MicroHorror

Hank Jones drained the beer can. Tommy looked set to toss him another tin from the cooler by his bunk. Hank held up a hand to say he didn’t want another. He wasn’t much in the mood for celebrating; the extent of their actions had begun to kick in. Hank crawled beneath his blankets not knowing whether sleep would find him. The boisterous noise from his bunkmates didn’t help him much. Soon the length of the day and the beer made them all turn in. Hank listened to the beer snores. Each would handle their guilt, if they had any, in their own way. This first night, they’d mostly decided to use alcohol to anesthetize their thinking.

It moved. Hank saw it. The only light was coming in from one of the barrack windows. But he could see it. A shadow crept along the wall. Hank strained his eyes to see who was up, someone no doubt going to use the head, probably Larry; he pissed as regular as a pregnant woman did. Hank couldn’t see anyone. Yet the shadow kept moving. Another joined it, and another. They slid over the walls, spilled about the floor. Hank held his breath. No one else noticed, all sleeping in alcohol’s chokehold.

The detached shadows waltzed about, and around, all of the bunks. Running midnight hands over the blankets as though trying to wake the cocooned creatures of slumber. One shadow had skated over to the foot of his bunk. Its shape creased at an odd angle as it worked its way onto his coverings. Hank yanked his feet up like he was a kid again and was having nightmares about the toe-monster that bit off exposed digits. That act was like bait to the other shadows. They swarmed to him. Hank could smell the shadows, could taste them in the air, a crude metallic taste.

They, the shadows, were so many as to create a secondary blanket. One that rose towards him as though they were the tide and his face was the shore. He couldn’t scream, couldn’t move. He chose to hold his breath like a child who thinks it will get them something they want. The blackness worried at his face. It made a sable scarf about his throat. It rose higher, like a raven kerchief, that of a bandit. Higher still, causing Hank to close his eyes. He could feel their presence now, as well as smell their tainted existence. The shadows felt hot to the touch. Superheated darkness that worked at his face, whispering away his hair. Eyelids bald and blistered clenched shut and welded by the horror’s tasks. Hank didn’t want to open his mouth, knowing that it would be flooded by the shadows to burn his insides with fire. However, scream he did, and for all that he was worth.

“Wake up, man, fuck, no, what the fuck!” Hank could hear voices. Recognizing them as people he relied upon with his very life. They were worried voices, like those that linger at the result of a hit and run. “Christ, Larry, look at his face, what the fuck done that? Jesus H. Christ, that’s just wrong, man, so fucking wrong!”

Hank never saw again. His face was a tattered mess that was nearly as bad as he felt inside. Hank was glad of only two things. Blindness meant that he didn’t have to see shadows anymore. Also, it meant that he didn’t have to fly no more. He’d been a part of dropping Little Boy; his trauma meant that he would have nothing to do with helping to drop Fat Man on Nagasaki.

Chokes landed on his ass and honked his horn towards the stands. He didn’t manage so much as a titter from the cheap seats.

He couldn’t be bothered getting up from the sawdust. He rummaged in an oversized pocket and pulled out his smokes.

He sat and chugged, pausing only to scratch at the scabs that itched, burned and bled beneath the tri-colored wig.

He was done with the cigarette. He flicked it at Sammy the dead seal and clambered to his elongated feet. He tooted the horn absently and goose-stepped his way towards the concession stand.

Some flies did a quick taxi on the runway that was Bulk the elephant’s corpse and took off as Chokes lumbered by with his bleeding nose. Bits of him bled on and off and had done since a week last Monday. Chokes wiped at his nose. He didn’t mind it when his nose or his ears bled. It was when his eyes and anus wept crimson that he became unsettled.

He stuck to candy-floss. He wanted to save his three remaining teeth for his final meal. He wanted to make that one count. Chokes looked at all the corpses. Clowns, clowns everywhere but not a drop of laughter to be heard.

The ringmaster was a fornicating whoreson in life. In death he was just well dressed.

Chokes had raised the revolver during a rehearsal just after the incident. “Ooh, a little-widdle bomb, the one we’ve all been expecting does a kazzplat and the show stops? Fuck- no, not on my watch. Show Chokes how yer do the SmileyWooWoo!” Lead poisoning killed the ringmaster before the radiation did.

Chokes had offered an ultimatum. Perform or piss off. “What the world needs right now is entertainment.” He paused to spit out the blood that had run from his gums. “And what better entertainment is there than the Greatest Show on Earth!” Chokes did his best to rally the troupes but people were getting sick. He watched them leave. They were like dying rats, going to find a crawlspace to die in and stink it up.

The other clowns, though, when they moved to walk out, well, that just did it for Chokes. They were a brotherhood, his kin in laughter. He couldn’t just let them go. They were traitors to the pratfall. Chokes didn’t bother to line them up before he shot them too.

Now he was nearly alone, Gabriel had trumpeted his trumpet and the world had gone to shit. Alas, the need to perform was like a crack addiction in his veins. The Big Top his Broadway, the cheap seats his theater boxes.

All Chokes wanted to do was perform, to entertain, to be seen. He tried not to think of he Waybeck Theatre back in ‘98 when the production was cancelled before first night. He still felt a little bad about burning the place to the ground with everyone still inside. That was like shooting the dog for having fleas.

Chokes turned to the front row.

“Gonna do my act again. This time I want to hear some fuckin’ chortles. Are we on the same pageroo?” He looked at the Mummy, shivering with fright, the Daddy who was looking for a way to free his family and at the kids, those precious little poppets whose cheeks were red with tears. Chokes figured they really should try and grab all the fun they could before their kidneys dissolved completely and died.

Chokes started his act with a honk and decided to Hell with ‘em if they didn’t laugh, he had three good teeth left and the Mummy looked edible as long as he stayed north of the spleen.

Mavis dismounted the stair-lift. Her steps imprinted into the carpet, showing that she always kept to the left. Those steps had kept the same measure for too many rusty-hipped years. Even the tip of her walking stick had its own little marks just like needle tracks in the carpet.

She was keeping the house out of spite more than anything. Mavis was pretty much sick to death of her kids hounding her to move somewhere smaller. Telling her how they’d handle everything, the estate agents, the lawyers, and the removals men.

Mavis may sometimes forget where she’d left a remote and would find it in the fridge a few days later, but she still had enough of the grey matter spitting sparks for her to know that what they said in words translated to numbers in their wallets.

It angered her; they hadn’t been brought up that way. She’d thought there’d been a balance between them being given what they needed and what they wanted; obviously she’d been wrong. They were more intrigued about how she was feeling whenever they came around, looking at her the way a doctor would, rather than with the loving eyes of a child. They moved through the hallways as though they were surveying the structure rather than remembering their childhood days. Especially Nick, her eldest. He had his father’s mouth, but that was all he had of his father, reckoned Mavis.

She disrobed and de-toothed, then got into bed. She looked at her late husband Tom who stood proud in the garden. In her memory of that moment he’d been framed by trees. In the photograph he was skirted by faux silver.

Mavis could hear their song playing, “Twelfth of Never” by Johnny Mathis. It sounded so clear, not like an echo from some cavern in her crumbling mind, but real, external. Mavis sat up and smiled wistfully. She hadn’t a wireless in her bedroom, nor had she one of those compact deck contraptions that didn’t work when you put the other side on.

It couldn’t be a memory. Mavis pushed back the bedding as though it were a tide. She used the stick to help her towards the sound. It was coming from outside. Her ears were just as good as they’d always been; it was just that sometimes the words turned to stone, like Medusa had peeped at them once they’d gotten inside.

With the crook of the stick she separated the heavy curtains. She didn’t bother about anyone gawking in and seeing her in only two layers of cotton; trees stood sentry around the garden.

Mavis opened the window. One of those good old-fashioned ones, the kind that are a match for neither arthritis nor burglars. It was another one of those things that Mavis had been adamant about keeping whenever one of her adoring children tried to coax her into lavishing money on the house to “bring it up to date” and now it was paying off.

He was there. Tom was in the center of the lawn wearing his favorite light grey suit. His face was only half seen beneath the trilby that had practically been more a part of him than the marrow in his bones.

“Tom!” she called.

The head dipped and rose, but only enough to show his mouth.

“Come to me, Mave. Let’s make it the Twelfth of Forever.”

Her heart tripled, tightening the blue wires of veins and arteries. She smiled. She knew the feeling of an angina attack; she didn’t care. She could be with Tom.

The man in the trilby looked at Mavis on the ground. It didn’t take much for the fall to work her calcified joints to make elaborate shapes from her limbs.

The man in the trilby spoke, staring at the body. “It’s okay, she’s dead.” He looked up as his younger brother and sister came out of the shadows like scavenging cowards, now that the kill had been made by the pack leader.

Some people cursed him as they were forced to step around. Others stopped to watch as the man dragged his pieces of colored chalk back and forth across the drab slabs of the pavement. Some of the kids had to crane their necks to look over or around the broad shoulders of Tobias Corbaux. He ignored their attentions. He worked his art for one reason, his own personal satisfaction. If he got paid now and again it was all good, but if he didn’t then it didn’t matter a jot.

One child decided to walk across where he’d just laid down the basis of the piece. The mother shrugged her shoulders, the denim of her jacket lifting in a “So what?” manner. Tobias breathed through his nose to remain calm. Every day he saw the way in which the world was changing. Respect was something to be read about. Tobias stared at the back of the child. The little bastard was old enough to know better, clearly coming up to double figures. The brat extended his tongue. Tobias pretended to grab it in the air and reel him in. Enough time had been wasted on the waster; Tobias went back to his work.

The passersby stopped to make their noises of oohs when they saw the lion scribbled on the pavement. The artist had caged it, but it still looked as though it could break free of the concrete and attack. The people looked around and seemed puzzled when they saw that there was no hat into which to toss loose coins.

More people stopped. Some looked a little disturbed at the art of the man. But art is different things to different people, surmised Tobias. A woman pushed her way through the throng. Not caring about the work on the floor.

“Have you seen my son?” she asked, her words every color of urgent. She described him, short dark hair, brown eyes, and wearing a dark blue jacket. People shrugged and shook their heads. The woman ran off to continue on her search for her errant son. The gathering nodded in appreciation to Tobias and then continued upon their way. Tobias smiled at his work. The lion looked real enough to pounce if not for the cage. The lion had other sport to keep its interest, a young boy with dark hair and dark eyes huddled in the corner against the bars. The boy looked so real, real enough that it appeared as if he had pissed his pants at the sight of the lion.

Tobias collected all his pieces of chalk together in the box. Took one more look at his work, turned and headed off. The crowds of the day had dwindled to nothing. As the day had grown long interest had flagged in the pavement art. Some had even suggested that it wasn’t art. That even their children could have done better than to merely scribble red chalk all over the pavement and have the audacity to think it artistic. The woman in the denim jacket ran over the red chalk, scuffing it a little. She was still searching for her boy. Tobias looked up as he walked; it looked as though rain was on its way.

Caroline had only popped around for a coffee and a chat with her sister Kelly. And on receiving no answer at the front door, she’d gone and had a gawp through the window. That was when she’d seen her sister sprawled upon the living-room carpet with her skull wide open. Kelly had ceased to be twenty-two years old the moment she’d run out of blood. She’d now and forever be referred to by how long she had been dead. Poor girl, she’s been dead, etc. The camera clicked and its flashes threw white fireworks into the room as the photographer captured the grim scene from every attainable angle. Detective Morris sniffed and watched as the forensics man dusted the outside of the window. Morris was on the inside and staring as the fingerprints bloomed upon the surface of the glass. The fingerprints were strange, in the fact that there were no ridges or whorls to be seen. Just fingertip-shaped smudges, lots of them, along with blank palm-prints. It had been the same oddity at the scenes of five other murders. Forensics reckoned that as many as nine different sets of gloved hands had been pressed up against the glass. So, what did that mean?

That the act of murder had become a spectator sport? That a hoard of fucked-up freaks were playing Peeping-Toms, whilst a show-off killer showcased his depraved skills? An even worse thought that occurred to him was what if they were all taking turns at being the killer whilst the others watched? That scenario wasn’t even worth thinking about. 

Morris got home. He didn’t need to shout out that he was home. His wife had packed up and fucked off long ago, and they’d never had any kids. He closed the curtains in the lounge. He was struck hard from behind and everything went dark. Morris regained consciousness to find himself still in the lounge. He was bound to a chair and gagged. A squat man stood before him. The man was dressed in coveralls. His face was slack, his eyes vacant. At school he’d probably been teased for being backwards and nicknamed Retard. He came up close to Morris. His words were dummy-slow and his breath was vile.

“The dead. They like to see people die. They like to see lots of people die.” The simpleton went and opened the curtains. A dozen white misshapen faces malingered at the window. Two dozen sets of fingers stroked at the glass impatiently. The simpleton walked around to the back of Morris so as not to obstruct the show for the watchers. He raised the claw-hammer.

Rose had been dreaming of blue skies and luxury. She was yanked from that utopia by the sound of something breaking downstairs. The paradise was forgotten as she was delivered back to her purgatory. Rose got up and went to see what Beth had broken this time. 

Beth, all of five years old. So sweet when asked her age, she’d lift up a hand with all the fingers splayed and tell folks, “That old.”

Not so sweet now as she stood over a broken cereal bowl. 

“I’m hungry.” No please, no nothing. Just a declaration of the state of her tummy.

Rose took a steadying breath. It was just a phase. It might just have been a phase but it was the third bowl this week that she’d broken just to get her attention. Beth camouflaged it behind the innocent, I wanted to make it myself like a big girl. She wasn’t fooling Rose. Her behavior was getting unbearable. 

Yesterday Beth had flushed her fish down the toilet. Poor Mr. Bigfin hadn’t even been dead. 

Rose bent and picked up the broken pieces. Beth pulled her hair, 

“I said I was hungry!” She didn’t let go. Rose prised Beth’s fingers from her locks, 

“You’re a nasty little girl.” She immediately regretted it. Beth watched Rose bin the debris and start on fixing breakfast.

“You know that Father Christmas doesn’t give presents to bad little girls, don’t you?” She’d been using that threat throughout the run-up to Christmas. Today was Christmas Eve. Beth hummed as she shoveled cereal in. Dancing her head from left to right, singing. 

“Yes he will.” 

“No he won’t!” Rose was getting to the end of her tether.

“Oh yes he will, Mummy,” said Beth.

Rose hadn’t been paying attention to the toaster–you had to keep an eye on it. The smoke alarm let her know that the toast was ready, for the bin. Beth found it funny as Mummy had to stand on a chair and remove the battery from the alarm. 

Breakfast was done with. Rose set about washing the dishes. She would have liked Beth’s help but that would have ended in carnage.

“I’m going to play with Mr. Furrytail,” she declared.

Mr. Furrytail was her pet gerbil. Rose knew she should find it a new home after what the little beast had done the previous day. The thought of the tantrums that would ensue made her reluctant. 

“Don’t take him out of the cage.” 

“Oh, I won’t.” She trundled out with her pigtails swinging. 

It was quiet. Too quiet. Rose walked through to the lounge. Rose was nearly sick as she grabbed the rest of the matches out of Beth’s hand. 

Beth was screaming. Rose sat on the toilet crying. She had never raised a hand to Beth before. It had just been so cruel. Rose had lost it and slapped Beth hard about the face. Beth had been stunned. Rose phoned up a charity to tell them she had presents for the children in hospital and to come and get them. 

Every single present she had given to the charity. Beth had fought to stop them being given away and in defeat had run to her room to tantrum, brawl and break things up. 

Christmas Eve became a disaster. Beth locked herself in her room and threatened to do all manner of horrible things to herself and to Rose. Rose retired to her own room and wept herself to sleep. 

Christmas morning and Beth sang a happy tune as she opened up one of the presents from her mother. It was a Loving Dolly Lotte, just as she had asked for. The nurse smiled, glad that the little girl liked her present. All their thoughts were with her mother in the burns unit, hoping that she pulled through. The nurse wondered, why-oh-why did people take the batteries out of smoke alarms? And why-oh-why did people leave matches lying around.