MicroHorror

Jack entered the corner shop to get his hangover supplements of Coke, milk and orange juice. Given the weight, size and quantity of items bought he asked politely for a bag; though he was slightly confounded as to why the shopkeeper had not instinctively offered him one given the gravity of his purchases. The shopkeeper rustled from under the counter a translucent plastic bag and placed the items into it. Jack lifted the bag from the counter, which was so feeble and impractical he may as well have given him a bag woven of gossamer. The plastic stretched so tautly around the items it looked as though he were carrying the limbs of a cancer patient who had become so emaciated that their skin was literally tearing over their bones. As he made his way to the door he heard a yelp that he was sure had come from behind the counter. Jack knew he should just leave as the sound was probably, like most things, a spark of his imagination, which would only cause a huge mental upheaval in his life if he were to confront the shopkeeper about it. Unfortunately there was the possibility that the sound was in fact very real, in which case if he were to leave without the certainty of this not being the case, he wouldn’t be able to enjoy his Coke and milk chaser to its full potential. Jack twitched and raised the back of his hand to his forehead, wiping away the moisture that formed within moments of him hearing the cry. He scratched a non-existent itch on the nape of his neck and turned around to face the shopkeeper, who in pathetic attempts at subterfuge began to cough intermittently whilst busying himself with the cash register. Jack realised he couldn’t just directly ask the shopkeeper whether he had some violated human being behind the counter and that he needed some subterfuge of his own to get to the bottom of this; after all, he wasn’t black-clad in a leather jacket and shades with a twelve-gauge for kicks.

“Excuse me, Mr. Patel.”

The shopkeeper looked up and gave Jack a crooked smile.

“Forgive me for the inconvenience, but could you change this for some pound
coins? My electricity meter is pay-as-you-go and there’s a Twin Peaks marathon on the Sci-Fi Channel this weekend.”

“Ah yes, a very good show,” said the shopkeeper coolly.

“Little bit of Bob in all of us, don’t you think? This shop of yours could be your own little Black Lodge; going to work every morning’s like hell, right?” said Jack with indictment.

“Oh certainly, Bob is everywhere. Though I must say I’m one person who thoroughly enjoys his job.”

The fluidity and insouciance with which the shopkeeper spoke baffled Jack, as he expected a more anxious reaction.

“What about you, sir. It looks as though work may be somewhat hellish for you today. Did you have a late night?” asked the shopkeeper with resolve.

“Did I… me…yes, last night seems a little hazy for me unfortunately. The best nights out usually are. Anyway, what…”

“Well, would you like a little clarity, sir?” interrupted the shopkeeper.

“Would I…?” said Jack with surprise.

“Yeaahhhhheeeeesssss… tihehehe.”

Suddenly the shopkeeper pulled a battered body from behind the counter. A blindfold was its only form of concealment, which meant that every bruise, scar, cut and wound–of which there were hundreds–burned their presence into the eyes of Jack, who fell to his knees with bloodied tears.

“Oh God… please, God. No. No. What did I do?” pleaded Jack

All Jack could see were flashes of white light spliced with fragmented moments of the night before. Images of a man with long curly grey hair and a blue denim jacket. Images of the young black-haired girl screaming for help who was now being mounted on the shopkeeper’s arm before him.

“God? Oh, no; no, sir. Bob. Bob.”

I’m sorry, cat,
I know that you were born free.
If only I had
equanimity.

***

As I approached the train tracks the siren triggered and the barriers lowered, indicating a train was about to cross. I stopped and stared into the azure sky so as to avoid any eye contact with those around me. Suddenly I felt something wet and slimy graze my calf, causing my entire body to jerk. I turned around and there stood an old lady… ha ha ha, no, it was not her who had made friends with my leg; she was walking her terrier and it was
that which had had a good sniff and a lick.

The lady was small and gracious, full of humility evident by the crinkle-cut ridges sculpted into her face, like a pre-kiln clay mushroom tightly bound with string. Her face showed the signs of a life lived conscientiously but disappointedly. She was the kind of woman who would make banal banter about the weather with a heroin addict who had just murdered their parents but a lady whose magnanimity would become subject to caprice if you even looked at her dog in any way less than amicable… leaving her with no doubts about pulling a Kalashnikov on your sorry ass.

They walked past, ignorant of the stink of death and failure that seeps from my pock-marked skin, and unbeknownst to me given that the barriers had come down and there wasn’t much further they could go. My surmise was that the old lady and her dog wanted a front row seat of the train passing by; a more practical form of trainspotting for the mature multi-tasking pedestrian, who likes only to have to cross the tracks to buy her loo roll and angel cake. Anyway, the dog must have become bored waiting as it began to jitter and then turned around and gave me a hard stare. Its eyes grew smaller and its legs started to move in different directions and I knew what was coming. I prayed that it wouldn’t; I closed my eyes and wished to the furthest burning star in the galaxy that the dog would not do what I thought it was going to do, in broad daylight, with people stood all around and on either side of the tracks. But it did…

…It barked and barked and jumped and barked and barked and jumped and barked. I am accustomed to humiliation but when you leave the house expecting to have a people/trouble-free run to the supermarket, the last thing you expect is this kind of embarrassment. Of course it could have meant nothing. Maybe the dog was on a daily dose of Valium and today his forgetful, nonagenarian owner had forgotten to sedate him. Or maybe it was like Magda’s dog Puffy, who just had an irrational dislike of certain strangers. I even developed a theory that the cats and dogs of Canterbury had conspired for the first time in history to destroy me; in this case the cat to suck out what little soul I was born with and the dog to expose the blackness that remained. However, the explanation that my obsessive, monomaniacal and paranoid excuse for a personality could not let go of…was evil. Fuck the persecution complex. I am evil. I have always suspected as much and now I have the confirmation. I am not a bad person, in fact I can actually be quite pleasant most of the time…but I was just born evil.

It was 11:00 PM and I had finished work at the office spending all day doing God-knows-what in front of a computer, only to return home and spend the dying hours of the evening in front of my own, perched at the end of my bed. However, I was happier to see this computer, as it had just finished downloading an Argento movie which I couldn’t wait to watch before going to sleep, hoping it would bless my subconscious with a nightmare or two. I love to be scared.

***

I turned my head to the clock on my bedside table as the credits rolled, to see that it was now 1:00 AM. Not that late, but I thought I’d turn in as it had been what seemed to be a long day. “I’ll just check my e-mail,” I muttered to myself. One new message, no subject. Contact unknown.

Hello Frank….
look under your bed

from a very close friend

I’ll spare you the descriptive words of how I was feeling and what I was thinking. Suffice to say I was scared, especially as I don’t have any friends, let alone close ones. As I am one to deal with things sooner rather than later, I decided to rip off quickly the proverbial plaster and so hastily looked under my bed but saw nothing of any discernible size or presence and therefore, discarding the notion that somebody was under there, I sat back against my headrest. However, I was unsatisfied as some intrinsic instinct suggested that what was under there was not a someone but a something. I decided to reach under the bed with my arm and I began patting my hand around until I felt something. It was cold and sharp. With an intrepid approach and disregard for the object’s icy edge I clutched it and pulled it from underneath the bed. A hatchet. A hatchet smeared with blood.

***

“Morning, Frank. You don’t look too good, bad night’s sleep, was it? Oh, I’m sorry, darling, you wouldn’t know, would you. Ain’t that funny, how I keep forgetting about your forgetfulness. What a pair we are, eh? I’ll get you a cup of coffee and your transcript. There’s not a lot of data to input today so you can get off early and get some rest.”

“Yeah, that would be good. For some reason I didn’t sleep well last night.”

“Well, look at it this way. If it was because of some anxiety or the like, at least your short-term amnesia will get rid of that for you.”

“Heh. Yeah, I guess there are some advantages to my condition. Sometimes I scare myself.”

“Heh heh, oh, you. Well, I’ll be back in a minute with your coffee.”

“Thanks, Alison.”

Man, I like her. Okay, now where was I.

Hello Frank….