MicroHorror

Robert’s first impulse was to shoot Esmeralda. He watched her fat rear end jiggle and bounce as she worked out her insatiable hunger on the stranger. Retracing the guy’s footsteps in his mind, Robert remembered the abandoned car he’d passed a quarter mile back on his way home from town. Maybe the stranger had simply had car trouble and was just looking for a phone. Maybe his destination hadn’t been Robert’s rundown farm. Maybe he wasn’t looking into the unsolved prostitute disappearances. “Yeah, and maybe pigs can fly.”

He’d killed his first prostitute three years earlier. He hated prostitutes almost as much as he hated hogs, but he’d realized long ago that both served a purpose. He’d dragged the body out behind the barn and was about to dump it into a makeshift grave, when Esmeralda appeared and began devouring the girl’s body. The pig was due for slaughter the following week, but her lusty appetite for human flesh made her more valuable than the few dollars her meat would net him. Since then, Robert had murdered over a dozen prostitutes and fed them to Esmeralda, then shredded their bones in the chipper and spread them over the property.

Lately the pig had begun breaking out of her pen. Robert had reinforced her enclosure several times, but Esmeralda seemed to grow more cunning with age. This was the second time he’d come home and discovered her devouring a body. He got lucky with the first one. The cops assumed the married woman who’d gone out jogging had actually run off with another man to escape her abusive husband. But the families of the missing prostitutes were beginning to attract attention, and now the word in town was that some of them had hired a private detective.

“You’re gonna have to go, Esmeralda. I can’t take any more chances. I’ll shoot you and get another pig to take your place.” The sow turned to face him, her snout and chest covered with blood and gore. The mean look in her piggy eyes chilled Robert. It’s like she understood every word I just said, but that’s impossible. I don’t care how smart she is, she’s just a dumb animal. No damn pig is gonna intimidate me; I’ll get my gun and kill the bitch right now!

Robert knew he’d made a fatal mistake when he turned his back on Esmeralda.

“Your work has become stagnant,” the gallery owner complained. “Your latest painting is an excellent example of what I’m talking about.”

“What’s wrong with it?” Doran asked.

“Please! A wolf-dog standing in a shallow stream? It’s not doing anything, just standing there. My customers have very distinct tastes. They want to see death in the paintings they buy, not some moronic animal taking up canvas space.”

“But there is death in this painting. Notice how the eyes follow your every movement.”

“Get rid of it! I want to see blood and gore.”

“If you insist,” Doran said. He whistled.

Something growled.

Anxiety churning her stomach, Laura turns into a familiar driveway. A red barn comes into view, a green tractor slewed sideways in the doorway. Something is slumped over in the seat.

Beyond the barn a white farmhouse. The front door is open. Her old sheepdog, Buster, greets her in the hallway, dead eyes accusing. Something unrecognizable sprawls at the foot of the stairs. A trail of blood snakes upward.

A sound behind her, flaring pain inside her skull. She shudders, and once more time reverses itself inside her dying brain.

Anxiety churning her stomach, Laura turns into a familiar driveway…

A small sound caught Danny’s attention. He glanced around the darkened bedroom, his gaze finally coming to rest on the closet door. It’s nothing. Probably one of my suits slipped off the hanger; that’s happened before. Or maybe something fell off the shelf.

Resisting the urge to turn on the bedside lamp, he listened to the silence a moment longer, then rolled over onto his right side and concentrated on making his muscles relax. He’d been on edge ever since Mrs. Sydney in 12B had mentioned that the previous tenant had misplaced his twelve-foot pet python just before moving out. How the hell do you misplace something twelve feet long? he wondered.

Danny was terrified of snakes. He couldn’t even look at a picture of one without screaming. The building superintendent denied any knowledge of the reptile when Danny confronted him. An extermination crew had gone through the apartment, but they failed to find anything, not even a cockroach.

Except for the disappearance of Olivia and Jasper Browne’s yappy poodle next door, nothing unusual had occurred since he’d moved into the building two months ago. Everyone agreed that Precious, an accomplished escape artist, had most likely slipped out of the building unnoticed and gotten lost on the city streets.

Relax! There’s nothing in the apartment that shouldn’t be here. Remember what Dr. Pritchett said: Take a deep breath and count to ten before giving in to panic. He held his breath and listened intently. Nothing. He focused his attention on his muscles, tightening and relaxing each muscle as Dr. Pritchett had taught him.

He finally slipped into an uneasy dream. He was in a rowboat in the middle of the ocean, his eyes riveted on a patch of blackness hovering just above the water. Seagulls circled overhead, their raucous cries setting his teeth on edge. As he watched, the menacing blackness formed itself into an old-fashioned radiator, and in the floor behind the radiator, completely hidden from view, was a hole. A sudden wave flowed out of the hole and moved toward him. The boat began to rock.

Danny woke with a start. It took him a few seconds to realize the waterbed was sloshing back and forth. A heavy weight slid across his chest. Danny’s last coherent thought was what Dr. Pritchett could do with his advice.