MicroHorror

Like every parent in those parts Johann knew what had happened on Amelia Street forty-two years ago. How the old Ford caught the wheel of the twin pram and dragged it tumbling down the road, how it had reversed, freed itself and driven away. That the mother hanged herself. That the father took a walk on the live track at West Central. How the killer was never caught.

People told the story like it was a neighborly duty.

He knew that twenty years later something similar happened. An old Chrysler hooked its rear bumper into the walking-reins of twin toddlers.

Guess you oughta know (was how most of them finished) ’cos here’s the thing, mister, that big place you just bought is where they lived, both them families. So you best take care, seeing you got twins yourself. Boy an’ a girl is it? Yep? Just like them kids was. Ah, look at ’em, not a care, huh?

Or variations on that theme.

Johann and his wife had felt spooked at first, but Johann was a practical man not given to superstition. He was a mathematician, familiar with the vagaries of probability, the knowledge that coincidences occurred, that they most often were banal but that sometimes, naturally, they could be freakish.

“It’s a matter of time,” he told his wife. “If there’s enough time, enough things can happen. If time is infinite, which it is, everything can happen.”

“Even this?”

“Even this. And listen, the fact that it’s occurred twice, that means it can’t happen again, okay? The odds are trillions against. It’s preposterous to consider it.”

“Well, I don’t like it, Johann. Everyone around here stares. They really stare. You know why? Because they can’t believe I’m staying here one minuscule second longer than I have to.”

“We can’t leave, Evie.”

“Why not?

“Because we’ll never get anything like this. Look at it, look at the space. Not just inside but out, that garden, that view, the trees, there’s just so much… space. Remember our old place?”

“Yeah. I liked it.”

“I did too. But we couldn’t swing a mouse.”

“There’s a reason why stuff is cheap, Johann. Stuff is cheap when it stinks. And this place stinks. Anyway, I miss my friends.”

“They’ll visit.”

“Yeah, if we pay them.”

“You just want an excuse, Evie. That’s what this is.”

“Screw you, Johann. And you know what, it’s you that’s pushing that pram around this shitty hole morning and afternoon, so you better listen. Be careful. Look right, look left. Don’t take any risks. And most of all, most of all Johann, do not take that pram across Amelia Street. Ever. Okay?”

And so it went on, sometimes amicable, sometimes heartfelt. But never resolved.

And every day Johann pushed the pram across Amelia Street. Naturally he did. It was the quickest route from his fine, big house to the wholefood café where he drank his afternoon coffee.

To go any other way would be insane.

• Copyright: © 2010 Peter Charles

On Christmas Eve the Destroyer sweats blood through trenches millimeters wide scored by torturers down his back and sides. Goggles and headphones play to him each degenerate deed of his life: uncountable violations and rapes, awful bludgeonings and decapitations. Eviscerations and dismemberments unimaginably elaborate.

On the soundtrack of every scene, amidst the screams and imprecations for mercy, the Destroyer’s laughter booms.

Though his hands are nailed by spikes to snow-laden rock high above the ground, and though his legs have been crushed to pulp, the Destroyer, with a mighty effort, raises his head. He coughs and retches and regurgitates into his tooth-ripped mouth a balled envelope.

Pushing with his tongue he manipulates the paper. He thrusts it outwards in increments until the envelope hangs from his smashed lips in a straightened form. Across its surface saliva and blood run in zigzag courses. Fragments of vomit half-conceal the dense, black ink of an unpracticed scrawl.

The scrawl reads:

“Santa’s Grotto, North Pole”

• Copyright: © 2009 Peter Charles

In the empty room stood a pine coffin, open.

Iggy had invited no guests. His grandmother wouldn’t have wanted it, he told people. And anyway, what a ridiculous expense for a dead person.

He had no intention of staying sober himself, however. “Dear old Granny,” he said each time he took a drink of fine whiskey. “Dear old Granny.” He let out a laugh. He admired his youthful face in the mirror.

His rich youthful face.

Dear old Granny had done well. A shrewd lady. For two decades a cosmetics conglomerate had paid large annual fees for her potions. And for a photo of her in old age, looking like a woman of thirty.

Ma Sullivan’s Anti-Ageing Cream. It Works Like Magic.

“It sure does,” said Iggy, and he laughed again. He raised his glass. “What a clever old witch you were.”

And what a strong old witch, he’d thought, when he held the pillow onto her face. Who would imagine a person could take so long to die?

“Some party this is,” said a voice.

Iggy stared at the coffin.

“I said, some God-forsaken party this is.”

“Granny?” he said.

“I’ve seen Presbyterians have more fun.”

He dropped the whiskey bottle.

“Not only a murderer,” said the voice, “but cheap.”

He looked into the coffin. On his grandmother’s face there was no movement. Only a silent, wide-eyed scream.

“You user, you sponger. You cheap little prick,” said the voice.

Iggy plugged fingers into his ears, to no avail.

“Hey, pretty boy! Go look in the mirror.”

What Iggy saw there made his heart stop mid-beat. As he watched, his face fattened rapidly. Then it sagged. Then it wrinkled and shrank. It became the face of a bitter, sad man.

A man in his nineties.

“Call it inheritance tax,” said the voice.

• Copyright: © 2008 Peter Charles

The prisoner reached out to the stone floor but his hand touched instead a scaly body like a snake’s which hissed and with a twist slipped away from him. He kicked out, but the creature had gone. The blackness around the prisoner was complete, an inkiness so dense the only things visible to him were the star-bursts and light-shows of his own straining retinas.

Away in the distance a rackety noise flared up and died down, an excited conversation. And beyond this noise, a blaring, as though of a nagging voice infinitely distant, over-amplified, blown out. And in response to the nagging each time, a loud shout. Beyond all this, separate and intense, came the clicking noise, always there, a furious, irregular, dull-sounding click-click, click, click-click-click. Its source seemed embedded in the very stones of the dungeon walls.

The snake-thing slithered across the prisoner’s ankles and wriggled up his side, hoping to graze on the sweat bacteria of his under-arm. He brushed it away. It hissed and turned, and the curtain of its thousand legs fibrillated against him. “Little fuckers,” the prisoner whispered. The dryness in his throat felt like razorblades.

From far away came the noise of a key grinding round the inside of an ancient lock. Then a scraping sound, grit against stone. Hope skittered through the prisoner’s mind when across the crude flagstones dim light stole towards him. It crept into his eyes, painful, unwelcome, exposing to his sight his own smeared, wasted flesh.

A voice, hardly audible, raised itself from the direction where the light and the scraping had come, a voice which echoed around the dungeon like a whisper in a nightmare, “time to die… time to die… time to die… time to die…”

“Time to die,” said Criss.

“Yeah, man,” said Manny.

“Time for dungeon creep to catch the train to pain. We will make this h-u-u-u-rt.” Criss rolled the wheel, selected “machete,” hit F2 for max armor and Ctrl+K to slide himself under the door’s low lintel.

“Do him,” said Manny.

“Yeah, man.”

A voice called from downstairs.

“Criss, you won’t get told again. Get down here.”

“No way. No. ”

“Now!”

“No.”

“Your Dad’s gonna be home,” Manny said quietly. “You better be down.”

Criss kicked shut the bedroom door.

“He’s not my fuckin’ Dad.”

He rolled the mouse, jumped down the rotten stone staircase three steps at a time and landed in a crouch. Gloom embraced him, and something extra-sensory twitched into life in his brain. He moved forward with careful little stabs at the up-arrow. “Hey, dungeon creep,” he whispered. “Look. I’ve got something for ya.”

• Copyright: © 2008 Peter Charles