MicroHorror

Bobbie looked at the mirror and applied the lipstick slowly, making a slow kissing sound toward the reflecting surface. Lipstick was always the hardest to put on, you really had to sell it, force people to look at your lips, make them want your lips, make your lips make them want you. They say that first impressions are the most lasting. If it’s done right, it’s all they need to see.

This was especially true for Bobbie, whose lips were arguably his best assets. He had little going for him beyond his full lips and demure manner; the rest was carefully crafted to conceal in the most alluring way. He pulled on his black “bob” wig, his personal joke, and closed his right eye to begin applying the eyelashes.

He’d begun cross dressing several years ago, but he’d nearly given up his dignity several failed relationships before that. The women and men he’d paraded into his life back then had been a panacea for the ache in his soul, but never the cure.

All of them walked away in the end. Bobbie reached over and cranked the radio volume up as an old raspy voice asked him if the Moon was too bright, or the Chains too tight. Bobbie smiled and winked at the mirror. “Please…”

Of course the smile was faked; everything about Bobbie was faked though. Everyone faked it. Everything is fake now. Roses all come from drugstores. Love songs are sung sweetly by heartless bitches. Paychecks reward those that backstab their coworkers. Churches eat the innocent.

And the chaste look for Bobbie with discreet needful glances.

Everybody knows the End is coming, but they hide in their shiny houses, shiny cars, shiny clothes, shiny lives. Everyone knows the pain is out there and everybody hides from it in their own way. Bobbie was just playing the game better than anyone else.

He slipped on his dress, letting it slide down like a cloak, hiding him from the world; from the pain. Who was anyone to judge how he hid himself? Everyone is a Liar in their heart. How many promises hung broken and abused in the world? How many people gaped in shocked betrayal at their friends, their lovers, their family?

How… how could she?

He dabbed a hanky at his eye and pursed his lips as he grabbed his purse and coat and slipped out the door.

“Maybe I’ll get a Promiser tonight… Yeah, that would be the trick.”

Bobbie hit the bars with bashful eyes and a tight, almost inviting smile on his perfect lips. He found his lover quickly, the aging John promising sweet, sweet nothings, obviously trying a little too desperately to hide a pale band of skin on his left hand. He was charming. He was handsome. And he was so smooth, so faux earnest in his declarations. His words were as empty as he was, dead things shoveled out of a dead mouth. Bobbie’s lover was a dead man wanting to fuck a make-believe woman.

He was perfect.

The taste of Leonard’s cock still sat in Bobbie’s mouth like a diseased toad, dry and befouled. His lover was gagged and thankfully bound in the other room as Bobbie cried just a little while he rinsed his mouth in the bathroom. He didn’t dab the tears from his eyes as he slipped from the dress and stalked into the bedroom, eyes finally as cold as the heart inside his cold chest.

Bobbie pulled the wig from his head as Leonard stared wild-eyed at him. The illusions were gone now. He’d found the ring in Leonard’s pocket, but it didn’t matter. His own member stood erect, pointing at Leonard’s horrified gaze, but that didn’t matter either.

There was nothing to hide.

There would be so much to hide.

Bobbie held up the switchblade as his dead eyes moistened in anticipation.

“Baby,” shnickt “I’m your man.”

Samhain, nearly midnight:

The gravestone glows like pale bone under the moonlit sky.
Her belly bulges with the seed of her lover, ripe and ready. Her hands glisten with his blood.
She stands, immersed in both worlds, between both worlds.
She tosses the shovel and climbs down, pulling the dirt down atop her.
Her son will come with the dawning new year,
If he can dig his way out.

It’s Halloween, so I know they’re out there.

Like every year, in the shadows, waiting for me, ready to scare me.

Last few years I tried to go around. I ran SO hard, SO fast. But they almost caught me.

This year, mom wants me not to go.

But I’m going to.

I’m not scared anymore. I’m not.

The blade is cold and solid in my trick-or-treat bag.

I’ll show them who’s scared of who.

Mommy said there was no such thing as monsters. Mommy was wrong. The Monsters shot Mommy while she screamed downstairs. Timmy had heard her screams stop, even as his younger sister squealed in terror in one of their arms. They had shot Timmy too… at least everyone thought they had. Who’d have thunk those Happy Poppy books could stop a gun? Timmy didn’t. When the bullet struck the book and drove it into his chest, he thought he was dead. People always die when they get shot, no matter what the movies say. That’s what Daddy said. Guess he was wrong too. He shot one of them back… Timmy heard the Monster laugh… (oh god! That laugh…) It was the same voice that said something about “only the innocent one will work…” Wasn’t Timmy innocent? Couldn’t they have taken him instead of little Cindy? Was this about cute little Mary Smith back in 5th grade? (oh Jeez… Mary… I’m so sorry…) Please, Timmy thought as the grinning Monster left and the frowning one pointed her shiny gun at him. Please let her go… Take me! I’m 15, she’s only 7. I’m a much better worker, Daddy says so. All she’ll do is cry a lot. Hear that? She’s started already. Please, take me! Please? It’s me you want. I’m the one you want. The Monsters always take the bad ones. I’m the one that was Bad. Not her. Please? Not her… Please?

…

They found her body in an empty building after the riots had started to calm down, finally. Timmy cried for three days straight while hiding in a burned-out building, after hearing the news.

…

Mommy was wrong. Maybe she lied when she said there were no Monsters. Maybe she just didn’t know. Or didn’t remember, having worked so hard to convince Timmy and Cindy that they didn’t exist except in stories made to frighten people. But no matter why, or how, Mommy was wrong.

The Bad People were all around you. The Monsters walked among everyone. Timmy could see them now… He knew. The Monsters were real. And he would not be afraid of them again.

Lawrence stabbed the “Stop” button on his tape recorder with a nicotine-stained index finger and absentmindedly rubbed his forehead with his left hand.

Fuck all, this made no sense.

Two months ago, his sister Laura shows up in the county morgue, the victim of a brutal murder. The prime suspect was her shit of a worthless husband. Lawrence had warned her multiple times that he was just like Martin (Father, you mean?). Schizophrenia coupled with multiple compulsive and disassociative disorders, classic sexual predator. And Laura had fallen right into his world of shit like she’d been born into it, mostly because she had…

But… I mean… Fuck! How could he have done that to her? How could anyone even remotely sane have done that?

The idea that Harold had molested and abused little Sarah almost made Lawrence sick to his stomach, but it was unfortunately no surprise. Even less surprising were Sarah’s pervasive and insistent denials of Harold’s involvement in her mother’s death. Lawrence wanted to dismiss her claims of a monstrous Boogeyman as a classic denial syndrome. (because there’s no Monster like Daddy Monster, right?) But how the hell could Harold have done that with two broken legs? Or even at the height of his strength? The facts just… damn it, they just didn’t make any damn sense.

But the D.A. didn’t need to mention all that to send Harold screaming like a lunatic off to his spot on death row. So Sarah came to live with her closest blood relative.

Good ol’ Uncle Larry.

Only Sarah called him Larry now. His buddies had called him that before he got on The Wagon. His first wife had also, but she was just as dangerous as the whisky she kept flowing to Lawrence. The second and third knew him only as Lawrence, the emotionally distant and controlled psychiatrist and recovering alcoholic. Work had become his new drug, and neither woman liked being analyzed the way Lawrence would.

So what the fuck did he know about raising a child? Nothing, that’s what. He sure as hell hadn’t received any nurturing as a child. But then, he’d gotten out… Right? He broke the cycle and knew how to look for the signs. He was certain that he would not let that seed take fruit in him. Sure, everything ever written about medical or psychological ethics said that self-diagnosis was the ultimate form of self-delusional narcissism. But Lawrence could avoid that trap. He could help Sarah. He could find out what really happened for her. He could help her get closure. Help find the Truth.

No matter what the cost.