MicroHorror

“Murder one,” the voice cries in your head as you stare through the window at the stripping girl. “Take just one person’s life.”

Shivering in the cold, cradling the knife to your body, you remember that day. Remember the surprise you felt when the man calling himself Robinson walked into your house.

“Just one,” he told you, before reaching in his jacket. You gasped, thinking that he was reaching for a weapon. But what he produced was even more hurtful.

Pictures of your wife and two daughters.

It was the closest you’d come to them in weeks.

“Just one,” Robinson repeated. “And we’ll leave you–and these–alone.” Then his eyes met yours, seemingly seeing into the depths of your soul. “Maybe we can even help you win them back.”

“Nothing can do that,” you said.

“You’d be surprised what we can do.”

“We?” you countered. “Who’s we?”

His eyes gleamed. “The Murder One boys,” he declared. “All of those that came before you.”

His words made as much sense as the rest of your life had since Martina left: none. But his words struck a chord in you, and after Robinson departed, you couldn’t stop thinking about them. It was like something had been released inside you, and this was all you needed, the feeling that something was forcing your hand. Freeing you of all responsibility. Like maybe Robinson would be the one really doing the killing–you’d just be the middleman.

As you thought this, you saw the girl.

But you no longer saw her as a person.

Instead, you saw the reason you lived in solitude.

The reason your three lovely girls had left.

You’d tried to tell Martina that it wasn’t your fault, that she’d come on to you. But that no longer mattered–not when she’d caught you in the act.

“In our bed!” she’d screamed. Then launched a slap at you that nearly took your face off.

So now you’re alone. Alone and watching as Jess, the girl across the road, strips.

You walk in as if invited.

Robinson’s words ringing in your mind.

“Murder one. Just one.”

It’s all you need to hear.

Jess seems to be expecting you.

She lies back in her bed, purring, “I knew you’d come back for more.”

Looking like the cat that got the cream.

But when you mount her and unveil the knife, she gets something else entirely.

Next day, you feel good.

You even stop wondering if Robinson is watching you. If he even existed.

But you forgot to call in sick to work.

Cue the arrival of Hutchins, your boss.

He barges into your place, shouts into your face, “Where the hell were you, Cooper?”

You begin to tell him. To scrape and beg and apologize like so many times before.

Then you think, why the hell should I?

After what you’ve done, after getting away with murder, why let this bully grind you down?

Thinking this, you lash out at him.

He falls down.

Bleeding.

Which surprises you.

You can’t quite remember when–or why–you picked up the knife.

But it’s done now, and there’s no going back, so you continue to use it. And when you look through the hole in his flesh, you see Robinson opening the door.

A crony with him.

Robinson is handing money to the friend.

“I though you’d be different, man,” he says, shaking his head sadly. “I thought I was onto a winner this time.”

You look at him, confused.

And notice that his friend wears a police uniform.

It’s this man that says, “When will you learn? The losers I pick out can never stop at one.”

“Am I… under arrest?” you ask.

They look at each other, than laugh.

“Not yet,” the policeman says. “Not if you can keep up your payments.”

You look down at the knife in your hands.

Robinson laughs. “He’s thinking about killing us now!”

He’s right.

You were.

Welcome to Murder One.

• Copyright: © 2010 Shaun Avery

It drove me mad at first, did living with Cooper. The way everything had to be just so, the way he liked to clean everything. And then, three weeks in, the almighty scream he let out whilst in the kitchen.

Thinking murder had been committed, I ran in. “What?”

He was frantically rearranging the cutlery. “Eight items in each,” Cooper was saying, babbling. “Eight items in each.”

I watched, agog.

Whilst my friend thought it was pretty funny.

***

A few things about my friend.

I don’t know if you could call Mikey a “friend,” as such. He just turned up at my doorstep every payday, asking me out to play–a ritual he had been undertaking ever since our student days, when we’d first met.

I had to move here, into Cooper’s palace of OCD, when Mikey “borrowed” my rent money, prompting my out-of-pocket landlord to turn up, demanding the outstanding payment be extracted from my kneecaps. All well and good, I suppose. But when he saw the state that my friend had left the place in after his last party (I wasn’t invited), remaining there as a tenant was no longer an option. Hence my answering of Cooper’s “flatmate wanted” ad. Though, so far, “flatmates” was all we were to each other; actual friendship seemed out of the question.

Anyway, Cooper went mental on a payday, which put Mikey at my place, pigging out at my expense, feet up on the table and me too scared to ask him to move them. Not scared of him as a person, scared that he’d take his friendship away. Leave me alone.

Until I met Rowena.

She helped kill the fear.

Mikey was dismissive, not liking her much. Saying “you can do much better, mate,” before trying to set me up with his preferred choices.

Rowena pointed out his reasoning for this. “He doesn’t like you spending money on me, John. On us, I mean. That’s money you’re not spending on him anymore.”

I saw her point.

So I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised when Mikey started sucking up to Cooper.

Either trying to make me jealous, or else wanting Cooper to pay his way, like I’d been doing for years.

Helping my flatmate do the washing up, all coy and smile as he simpered, “Eight items in each, right, Coop?”

Coop.

I don’t think he’d ever truncated my nickname.

But I let him have his fun. Until the night I came home and found them in bed together.

***

“I’m sorry, John.”

Breathing on my neck.

“It didn’t mean anything.”

Moving whilst speaking. Moving away.

“Please talk to me.”

Reaching the door.

“I’ll do it. I will, damn it. I’ll open this door and walk right out if you don’t talk to me now!”

Delivering an ultimatum, as if I was in the wrong.

But I didn’t want to talk.

I just sat back and watched Rowena leave.

One more thing my so-called friend had taken away from me.

My self-respect, my flat, my ability to make friends other than him, and now this.

Then I went out of my room. Hoping Mikey had had the decency, after betraying me in my own bed, to leave the flat.

He had.

Surprisingly.

There was only Cooper.

Doing his dishes.

I watched him.

And was suddenly inspired.

***

Mikey screamed against the gag as the first knife sank into his body.

I’d bought seven more on the way over here.

Maybe living with Cooper wasn’t quite as bad as I’d thought.

• Copyright: © 2010 Shaun Avery

The basement was silent now, but the atmosphere hung heavily around it, weighty with the memories of stories told, confessions made, souls all too temporarily cleansed. Only Bernard remained, waiting to talk about his secret mission.

Above him, Father Abe said goodbye and goodnight to the last of the members–who possibly left wondering why Bernard, a nobody by all accounts, had been asked to remain behind these last two meetings.

He had wondered the same thing, himself. But that hadn’t stopped him following Abe’s instructions.

Behind him, Abe walked down the stairs, his return heralded by the tapping of his walking stick against the wooden stairs. “Well, Bernard? How did it go?”

He leant forward in the rickety old chair, pressing his hands together and placing them between chubby knees. “It went well, Father.” Then added, as the older man came to stand behind him, “I found three, just like you asked.”

The Father tutted, and Bernard shrunk into himself, thinking that he’d messed up. But when Abe slowly shuffled around to sit in front of him, he saw that it was not anger on the old man’s face but disappointment.

“You found that many?”

“Yes, Father.”

Abe shook his head. “It is a sad world we live in.”

Nodding in agreement, Bernard studied his mentor.

Stories differed about the man’s history; all that was really known was that drink had driven him out of the priesthood, and now in his sober days he tried to redeem himself by leading the AA meetings here. But recently, he told Bernard the first time he asked him to stay after the meeting, being reactive to people’s problems had ceased to be enough; now he wanted to be proactive, to help those who would not admit they had a problem.

Now, he stood.

Held out his hand.

“You have the addresses of all three?”

“Yes, Father. I followed them home to make sure.”

“Good.” Abe smiled. “Let me have the details.”

It was closing time for real then, and as Bernard left Abe alone in the darkness of the meeting basement, he reflected on something: one fact that all the stories about Abe agreed on was he was a very kind human being.

They were wrong on both counts.

The door swung open.

A boozy, bloodshot face appeared.

“Yeah? You know what time it is?”

A pleasant smile frozen in place on his face, Abe looked down at the details given to him by Bernard. “Des Wilkins?”

The face turned suspicious. “Who’s asking?”

“I believe you spoke to a friend of mine recently: a Bernard Bridges?”

“That weasel in the bar? The guy said I was a drunk? You with him? Well, like I told him, buddy: I don’t want saved.”

“Good,” Abe replied. “Because I don’t want to save you.” And as the smile on the old man’s face became something unspeakable, Des Wilkins screamed.

And awoke tied to a chair.

Flanked by two other bound men.

Abe–or the thing inside Abe–watched them.

So tragic and pathetic, these humans–trying to fill the vacancies in their souls with various addictions. Well, he would fill them with something else.

He readied the scalpel and surgical mask that he’d removed from storage earlier this evening. To catch the blood.

These three weakened vessels, useless on their own, would make one great new whole for him, and the body known as Abe, who had also been a splice of three hopeless addicts, would vanish forever. For it was old now, faltering, succumbing to Earth’s wretched aging process. Hence his need to find new victims. Ones that couldn’t be traced back to his AA meetings. Which pretty soon would have a new leader. And if Bernard should tell any tales… well, who would believe the most pathetic of the group’s members?

He advanced, and six eyes grew wide as they watched the creature move, carrying rebirth–sharp, shiny rebirth–in the dark claws of his hands.

• Copyright: © 2010 Shaun Avery

The spaceship crashed onto Earth with all the subtlety of a drunken Stegosaurus getting horny on its wedding night.

It was a miracle that anything survived.

But something did.

Captain Ulysses Baxter blinked and coughed, fighting through cracked metal and burning fumes, his body and mind threatening sensory overload. Thousands of years in stasis in space would do that to you.

Still, he stumbled out into the world, quite unaware that he was about to become the most famous man on it. And amongst the most envied, too.

“Your family are all dead.”

Doctor Hess delivered this in a flat, dull monotone.

Baxter blinked.

“On the plus side, though–“

“There’s a plus side to that?” Baxter, whose memories had yet to return, could not even remember his family. But this seemed like the right thing to say.

“Oh, most certainly.” Envy flickered in the eyes of Doctor Hess, physician and surgeon–but never anything more than that–to the stars. “You see, you’re famous.”

“I am?”

Hess nodded. “Ridiculously so.” He nodded towards the window. “And all those glamour models outside, the ones that followed you here, want to sleep with you.”

“Is that what they are?” Baxter squinted. “Hey, why is that one’s skin all funny-looking, like that?”

Hess was about to answer the question. Answer it both honestly and fairly. But then two things happened at once–unrelated events combined to create an inflammable situation.

Firstly, Hess saw whom Baxter was talking about–saw a face that he recognized well.

And next he saw, as his heart fragmented into tiny pieces, something on Baxter’s medical records.

And a decision was made.

One that led to death.

Baxter was indeed famous, and his unexpected return to the world had a knock-on effect on just about everything.

Football and rugby players were out; now everyone wanted to date an astronaut.

They added a new section, set in deep space, to the TV show Britain’s Got Tragedies.

Amidst all this spectacle, the Doctor called Hess could do nothing but watch as his dreams–far-fetched ones, but dreams all the same–floated further away into nothingness. But there was always hope, cruel hope–for was it not true that the girl he loved had not caught Baxter’s eye yet?

It was indeed.

But he knew she would, sooner or later. That was why he hadn’t told Baxter about the thing he’d found on the man’s medical records. That strange allergy of his.

After a riotous but fun scandal in which he played all five members of the world’s biggest girl band off against each other (they still didn’t break up), Baxter was almost tired of the opposite sex. But he’d make an exception for the honey creeping up the road towards him.

“Funny,” he said as he squirted suntan oil onto Gillian West’s back. “I’ve not been out with a glamour model yet.”

“Oh?” It didn’t really surprise her, that she was his first; she’d also be the best. After all, no one else had what she had. Doctor Hess hadn’t performed the full-body procedure on anyone else. Shame he’d had to ruin things by trying it on with her afterwards… and then all that crank mail. Never trust a doctor.

“I remember seeing you, that day at the doctor’s, though,” Baxter went on, after coughing to clear his throat a little. “I asked him why your skin looked so funny.”

“Funny?” She fluttered her eyelashes. “Don’t you like it?”

“Sure I do. But what is it?”

“100% silicone,” she replied. “An operation totally unique to me.”

But as she said this, Baxter collapsed to the ground.

His throat closing up.

His face going purple.

His body attempting to fight off an attack.

And failing.

And in the office of the lovelorn and possibly insane Doctor Hess, a single tear fell down upon the medical records of Ulysses Baxter, almost, but not quite, obscuring four fateful words:

Highly Allergic to Silicone.

• Copyright: © 2010 Shaun Avery

Trapped.

Stag night. Prank. Drink. Can’t remember.

Focus.

Breathe.

Think.

Floor wet. Sticky. Area smelly. Pungent.

Something coming.

In head.

Recollection?

Yes.

Toilet!

In toilet.

Public toilet. Outside. Abandoned. Not much used.

Dark. No light.

Phone.

In my pocket.

No signal.

But light.

Use it.

See door.

Move hands towards it.

Locked.

Look around.

No keys. Anywhere.

Panic.

Claustrophobia.

Think!

Remember.

Friends out. Big session. Drink. Lots of drink. No stripper. Disappointed.

Then saw Ken.

Been a while.

Not long enough.

“No hard feelings, mate?”

“None.” Smile on his face. But maybe not in eyes. Had too much to drink. Hard to focus. Can’t remember. “How is Dawn, by the way?”

“Great!”

We drink. Feel guilty. Less so as we drink more.

Group breaks up. Bar closes. Club won’t let us in. Taxis beckon. Kebabs eaten. Goodbyes come. Poetic handshakes and potential hangovers. Watch everyone leave.

Except Ken.

Feel his hand. On my back.

“Night’s young. Another drink.”

Slur yes.

He buys drink.

Tastes funny.

Drink anyway.

Blackness next.

Wake up here.

Floor wet.

Graffiti on wall.

Door locked.

Shout, “help.”

No reply.

Look up.

See something.

Attic?

Yes, attic. Where supplies are kept. But door to it open.

Wonder what’s up there.

Move to see.

Foot hits something.

Look down.

Scream.

Man dead. On floor. Blood-covered badge says, “caretaker.”

Laugh comes.

From above.

Look up.

Picture drops down.

Dawn and I.

My face crossed out. Violently. Deeply.

Second photo falls.

Old one.

One I know well.

Dawn and Ken.

Before the breakup.

Before me.

Guilt returns.

As figure drops.

To feet.

Landing in front of me.

Eyes meet mine.

Glowing red in the darkness.

Knife in hand.

Keys to toilet in other.

Ken speaks.

“Hello, groom.

“Guess what?”

I speak.

“What?”

He smiles.

“No wedding.”

Advances.

“The best man just won.”

• Copyright: © 2010 Shaun Avery