MicroHorror

“I like that my customers never complain,” said the doctor, sewing the lips of the corpse.

“And if they ever do?” asked the assistant.

“Are you crazy? How are they going to complain?” replied the doctor. “Don’t you see that I sew their lips?”

The body nodded with a slight movement of its head.

“There are only four people in the world who keep the secret of immortality. One lives in a remote village at Tibet, unreachable but by the purest spirits. Another one wanders by the most desolated places, trying in vain to commit suicide, a mutilated creature praying for a pathetic end. The third one, as you well know, is you,” I said, pointing to the rack where I had tied the Immortal.

“What do you want? My secret?” said the Immortal, struggling against the ropes.

“No, no, you don’t understand.” I said, smiling. “I am the fourth one. I just want to have a good time with you. A very, very long time, of course.”

“Happy Mother’s Day,” Norman said.

“Thanks, son,” Norman replied, smiling.

“But… honey… this is not a pumpkin, for God’s sake!” said my father when, smiling, I gave him my younger brother’s head.

“Open it,” she said, with a voice like syrup.

A forest of frozen smiles surrounded him, concealing so many emotions–affection, respect, curiosity, envy–that he felt exposed, abandoned at a masquerade without a disguise. His eyes roamed across the enormous table, across the faces of all those people: parents, brothers, aunts and uncles, grandparents, cousins…

“Go on, open it.”

He heard the reproach in his mother’s voice. Anxious, he caressed the gift with his hands. The paper was smooth, speckled here and there with colorful flowers. An enormous pink bow held it closed. He opened it in silence, then looked inside. A camera.

“What do you say?”

“Thank you, Aunt Lidia,” he whispered.

The camera left his hands and joined the greeting cards, the silverware, the ring, the autograph book and the various other gifts whose value, in his mother’s words, the boy would appreciate in years to come. Right now, thought Alex, they weren’t worth much.

After the presents had been opened, his one fleeting moment of glory, the banal conversations flooded the table and it didn’t take long to realize they didn’t include him. He wasn’t the center of attention anymore. Within five minutes, his presence at the table was irrelevant.

“I’m going to the bathroom,” he murmured.

He left the table, and no one noticed. They were too busy with the party to pay attention to a little boy who had come into the world on an October’s day just like that one. The glasses clinked in mid-air, dripping tears onto the immaculate tablecloth, while Alex descended the stairs that led to the toilets.

The bathroom door loomed like a phantasm at the end of the corridor’s white walls, which were chipped and scarred with diverse inscriptions, mostly obscene or racist in nature. There was a small poster, showing a smiling youth against a multicolored background. Alex grasped the knob with both hands and opened the door.

A tall, thin man was holding a tiny wooden box at eye level between long fingers, its surface inscribed with strange symbols. The wrinkles in his furrowed brow were reflected in the washstand mirror.

“Sorry,” said the boy, closing the door.

“Don’t worry. It’s fine,” soothed the stranger, preventing the door from shutting completely with his foot.

His smile revealed two rows of immaculately white, perfect teeth.

“Here. This is for you.”

In the man’s hands rested the box. Alex looked at it, lost in thought. Under the bathroom’s weak light it seemed to move, to tremble.

“What’s inside?”

“It’s a surprise,” said the stranger. “A surprise that you should share with your family, little boy.”

He didn’t like being called that, and liked even less having his hair stroked the way the man had just done. But the box was so beautiful that when the man put it in his hands, he whispered his sincere gratitude and ran down the hall towards the stairway.

“Open it with your eyes closed,” he heard him say, as he climbed the stairs. “That way you won’t spoil the surprise.”

When he arrived at the table, they all greeted him with a warm smile.

“Look what I got!” Alex shouted in excitement.

And with these words, he closed his eyes and lifted the lid of the box. A stench of putrefaction and death flooded his nostrils. A horrible cacophony of screams and laughter assaulted his ears. He heard his mother’s pleading voice, the muffled groans of his relatives.

“My god…”

Creaking furniture, shattering glass. Screams and pleas for help all around. Confusion.

Under the odor of rotting fish, Alex detected something else, more subtle, cloying. He couldn’t identify it. Someone knocked him down. He heard wild footsteps, running in all directions. Something damp and enormous fell on top of him with a grunt. Lying on the floor, with his eyes shut, he tasted the salt of the ocean in his mouth.

But despite it all, he kept his eyes closed.

He didn’t want to spoil the surprise.

I lied. This amputated hand is not yours.

“Hi, are you alone?” whispered a voice by my side, and the walls of the coffin suffocated my shrieks.

I live in your cupboard, hidden among your clothes. I sleep during daytime, one of my heads leaning onto your old slippers, my body hanging from a plastic hanger. At night I wake up and spy you from the inside, through the crack of the door your mother leaves open. I know you know I live here, I know you’ve told your parents a lot of times.

I hate you just for that.

For you discovered me.

I’d like to go out and tear you to pieces with my teeth, to make you pay what you owe me for your betrayal.

But I won’t do it. I hide among your clothes and wait, as I always did, suffering my fear in silence.

Because I’m not lurking; I’m skulking.

I’m skulking from the monster that lives under your bed.

I’ve installed a whole surveillance system in my house. I screen everywhere, from the front door to the bathroom. Thirty two cameras placed with the precision of a clock man, always moving, always recording.

I edit all the records, and then watch them. While I do it, the cameras keep on rolling.

Yesterday I saw again the other man standing by my bed, in one of the tapes. I can’t see his face; despite I’ve taken shots from several angles. Why does he only appear in the records? Why can’t I see him?

I ignore his identity, but I need to know.

Pretty soon.

Today, on revising the camera of the living-room, I’ve discovered him sitting by my side in the sofa. And he has leaned his arm on my back while we were watching the tapes.

I entered the shop to take shelter from the rain of boiling blood and saw a crowding mass of demons from different clans in its interior.

“Demons,” I murmured, more an oath than anything else.

A black elf, eyes as red as burning coal, came closer to me.

“I guess, like this whole bunch of loafers, my dear sir won’t be buying a damn thing,” he whispered with its bifid tongue.

“On the contrary, poor little fiend,” I answered. “Truth is I was looking for an umbrella.”

The elf smiled, showing its perfectly sharpened teeth, and led me to a showcase. There laid a beautiful human-skin-made umbrella, its ribs created out of shinbones and fibulae, a femur its handle.

“It will scarcely cost you a few souls, and yet it is maximum quality,” he rustled.

I nodded, then signed a bill with my blood, and, after taking the umbrella, I left towards the street. On opening it, a squeal of pain came to my ears. Surprised, I turn around and my eyes met the elf’s.

“I suppose you wouldn’t have thought we made them with dead people, would you? I told you its quality was the highest,” he whispered.

“You are plenty right indeed,” said I, and went on walking about Hell pinching occasionally the skin of the umbrella, just to hear it moaning anew.