MicroHorror

And there we sat, in a kind of energetic silence which stretched like a meterstick in all directions. Inside that place, whatever it may be, a building, warehouse, giant tent, it didn’t really matter–we didn’t exactly perceive that we were in a place, after all. Everyone just shot black holes into space with dilated pupils.

A dirt floor, no chairs, most of us sat with our legs crossed in what I was always told was “Indian-style,” with the exception of a few who were sleeping on their sides, without pillows. We were completely without luxury and the room was dimly lit by the moonlight beaming in the fissure in the ceiling, or a rip in the fabric, who knew? Only the smell of night was there.

I’m not altogether sure how many of us there were in that giant circle. I remember you could see the other side clearly, but you couldn’t make out the faces of the people there. At the time, I was also confused as to why we were all sitting in a circle, as there was nothing in the middle of it. It was an almost religious experience, absent a monolith. (Does the omission of a theological alter imply a religious presence?) We all knew something was there; the ones who refused to accept the situation at hand tried to explain it away with strong magnetic forces, but something was definitely there, and perhaps its core was in the center and we gravitated around it without much thought. We just felt it was what we should do.

I was considering, as I’m sure all the others were, standing up and saying something. I didn’t know what I would say, if I would introduce myself in some way or not (it’s important to note that the concept of name didn’t matter to any of us at this point). I guess it would seem inappropriate as well to assign myself a number, as it would have to be “1″ for the first to speak, or the first to stand, or the first to do something. I thought at the time that it may imply a penchant for leadership, something I lacked.

So another man stood. “Uh… excuse me!” The correlation and timing of my thoughts were impeccable, and I felt as if all the others felt it, a natural movement in the collective unconscious.

“Yes, excuse me! What is all of this? Why are we sitting in a big circle? Are we inside of something?! Do we own this?! Does this own us?! Dirt!” He was obviously confused, and it became very clear to me why none of the others talked: we were afraid we might come out with something just as confused. I’m sure we would have. “Are we to eat this?!”

No one laughed; it wasn’t a joke. Without saying anything, I think we all started to consider what we would do for nourishment. We had children to think about as well. The thought of cannibalism was there, but we were afraid that might actually lessen our chances for survival, or whatever it was we were trying to do. We were also afraid to move and try to leave the place; we were worried about the lives of the braves who would dare the unknown.

Not that we knew anything. This wasn’t civilized; how could we understand? We just kept sitting.

I swam through the black goop, only a small pinhole allowing light into the cavernous room. I had awoken here, floating, and I couldn’t see too far ahead of me or behind, or too far through the murk in general. The small amount of light that was there was insufficient for any sensory analysis.

I definitely couldn’t see any way out, and there was no way I could possibly get through the light hole. I eventually found a tiny bit of a ledge outside of the goop and slipped up on to it, covered in the stuff. By the looks of it, it should have smelled like tar, but it was closer to the smell of rotting trash mixed with cooking cabbage. I clawed around me, trying to find a higher ledge to slip up on to to see how high in the thing I could get. I also didn’t know how clear my vision would get.

My eyes eventually adjusted, but it was still somewhat difficult to see, and there was definitely no way out of this place. Even though there was no hope of making it through the tiny pinhole, I made my way towards it, knowing that it was my only source of oxygen in this place. The black stuff clung to me no matter how high I went, but it wasn’t that heavy, and oddly enough it wasn’t too slippery as I climbed fine with it on my hands.

I got to the top of the room, hanging almost horizontally on the domed ceiling, and with more than several sighs of relief, I realized the hole was large enough for me to get my arm through. I thought that maybe I could get lucky and the ground or something to stand on was above it, and that the material this pseudo-rock was made out of was flimsy enough to break down with my hand.

I was wrong. I pulled as hard as I could, but the material wouldn’t budge. I let out a hopeless whimper, at that time believing I had nothing I could do to make it out. So I stayed there, clinging to the ceiling with both hands and feet, the black goop moving over and around me and soaking in to my clothes, keeping me cold in the darkness.

After several days of hanging there without sleep, food, or drink, I started to become more than desperate. I realized that if I didn’t do something drastic, I would definitely die, and any hope I had of survival would be destroyed. In a blind, desperate, self-loathing rage I slipped my right arm through the hole in the ceiling, bending my elbow so I was holding myself up with my forearm on the rocky surface. I pulled as hard as I could, hearing my bones crack and my skin tear as I desperately tried to rip my arm off in order to pull down some of the land that kept me locked there. My arm finally broke off and I fell down, the force of my weight pulling me down but the strength I had mustered in my desperate state kept me clinging to the ceiling.

I hung there for a few more days, but by that time I didn’t have any idea of morning or night, days, weeks, or even minutes. I decided that there must be a way out further down that I just hadn’t explored yet, and let go of the ceiling, dropping back in to the black goop.

I fell through it without a splash, being sucked down deeper in to it no matter how much I struggled to gain control and tread it. I felt myself exit the goop and suddenly stop in place.

I felt myself expand to encompass the entire universe, the very particles of my physical being split apart and wafting in all directions. My vision expanded, before being blinked out in to infinite silence. I couldn’t even take a breath.

Hairy, heavy, dark, gigantic–all the words that describe the beast I caught a glimpse of right before it devoured me, complete with the chair I was tied to. I noticed how white its teeth were right before it bit me in half, and things went dark. It didn’t make a sound while it ate, and its eyes were filled with the innocence of a newborn pup.

He had been thrashing about in his bed, and the itching beneath his eyelid had kept him awake for hours. No longer convinced that the itching was due to a simple allergy problem, he stepped out of bed and made his way to the bathroom, feeling his way around a wardrobe to make it through the opening which didn’t feature a door.

The man had been rubbing his eye, and assumed it would be red when he looked in the mirror, so without even looking, he whipped it open with his free hand and pulled the eye drops out, slamming it shut and closing both of his eyes at the same time. He unscrewed the lid and prepared to place the drops in his eye.

He continued rubbing his eye with the tip of his index finger, when something that felt a little slimy slipped out on to the tip of his finger. He mused, “What the hell is this?!” and started to try and pull it out of his eye, noting that it was sticking to the tip of his finger. He continued tugging and noticed that it was becoming taught between his eyelids as he pulled.

Finally looking in the mirror, he realized that connected to the end of his finger was his pupil, or what he rationalized as his pupil (It looked more like a worm with a flat black end.) His mouth agape in terror and surprise, he saw the long slimy thing extending about an inch to his finger, draped over it with the black hole staring at his other eye. The body of the thing, a white near-translucent tube, ran to his eye and appeared to extend further in to the back of it, anchored somewhere on the inside of his skull.

He tried to scream, closing both of his eyes and forcing the air out of his lungs, but he wasn’t able to emit a sound. Stumbling back, he felt his body giving way and fell in to the bath tub, his knees folding over the edge.

At the very moment the tile hit the back of his head, he felt the sensation of being pulled through the back of his skull by an enormous invisible force. When he was finally no longer being pulled, he opened his eyes again, and immediately ran to the bathroom. On the way, he tripped on a glass paperweight that contained a scorpion which had been tortured before the creation of the tool. Falling to the left, he smashed his head on the wall mirror, a piece of the jagged broken glass falling in to the back of his neck, just under the base of his skull.

After a few moments of shock, he finally stood back up and wobbled the rest of the way to the bathroom, roughly pulling the large chunk of mirror out of the back of his neck; this wound was a fountain, shooting bright red blood on to the floor behind him.

He looked closely at himself in the mirror, sighing out loud, “Thank goodness my eye’s okay!”