MicroHorror

You like to play but the cyber playground is cold and dark and there is no one there, angel.

I’ll take a torch to light my way home. Shed words to mark my foot print. Are they following me? They will find me soon, baby.

Look out for the gingerbread house, honey. It looks so warm, inviting. Click on the mouse and come in. There are good things to eat and a soft bed for you to rest in. Drink me. Look at you grow and blossom.

Are you fat enough yet, angel? Give baby the bone he asks for–then tell him it wasn’t you.

The clock is ticking–counting down the minutes of my life. Honey, I can lose days–click again–lose my mind.

Lose your soul, angel? That is an alien concept. Come in! Slip on the masks you wear beneath your skin. Here there are no boundaries–here you can be most truly yourself. Say hello to your new friends. You have quite the collection. Pinned like flies–your trophies.

Some of us have two faces or more, baby. Smile–are you ready for your profile picture? You can be anyone, girl or boy, the one or many you never dreamed. You can change the color of your face or we can change it for you. Isn’t that better? Too much reality hurts.

I can stop this any time I like, honey. All I have to do is shut down. Click and click again. Find the key and open the door, baby. Told you I can stop this.

Not now.

Not when we’re having such a good time.

Not yet.

Follow me? Adorable! She laughs, he cries, she bleeds!

Look out for the wolves, baby. What big teeth they have. They are tracking you on silent paws. They bring you flowers and a cake on your birthday. They smile as they eat you from within, honey. You spill yourself to sate their hunger, but it will never be enough. They are caught in the web and the cyber soul has sucked them dry. They will never let you go.

Wake in a hundred years, angel. See the grey in your hair and the lines on your face, honey. Shed the avatar like last year’s coat and look at you, baby. This never gets old. Remember me?

Who are you?

Who am I?

Don’t you know?

Don’t cry, angel. Don’t break the screen. It is only a mirror of your soul. See the flies trapped in your web, honey? Look how many they are. See the things you have become.

Remember dreams? They are all we have when the lights go out and the world is dark. Who will you feed on now?

Am I cold? Are you hungry?

Baby–feed on me. I love you.

Don’t break the glass!

One hundred me and all of them are you.

• Copyright: © 2011 Sarah Ann Watts

Funny name for an inn, I thought, but it had been raining all day and I was soaked to the skin. This was a lonely part of the road and I didn’t fancy sleeping under a hedgerow tonight–any port in a storm, I thought, and reined in the mare.

The sign creaked over my head like a gallows–it was crudely painted and showed a pantomime devil roasting gobbets of flesh on a pitchfork over a blazing fire. Rain ran down the sign and funneled down the back of my neck, quenching my indecision. I raised my hand to the knocker–this one another gargoyle–and let it fall. A peal resounded through the house and I heard slow shuffling footsteps. Eventually the door opened to reveal a small wizened creature in mobcap and apron.

“Will you come in, sir?” it croaked and I stepped over the threshold.

“Will you look to my mare?”

She called an ancient ostler and he led the mare away to the stable. I should check on her later, I thought, but for now I was glad to get in from the weather.

The interior of the inn was not encouraging. I got the impression there was little or no custom in the house and yet there was a fire lit in the parlor and nothing wrong with the glass of brandy my hostess offered me “to keep out the cold.” Looking at her by candlelight she was no beauty but she seemed anxious to make me comfortable and I felt a bit ashamed of my earlier prejudice. I was no oil painting myself. It was time to make amends for my brusqueness, show her I was no savage.

“My compliments to the master of the house.”

“He’ll be here shortly,” she said. I wondered if she was deaf. She bustled around laying out supper for me, a dish of chicken soup with a curiously wrought long spoon, freshly baked bread and a thick wedge of cheese. I ate heartily; I was famished and drank deeply of the pitcher of foaming beer. The hostess had taken my sodden greatcoat to dry, and as I stared into the embers of the fire I found myself relaxing, the events of the day receded, I felt myself sliding towards sleep.

The door blew open with a crash and as I gathered my fuddled senses I saw that I had been joined by my host. He wore a crimson smoking jacket and seated himself in the chair facing me. The landlady hovered around him, filling his glass, but he waved her away and she went out, cackling gently.

“Welcome to my house,” he said. “Did you have a pleasant journey?”

“No,” I said, “but I am glad to be here and thank you for your hospitality.”

“The honor is mine,” he said. “Is that blood on your shirt?”

I glanced down at the spreading stain over my heart. “But…”

“Don’t worry, your adversary is dead.”

“I know.” I’d made sure of it. There were tears on my face. I shook my head blearily. “How did you–who are you?”

“Did you not read the sign?”

“The Devil’s Within?”

He nodded slowly. “All of us. When you let that boy die, you found your path to my door and you accepted my invitation to come in.”

• Copyright: © 2008 Sarah Ann Watts

The rats cast shadows in my dreams. At night they come out to play. I hear their voices in the dark and I listen. In the morning they are gone. They are creatures of nightmare who shun the daylight

They are secret, swift and deadly. They scurry across the floor searching for prey. Their tails stir trails in the dust and the floor is patterned with paws. Last night they left a dead cat by the gate. They are always hungry and they are growing sleek and fat.

I put out sacrifices to appease them – scraps from the larder, morsels of cheese and slivers of ham. My mother is angry–she knows I steal the food. I tell her sometimes I wake in the night and I get hungry. She brings me milk in a glass at bedtime and tells me, “sleep well.” I look at her and her face blurs like a stranger and I wonder if she is one of them. She kisses me and says goodnight.

I close my eyes and the rats skitter across my eyelids. I cry out but the fear rises in me and all that comes out is a thin despairing squeak. I cough like I am choking up fur–spitting out bones. I wonder if I open my eyes and look in the mirror–whose face will I see?

My whiskers twitch and suddenly I feel very small.

• Copyright: © 2008 Sarah Ann Watts

The box was the size of his palm. It looked like one of those wedding cake boxes that you send to those guests who have to be invited but nobody expects to turn up. He smiled. Some people he knew had a very warped sense of humor.

The postman had rung the doorbell to hand over this apology for a parcel, dragging him out of a warm bed. He padded downstairs when he heard the knock at the door, knowing it wasn’t his birthday.

He wondered why the idiot hadn’t stuck it through the letterbox but apparently he had to sign for it. He didn’t recognize the slanting writing on the address label–no doubt she’d asked a friend to send it to him so he wouldn’t know where she was. Touching–her lack of faith in him. He’d always known more than she thought. He scrawled an illegible signature and carried the box through to the kitchen.

He was tempted to spare himself the grief–feed it to the waste disposal unit– but he knew he wouldn’t. Instead he let it sit by the toaster while he brewed his morning coffee–watching him like an old friend who knew far too much about him and who he needed to get rid of before he could go back to the bedroom to the new secret in his life. A secret he wasn’t ready to share with anyone just yet.

He closed his eyes imagining he heard her voice calling him–she always wanted to know where he was and it was one of the things about her that drove him mad. That and her habit of assuming that she always knew best and he was a child who needed to be protected from himself. She was right in a way.

As he switched on the dishwasher–he had loaded the washing machine the night before–he reflected that he was not the one who had needed protection. He didn’t need her to guide him in everything–he was impressed by how well he was managing on her own. He imagined that, wherever she was, she must know that by now.

As he poured the coffee he caught the box with his hand as if by accident and it fell to the floor. Something rattled as it hit the tiles and he hoped whatever was inside might be broken. Then he would need no excuse to throw it away–could consign it to the bin with a clear conscience.

He opened the box– slitting the edge with his nail and peeling back the card. Inside there was a mass of scrunched up tissue and a platinum ring set with a single pearl. “Pearls for tears.” He had tried to warn her when she made him choose it for her–said she was tempting fate–but she hadn’t listened. She never did. He shook the box and as he’d expected a note fluttered to the floor. He picked it up and read the message, “I’m sorry, I can’t go through with it.” How typical–she only had to tell him to his face. He shook his head in disbelief and then he turned on the gas.

The flame caught and, rolling the note into a spill, he fed it to the flame. Then he lit a cigarette– his first in months but today he thought he had an excuse. He had tried to forget how much fun life used to be but memories didn’t die as easily as people did.

It was such a waste her ending it this way. If he’d only known, he needn’t have ended it his way. His eyes went to the packing case by the door. His landlady was expecting him to move out of his bachelor flat today. He hadn’t been certain that everything would fit in this one container but it turned out she had taken up less room than he’d thought.

• Copyright: © 2008 Sarah Ann Watts