MicroHorror

Jonas knew they couldn’t keep the baby. No matter how excited his wife had been about conceiving again, he couldn’t ignore the voices that told him the baby wasn’t theirs to keep.

Jonas carried the small bundle to the outhouse. The voices were loudest here, a droning babble rising from the stinking dark hole. He could hear them calling for the child. Jonas held the bundle over the opening and the tiny body tumbled out. It sank into the muck amidst a handful of tiny yellowing skulls.

The voices were silenced, except for one. Soon it was silenced, too.

Having Tony around for holidays like this one was nice, Veronica thought to herself as she picked up the small heart-shaped box of candy and walked toward the door at the rear of the house.

She’d had some issues with boyfriends in the past, and Tony had been no different. He was wonderful at the beginning, but then he became abusive. First he used his mouth, then he used his fists. But they’d worked things out, and everything was fine now.

Veronica reached the door and opened it. Flipping the light switch, she stepped into the garage, reflecting on how Tony had been with her since just after Christmas. She’d have to do something really special for him next time Christmas rolled around. For now, the candy would be fine.

Veronica stopped in front of the industrial-sized freezer. She opened the lid and waved away the escaping fog to reveal Tony’s frozen corpse. She gently fitted the heart-shaped box into the hole in Tony’s chest where his own heart used to be. She leaned down and kissed his frosty, grey lips, then straightened back up and smiled, licking the moisture from her lips. “Happy Valentine’s Day, baby,” she said, and she closed the freezer lid.

The devil appeared to the disheartened quarterback in the locker room at halftime.

“I can guarantee you victory,” the devil offered, “but the price will be high.”

“Please help me,” the quarterback said, and shook the devil’s hand.

His team won.

After the game the quarterback found out that the bus carrying players’ wives to the stadium had burst into flames. No one survived.

The quarterback, who was single, wept.

The little girl knelt by her bed.

“Please bless Mommy and Daddy,” she prayed.

“Please bless my brother Jayden and my cat Buttons.”

The little girl jumped into bed and pulled the covers up to her chin.

A hideous screeching from behind her closet door raised goosebumps on her arms. She leapt out of bed and back to her knees.

“And please don’t let the monster in my closet get out! Amen!”

She jumped back in bed and pulled her legs up. If the monster did get out, she didn’t want it touching her feet.

No one paid much attention to the huge man in bib overalls, a stained white T-shirt and dirty work boots as he pushed a cart toward the grocery store’s bottle return area. There was a black plastic bag inside the cart, and the cart’s front right wheel wiggled and squeaked. It wasn’t until the man arrived at the bottle return and began removing body parts from the bags that people took notice.

The giant hefted a human leg from the bag and guided the bare foot into the receptacle. Toes painted hot pink disappeared into the hole. The machine beeped loudly. Its display indicated that the store didn’t accept that brand of bottle. The man grunted, and shoved the leg in up to the knee. He leaned into it, and the rest of the leg went into the machine.

Customers who had been redeeming bottles and cans fled the bottle return, their faces green, their hands covering their mouths. Only the store clerk who was in charge of the bottle return area stayed behind. He watched with horrified fascination as the man reached into his bag and pulled out a woman’s severed head.

The giant held the head up to the bottle machine’s opening by its long, matted brown hair. The head was too big. The man pressed the head against the hole and pushed. The bones in the head began to give way with wet, cracking snaps and pops. Fluids seeped from the head’s ears, eyes, mouth and nose. He pushed harder, wedging the head halfway into the opening. The machine beeped again. The display requested that the item be inserted bottom first. Ignoring the request, the giant put all of his weight behind one final push. The head sounded like an imploding cantaloupe as the man crammed it into the receptacle.

Blood dripped down the front of the machine. Strands of long, brown hair and one pink toenail stuck to the gore that surrounded the opening. The read-out flashed and fizzled for a moment, then indicated the man had $4,372 in returns. The giant pressed a button and took his receipt. The clerk held his breath as the man pushed his cart past him and out of the bottle return area. The clerk let his breath out and shook his head, reaching for the phone on the wall. As the giant pushed his cart down the aisle, its right front wheel wiggling and squeaking, a voice came over the store intercom.

“Cleanup in bottle return.”

“There is no-one living in the toilet!” I had tried to reason with my young son, but he insisted he couldn’t use our bathroom because of the man in the toilet bowl. My patience with Gerry was running thin.

“Da man in the toilet wanna touch my bo-bos,” Gerry said. You can thank my wife for teaching him to call his nuts “bo-bos.”

“Nobody wants to touch your bo-bos!”

“Da man in the toilet do,” Gerry insisted.

“There is no man in the toilet!”

“Dere is! I seen him in dere! I seen his face!”

“What you saw was your own reflection in the water,” I told him.

“Den why I doan see him in da school toilet? Or at gamma-gampa’s?”

I didn’t have an answer for that, and that made me even angrier. I hated losing arguments to a toddler.

“Look, Gerry,” I said, placing my hands on his small shoulders. “You’re a big boy now, and big boys use the toilet. Big boys don’t think there’s a man living in the toilet bowl.” Gerry’s bottom lip began to quiver, and his eyes filled with tears. “You’re staying in there until you use the toilet.”

Gerry’s tears overflowed, and as he turned toward the toilet silent sobs shook his small frame. He walked toward the commode like a death row inmate toward the electric chair. The poor kid–I couldn’t take it. But maybe there could be a compromise…

“Gerry, how about if I use the toilet first to show you it’s okay?” Gerry sniffed and nodded his head, wiping tears with the back of his hand.

I walked toward the toilet and, standing in front of it, I unzipped my fly.

“No, Daddy,” Gerry said. “You gotta sit.”

I started to argue the point. “Why do I gotta…” then I thought, what the hell, if it’ll get the kid over his fear. “Okay, I’ll sit. You wait outside.”

Gerry shuffled out of the bathroom, and I closed the door. I walked back to the toilet and dropped my pants and jockey shorts down to my ankles. I squatted down on the bowl.

“I’m sitting down!” I hollered at Gerry through the door. “Everything’s fine!” Then I heard bubbling in the water beneath me. I jumped, and looked down between my legs into the bowl. There was a man in there! I nearly leapt to my feet before I realized it was my own face I saw reflected in the water. I chuckled, and settled back down on the seat. When after a few moments I felt cold, wet fingers reach up and caress my testicles, I screamed. I jumped to my feet and yanked my pants up. I edged my head over the bowl and peered in. Just my reflection. But I couldn’t explain away the wet spot in my jockeys from the toilet water on my balls.

“You okay, Daddy?” Gerry asked from outside the bathroom door, his voice shaky. I buckled my pants and opened the door.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, tousling his hair. “And you don’t have to use the toilet if you don’t want to.”

“Yay!” Gerry yelled, taking off down the hallway. “I doan hafta use da toilet! I doan hafta use da toilet!”

Gerry almost ran into my wife, who was standing in the hallway. She gave me a curious look. All I could do was rub my bo-bos and shrug.