to switch positions. I didn’t catch that in her face so I started again. This time with my hands, I touched her down there in her woman place. She told me to stop but I didn’t. She demanded it louder so I hit her. I stopped with her woman place and I took one of the razor blades. I made a gentle slice across her belly. The scream cut through my head like glass. I made her smack her head against the headboard. I felt something snap in her neck. I felt her quit breathing.

I carved her up and I put her in Baggies. I’ll dump her in a river shortly. All except for her eyes. I’ll keep those.

I didn’t mean to do what I did.

I didn’t want it to happen.

Why does this keep happening?

The great pit opened. In the middle of what would become literally Death Valley the great black pit opened. Most of the people came to see it out of sheer curiosity. A perfect circle exactly one mile across; scientists couldn’t fathom how it naturally occurred. The other puzzlement was it didn’t have a bottom.

The best cave divers had gone down attached to more than three miles of rope but hadn’t even caught a glimpse of the pit’s end. Light, like everything tossed in by the locals, just simply vanished. The government even threw down a high-powered laser beacon: its light stayed for a while and then went dark.

One hot day things started to come up from the pit. Some of the people ran when they saw the creatures; most just stood and looked. The creatures stood on their hind legs, about five feet tall; their semi-clear bodies had a translucent goo coarsening through their veins. The onlookers could see through them if they looked hard enough. Something that resembled slime but smelled fouler dripped from them constantly. No eyes, ears or hair were on the creatures. They looked like a wet unfinished sculpture of a human. The only exception to their clarity was their teeth and claws that were as black as the pit itself. Making sounds like a fish out of water, they started advancing on the crowd. The news choppers arrived just before it happened. The creatures screamed in an inhuman pitch and attacked.

Leaping into the air they crashed down on the crowd. After a few minutes just the parts they didn’t like was all that remained. As the next twenty-four hours passed, thousands more of the creatures sprawled out. Every direction the compass could point, the beasts went on their murderous rampage. In less than two hours 200,000 people had been killed. The National Guard formed the first line of defense. They fought bravely but foolishly and fell after a 45-minute battle. One good thing did come out of it: one of the cooks threw some salt at an attacking abomination. The creature screamed in pain and fell over dead. The news spread little joy; by the next morning over a million of them had come out.

If things weren’t bad enough the creatures started to grow wings. They took to the skies to get to the rest of the world. In Japan so many screamed down from the sky they blocked out the sun. When they came for the rest of Asia the wind changed from a calm south-southwest to a raging north-northeast. How Europe fell is lost but what is certain was it was sudden and bloody. The predominant story is they came from everywhere at once. Before long all the creatures coming out of the pit had wings.

Back in America, what remained of our armed forces staged a last stand on an island in the Great Lakes. The world’s guns had been converted to shoot rock salt. For two weeks they held out, but in the end the unlimited demon horde broke through. When the American military fell the rest of the world fell shortly after. Even to this day I still think they are pouring up from the great pit.

The last of us hid in the salt mines of the world. I don’t know why, really; we’re just waiting to die. All of the others are dead and I’ve got a choice: die by what I’m breathing in my lungs or by the creatures outside. Funny… I never thought mankind’s final words would be written on a junior legal pad.

I can feel it. The old gods are on their way back, finally free from their long imprisonment. Each bang of the roaring drums brings them one step closer. The torches light their path back home. The dances invite them to join us. Soon they will be back. Soon the old gods will wash mankind away in a river of blood. Soon once again the old gods will rule with us. I can see the heavens opening.

There are two sides for everything in the universe. The side we see and accept as fact and the other side of speculation and faith. Proving or disproving faith with cold hard fact was what Millie Hamilton had spent her whole life doing. Her goal was to answer the unanswerable questions of life. Who we are, who we’ve been and of course where are we going, but none of those occupied her mind more than this one: Is there a God?

She’d spent twenty years off and on trying to construct a mathematical formula to scientifically prove or disprove the existence of God and the heavens. Late one night Millie finally found her correlation but not exactly the one she was looking for. She accidentally found she was very close to proving the existence of God’s counterpart, the Devil. Millie figured that with the right number combinations she could actually catch a brief glimpse of Hell.

The problem was Millie was right. When the numbers lined up the window to Hell opened up, releasing Satan into our world. Millie never stopped to think if she could close it or not.

Before she hanged herself, Millie wrote a simple note: I’m sorry.

So began two million years of darkness.

Good going, Millie. Thanks a lot.

“There is evil growing inside of you.”

“What?” the woman in the pink sweater said.

“Yes, you see how his forehead has a sharp spike here?” said the doctor in the white mask.

“Yes.”

“Then you’ll notice his rather longer, claw-like fingers. Most importantly, see how the spine resembles a six, and how his thumbs make the other two sixes.”

“What are you saying?”

“This child will never know the love of God. This child is a child of Satan.”

“What can we do?”

“Abortion.”

“All right. It’s not worth the risk of bringing the devil into our world.”

“Jesus, I really need to go to the bathroom,” Dr. Willy Nailstein said to his assistants. He’d been in surgery since 7:00 AM and had forgotten his customary stop to the bathroom before starting surgery. Now, more than two hours into surgery, his bladder’s need was superceding any need the eighty-two year old man on the table might have. You’ve done it before, he thought. Just go run in, take a leak, wash your hands and be back before the EKG prints out.

“I’m leaving to go to the bathroom.”

“Yes, Doctor. Go ahead.”

“Right.”

Nailstien ran out of the OR to the men’s room. He pushed the door open with his backside. He did his thing in the nearest stall. Halfway through his piss, Willy heard the code blue alarm.

“Code Blue Operating Room Four
Code Blue OR Four
Code Blue!”

With a bit of effort, Willy finished in record time. At a sprinter’s pace he raced to the nurse waiting with a fresh pair of gloves. With great skill, Will slid into the gloves a moment before bursting through the OR doors.

“What the hell? I was gone for less than a minute!”

“Patient flatlined because you didn’t look close enough at where you put your scalpel before taking a piss,” one of his brave assistants said.

“Shut up and help me save the old man!”

Five minutes of shocking his heart with no result. Willy gave up trying.

“I’m going to call it. You guys know the drill for this situation,” Willy said to his staff. This wasn’t the first time they had to cover something like this. Willy didn’t have a doubt about their ability to lie but they weren’t the ones that had to sell it to the family. At 9:42 am Willy Nailstein’s patient died. The official cause of death on the report would be written down as complications that arose during surgery. It didn’t help Willy as he made his way to the family’s waiting room.

The family was all there, prepared for the long haul. Monopoly and Scrabble boards took up two of the four guest tables. When Willy appeared, the relatives surrounded him. Gently, Willy took the new widow aside to break the news.

“What happened? I mean, how did the surgery go?” she asked.

“Well… there were complications.”

BRINK!

BRINK!

BRINK!

That was the sound that Kenny Jenson hated to hear every morning. He knew what it was perfectly well; it was the same thing that woke him up every morning to take him to the job he hated. He rolled over and his pudgy fingers found the snooze button, shutting the infernal machine down, giving him ten more blissful minutes.

BRINK!

BRINK!

BRINK!

The snooze button went down again.

BRINK!

BRINK!

BRINK!

The fat fingers forced the snooze button down again.

Ten seconds later:

BRINK!

BRINK!

BRINK!

Kenny sat up in bed; he’d pushed the button, hadn’t he? Reaching over to the black box of pure evil he hit the snooze again.

BRINNNNNNK!

BRINNNNNNK!

BRINNNNNNK!

Recoiling from the noise–it had never been this loud before–Kenny reached for the switch to just shut the damn thing off. It clicked into the off position just like it had done every morning of its existence. Kenny waited…

BRINNNNNNK!

BRINNNNNNK!

BRINNNNNNK!

Covering his ears from the increased volume, Kenny reached behind his bed for the clock’s power cord. A blue spark appeared when the cord was ripped from the wall socket. Looking back with a smile Kenny expected to see a blank display. His heart, that had to circulate blood around his eighty pounds of fat, just about exploded when he looked back. The numbers were there, brighter than ever before, and before Kenny’s eyes the numbers started to increase in speed.

27

28

29

30

BBRRIINNNNNNNNNNKKKKKKK!

BBRRIINNNNNNNNNNKKKKKKK!

BBRRIINNNNNNNNNNKKKKKKK!

The noise felt like grenades going off in Kenny’s head. Rolling out of bed he went for his door. The handle felt like it was made out of ice. The handle didn’t move. Kenny shifted his weight down on the handle. Even with all of his 320 pounds on it the handle wouldn’t turn an inch.

BBRRIINNNNNNNNNNKKKKKKK!

BBRRIINNNNNNNNNNKKKKKKK!

BBRRIINNNNNNNNNNKKKKKKK!

Catching his breath, Kenny felt his ears start to bleed. Blood staining his white T-shirt, Kenny started to kick at his bedroom door. Like it was made of steel, the door didn’t even get a scratch. Sweat pouring down his face, Kenny ran over to the clock. He raised his meaty arm.

BBBRRRIIINNNNNNNNNNKKKKKKK!

Being that close to the box sent Kenny staggering back a few feet with a deafening ringing in his ears. He collapsed to the floor. Lying on the ground Kenny looked up at the clock. An illuminated red smile showed across the clock’s screen. The smile vanished and 12:00 appeared. Kenny closed his eyes and covered his ears.

BBBBBRRRRRIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNNKKKKKKKKKKK!!!

BBBBBRRRRRIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNNKKKKKKKKKKK!!

BBBBBRRRRRIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNNKKKKKKKKKKK!!!

BBBBBRRRRRIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNNKKKKKKKKKKK!!!

BBBBBRRRRRIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNNKKKKKKKKKKK!!!

BBBBBRRRRRIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNNKKKKKKKKKKK!!!