MicroHorror

All Kimberly felt was cold. It went far beyond a normal chill. It was all-encompassing. No other feelings broke through the cold and she found it hard to think straight. When she’d woken, it was there. Kimberly wasn’t sure how long ago that had been. There was no way to tell time, wherever she was. She couldn’t move, not even a twitch. Why? She was frozen, that’s all she could think. How she could be, and still not only remain alive but conscious, she had no idea. More and more, she found it hard to remember things. Little by little, the cold was stripping away her mind. Where was she? Where could she be that it was this cold? She hadn’t been anyplace cold when she went to bed the previous night. Or had she? Where had she gone to bed the previous night?

The memory eluded her, like many other specific things she tried to think of. It seemed her mind could only focus on a single thing. Cold. Every inch of her, frozen stiff. She couldn’t tilt her head downwards to see, but she imagined if she could, her body would be ice blue. Maybe she was dead. That would explain a lot. If she were dead. Although it wouldn’t be very pleasant if this were the afterlife. Kimberly tried to think back on her life, to remember if she’d done anything to deserve being trapped like she was. She couldn’t recall anything, but at the moment that didn’t mean much. As far as she could remember, she might have been a serial killer.

Frozen timelessness. Kimberly decided she must be dead and she must have done something horrible. Funny how all those people thought Hell was comprised of fire. For her, it was comprised of cold. Never-ending icy restraint was her punishment for whatever she’d done. She waited for her body to go numb, but it refused to. If anything, the feeling began to increase in intensity. The more time went by, the more she could feel the chilly caresses. No longer content to surround her body, it now seeped into her. Every nerve ending was alive with the tingling of the freezing temperature that flowed through her.

Kimberly realized she couldn’t see. It wasn’t blackness, but white. Pure white. Maybe she’d been buried in the snow. That would explain everything she felt but why would she be in the snow? So little of her memory remained, she couldn’t answer. She felt as the cold invaded her head, freezing through her brain. In an instant, what remained of her memory blotted out. Even her name. A moment later, all of her thought processes were obliterated, leaving her mind a total blank. She could no longer ponder why it was so cold. She couldn’t even put a name to the feeling her body was experiencing.

Arbuckle stood over the smoking corpse.

Damn, did it stink.

He walked around the thing, trying to spot what had started the blaze, but came up empty. No matches, no lighter… It was as if the fucker had just gone–poof–up in flames with no concern for proper cause and effect. One thing was for sure: Arbuckle didn’t like it. Not the smell, not the sight, not the girl sobbing in the corner.

The hangover wasn’t helping. He was starting to wish he’d just stayed in bed with Marie. Not answered the damn phone. But he was here now so he might as well make the best of it. He made his way over to the girl.

“He just started burning,” she said between sobs.

Well, that at least confirms the gender, he thought. “Let’s start with your name,” Arbuckle said, trying to be as soothing as he could.

“Julie,” she replied, starting to calm down a bit.

Arbuckle smiled at her. It was a start. “Okay, Julie,” he said in the same soothing voice. “Let’s go over it nice and slow…”

“Carlton and me were just havin’ a drink. The next thing I know…” She started to cry again. Arbuckle sighed.

People just don’t burst into flames, he wanted to tell her, but he knew it wouldn’t do any damn good. Arbuckle turned away from the crying girl and back to Crispy Carlton.

So what had lit his fuse then?

The only thing not scorched was his left hand. Why his left hand and not the right? It was as if the fire had decided it had enough and put itself out. Right at his wrist.

Screw it, he decided. Write it up as an accident and be done with it. Go home to Marie and some aspirin. But that damned perfect hand wouldn’t let him walk away. It was like it was taunting him. Teasing him. Years later, in the Home, Arbuckle would still be talking about that damn hand.

“Oh Jesus!” the girl started, her voice growing higher in pitch. Arbuckle looked over to her. Julie was staring down at her hands in horror. “It’s happening to me now! I’m burning up!”

Arbuckle moved over to the hysterical girl, reaching out to calm her down. “Hey! Easy!” he said to her. Arbuckle reached out, grabbed for Julie’s wrists in an attempt to shake her out of her state of panic. He pulled back quickly, letting out a hiss of pain. Her skin was scorching hot. It was turning an angry red.

Julie let out a shriek as she caught fire. Arbuckle was close enough for her flames to burn his face. He fell back to the floor in agony. It took him a moment to realize the screams he heard were his own.

The last thing Arbuckle saw before passing out was Julie’s blackened skeleton falling to the floor.

“The fucking thing’s staring at me. I know it.”

Roberts hated being on guard detail with Jensen. The son of a bitch not only didn’t know how to keep quiet, he was also extremely paranoid. It was like he hadn’t been doing the goddamn job for two years. “I thought Army men were all supposed to be the strong, silent types?” she snarled, giving him a glare that told him to shut up.

But of course, for that to work, Jensen would’ve had to be paying attention. “I mean, shit… Look at it! No way that thing’s unconscious. Its eyes… fuck…”

The “thing” Jensen was referring to was what they were guarding. They hadn’t been told where it had come from or what exactly it was. A fossilized alien that had crashed to Earth back in the Ice Age… some horribly deformed circus freak from the Dust Bowl era… or maybe the rumors were true and it was an honest-to-fuck vampire.

Whatever it was, Roberts didn’t give a shit. She was here to guard the thing and that’s all. Make sure it didn’t wake up and walk away or, more likely, that no one shanghaied the goddamn thing. Occasionally a nerd would come by to do some kind of test on it, but aside from that, the job was standard guard detail. Boring as hell.

Roberts let out a sigh, reflecting on her situation. Crushing a superior officer’s genitals had gotten her a demotion and this shit assignment. The fact that he’d been attempting to sexually assault her hadn’t mattered much. Now it seemed the only way she was getting back into active duty would be if she went back to said superior officer on her knees… literally.

Fuck that, she thought. Better to be down here with the freaks. Even if it was slow and she had to deal with Jensen’s babbling like a superstitious pussy. Roberts blinked. Her fellow guard hadn’t said shit for nearly two minutes, which had to be some sort of record. She turned and looked at him.

Everything seemed all right. He was standing at attention. Eyes fixed ahead at the thing they were guarding. He was the poster child for a well trained military guard. And that’s what made it so fucked. Roberts turned to him and leaned in close. “Jensen.”

The man didn’t respond.

“Hey! I’m talking to you, Private!” she said, her voice growing louder and taking on the tone of a drill sergeant, which she’d been before the incident.

Again, no response.

Roberts was considering punching him in the arm to see if it’d snap him out of whatever state he was in. Then the man began to laugh. No, that wasn’t right. Cackle. He was cackling.

“Private, what the fuck is wrong with you?” she asked, feeling a trickle of fear.

It spiked as her fellow guard turned to her with a wide grin. His eyes were glowing red. “I can smell you, Jennifer,” he told her. Fuck, even his voice had changed. There was an echo to it. “You smell so good.”

Roberts reached for her sidearm. Jensen lunged for her. They fell to the ground before the mummified body they’d been guarding. Jensen grappled with Roberts, snagging her wrists and pinning them to the floor then opened his mouth wide and bit down into the side of her throat. Roberts felt his teeth dig into her and she winced as she felt her skin tearing. Jensen pulled back hard, ripping a large chunk of Roberts’ throat out.

Blood sprayed from her torn carotid artery, pooling onto the floor and flowing towards the guarded specimen. As the blood reached it, the crimson liquid began to flow into it and the creature started to look a whole lot less dead.

As Corporal Jennifer Roberts’s vision faded, she watched the creature blink… and then take a step towards her.