MicroHorror

Mathis paused at the doorway. Four unwashed, filth-caked forms, some huddled in blankets and others in what scraps of fabric they had freed from the wreck of the room, looked back at him.

He was stalling. Everyone knew it. The truth was, no matter what stoic mask Mathis plastered onto his face, he could not elude his fear. He turned away before his ailing nerves betrayed him, stepped through the door, and closed it behind him.

The hall stretched ahead. Far to the opposite end, he saw the other door, the exit. He took a careful step, and then another. He began the walk from one end of the hallway, from sanctuary, toward the distant other end, where anything could happen.

The only lighting in the hall stammered from poor fixtures overhead, dim and flickering. The carpet beneath Mathis’ tattered shoes was stained an ugly, splotchy maroon. In several areas along the hall, portions of carpet were burned away, and black circles remained.

Cigarette butts and snack wrappers littered the floor in front of Mathis. He stepped around the wrappers, because they would make noise, and that was the last thing in the world he needed right now.

On the walls hung pictures, many an abstract mess of grays and blacks. One of the pictures had fallen, and lay on the floor against the left wall. Mathis stepped past it, and over a dirty diaper, to proceed.

Ahead, the right side of the hall opened into another area which was even darker than the main hallway. It featured no lighting at all, and only a single stairway, which led up to a place that no sane person wanted to think about in detail, least of all Mathis. He crept past this area, but against his better judgment, allowed a flitting glance toward the stairs. Dread found his heart, and squeezed it. Breathing became difficult.

He had to stop. He leaned against one wall to recuperate, taking slow, easy breaths to quell the sense of panic that clenched him. He resisted an urge to look again in the direction of that stairway. Instead, Mathis looked toward the door from which he had come, where all those other refugees hid.

He had come far, he realized. Now was not the time to hesitate. Not here, not now.

He righted himself and started walking again. His steps treaded the ugly carpet with cautious silence. The battered old oak door neared his reach. He took the last few steps, and grasped the door’s cold brass knob.

At the sudden chill, Mathis shuddered, but he forced himself to open it. The door cracked open, and the unoiled hinge squealed.

A dark blur swept down the stairs and up the long hall. Mathis screamed in terror, and the immense blur of motion was upon him. The hallway lights flickered out.

Almost a minute later, the lights, ever faint, came back on in the hallway, but continued to blink uneasily. The hallway was empty. In front of its exit, freshly burned through the carpet, was a smoking black circle.

Back in the room Mathis had left behind, the remaining refugees looked at one another, expressions torn. There were no words.

Mathis was gone, and still the food supply dwindled. Even knowing this to be so, as they passed around an old can of peas, a quiet hope sustained them. They remained four in number. Soon, they would have to choose another to walk the long hall. Perhaps the next one, whichever one of them it might be, would make it.

Above, up a stairway in the upper reaches, a searing heat pulsed in the darkness, and lingered in anticipation.

Beyond the oak door at the end of the long hall, outside the ice-covered shambles of the building, everlasting winter reigned over a barren, albescent land pocketed with uncounted circular scars.

Resigned and weary were the children of the modern world. The personal comforts and sprinklings of pleasure that had seasoned the lives of so many were no more.

From behind his badge, Officer Eaves watched crime soar and spirits sink into the cracked, scorched pavement. He watched his fellow officers vanish one by one, deserting the force or worse yet falling to the berserk rage junkies–or to the demons that dragged them along by a leash.

Eaves forced down his lunch without relish. Whether it was jambalaya or dry toast, it never mattered, because it all tasted like dirt.

Then the call came in and he was moving along the shoulder past the procession of red lights, the whirling blue lights of his police vehicle a contrasting beacon. In every vehicle he passed, he saw another person, or an entire family, who had been forced to question and redefine life.

The families who had stayed together clung to one another for support. Some people found religion. Others lost it. Many more plunged into vices of alcohol, drugs, and reckless behavior, and of course, there was the rage, and the wanton violence.

What did it solve? Nothing. Who was to blame? It made no difference.

Eaves accelerated along the highway toward the multiple vehicle pileup. He slipped a cigarette between his lips, a habit he had adopted after the tastes and smells faded, and the colors dulled.

Before he could reach his lighter, he saw the Mercury that had collided with a black minivan from behind. From his police cruiser, Eaves saw the giant man standing, a blood-coated pipe wrench in his hand, and his victim sprawled, battered and lifeless. In another time, the cigarette might have dropped from Eaves’ mouth.

The man saw the blue lights and froze. Slowly, he backed away. Officer Eaves set his cigarette aside, slipped out of his vehicle, and pulled his pistol from its holster.

“Stop,” he called, moving forward. “Police!”

The man paused. He studied Eaves.

“Police?” he said. “What police?” His lips curled in an ugly sneer, and his eyes were dark. The man hefted the wrench in one hand and began walking in Eaves’ direction. “There aren’t any cops left,” the man declared, “and there’s no more law. Shoot me, and you’re nothing but a killer yourself.” Before Eaves could respond, he charged.

Eaves squeezed the trigger. One blast, two, and kneecaps opened up to spray the pavement. The pipe wrench clattered to the asphalt, followed by the man who held it seconds before. Crippled and wailing, he toppled into the street.

“There are police,” Officer Eaves said, “as long as I’m alive. And since I’m at least somewhere near the top of the chain of command now, there is still law, and it happens to be whatever comes out of my mouth.”

The man screamed at him, clutching bloody, shattered knees and scrambling about in an absurd effort to stand. “You–shot my legs!” the man gritted in agony. His eyes squeezed shut, and a deluge of curses followed.

“Tell it to the judge,” Eaves said, “if there’s any such thing, anymore.”

Eaves returned to his police cruiser. He pulled away and drove onward along the shoulder, and left the man on his own, possibly at the mercy of another like-minded, blind fury-engorged predator.

That was justice, in Eaves’ eyes. He switched off the blue lights.

He placed the cigarette back in his mouth, lit up, and inhaled deeply. These days, he could no longer taste the smoke, but it still relaxed him. He would call it his reward to himself for a job well done. While the cigarette burned down between his lips, he drove on, up the broken asphalt of the ruined highway.

Horns blasted through his perception and yanked at his nerves until they stretched taut like quivering piano wire. Red lights flared in front of him. He unconsciously clenched his jaw and punched the brakes. The screech from behind warned him of another vehicle roaring toward his back bumper.

Space. Give me space. This was Cochran’s foremost thought when the gap closed behind, and the driver nearly struck him.

The metallic taste was in his mouth. It wasn’t blood. No, he hadn’t bitten his tongue.

The procession slowed. More screeching. It was the inattentive idiot with the lead foot, nearly hitting him from behind again. If this happened, it would be entirely the other driver’s fault, and Cochran guaranteed himself that he would see it to court. Was a little extra space so much to ask?

The intersection’s light turned red. The black minivan in front of Cochran braked, and its own red lights brightened. Cochran slowed, and his back bumper crunched. The vehicle behind him shoved him into the minivan, and his body whipped forward and then back from the seatbelt’s restraint; metal twisted, and broken glass rained onto the street.

Rage. The metallic taste returned, stronger than ever. Cochran’s stomach roiled. He flung open the door and lurched out onto the street, where the chain-link of crushed metal on wheels extended several car-lengths back.

He ran toward the car behind him. Its door opened, and the other driver staggered out.

Their eyes locked. The driver gasped, and Cochran charged. The shard of broken windshield glass was clenched in his hand, cutting his skin, and blood made his grip slippery. He tightened his grip with the first thrust, and blood ran down his knuckles to mix with the other driver’s blood. Cochran kept stabbing. The other driver screamed, and his face came to shreds, along with his eyes.

The driver lay there bleeding and crying. Somewhere else, there was another scream. When the metallic taste faded, Cochran witnessed a woman hurriedly backing away with a cell phone in hand.

She was calling the police. Cochran was sure of it. Weakness overtook him. He collapsed to his knees at the roadside, and steadying himself, hands against the hot asphalt, he heard the noise behind him.

It was the door of that black minivan, which had Cochran’s front bumper lodged in its tail. Its driver climbed out. The man was huge, towering, and in his hand was a pipe wrench. He stalked toward Cochran, and his face was contorted in fury–hatred, even.

On the ground, Cochran gripped his bloody glass shard, but it sliced his hand painfully. He cried out, dropping it. This time, the pain was impossible to ignore, and it was about to get much, much worse. Cochran knew what was coming.

The gigantic man stood over Cochran with the pipe wrench raised high. Before it crashed down, Cochran prepared once more for the taste of metal, which always meant suffering wasn’t far behind.

The rising flames licked at his legs. Flesh roasted. He screamed. The madness of pain drove deep into his senses, and his will collapsed.

“I confess!” Gaspar wailed. “I confess!”

The fire lowered, and Gaspar fell into wracking sobs. His captors hauled his body down from the wall and dragged him away.

Spiteful words followed him. “Confine the heretic.” He was thrown into the darkness. He collapsed to the floor, too weak to do anything else as the heavy door swung closed behind him. The white-hot pain of his cooked legs intensified. His scream ripped through the blackness of his cell.

1494. The end. I have been judged.

He watched the flames again in his mind, burning his legs. He thought about the flames that would come for him next, to consume his entire body. Like the rest who were broken under the crushing fist of the Inquisition, when the final sentence came, Gaspar would be burned alive. Alone in his agony, hopelessness enveloped him.

“Please, just let me die,” he whispered.

A rasping sound answered him from the dark. It was a dull, wet sound, which dispelled the thought that it might have been a rat. Within a moment, Gaspar realized that it was a voice!

It was a wretched voice, one that mirrored Gaspar’s misery. It was inhuman, but somehow, Gaspar could understand the words it formed.

“If you truly wish for death,” the voice grated, “you have only to await their return.”

Gaspar gasped. “Who are you?”

“I am what they fear.”

What they fear. Gaspar fumbled at reason, pondering the phrase. The persecution, the torture, the deaths–it was all in the name of fear, but they gave it another name.

“Satan?”

The voice laughed, a meaty, grating sound. “As you have observed, in these times, Satan is merely another word for fear, as God is a word for power.”

Though the room was black and he could see nothing of the speaker, Gaspar could envision it in his mind. The image that sprang from his imagination was vivid, awful.

It was grotesque, and resembled a gigantic baby whose insides were on the outside. Mucus and pus bubbled from its quivering frame.

“You never answered my question,” Gaspar ventured through trembling lips.

“The answer is there,” the creature spoke. “These men created their own God, for their own ends. An unforgiving God, for whom you will soon die. They believe you are beyond hope of penance, and they will offer you death. In this place, only I can offer you salvation, the only hope you will find. Together, we can make them suffer for what they have done.”

“What must I do?” Gaspar asked.

“I am weak,” the creature rasped, “as you are weak. Together, we shall become powerful. You have only to surrender yourself to me, and we will become one.”

Seconds passed in silence. A phlegm-rattled wheeze commenced, and died away.

Revulsion churned Gaspar’s senses. He tried to drag himself across the floor, away from the creature. The pain in his legs reignited, and he cried out. He laid still for a long moment, and the bleak darkness began to press in on him. Behind its veil of blackness, the creature awaited his answer. Gaspar took a long, shuddering breath.

“Do what you must, then,” he spoke quietly, and added, regretfully, “let us become one.”

It slithered toward him eagerly. He screamed when its razor-teeth crunched into his shoulder. Burning hot saliva dribbled onto his skin. He struggled against it, but it was useless. His senses went numb, and the creature gorged on him until nothing remained.

Power rippled through the creature’s disgusting body. From inside the beast, Gaspar could feel it. He stared out through new eyes–the vision of the beast.

The creature waited in its dark cell. Footsteps approached.

Acidic saliva dripped from the creature’s fangs to sizzle on the floor. The door swung open, and the creature rushed out of the darkness to devour its feast.

The wind was freezing, and the cave that Marco and Lucia huddled in offered very little warmth. They had somehow managed to survive through this bleak winter until now, but as they sat across from one another with only the pot of transparent soup between them, Marco could sense death hanging upon Lucia’s starved frame.

By his estimation, the girl couldn’t have weighed any more than fifty pounds. Her cheeks and eyes were sunken deep, and her body was frighteningly frail. She lacked nourishment. She was starving. They both were.

The soup consisted of a bone lying at the bottom of a pot of water; it was a bone which had been picked clean quite some time ago. They had obtained the water from thawed snow and ice. That’s all that was left in the cave by now: bones, snow, and ice. When the fire was fully raised beneath the old rusted pot, Marco and Lucia would attempt to boil any trace of nutrients from the dry bone to sustain themselves.

This bone, and the rest of the bones that littered the cave, were all that remained of their last shared supper. It had been a distant time ago. To the starving, the days can seem as years. Still, both of them remembered it vividly. The warm meat had filled their bellies and had kept them alive just a bit longer. Because of it, they had been able to further preserve their own hopeless, walking-dead existences.

Lucia had slept constantly for the past week. She would curl up in the far corner of the cave, and her wasting body would drift into sleep. Marco would watch her as she slept, while her body faded to a shadowy remnant. The next time, he knew, she probably wouldn’t wake up.

Time elapsed. The two of them were drinking the soup, the warm bone-water. It tasted just like the ordinary drinking water that had quenched their thirst in the past. It filled them, but did nothing to satiate the bottomless hunger.

Lucia was silent, as she had been for days. Marco speculated that she might be thinking about that last wonderful meal, or perhaps about what had befallen her husband, who had gone into the frozen wastes in a desperate search for food in any form.

When Lucia’s husband never returned, Marco ventured out of the cave to find him. In the vast icy wasteland, he happened upon her husband lying still in the snow. Marco remembered exerting himself to his absolute limit in dragging the man back to the cave’s sanctuary.

Lucia lay down in her corner now, her stomach filled with the unsatisfying warm water. Marco watched her as she dropped into her usual slumber. Her skeletal form shuddered dangerously, and her breathing was abnormally shallow. Eventually, with only these futile liquid meals for sustenance, she wouldn’t awaken. Death would take her, as it had taken her husband.

How long before her body wasted away completely? What cruel forces of nature could leave her to live out these final excruciating days in this frozen abyss of suffering? Marco would outlast her, and then he would be alone to deal with this terrible, never-ending hunger.

Perhaps soon, Lucia and her husband would be together again. Marco rubbed his painfully drawn stomach.

He refilled the pot with ice and snow. Over the fire it would thaw, and then it would begin heating to a boil. Marco’s eyes wandered back to Lucia’s skeletal form, and then drifted upward to the cave’s ceiling as he became lost in anticipation of the meal to come.

The tide churns, the winds twist, and the thunder crash of life crackles through the flow of time. The coldest scales are shed, and the softest feathers erupt in an unforgiving blaze. Caught in the briefly eternal throes of celestial apathy, all of the helpless writhe and thrash in torment.

Now motionless, the dead rise to the surface. As they drift in aimless abandon by the number, their eyes are unreflective of the elements that govern their fate. Their essences are washed away in the river of time and, with only silence in its wake, the storm surges on.