MicroHorror

Every month, like clockwork, Reg the chimney sweep would call Doris. “When was the last time you had a professional cleaning?” he’d always ask. “There’s nothing up there that you want sharing the house with you.” Doris always politely said no. Doris didn’t even use her chimney in the five years she moved in. Her neighbor said Reg used to be even more persistent. He would go door to door in person, every month, literally sticking his sooty foot in the door to stop you from closing it. Her neighbor heard Reg actually went into an empty house that was unlocked, and when the family came home they found him inside their chimney! And he wanted money for it, like one of those squeegee men! Doris seriously considered calling the Better Business Bureau about the calls (she was on the Do Not Call Registry), but the fact that it was some oddball Mary Poppins profession instead of magazine subscriptions made the whole affair a little charming. Reg’s monthly phone calls were about the only use her land line ever got. They eventually inspired Doris–not to use Reg’s services, but to finally use her fireplace. She bought a wax fire log, rolled up some newspaper, and lit them. The living room soon filled with smoke. The flue was completely blocked. Doris hit redial on her land line, since Reg was the last call she got on it. She couldn’t get a dial tone. The phone jack was out; it must have been knocked loose when Doris rearranged the furniture three months ago. But the calls from Reg had been coming even with the phone disconnected. Doris was suddenly very afraid to look up the flue. There was nothing up there that she wanted sharing the house with her.

Burt grabbed his daughter’s MP3 player by mistake, and so half of the songs during his jog down Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River were rap. He skipped three rap songs in a row, and then Burt heard the most inspirational music in the world: Rocky. When did she find this song? Burt surged ahead, running. That was such a good movie. Never mind that Rocky ran eight different directions in order to jog through Philly the way he did. That guy had heart, and that was all you needed in life. The sequels were good, too. He was only a few minutes from the famous steps of the art museum. It was corny to run up them, but Burt never had the music in his ears before. His aching legs got new life as the music built. Burt’s green windbreaker pressed flat against him as he sped toward the museum, getting to the steps just when Rocky did. He ran like he never had in his life, the music carrying him up. His heart clamped down for a beat, but then it felt fine. Burt pounded up the steps, higher and higher, taking the last ones two at a time. He made it! Burt jumped up and down, not caring how stupid it looked. What a great feeling! He had heard of athlete’s highs, but never felt it before. Burt ran in place, spinning around while pumping his arms in the air. A crowd was around someone lying at the bottom of the steps. Someone trip? Hope they’re okay. Burt continued pumping his fists, the music still in crescendo, the best feeling in his life, not realizing that the person at the bottom of the stairs was wearing a green windbreaker, and was not okay.

Madison’s wish on her birthday was for her toys to come to life. Her stupid big sister Maudy said that only babies believed in birthday wishes. But Madison’s wish came true! Madison woke up in the middle of the night, and Mr. Duckie was quacking on top of the covers. It didn’t look a lot like Mr. Duckie, because now he was a real duck, but he was still wearing his top hat. Madison heard neighing, and on the other side of the room was a gigantic horse, taking up half the bedroom! The purple saddle was the same as on her My Little Pony! Wow! Real horses were big! Madison heard crying in her toy chest. She opened it up, and a monkey and puppies jumped out. A baby was at the bottom, a real baby, blinking its eyes just like her toy baby used to. Yay, a real baby! All of her toys were real! Madison picked up the real baby, and shooed the monkey away, and then pulled a puppy onto her bed to play with along with the baby. Everyone was here–well, except for Clyde. Stupid Maudy took Clyde because she said Clyde was too cool for Madison to play with. Madison heard screaming from Maudy’s room. Good. Now that Clyde was real, too, he would tell her that he belonged to Madison, not stupid Maudy. Clyde was such a good teddy bear.

“Bob. Bob. Wake up, Bob. Bob. BOB! Wake up. Hey Bob, how you doing? Your head okay? Good. Here’s a little grammar tip, Bob. ‘Literally’ does not mean ‘a lot.’ When you say you literally have a ton of work to do, that’s not true unless there’s an actual 2,000 pounds of something to do. Okay, Bob? If you drove a forklift and had 2,000 pounds of something to move around, then it’d be appropriate, and maybe even clever. But you can’t drive a forklift, you just sit in the office and make eight times what the rest of us make. You treat us like serfs. Do you even know what a serf is, Bob? You’re not smarter than any of us, Bob. You just happen to knock up a girl whose dad owns the business. And every time you say you’re LITERALLY bored to death by being forced to spend eight hours in this building, Bob, you remind us of just how unfair this whole arrangement is. Guess what, Bob. It ends tonight. I’ve got a couple of the cordless drills we have 500 extra units of. Guess who ordered too many of them, Bob? Guess who doesn’t think it’s his responsibility, Bob? And guess who’s the only guy in this building whose job isn’t on the line because of the screw-up? It’s you, Bob! And that’s all going to end tonight, Bob. I’m going to see how many times I can put this drill through you. I’m thinking ten, Bob, but feel free to try get that up to a dozen or so. You can scream all you want about being literally bored to death, because for once it’ll be true.”

The archaeologists had no patience for Señora Louisa, but that was because none of these people believed in the spirit world. They went about their digging at the Mayan temple as if it was a construction site, and not where so many people had died. But after the third time a cold chill settled on the whole camp and smashed equipment flat, one of the guides insisted on calling Señora Louisa. There were old ghosts here, Señora Louisa felt, older than any she had ever felt. They would not speak Spanish, which would be a problem if they had a message to relay. Some of the scientists here knew the dead languages of the Mayans, and so were willing to translate whatever Señora Louisa might hear. The scientists would probably claim she looked up whatever words she might end up saying, but she was here to appease spirits, not prove herself to scientists. Señora Louisa lit candles, closed her eyes and began praying. She opened herself to the spirit world. She heard some scientists snicker, but did not pay attention to them. It took a while to sense a presence, but when she did she almost fell over from it. This was an enormous soul! Bigger than any she had ever felt! She heard the gasps of the scientists. Was this spirit visible? She opened her eyes, and it was! It was colossal, the size of a house! It had horns and a tail and screamed out like it was on fire! What was this thing? For once, one of the scientists was able to help. He pointed at the spirit and said, shaking, “Triceratops.”

Anish was having a brain fart. What was this thing called? This thing in his hand? Common household item? In every house in the world? Two steel blades, hinged together to cut paper and other stuff? Oh, it was on the tip of his tongue! Anish could remember all of India’s fourteen prime ministers–he ran them through his head in thirty seconds just to prove this memory gap wasn’t across the board–but he couldn’t think of the name of this thing in his hand. He began mimicking its cutting motion with the fingers of his other hand. Come on, toddlers know what this is. It wasn’t a stapler, it wasn’t tape, it was… He was seriously going to have to look this up in the dictionary. Under what? What letter did it start with? Z? No, nothing starts with Z. Something that sounds like Z. S? Anish went through the vowels. “Raj, please pass me the Sa… Hey Raj, pass me the Se… Raj, give me the damn Si…” Scissors! That’s the word! Scissors. Anish felt an immense itch being scratched. He looked at the metal surgical scissors in his hand. Scissors scissors scissors. Anish went back to what he was doing with the scissors, which was cutting the tongue from the girl he killed two days ago. He was hungry, and would fry up her tongue for lunch. What a relief, Anish thought. He seriously thought there might be something wrong with him for a second.

Han carefully moved the dirt out of the hole in the forest, inch by inch with a trowel. He didn’t see any eggs. This was where the eggs were buried! Han was there when the restaurant crew placed them here, under the large tree. Many hundred-year-old eggs were made by modern methods, simply wrapping the eggs in plastic for a few weeks. But the best hundred-year-old eggs were being made the classic Chinese way, buried in the ground until the yolks turned green and the whites turned brown. As dramatic as the process was, they were only aged a few months before they were retrieved and eaten. But those weeks were long enough for Han to apparently forget where he buried them! Han started widening his hole. Did an animal dig them up? No, the earth was smooth all around. Was he under the wrong tree? Han thought there might be other trees that looked like this, but then Han noticed a distinctive softness in the earth. Here they were, the whole dozen of them. Han took the black eggs from the earth. 10, 11, 12 … 13? 14? 18? There were too many eggs. Han dug up someone else’s supply. These had the faintest hint of rice paper around them: Han’s eggs were wrapped in aluminum foil. These eggs were past the point of blackness. They were almost glowing with a greenish paisley pattern. Han held one in his hand. The outside was stiff, but felt yielding on the inside. Were these eggs actually buried for a hundred years? Would they be safe to eat? Safe or not, Han knew people that would be happy to pay large sums of money to risk such a delicacy. As Han contemplated how much to charge for each egg, the egg in his hand began moving. After a hundred years of incubation, it was time to hatch.

It was one thing to still have Christmas decorations up in January, thought Natalie Hunt, but Halloween decorations were something else entirely. Mr. Shorenstein’s fence was still lined with cotton cobwebs, and the front yard was still covered in those pretend cardboard tombstones. A scarecrow with a big jack-o’-lantern head sat on the front porch, and the pumpkin had turned black and rotted. To leave all that ghoulishness up into November was appalling, but to leave it up when the rest of the neighborhood was celebrating Christmas? Natalie Hunt was too polite to say anything to Mr. Shorenstein, of course. She never bumped into him at the market or walking her Pekinese, so she had no way of asking him aside from the unspeakable rudeness of knocking on his front door. Nothing spoke louder than a good example, though, and so Natalie Hunt told her husband to take down their decorations exactly on December 26th. The rest of the neighborhood followed suit a week or two later, and Mr. Shorenstein still didn’t get the message. However rude, it was time for an intervention. She marched over to Mr. Shorenstein’s house, tray of brownies in hand, preparing to spend half an hour listening to his medical problems before addressing the decoration issue. Before she got to the front door she smelled the rotting pumpkin. That was positively the worst smell she had ever encountered! How could Mr. Shorenstein live in such a manner? Almost gagging, she walked to the front door and knocked. A host of flies came from the rotting pumpkin. Then Natalie Hunt saw the rotting face beneath the rotting pumpkin, and understood why Mr. Shorenstein wasn’t paying attention to his decorating.

Every portrayal of the undead coming back to life takes morbid pleasure in their horrifying look. Gray sunken faces, rivulets of blood, maybe a fresh scar or a fake eyeball dangling from a socket. A reanimated corpse eventually will look like that, but not at first. Has everyone forgotten the care we put into preserving the recently deceased? We drain their blood, pump in formaldehyde, dress them in their best clothes, brush their hair, lightly scent their bodies, place their hands gently across their chests. And if this wasn’t nice enough treatment, we put them in makeup. A thick primer coat is slathered all over, even the ears and neck. Then lipstick, rouge and eye shadow. Most women have never worn so much makeup in their life, not to mention men. Applying such makeup is a art, but the makeup artists usually have never met their clients in life, and so err on the side of healthy glows. Most families’ last view of their relatives are marred by rosy-cheeked, gleaming countenances that didn’t match up to their loved ones in life. And when the recently deceased do climb out of their tombs, their desiccation will be neatly hidden by this makeup. Their clean-cut appearances and dark suits will fool us, allow us to not notice who they are until we can see the dead of their eyes. And that’s as close as they need to get to lunge.

Was this Tuesday? Phyllis was outside. How did she get outside? It was cold. A ghost! Wait, just a boy in a sheet. He had a plastic pumpkin. Oh, this is Halloween. Phyllis forgot. That was why there was a cardboard Jack O’ Lantern in the cafeteria! That made sense. So much of the world didn’t make sense. She should really get home. Oh, girls dressed as ballerinas! Phyllis followed them to the end of the block. She turned, and saw Death! No, just a decoration someone put up. It was cold, and the decoration had a real cloak, so Phyllis took it and wrapped it around her. That got her warm, especially the hood. She turned to go home, but which way was home? She picked a direction. There was a church at the end. Was this her church? There were people in a line, all in costumes. Maybe they would know where she lived. She dug out her emergency $20 bill. She could get a taxi to take her home. She joined the end of the line. When she got to the front, she waved the $20 and said in her quavering voice, “I would like to go…”

A man in an eye patch took the $20 and gave her a $10 back. “Oh, yeh think you be scarier than us, eh, Mr. Reaper? Well, we’ll give you the special treatment inside, yarr.”

Thank the Lord for these nice people. They must be making her tea, although it must be a big expense for them since they couldn’t afford many lights inside. Phyllis walked into the dark house, glad to be safe and warm. The doctors said she shouldn’t be taking these walks much longer, what with her weak heart.