MicroHorror

It was just a joke. A harmless, juvenile joke that Simon thought up while sitting through a boring lecture in Philosophy 101. Hilarious, Simon thought. Priceless. He stifled a laugh, covering the noise with a fake cough. Simon couldn’t wait to tell someone. Anyone. If Professor Maya ever finished talking.

When class was finally over, Simon ran into his friend Artie in the hallway. “Hey, Artie, listen to this joke. It’s a killer,” Simon bubbled with enthusiasm.

And it was. When Simon finished telling the joke, Artie got a sick look on his face, and then pitched forward, dead as the proverbial doornail.

Paramedics couldn’t revive him and couldn’t figure out why Artie died. Simon related the whole story to them as they slid Jay’s body into the ambulance, including his joke. Both paramedics and the driver dropped dead.

By the time the police showed up, a small crowd of students and faculty had gathered around the ambulance and bodies. The two officers pushed their way though the curious group, and Sergeant Randy Graves asked, “All right, who knows what’s going on here?” The other officer checked the bodies, looked up at Graves and shook his head.

So Simon told the whole story again which, of course, involved repeating his joke. The reaction was the same. Both policeman, and the entire college crowd of onlookers, fell dead like a small and bloodless massacre.

Since the police car’s radio was switched to exterior, most of the police officers back at dispatch headquarters died at their desks. When investigating officers played the audio tape to see what might have caused these bizarre deaths, they joined their deceased fellow officers.

A local mobile news crew picked up the police call, tapping directly into the police band, and broadcast Simon’s narrative, including his joke, as breaking news, live to Channel 5’s audience plus their affiliates nationwide. People within range of their television sets or radios dropped like flies, flounders, or any appropriate metaphor. Suddenly cars with dead drivers at the wheels crashed into other vehicles on the freeways, killing many of those surprised drivers and passengers.

At this point, Director James Ender, CIA, Special Weapons and Tactics, Wetworks Division, was informed of the odd and lethal situation spreading through New Jersey. Reviewing the faxed information carefully, he calmly ordered, “Bring me that kid. And tape his mouth shut.”

When something’s dead, it should stay dead. But Clem’s rotting corpse didn’t know that, I guess. Moving too fast for something so long dead, his grayish, mottled hand grabbed Holly’s arm. She screamed like the devil himself had hold of her, and maybe he did.

Luckily Clem had trapped us in the boathouse. It offered the only weapon that might possibly stop him. Finding the flare gun, I broke it open, dropped in a cartridge and aimed the pistol directly at Clem’s decaying chest. Holly realized my purpose and somehow twisted free of his slimy grasp for just a moment. It was all I needed.

“Go back to hell,” I whispered hoarsely in my best Clint Eastwood impression.

I fired the charge, which exploded in bright magnesium light. Clem became a walking Roman candle, screaming and swearing like the damned soul he was. He staggered out of the boathouse, down the old dock, until his blackened, smoldering skeleton collapsed, crumbling into dust only inches from the lake.

I held a shaken, stunned Holly close to me. One hell of a first date.