MicroHorror

Chill wind played in the hunter’s hair as he waited for his game to tromp through the underbrush.

In his spot just off the trail, he savored the quiet that came before a kill. He had learned to be patient and still, to become one with the woods around him.

His breath was slow and measured. The bracing fall air felt good in his lungs. Somewhere in the thicket, a wren trilled.

Finally, to his left, a twig snapped. Then another. He saw a flash of movement through the branches.

It was time.

The hunter lunged, his black nails ripping through skin. His game tumbled sideways, shrieking. He pinned the thrashing prey, sinking in his teeth and tearing away flesh.

The dying man’s arm, clad in blood-soaked camouflage, flailed for his rifle. It had fallen in the leaves, just out of reach.
 

***
 
The hunter looked up from his half-eaten prey. More bears had emerged from the trees, their muzzles dripping red. They awaited his lead.

He growled and turned, lumbering toward the lodge.

Hunting season opened today. There would be plenty more game there and in the town down the mountainside. Perhaps beyond.

• Copyright: © 2009 Sanford Allen

The man walks into a valley of bleached bones that stretches for miles. The white, chalky fragments clatter and snap beneath his feet.

He reaches down, picks up a thin, hollow bone and punches tiny holes in it with a knife.

Placing the flute to his lips, the man blows a simple song of a few mournful notes. This is how to remember humanity.

• Copyright: © 2009 Sanford Allen

The sunset is the color of blood, and the boy dozes beside me, pale hair across his forehead.

We try to sleep during the day, because that’s when the Wretched sleep. I think of him waking to another night of this hell and I shudder.

Corpse-pale, with eyes like smoldering coals, the Wretched stalk the ruins. They drag the survivors into the streets, tear away their limbs, devour their flesh.

Each night, the screams grow closer. Within yards now.

I have no gun to protect the boy. To end his misery. But this pillow, while not as quick, will suffice.

When night falls this time, his nightmare ends.

• Copyright: © 2009 Sanford Allen

Suzy cleaned the hunting knife under the faucet and delicately placed it on the soap dish.

She cupped water in her hands, letting it splash blood from the sides of the sink. She pushed tiny chunks of flesh into the drain, hoping it wouldn’t clog.

Drying her hands, she looked up at the mirror. She liked what she saw. Two round white globes stared back at her from a dripping mask of raw meat.

“They’ll never laugh at my ugly face again,” she thought to herself smugly. “Because now I don’t have one.”

• Copyright: © 2009 Sanford Allen

Alex was crossing the field behind his house, hurrying home for dinner, when he found the severed head.

It was stuck on the end of a gnarled fencepost that poked up through scorched yellow grass. The hot dry summer had left the whole field dead and brittle.

A line of ants ran from the bottom of the fencepost, up what little neck remained attached to the head, and right into the head’s left nostril.

Its eyes were glassy, and its jaw dangled, slightly open.

“Hey, kid,” the head croaked, squinting to focus on Alex. “Can you brush these ants away? They’re driving me nuts.”

Alex stared at the head and kept his distance. He blinked twice. Once to make sure he was actually seeing a real human head. Another to make sure it was actually talking.

“Just do me this favor, kid. Don’t be afraid. I won’t bite.”

The head grimaced as it spoke. Alex guessed it took a lot of effort for a severed head to say much of anything. He could see fresh blood at the corner of its mouth and more running down the fencepost.

“What happened to you?” Alex asked.

“We can talk about that later,” the head said. “Knock some of these ants off. Help me, and I’ll return the favor.”

Alex wasn’t sure how a severed head was in any position to return favors, but he figured it wouldn’t hurt to help out. Knocking a few ants off wouldn’t make him late for dinner.

He wondered, though, how he would go about explaining to his parents that there was a talking head in the field behind the house.

Alex picked up a discarded fast food wrapper that lay at the bottom of the fencepost. He twisted the ketchup-smeared paper into the shape of a stick and used it to knock a few of the ants off the head’s face and neck.

The ants fell into the dried grass at his feet, but more kept climbing the post to take their place.

Alex kept swatting away ants until a few crawled onto the rolled-up wrapper and toward his fingers. He dropped the wrapper.

“Well, you tried,” the head said. It coughed, and Alex could see fresh blood on its lips. “Thank you.”

Alex waited for a second and looked at the head. The ants continued their steady procession into its left nostril as if nothing had happened.

“So are you going to return the favor?” Alex asked.

The head managed something close to a smile.

“Yes. All I have to give you is a piece of advice: Stay clear of that house over there in the distance. I saw the man who did this to me walking toward it with his machete.

“You seemed to be headed in that direction, and I thought you might appreciate the warning.”

• Copyright: © 2008 Sanford Allen