MicroHorror

She watches over the steaming pot as the refugees file in, dirty and weary. Filling their bowls with hot stew, they speak to the cook as they smell the aroma. They say the food is incredible, the food that keeps them warm on these cold nights, and they ask what’s in it.

The cook shrugs and says, “Potatoes, carrots, and just a touch of love.”

They smile and move on.

A woman steps up. Haggard and red-eyed, she shuffles slowly up to the pot with her bowl in hand. Bags underneath her eyes the size of half-dollars, the woman looks lifeless with fatigue. The cook looks at her, saying, “Still no sign of your husband, Mrs. Love?”

The woman says no, fighting back tears. She says he must have left her for another woman, for he’s been gone a week with no sign of him. “We all know the kind of man he is,” the woman says, sniffing.

Telling the woman not to worry, the cook dips her ladle into the pot to fish out extra pieces of plump, pink meat. Dropping them into Mrs. Love’s bowl, the cook says, “I’m sure he’ll turn up eventually.”

Mrs. Love sniffs the food, smiling at the aroma. “You’re probably right,” she says, then walks to her seat to eat her stew, stew prepared with potatoes, carrots, and a just a touch of Love.

The interviewer was weary. He’d been sitting across from the prisoner for an hour, his notepad sitting before him, his ears taking in every sordid detail of the prisoner’s deeds. A growl of hunger came from his belly, followed quickly by another. The prisoner didn’t seem to notice. His eyes were set on fame.

“This is goin’ to make the newspaper, right?” the prisoner said. He leaned forward, beady eyes glimmering. “I ain’t tellin’ you this for my health.”

“It’ll make the paper. Continue.”

The prisoner sat back, grinning. “I had all six of ’em rounded up in the front room. One guy tried to get tough, but he settled down after I threatened to shoot his old lady. He let me tie him up, then I shot the bitch anyway.” The prisoner laughed uproariously. “Then–”

The interviewer raised his hand. “Enough,” he said. He sighed. He felt as if his soul had been beaten. His stomach rumbled again. “No more.”

The prisoner look surprised. “That’s all you need?”

“That’s more than enough,” the interviewer said. “You are definitely a killer.” He rose to his feet abruptly, grabbing the prisoner’s arm and snatching him onto the table. Bones cracked like dry kindling beneath the interviewer’s grip. The prisoner screamed as the interviewer’s mouth opened wide… wider… then wider still. As if his jaws were on a hinge, the interviewer’s eyes disappeared behind his head and the prisoner saw nothing but rows of yellow teeth surrounding a blackened chasm.

A black tongue darted from the maw, wrapped around the prisoner’s neck, and snatched his head into the interviewer’s throat. The jaws snapped shut, and after a moment of thrashing struggles, the prisoner lay still, his body an empty vessel. His stomach no longer growling, the interviewer dropped the corpse to the floor, seemingly boneless.

The interviewer walked outside. The man was waiting for him.

“You get him?” the man said.

“Yes.”

“Deputy give you any trouble getting in?”

“I tied him up, no troubles.”

“Conner believed you were a newspaper man?”

“He bought it. He loved tellin’ me all about what he’s done. Loved every disgusting minute of it.” The interviewer’s head was hung low. He was walking slowly.

The man watched him. “Stop feelin’ bad for these people. They don’t deserve pity.”

“I hate this,” the interviewer said, “I hate being near these people and I hate what I have to do to–”

“We’ve talked about this before. I explained it the night I found you in that ditch. I told you what it meant to be like me, and you agreed. You said you didn’t want to die, remember?”

“I remember.”

“You lost your soul that night,” the man said, “so you need to feed on souls if you want to keep on livin’, simple as that. Be happy we choose to feed on people like him.” He jerked a thumb at the jail where the prisoner’s corpse lay metaphysically eviscerated. “That’s the price we have to pay.”

The interviewer was shaking his head slowly. “I don’t know if I want to pay it anymore.”

The man stared at him, squinting. The sun, burnt orange with sunset, simmered in the distance like the anger in the man’s eyes. “I knew you were too damn weak for this. I should have left you in that goddamned ditch.” The man looked away. The interviewer could feel the frustration seeping from the man’s skin, but it could not be helped. Each day, the thought of being left to die in that ditch seemed a more preferable fate than the abominable existence he now lived.

“I think you should have, too.”

After a silent moment, the man said, “Now’s not the time for this. The prison train leaves Albuquerque in five hours, and we don’t want to miss it. We’re going to be hungry again soon.”

I stood outside Susanne’s door with the rain falling around me, rubbing the stitches around my head. They were still bleeding slightly. After ringing her doorbell, I looked at my dress. It was nice and baggy. My parka sheltered my head from the rain. I was still looking at myself when the door opened.

“Lee Ann!” Susanne said. Her eyes were so bright, so happy. It was infectious. I smiled, careful not to tear my stitches. She had given me exactly what I needed. “Come in,” she said, stepping back as I walked inside. I heard the door close behind me. “I wasn’t expecting you. Is everything okay?”

Draping my parka over my arms, I stepped into the shadows, self-conscious about my stitches. I turned to her. “I wanted to surprise you.” My voice was raspy. She looked at me curiously as she pulled her blond hair into a ponytail. I pointed to my throat. “Comin’ down with something.”

“Seems like everyone is,” she said, “Make yourself at home. Let me get that for you.”

By the time I realized what was happening, my parka was in her hands. My arms–my muscular, hairy arms–lay exposed to the room’s soft lighting. I silently cursed myself for not shaving them. She was staring at them in horror, confusion.

I had to think quickly. “I just wanted to meet you,” I said. Only after the words passed my lips did I realize I had forgotten to alter my voice. The masculine baritone of my words echoed in the place.

That was when she ran. I tore Lee Ann’s face from my own, throwing it and the hair attached to it to the floor where it flopped and lay still like a dead fish. There was no point in wearing it anymore. I was taking a knife from the kitchen when I heard her shut and lock the bathroom door.

Her fiancé, Dave, came home an hour later. I was sitting on the couch when he walked in. Water dripped from him. He looked at me and smiled. “Hey, babe!” he said, “It’s really shittin’ potatoes out there, ain’t it?”

I nodded and smiled, thanking him secretly for that. It was just what I needed. He was a nice man, though not terribly perceptive. I looked back at the photograph in my hand as he disappeared into the kitchen. It was a photograph of him. I had found it in Susanne’s purse. He looked just like his picture, and I had been anxious to meet him. The next photograph was a picture of Dave and another man, a tall, lean man. They were standing next to a boat, holding up a gigantic fish. This tall man looked friendly, jovial. As I twisted my fingers through my bloody blond hair, I decided I had to meet the fellow.

It was regretful that people had to die in order to get what I needed, but no matter how friendly the request, it was not the sort of thing one gave up willingly. Ultimately, it was of no consequence to me. These people had their entire lives to know how it feels when someone they loved lit up simply because of their presence, to feel needed, to feel loved. Now it was my turn. The ruses never last long, but they don’t have to. They last long enough to give me what I need.

I picked up my knife and peeled Susanne’s face from mine. As I walked to the kitchen, I wondered if the tall, jovial man in the photograph would appreciate a late-night visit from his old friend Dave. As I came up behind him, I thought of the acquaintances the tall man might have, the shining faces in his photo albums. Delightful friends, family, loved ones. I would find out in time, as I had so many times before.

Andy’s cell phone rang while he was pulling away from the gym. He flipped it open. “Hello,” he said.

“Andy?”

“Yeah?”

“Andy…”

He held the phone closer to his ear and pulled to the side of the parking lot. “That you, Mark?”

“Yeah.”

“You sound funny. You all right?”

“No, I’m not,” Mark said. His voice was a strained whisper and awash with exhaustion. “There’s something in my car, Andy. Something I can’t get out. It won’t let me out either.”

“What the hell are you talking about? What’s in your car?”

There was a moment of silence, then, “I need your help, please. Can you help me?”

Andy pulled back onto the parking lot and drove for the road. “Where are you?”

“I’m parked behind the bar. Just past the lights. Please hurry.”

“I’m on my way.” Andy flipped his phone shut and sped through the night towards the bar.

Mark’s car was parked as foretold: behind the bar where it sat encased in darkness and resembling the shadow of a car more than a car itself. Andy parked a few spaces over and got out. He strained his eyes to see. Mark was sitting in the driver’s seat as erect and still as a tombstone. He jogged quickly over to the driver’s window with a flashlight in hand and peered inside. Mark remained staring straight ahead with a doped expression on his face. He did not move until Andy tapped on his window. He rolled the window down and looked up sleepily.

“Thank you for coming,” he said in a low voice.

Andy tried to survey the inside of the vehicle, but it was too dark to see anything save Mark’s face. There was an odd smell seeping from the car, something sweet and sour.

“You okay? What the hell is going on?” Andy clicked on his flashlight and began to raise it.

“Yes,” Mark said. “Everything’s fine now.”

Andy shone his flashlight through the window. “What’s in there with you?”

“Something that won’t let me leave.”

It was then that Andy saw the passenger. It was crouched behind the seat, a thing spindly and black with long legs and arms folded like ghastly pretzels. A creature born of shadow. A thing with no face, only a swirling mass of blackness that sat where its head should have been and occasionally cracked by a grin lined with jagged, yellow teeth. It was melting in and out of the shadows like ink swirling in a glass of water. But there was more to be seen in the back seat.

There were bodies.

They lay piled atop one another in a pitiful shambles of bloody, broken body parts like junk marionettes, their blood vanished, their eyes soulless. Andy saw that the passenger had stretched one of its arms up to the back of Mark’s head where it disappeared into a hole that it had punched into his skull. He saw the passenger move its arm. Mark’s head moved along with it, and he looked at Andy with dead, soulless eyes. The passenger flexed its black fingers somewhere inside Mark’s skull, and Mark began to speak.

“And he won’t let you leave, either.”

The last thing Andy experienced in this world was an impossibly long, black arm stretching through the window to clutch his face and snatch him inside the car into history and oblivion. When done doing everything it saw fit to do, the passenger dumped Andy’s body atop the rest and picked up Mark’s cell phone again. It scrolled through the contacts. It was done with the As. It went to the first entry under the Bs and hit send as it raised the phone to Mark’s mouth.

“Hello?” a woman said.

The passenger flexed its fingers. “Barbara?”

“Yes. Who’s this?”

“Barbara…”

“Mark? Is that you?”

“Yes. There’s something in my car. I need your help.”

For Sale:

One Axe.

Handle painted red, blade painted red.

Only used once.

“Can you shoot it?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you?”

“That’s different.” The pair fell silent as a young woman walked by. She watched them with caged eyes. When she’d gone, Rich looked back up. “He bit somebody the other day.”

“Did he?”

“Yeah. On the bus. Nothing major, just a little awkward for me, as you can imagine.”

“Did you have your coat on?”

“Yeah, but I think he pulled the zipper with his teeth. He’s got a couple. He’s crafty like that. But it was just a bite. Maybe he’s calming down.”

“You really believe that?”

Rich didn’t answer. A man walked up and stood near them, reading a newspaper. He smelled like a mule. Rich and his friend stepped away to where the wind was less disagreeable. Rich looked around. No one was watching them.

“Let me show you what I bought the other day.” He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the smallest fedora his friend had ever seen. It was dark brown with a circumference of no more than four inches. It even had a tan strap going around the brim.

Rich opened his coat.

From his belly stretched a six-inch mass of pale gray flesh. It had a head that was as lopsided and lumpy as a rotten tomato, with one white eye the size of a pencil eraser that jutted out from its socket like the porthole of a submarine. It had one arm, and it stood out crooked and horrible like a compound-fractured leg. It had two tiny fingers, each with a cracked yellow nail. They were clawing at something invisible in the air. Blue veins lined the thing’s skin at every point. It was clicking its two teeth, teeth that protruded awkwardly from its tiny, slobbering mouth like unattended tombstones in a boneyard.

Rich put the fedora on the thing’s head. Perfect fit. He watched it. It was indifferent to the presence of the hat. It just hung there from Rich’s belly, drooling and clicking its teeth.

“Kind of cute, don’t you think?” Rich said. “Besides, he only bit the woman. That’s not a big deal.”

“You’re not going to kill it, are you?”

Rich scratched his chin. The thing wrenched its head up and looked at Rich, tilting the fedora rakishly on its dreadful head. Rich reached down and straightened it again.

“If it kills anyone else, I will.”

“What about the other one?”

Rich reached around and scratched his back. He could feel the grape-sized head of the thing that was growing there, lumpy and soft. It shifted slightly.

“I haven’t gotten that far yet.”

The wanderer found him in the desert, beggared and bleeding with the severed shackles on his ankles stretched out beside him like strange, metal snakes. He had a bullet in his leg. The wanderer bandaged it. Poured water down his throat. After a while, the outlaw sat up. He looked at the bandage.

“I thank ye. I’d have died out here.”

“Likely.”

They were sitting at the edge of a playa where the velvet mesquite provided what little shade it could. Something small and scaly slithered past, unnoticed.

“Ye ain’t got any tobacco on you, do ye?”

“I ain’t,” said the wanderer.

“Didn’t allow ye did. Why’re you out here, anyhow?”

The wanderer sipped from a canteen. “I came out here lookin’ for somethin’.”

“Prospector?”

“Somethin’ like that.”

“Did ye find what you were lookin’ for?”

The wanderer looked at the small wooden box in his hands and rubbed it. “I did.”

“Somethin’ valuable?”

“Priceless.” He nodded at the outlaw’s severed shackles. “I can reckon why you’re out here. What trouble you in?”

The outlaw drank. “Got sprung from jail in Saltillo.”

“Ye got out with only one bullet in ye?”

“It wasn’t easy. Had to burn the goddam jail down. The feller that sprung me didn’t fair as well as me.”

“Where’s he?”

“Layin’ in the streets, twitchin’ and bleedin’.”

“Why was you in jail in the first place?”

“I shot some folks. Don’t care to tell it.”

They sat for a while, and then the outlaw said, “I best head out.”

“Ye cain’t walk on that leg, mister. Best to rest a while.”

“I don’t aim to walk.” He gestured at the wanderer’s horse. Then he pointed his pistol at the wanderer’s head.

“Why don’t ye give me what you found in this desert so I can be on my way.”

The wanderer sat blinking. “You serious?”

The outlaw cocked the pistol.

“You’d draw down on the man that saved yer life?”

The outlaw wanted what he had, and he saw no use in discussing it.

He shot the man in the face.

The wanderer’s head exploded and he fell over. There was no blood. No bone or brains. His head came apart as fog, like a hand passing through a smoke ring, and as the outlaw watched, the smoke swirled about the wanderer’s neck until it coalesced once again into the shape of a head. A grinning head. He sat up again.

“You’re a bad one, ain’t ye?” said the wanderer.

The outlaw began to slide backwards across the playa, both pistol and bravado now abandoned, but the wanderer was upon him before he had even moved two feet across that lakebed.

“I thought ye wanted to see what I came out here for.” He raised his arm. It was comprised of smoke entire. Ghostly. The wispy trails of it twisting in the breeze, sliding across the wanderer’s fingers, and then merging with the arm again like purposeful fog.

The outlaw never screamed. Not even when the wanderer took his spectral arm and slammed it into his chest. He felt the vaporous fingers sliding past bone and wrap around his pounding heart. He squeezed for a moment, and then the wanderer snatched it out amid a shower of bloody flesh. The wanderer held it out with the blood running through his fingers. The last thing the outlaw saw in this world was what the wanderer had came to the desert for.

His beating heart.

The wanderer rose, still clothed in smoke, and opened the small wooden box and dropped the heart inside. He went to his horse. A bag was stretched across the animal’s back. Inside sat dozens of wooden boxes, each alike in that they all held what the wanderer had come for at one time or another. He dropped the outlaw’s box inside among its new brethren.

“Welcome home, ole boy,” he said, and then he rode on for the town of Ajo.

The wanderer had been riding muleback for two days through the worst dust storm he had ever seen when he realized he had lost his way. He rode on through the night, praying for a break in the swirling dust clouds so that he might take a reckoning by the stars. But as the hours elapsed, there was no break in anything save his spirit. He rode on.

The country was as lonely and strange as the landscape of another world, and upon that dusty plain rode no soul save he. He squinted, he coughed, and his throat ached, as if he were not traveling across a desert but across a snow globe, filled not with water and snowflakes but with dirt and thirst absolute. So when the dust cloud broke finally and he saw the boy, the wanderer stopped immediately. Even the mule seemed taken aback. It watched with its sleepy eyes.

The boy was sitting on the steps of his ramshackle house with his head in his hands as if posing for some western renaissance sculpture, and indeed the whole of the scene looked surreal, perhaps the sight one might encounter after peeking behind the reefs of a dirty and abandoned fish tank. The boy’s hands were tucked between his legs, out of view. He was not moving, and the only sounds about were the whipping of the wind and the boy’s sobs. The wanderer contemplated riding on, but his thirst compelled him to dismount, wipe the dirt from his eyes, and walk over with his tired mule in tow.

The boy did not look up until the wanderer called out to him, and when he raised his head, tears lined his dusty face like brown veins. The boy licked his lips. The wanderer looked down at him and smiled, his white teeth standing in such stark contrast to his dirty face as to look almost cartoonlike in the dusty darkness.

“Evenin’,” said the wanderer. The kid licked the salty, dirty tears from his lips again. He sniffed.

“Howdy.”

The wanderer smiled down at him. “What’s wrong, son?” He chuckled nervously. “Yeh look like somebody’s done killed yer dog.” He stepped closer, and now he saw drops of blood on the kid’s face mixing with his tears.

“Naw,” said the boy, “but I wish somebody would.”

That was when the door behind the boy creaked open and the dog came out. It was huge, prehistoric-looking, and blood drenched its body, and from its teeth swung a severed human head. A woman’s head. The head’s eyes were wide, bloodshot and sightlessly staring out into the abyss where her soul had gone, and her mouth hung open, as if in the middle of saying “Oh” when she lost her head. It appeared to have been chewed off.

The beast held it by its hair as it swung with each step like a bloody pendulum with blood dripping from its neck stump. One, two, three dark red drops of blood fell through the dusty spume that wasn’t real and plopped onto the porch. Two circular, smoking holes were above the dog’s reddened eyes. They oozed blood. The animal dropped the head upon sighting the wanderer, sat back on its haunches, and growled, its teeth gleaming red as if painted.

The wanderer’s jaw fell open as he peered first at the dog and then into the darkened recesses of the makeshift house beyond. Most of what he saw within was drenched with darkness; the rest was drenched in red like a slaughterhouse basement. The dog moved forward again, each step leaving a bloody pawprint upon the dusty porch. The animal was shaking as it stood, as if engulfed by sickness, rage, or some other third ailment yet unknown.

The boy picked up his hands. He was holding a revolver. Two bullets were missing from its chamber. The boy stared at the weapon glumly.

“I tried,” the boy said, “but it ain’t worked yet.”

I don’t think most people like me at all. The people that commute to work and go to soccer games and things, those people. And that’s tragic, because I love people. I really do. I try to talk to them as they pass me on the sidewalk, but no one speaks to me. They won’t even look at me, as if direct eye contact with me would somehow infect them with my poverty. That hurts.

Then I met Roland. He saw me at the bus station one afternoon, sat next to me, and we began to speak. He looked so, so lonely. He looked a lot like me before I met my friends. He seemed to enjoy speaking with me, and that felt good, but more than that, he listened to me, as if he’d know my opinion on any number of topics. That was even better.

We talked for hours. He said I was his only friend. I told him I had lots of friends, and that one, Clara, was waiting for me to return and make dinner. Pork and beans. He wanted to meet her, so together we walked across town to the abandoned factory that Clara and I called home. She was sitting at our table when we arrived. I told her I was sorry for being so late, but I brought a guest home for dinner.

Much to my surprise, Roland didn’t like Clara at all. I’m not sure why. It may have been because she was quiet, but Clara never was much of a talker. She was a listener. Or maybe it was because her clothes were little more than rags, but being homeless, she didn’t have a clothing budget. It might have been because she smelled bad, and she did smell horrible. She needed a bath, but I definitely did not want to give her one. That just seemed… inappropriate.

Of course, it might have been because sometime last month her jaw had fallen off and was still sitting in front of her in her soup bowl. She never bothered to pick it up and she never complained about it, so I just let it go. Also, her hair and scalp were scorched from the time she fell out of her chair and landed face-first into the fire I was using to heat up our pork and beans. That might have been the reason, too.

Whatever the reason, Roland hated her. He began yelling and pointing, so I told him to wait, just wait a minute. Maybe he would like my other friends better. I went to the supply closet and dragged out the rest of my friends. All five of them. It wasn’t hard. I had them all strapped to chairs, so all I had to do was drag them out, chair and all. I put them around the table and smiled at Roland. But he did not like them any more than he liked Clara, and now he was holding his nose and retching as if he wanted to vomit.

I didn’t understand what his trouble was and neither did my friends. They just sat there, so quiet. I told him that these people are my friends and that they all looked so lonely when I met them. I told him they all mean the world to me because they are the best friends and listeners. And then I told him that if he didn’t relax and sit down that I was going to chop off his head.

He tried to run away, but I was able to use the plank board hidden behind the door to persuade him to stay. He eventually adjusted and now he has no complaints. In fact, he sits right next to Clara. He doesn’t speak as much as he used to, but he is still a great listener, and that is what I look for in a friend.

Someone who will listen to me.

Constable Ballou was sitting behind his desk smoking a long, black cigarillo when the commotion in the streets compelled him to move. He saw the citizenry standing statuesque in the streets as they watched the curious pair that walked toward the station. It was Deputy Cat escorting another man who was bound about the wrists with chains. Ballou stepped out to greet them as they shuffled up.

“Sheriff ain’t here,” Ballou said. He looked at the prisoner. He stood hunched and inert, his body draped with a knee-length overcoat with the hood pulled over his head. Ballou looked, but the man’s face was shadow-draped.

“I know,” Cat said. He pointed at the building. “You go on ahead and have yerself a seat right in there.” The prisoner said nothing. He trudged past Ballou like a doped elephant. As he passed, Ballou caught a whiff of the stench emanating from the prisoner–a mix of sweat, urine, and dirt. Ballou pinched his nose. He watched the prisoner go, and then he turned to the deputy. Cat was scratching his head with his face defined with confusion like an ape.

“What’s this all about?” Ballou said.

Cat shrugged. “Don’t know, but that feller says he’s done killed a buncha folks up in Clarkson. He swears by it.”

Ballou raised an eyebrow. “Killed some folks up in Clarkson? How many?”

Cat looked up, his face awash in something resembling incredulity, like a man struggling to accept the sight of something before unknown and altogether fantastical. “All of ’em,” he said. Constable Ballou said nothing. He turned and went inside.

The stranger was sitting at the sheriff’s desk, and Ballou sat across from him. They sat in silence for several moments, Ballou watching the stranger as the stranger watched the floor. The man rocked in his seat, wobbling like a drunk at sea.

“Cat says you done killed some folks,” Ballou said. “Up in Clarkson. That true?”

The stranger cocked his head slightly, and Ballou found himself looking down caved and blackened sockets, the stranger’s eyes tiny and obsidian like a rat’s.

“That’s right,” the stranger said. His voice was raspy, as if his throat was devoid of any manner of fluid. The voice of a desert wanderer. The stranger coughed, the sound phlegm-laden.

“Who’d you kill?”

“All of ’em. They all dead.”

Ballou rubbed his temples and shook his head. “There’s six hundred folks up in Clarkson. You tellin’ me you managed to kill all of ’em?”

“That’s what I’m tellin’ ya.”

“There’s some healthy fellers up in them parts. Just how is it you managed to kill all them folks, but you yerself walked out alive?”

The stranger grinned wearily. “They don’t know I done it.”

“You understand what yer sayin’, don’t ya? Yer confessin’ to the murder of a whole town, fella. You’d swear an oath to that claim?”

“I will.” He was nodding, still smirking slightly.

The sheriff leaned back in his chair and tilted his hat back. “So if I was to ride down to Clarkson, I’d find ’em dead. That right?”

“Dead as hammers. Every goddamned one of ’em.” The stranger coughed raggedly again. He was no longer smiling.

The sheriff paused. He leaned closer to the stranger, the better to see his shadowed face. He said, “Take that hood off. Let me get a look at ya. So yer tellin’ me here today, in front of The Almighty hisself, that you’re the murderer of six hundred souls?”

The stranger lifted his head and pulled back his hood. His face was pale, dripping with sweat, and his eyes were sunk back so far into their sockets as to be nearly invisible. The veins protruded from his face, and across the whole of it, pulpy, purple boils pulsed with each heartbeat as if they themselves were living things. The stranger leaned forward and coughed in Ballou’s face. He grinned again.

“Six hundred and one… now,” he said.