MicroHorror

Mrs. Bircham hated her neighbor’s yard.

With as much stealth as her arthritic bones could muster, she crept across the grass to the iron gate at the property line. Her house-slippers slapped softly on her manicured lawn… thwok, thwok, thwok… spewing dew on her permanent-press polyester pants. In her well-manicured grip dangled her weapons: a bottle of bleach and a pair of hedge clippers.

It was not that the neighbor’s yard was poorly-tended. The neighbor, Lucy, fancied herself to be a gardener. Since Lucy had moved in three years ago, mountains of ivy had choked away the shiny, golf-course grass. It cascaded through trellises and meticulously-worked topiaries. Wire forms of men and beasts quickly filled in with green flesh. At night, the breeze brushed through those arms and horns, rattling free the illusion of movement.

Mrs. Bircham despised them. They were wild, ugly, and far too visible. Where she stood at her kitchen window, washing dishes, she always faced a figure of a man with his arms reaching skyward. It made Mrs. Bircham think of the peeping Tom who had startled Mrs. Newman some months ago.

Lucy talked and hummed to her menagerie, her tone just lower than the rustle of leaves. Mrs. Bircham watched for weeks, stewing, as Lucy built another manikin of wire and straw. The sea-serpent coiling around the yard, only half its humps visible above the ground, seemed to listen intently as she trimmed the giant turtle and re-shaped the hooked beak of that gawd-awful gargoyle perched over the air conditioner.

Mrs. Bircham had had enough. Lucy’s topiaries were a damned eyesore. Mrs. Bircham clutched her weapons close to her chest as she let herself through the freshly-painted iron gate. As she crossed over that imaginary surveyor’s line, Mrs. Bircham could no longer hear distant trains or the drone of late-night television… nothing but the chirp of crickets in the darkness.

Mrs. Bircham’s heart hammered as she approached the Peeping Tom sculpture. It smelled of rot. Filthy. She unscrewed the cap of the bleach bottle and poured its contents at the foot of the topiary. She imagined the bleach working its way into the roots of the sculpture, killing it slowly. She smiled. None of Lucy’s singing would be able to save it.

For spite, she lifted her hedge clippers and snapped them at the topiary’s outstretched hand. The clippers tangled. Mrs. Bircham grunted as she forced the shears to close, but the ivy was too tough to cut.

Frustrated, she wrenched the blades free, tripped, and landed on her backside in the sour mulch. A streamer of ivy, ripped free from the topiary, revealed the structure beneath: rotted straw and pale, gleaming bone. The smooth digit of a finger dripped free from the wire and fell to the ground.

Mrs. Bircham squeaked and scrambled backward, crablike, loosing a slipper.

“I see that you’ve met Tom.”

Lucy loomed over Mrs. Bircham, dressed in a fuzzy pink bathrobe that belied the darkness in her eyes. Her undone hair curled over her back, wild as the ivy.

“‘Tom?’” Mrs. Bircham croaked. Her blood roared in her ears.

“I don’t know what his real name is.” Lucy explained sheepishly. “But I couldn’t call him ‘Peep.’ It seemed very undignified.”

Tendrils of ivy rustled toward Mrs. Bircham, wrapped around her legs. She began to scream, but Lucy very delicately knelt down on her chest and stuffed her mouth with straw that tasted like mildew.

She began to hum in that low, familiar voice as the ivy dragged Mrs. Bircham to the unfinished topiary, the hollow shell of wire and moss. The ivy hauled her into that scarecrow frame, dug into her loose flesh with sharp roots.

Lucy tucked fistfuls of straw around Mrs. Bircham’s head, tugging the cage of heavy wire around her. “It’s very beautiful here, Mrs. Bircham. You’ll develop a proper appreciation for gardening, in time.”

• Copyright: © 2008 Laura Bickle

Zara never tired of dancing with dragons.

Bells strung around her waist chattered in time with her steps, hips swaying in counterpoint to the slow drums. In ancient times, the bells had driven away evil spirits who would gather to watch the dancers. Now, they were merely decoration for an elaborate costume, tinkling with the silvery sound of coins as she shimmied across the floor. Her bare toes brushed lightly over the floorboards, the motion lashing the fringe at the edge of her skirts.

Her veil unfurled behind her, light and insubstantial as smoke. Driven by her momentum and steps, it took on the sharp angles of an eagle’s wings, planed behind her. She curved it through the air, snapped it back, and the translucent fabric undulated in the sinewy shape of snake, coiling over her unfurling arms.

As Zara reached back, the veil fell open in a pleat like the wings of a butterfly. Beads scattered over its surface shimmered like the delicate eyes and wing-veins of the insect as Zara circled the floor.

As she danced, Zara was aware of approving smiles, of women clapping their hands, of admiring glances from men. A heckler jeered an instant before he made a grab for her veil.

Zara expertly slipped away, giving an exaggerated hip-bump to show her displeasure at the heckler. Touching a dancer was not allowed. She shimmied to another part of the floor to complete her dance, her veil turning in her hands. It lashed behind her, curling around her like the tail of a dragon. Where it grazed her shoulder, the glitter of red eyes smoldered in the beading.

A warning. Still, she could feel the heckler’s hot gaze on her, right up until the applause.

***

Zara’s breath made ghosts in the air. She drew her coat more tightly around her to ward off the chill. As she walked, the bells of her carefully-folded costume clinked softly in her bag.

Still humming the music, she could still feel the drums in the soles of her feet. It would take hours to wind down enough to sleep after the exhilaration of the dance, but she knew that her dreams would be populated with the creatures she mimicked. She smiled in anticipation.

“You. Dancer.”

Someone roughly grabbed her elbow. Zara tripped and turned, bells in her bag crashing discordantly.

The heckler snarled down at her with sour breath. “You too good to talk to me?”

Zara’s eyes narrowed. “Let go of me.”

“I don’t think so.” He grabbed her hair, tangled in her earrings.

Zara reached up, fingers scrabbling for the veil she’d tucked around her neck for the warmth. She ripped it out of her collar, cast it out at her assailant.

The shadowy veil’s beads glistened like scales as it escaped her hands. Sequin-red eyes sparkled, fringe parting over white teeth. The veil unfurled into the shape of a dragon, insubstantial chiffon suddenly as heavy as lead when it struck the heckler.

The heckler screamed as the dragon ripped into his shoulder. Zara smelled blood and fear.

“Get it off me!” Thrashing, the heckler was driven to his knees as the dragon curled around his chest. Zara could hear his ribs crackling.

Zara stared into his pain-slitted eyes. “Never touch a dancer. Never.”

With a flick of her wrist, the dragon peeled itself off the man and spiraled around Zara’s arm. In an instant, it melted into a piece of fabric once more. Grey chiffon was now stained red with the man’s blood, seeping away into a soft ombré pattern.

Zara wrapped the veil around her neck. She walked away from the gasping man bleeding on the street, toward home and dreams of dragons.

Zara never tired of dancing with dragons.

• Copyright: © 2008 Laura Bickle

“This is the one. I knew it when I first saw it.”

The Bride’s fingers caress the silk folds of the wedding Dress. The bodice rises and falls with each breath, molding around her delicate ribcage like skin. The skirt rustles with a whisper when she walks, but she can’t quite hear what it says. It shines with a light of its own, almost a living thing. All brides must feel this way about their dresses, she reasons.

Behind the Bride’s back, the Dressmaker takes the last pin from a seam. The Bride does not see that the white pins are hewn of bone.

“It’s as if it was made for you.” The Dressmaker’s gaze skims covetously over the young Bride’s dewy skin, the florid blush in her cheeks. “You’re absolutely beautiful.”

The Bride nods, believing, staring at her reflection. She feels dizzy; it must be her nerves. The color is draining from her face. “You don’t remember where the Dress came from?”

The Dressmaker shakes her head, dislodging a piece of gray hair from her chignon. “This Dress is a very old dress–one of a kind. You’re very lucky to have it.”

The Bride stumbles. The Bride’s mother hands the Bride a cup of water, and a bridesmaid steps in with make-up to mask her sudden pallor. The Dressmaker fades into the background of the wedding preparations.

Her work is done–she has sold her moment of beauty.

***Weeks later, the Bride brings the Dress back to the Dressmaker. Despite her Caribbean tan, the Bride is ashen. Her gums are white, and her sun-streaked hair is disintegrating in clumps. A web of lines spreads beneath her eyes.

The Dress has been folded into a box. The Dressmaker assures her that the Dress will be carefully preserved for the Bride’s daughters.

“Once it’s done, you can’t open the box,” the Dressmaker explains. “It will yellow right away.” She pats the Bride’s hand reassuringly as she leads her out the door. “I’ve done this thousands of times.”

The Dressmaker carries the box to the fitting room, crowded with pale, ghostlike dresses in plastic bags. She pulls the Dress from the box, shakes it out. It’s blindingly white, engorged in all the youth and vigor of the once-Bride.

Thin white filaments bristle up from the interior of the dress. Fine as hairs, they inquisitively taste the familiar air of the shop, moving as asynchronously as grass in a breeze.

The Dressmaker shrugs out of her suit, unfastens the back of the Dress and steps into it. The tendrils burrow into her skin, as they did the Bride’s. The dress molds around the Dressmaker’s body, as if it were made for her.

Of course it was. It’s her dress.

She breathes deep, as the Dress infuses her with that scalding whiteness of youth. The shadows under her eyes soften. Her gray hair darkens to chestnut. She can feel her skin growing taut.

The Dress drains out. The brilliance of the silk fades to a more ordinary white, and she can feel the tiny threads retracting into the fabric.

She steps out of the Dress and into her clothes. She glimpses her smooth reflection in the mirror. She is easily ten years younger, thanks to the Bride. She hangs the Dress beside the full-length mirror.

The Dressmaker tapes the empty preservation box shut. No one will look in the box for at least twenty years; the former Bride would be cold in the ground by within a month.

A jingle at the front of the shop alerts her to her next appointment. The Dressmaker leads a new Bride to the fitting area. Among the sea of pearly dresses, one stands out–the one hung beside the mirror. The Dress.

The Bride reaches out to touch it. It pulls her, like a star with its own gravity.

“This is the one,” she sighs. “The Dress.”

• Copyright: © 2007 Laura Bickle