Hermitosis: microhorror

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January 16, 2009

MicroHorror Featured Pick - "I Am Done! Or, The Last Entry of J. P. Lawson"

This is the 14th story from MicroHorror that I've featured -- a mere microcosm of the site's cyclopean compilation of 666-words-or-less fiction. This entry by Seth Furman reminds me of Chris Van Allsburg's The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, a book whose images are leaping-off points for bizarre tales; as you read over the entries and begin mentally filling in the blanks, you wind up considering all sorts of dreadful things...

"I Am Done! Or, The Last Entry of J. P. Lawson"
by Seth Furman

October 31, 1962

And so this will be my last entry. I am tired. Years it seems. Years. For years I have diligently kept this journal and now I am tired. They have beaten me at every turn but I have finally figured it out. Without my words they are nothing. Without my thoughts they are undone. They enter my mind through my musings and once inside are free to play. I will host their games no more. I am finished. I have won!

November 1, 1962

And so this will be my last entry. I am tired. Years it seems. Years. For years I have diligently kept this journal and now I am tired. They have beaten me at every turn but I have finally figured it out. Without my words they are nothing. Without my thoughts they are undone. They enter my mind through my musings and once inside are free to play. I will host their games no more. I am finished. I have won!

November 2, 1962

And so this will be my last entry. I am tired. Years it seems. Years. For years I have diligently kept this journal and now I am tired. They have beaten me at every turn but I have finally figured it out. Without my words they are nothing. Without my thoughts they are undone. They enter my mind through my musings and once inside are free to play. I will host their games no more. I am finished. I have won!

November 3, 1962

And so this will be my last entry. I am tired. Years it seems. Years. For years I have diligently kept this journal and now I am tired. They have beaten me at every turn but I have finally figured it out. Without my words they are nothing. Without my thoughts they are undone. They enter my mind through my musings and once inside are free to play. I will host their games no more. I am finished. I have won!

November 4, 1962

And so this will be my last entry. I am tired. Years it seems. Years. For years I have diligently kept this journal and now I am tired. They have beaten me at every turn but I have finally figured it out. Without my words they are nothing. Without my thoughts they are undone. They enter my mind through my musings and once inside are free to play. I will host their games no more. I am finished. I have won!

January 3, 2009

MicroHorror Featured Pick - "The Magician's Dilemma"

Normally MicroHorror's creator, Nathan Rosen, gives me full sway in my decision of which story from his 1000+ collection to feature here, so I was a little alarmed this week when he intervened, demanding that one particular story from the myriad 2008 Halloween contest entries be selected. Though taken aback by his insistence, I have no choice but to capitulate if I want to stay in his good graces -- so here's my own little story, submitted to the 2008 Halloween contest whose winners were reprinted here over the last few weeks...

"The Magician's Dilemma"
by Tom Blunt

I have two rabbits in my act, always two. One of them is named Clover and enjoys ravaging lettuce leaves off of a saucer near my feet while I prepare my own meager dinner. The other one never lives long enough to earn a name; it is placed within an “enchanted” golden box before a rapt audience, and crushed quickly and painlessly when the force of my entire upper body descends on it. I present its pathetic, ruined body and blood-dewed fur to the crowd, and then after a series of flourishes inspired by mystics of the Orient, the creature suddenly revives entirely -- or rather, patient Clover has emerged from my secret sleeve, and the wet baggage of her double has taken residence there, its blood cooling as it soaks through the lining and tattoos my underthings with damp roses. Clover takes a bow, to thunderous applause; we both dine well on show nights.

Two rabbits, two cages. But last night there was a terrific clamor on the stairs as I stood in my room perfecting my technique in the mirror; a false alarm, a large chamber pot (and not the tiny maid carrying it) had tumbled and emptied its contents onto the landing. When I returned to my room a moment later, two pairs of identical eyes greeted me from the floor. Two blank curious faces, interchangeable in their beauty and innocence, one of them destined to share my pillow, the other to bleed in my pocket and swim in my stew.

Tonight, in the wings, I watch the red-faced man with the poodle act as he guides his pups through candy-colored hoops. The audience coos; deep down, they know how often a dog must be whipped to learn those tricks -- but aren’t our lives made so much richer by these splendid flashes of magic? I understand their desperate laughter as I brood over the stowed creature nestled close to my body; it feels like an alien thing to me, a malignant cuckoo’s egg. Opening the box beside me, I reach in with one hand to fondle its cargo, begging silently for a spark of recognition as I caress its anonymous features in the darkness. Clover?

“You’re on,” hisses the pock-marked stagehand. The moment the spotlight smites my eyes and the stamping crowd booms, I feel a sudden stiff, frightened kick against my inner thigh, then another. But it is too late! Small claws dig into my flesh as I clamber through the routine, sweatily producing a long-stemmed rose from a woman’s décolletage and turning a decanter of milk into sour wine. I can’t stop now, the audience already knows what the golden box is for; it’s what they came for. With trembling hands I remove the lid and lift Clover high for their appraisal. I straighten myself to my full height and steel myself for the grand finale.

December 29, 2008

MicroHorror Featured Pick - "The Final Chapter"

Here's the last of MicroHorror's three winners from the 2008 Halloween contest -- coincidentally authored by Oonah V. Joslin, the very first MicroHorror author I featured on this site. May her vision of a possible future serve as a very special New Year's greeting to all our dear readers...

"The Final Chapter"
by Oonah V. Joslin

In the depths of the oceanic valleys there still was heat and light.

The heat came from fissures in the Earth’s crust, ever spewing forth lava and bubbling plumes of smoky gaseous fume that tunneled upwards through the long cold night of stilly waters.

The light emanated from creatures that few had ever seen and none had encountered; creatures which lived by their own light and feared no darkness. Electric flashes in the blackness heralded a shoal of swimming LEDs. Sudden white, a whiplash here; darting blue, a flash there; vermillion–changing–pink, a streak at the edge of perception. Neon, yellow, green, darting hither and thither beneath the Great Pacific Gyre.

The Sun that had once blazed no longer ruled the sky. It penetrated dimly mother-of-pearl clouds. Slowly it had carried on its work of photo-degradation upon the surface of the polymers left swirling on the waters and the corpses left strewn upon the land, but it was weak now. No fish surfaced to taste its rays and no animal basked in its radiating glow. The Earth lay under a dead blanket of thickened atmosphere, sick with poisons and all infertile.

***

Then came the day; that day that was bound to come, when the creatures that lay beneath rose from their ocean beds, close enough to the dark belly of the great petrochemical soup to taste its potential. Vast coils of plastic-coated wires, holographic interfaces, computer circuitry, components still intact within their plastic cases and yet sufficiently exposed for exploitation by those who could jolt them to life. The beings from the deep made their home there among those unnatural weeds and scales, among the flotsam of man’s legacy to Earth.

Gradually they built around them bodies, of indescribable intricacy and size, activated by elements from a trillion different machines and protected by a slurry of polymers, acetates and vinyls. Their glistening bodies shone as they took form and rose clear of their surroundings and they were given life, not from above but from below, from electric ocean depths that man had barely known and from his technological imaginings.

One by one, brand new creatures lurched onto empty continents to seek out the fills they knew must exist there. They towered over the landscape, striding a hundred meters at a time. They ventured forth upon the land of their creators and saw the devastation mankind had wrought. And the Techno-polymorphs saw that it was good.

December 11, 2008

MicroHorror Featured Pick -- "The First Of The Sea"

Here's the second of MicroHorror's three winners from the 2008 Halloween contest. Every great hero, villain, and abomination deserves an origin story, so I was intrigued to find an old myth in this new guise...

"The First of the Sea"
by Lori Titus

I am here and now. I have existed forever.

I have lived so long that it’s come to the point that I cannot even fathom all of my own past. I can tell you this: there was a beginning. When the world was young, so was I.

I may have been alone on the shore when the sea was new. I remember feeling a part of the air and the wind, how the water that cooled me was a new sensation. I was a part of it all, a being that was corporeal, but knew no difference between itself and the outside world.

For decades I was carried on the sea into this confusion that humans call the modern world. Time is nothing.

I will always be.

If I could touch you, I would, because it’s been so long since I have…

When was the last time that I did? It’s hard to remember. But you’re a human man; my touch may kill you.

What name did they give me? I know they called me Mara. I sang songs. I drew men to me. How perfect they were for all of their imperfection.

How their eyes light up when they see me. Upon that moment, I am their ideal, full of life and irresistible; I am what they have waited for all their lives, the thing that they cannot resist. No two men ever see the same woman when they see me.

But they will all tell you that I am the most beautiful woman that they have ever seen.

How many of them dived into the depths for me? How they kissed with abandon, as I pulled them down into the water, sucking the last breath of their lungs into my mouth?

In those moments, the last of their lives, I drew in all of their essence: their life, their need, their pain. To take this is the depth of ecstasy. They give, and their vision of me flows away as does the last of their spirit.

My soft arms turn cold and hard, made of bones and not the softness of skin. My long hair tangles them into a mass of dead seaweed.

My song is the first of the sea, the last of the sea, what all men that sailed in ancient times grew wise enough to fear.

I am Siren.

December 1, 2008

MicroHorror Featured Pick -- "Out For Blood"

The winners of MicroHorror's 2008 Halloween contest have been announced! I plan to feature each of them here, one at a time, but I figured I'd start with the one that most capably triggered my delusional parasitosis...

"Out For Blood"
by Gail Sosinsky Wickman

The door to the Wisconsin hunting cabin shuddered as the buck threw himself against the weathered gray boards.

“Hurry up,” Harvey yelled as his brothers dragged the heavy pine table across the floor. They upended it and shoved it against the door, then dragged one of the bunks over to brace it.

“I’d have sworn I hit that thing,” Mike said, panting.

“You did,” Bob said, wiping sweat. “Right through the rib cage. I saw lung blood on the snow. No mistaking that red.”

“That thing should be dead,” Mike said.

Harvey peered through the window, glad it wasn’t any bigger than a manhole, but thinking of ways to plug it anyway. “I think it is,” he said.

“Don’t give me that rural superstition crap,” Mike said, hiding behind his suburban house and his engineering degree like he always did when he was scared.

A banshee howl echoed through the clearing, and instinctively, Harvey grabbed an end table and covered the opening. Two thumps hit, followed by more screams and hissing.

“What the hell is that?” Bob asked as he threw his shoulder behind the table.

“That tomcat you warmed up on this morning,” Harvey said. “Both halves.”

“Here,” Mike said, returning from the junk drawer with a hammer, an assortment of nails and a couple of spikes they used to climb trees. It took a bit, but they secured the window.

“I’ve heard of this,” Bob said, nursing the thumb that had gotten in the way of the hammer.

“You thinking of Minong?” Harvey asked.

“Prentice, too.”

“Drop the spook stories,” Mike said. “It’s just some new form of rabies, not some revenge of the hunted.”

“It’s not hunting,” Harvey said. “Road kill, meat markets. The guy at the pet cemetery still won’t talk.”

“So why haven’t I heard of it?”

“Because it’s not logical and it’s not happening in a city,” Bob said.

“Just the day of the full moon, right?” Harvey rubbed his hands together. “We can last that.”

A second thud joined the first at the front door, followed by the crash of the chopping block and the bug light.

“Must be the doe from yesterday,” Bob said. “How’n hell’d she get out of the tree?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Harvey said. “We’d better make sure it’s clean in here, though.”

Mike grumbled, but he helped build the fire, and systematically, they burned every piece of meat in the refrigerator, every bite of jerky and the contents of two cans of steak and potato soup. A cracking noise above the mantle drew their attention. Grandpa Andy’s stuffed musky gnashed its teeth and struggled to free itself from its mounting board. The fish, a bearskin rug and a beaver pelt decorating the wall fed the flames, gagging them with the stench of burned fur.

“Damn, if it’s not like killing the old man all over again.” Bob wiped a tear that might have been from smoke.

“Now what?” Mike asked.

“Grab something to eat and wait it out,” Harvey said.

“They’re not going to take the ax and chop through the wall?”

“They’re just animals, Mike.” Bob shook his head. “It’s not like they get any smarter.”

It was almost cozy, sitting around the fire, eating beans out of cans–always careful to flick the bacon into the fire. After they broke out the schnapps, dozing came naturally. It was Mike’s gasps that woke them.

“It’s the wool shirt,” Bob said and pushed out of the chair, only to fall as his leather boots sliced his calves, severing his tendons. Harvey’s fingers flew to his tightening belt. The pressure on his gut grew, as did a steady whine in his ears, so loud he couldn’t hear Mike’s breathing anymore.

“No,” Bob forced out between moans.

Harvey looked up. A black cloud hung in the air, squeezing around the ill-fitted door. The mosquitoes had found a way out of the bug light’s catch tray. They descended, well-practiced in the taking of blood.

November 13, 2008

MicroHorror Featured Pick -- "Salvaging Finkbottle"

It's been a while since I've provided a MicroHorror fix -- here's something to make those awful shakes go away...

"Salvaging Finkbottle"
by Ian Kay

Dr. Ellington Finkbottle was going to revolutionize the World. Everyone knew it. Or, at least the magazines knew it and everyone kinda took it from them. His work with subnuclear restructuring was still in its infancy, but since it’s a method of transforming matter and energy into anything the operator wants while wholly avoiding all the fuss of nuclear fusion and supernovae, most people agree that a slight delay is acceptable.

The man had already used his marvelous picotools to phase a particle of hydrogen into two particles of molybdenum. With his brilliant lunacy focused, it would only be a matter of years before specialized machines made rotting apples into ripe ones, breast cancer into healthy tissue, and politicians into small but quality reservoirs of fossil fuel.

So you can imagine my surprise yesterday when I spotted Dr. Finkbottle in the park three blocks from my house, swinging his legs back and forth atop the white-stained fence along the sidewalk. He was working at a pistachio ice cream cone and watching two squirrels kung fu. I was even more surprised when he fell and cracked his head open.

Now when I say “open,” I don’t mean, like, “a noticeable but largely insignificant fault line in his skull.” No, more like “open” as in “cracked porcelain,” “open.” “Open,” “there were a few pieces of scalp lying inches away from their home base,” “open.”

Besides me, there were two other witnesses.

“Dr. Finkbottle?” I called, a tremble in my voice.

His fingers twitched. We rushed to him.

Needless to say, he was not in good shape. Without wanting to get too journalistic, I’d say he was beginning to leak. His gray matter (which, I might mention, was comprised of several colors and not a one was gray) protruded at an odd angle and threatened to double over like a tall block of gelatin.

We three witnesses were all in jogging shorts, out for the early air, and therefore had neither cars nor cell phones. The closest hospital was a ten-minute drive. And the wit that had once outthought solar accretion was now dry-humping a slab of warm concrete. There was only one option.

Using the sharper edge of the scalp piece, I divvied a portion for each of us.

The man in green shorts said he’d be keeping his part.

The man with the black watch was going to try to auction his online.

And me? I got indigestion. But while on the bowl, I came up with an idea for a self-sharpening pencil, so you tell me.

October 22, 2008

MicroHorror Featured Pick -- "Asphyxiation"

If you haven't already bopped over to MicroHorror to check out the annual Halloween story contest, then here's some additional incentive; when the contest is over, I plan to feature the winner(s) here at Hermitosis. In the meantime here's a wicked little number by Alice Evil to stave off the cold weather; the title itself would make an excellent "safe word," in my unprofessional opinion...

"Asphyxiation"
by Alice Evil

"Are you ready?” she asks.

“Yes,” I say, waiting with anticipation. I smile at her, loving the outfit she’s wearing–a black lace corset with garters and fishnet stockings, topped off with a pair of stiletto boots.

“Do you remember the safety signal?” she asks.

“Yes,” I say, naked, tied up.

“I love you,” she says as she leans in for a kiss on the lips. Before I can say anything else, she slips a clear, plastic bag on my head. She tightens the bottom around my neck and ties a knot at the back.

She gets on the bed, kneeling between my legs. She strokes my chest as she runs her tongue down my stomach–all the way down. My breath fogs up the bag. My hands are tingling from the lack of blood circulation. I lift my head a little to watch. Her head bobs up and down, slowly. She looks up at me. Her face is a blur. Everything is. I can feel her tongue flick every time she comes up. Her grip tightens. I’m throbbing, pulsing. I yank the scarves in two distinct pulls. She keeps bobbing up and down. She’s going faster, deeper. I yank harder, twice. The headboard rattles.

I breathe faster and harder, tossing the plastic bag in and out of my mouth. She’s not stopping. I squirm all over the bed, wrinkling the red bed sheet, 150-count Egyptian cotton, in every direction. I’m pulsing harder in her mouth, her saliva dribbling down, her hand moving smoothly with the rhythm of her head. I yank twice again, almost taking the headboard off the bed. I throw my head back. My back arches. The soft silk around my wrists feels rough from the friction. The plastic bag is practically in the back of my throat every time I breathe in. My knees press against the sides of her head. She pries them apart. She keeps them there, not missing a beat with her head, her tongue swirling around.

My knees press hard against the palms of her hands, but she still manages to keep them apart despite all my strength. She gets the message. There’s no way she hasn’t. I wrap my hands around the scarves and hold on tightly. I pull on them as hard as I can. This time, there is no count. I try to slow my breathing to save oxygen, to prevent carbon monoxide emissions from my lungs. My mind races with thoughts–what could I have done–what did I say to her this morning–is it because I left the toilet seat up again? I come up with nothing.

My head swirls. I’m coming in and out of consciousness. I don’t even know what she’s doing. It’s hard to pay attention. My head is tossing left and right, digging deep into the mattress. My legs are spastically moving in opposite directions of my head. My back is arching up higher. There’s nothing left to breathe in. I let go of the scarves. My body slowly slumps. My legs stop moving–knees bent outward. I get one last, blurry look at her through my fogged-up bag. She’s wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She runs her tongue around her gums and smacks her lips, coated with red lipstick, twice.

I can barely keep my eyes open, desperately trying to breathe in. All I do is choke on nothing, on wasted breath. She walks up. She leans in by my ear.

“I saw the e-mail.” She strokes my head, her hand squeaking against the plastic bag. “I love you. I can’t bear the thought of you with another woman.” Her arm is around my shoulder, her body curled up next to mine. She lays her head down on my chest. “I want my last memories of you loving me and no one else.”

I take one more futile breath. Everything goes black.

October 4, 2008

MicroHorror Featured Pick -- "Inside Out"

For seven weeks now I've featured highlights from MicroHorror, where authors get their point across in fewer than 666 words. A new link on the sidebar will lay them all out for you! This week's story by Melinda Selmys is one of the shortest I've reprinted, but the inverted palette she paints from made me more than a little queasy...

"Inside Out"
by Melinda Selmys

The battlefield had turned itself inside out, and now everything was spattered with green, the soldiers clutching their stomachs and trying to hold in bright, grass-colored worms that must have been intestines. Their faces were as dark as pine trees, and the sky overhead a sinister orange. The orderly lay on his back, looking up at the blindingly black sun in the face of the pumpkin sky and began to laugh, with the high-pitched assurance of a man who knows that he is dead.

September 22, 2008

MicroHorror Featured Pick -- "From Famine To Feast"

With Blindness opening next week and The Road coming later this fall (and the stock market falling all the while), my tastes have been running rather apocalyptic. Many thanks to Stephanie Campisi for this elegantly nasty little number:

"From Famine To Feast"
by Stephanie Campisi

The boy’s face was a thick, fluid rendering of blowflies. They crusted his eyes like false lashes, and crawled around his chapped, broken lips, their shimmering wings vibrating against their fat black bodies. The boy’s stomach was distended; he looked like a spoon, with the bulging, swooping curve of his gut leading into his rail-thin upper body. His ribs protruded; it was as though he had swallowed a birdcage that was pushing out from within.

Father Terence dusted the flies away with a hand soft from hemp balm and decorated with a series of gold rings engraved with brief notes to the Lord. His own arms were husky, with his upper arm drifting fleshily down over his elbow, and his forearms bulging here and there.

“It will be all right, my child,” he whispered, waving reverently at the new cloud of flies that had taken up residence upon the famished boy’s face.

Father Terence’s forehead creased into sweaty folds as he thought about the tragedy that had befallen his land, his followers. The blight had affected everybody who had ever come under his church roof, and now there was very little food for anybody. Villagers were scratching underneath the bricks of their homes for millipedes and slater bugs, were digging up skinny worms, skewering them on filthy fingernails and wrapping them in dried banana leaves, were drinking from pools milky with disturbed dirt and mosquito larvae.

There was nothing to eat, and it was having an effect upon everybody, even the wealthy and the elite in their houses of white blocks of stone and crenulated rooftops. Though, of course, they had not let anybody but the Father know their difficulties. They would come to confession, describing their kidnappings of infants, the stewing, the boiling, the stripping of flesh from the bone.

“It will be all right, my child,” he whispered, lifting the boy into his arms. The boy was a dark feather, flyblown and hot from the desert sun. His tiny toes bulged at the ends, like mushrooms.

Father Terence carried the boy up the dusty path that led to the church. Inside, the cool, unmoving air of the church, air that had sat there for centuries it seemed, refreshed the boy a little, for he stirred, his vague movement like a small fish slapping against his hunter’s hand.

The blight had affected everybody who had ever come under his church roof, and now there was very little food for anybody.

And Father Terence had to make do.

September 11, 2008

MicroHorror Featured Pick -- "Flawed Jewel"

Congrats to MicroHorror for posting its 1000th story! This week's glistening selection by C. Morgan Clayton is from the most recent batch of entries:

"Flawed Jewel"
by C. Morgan Clayton

Dragonflies dance outside my window; their shifting silhouettes touch the frosted glass, even in the night. It is for me they wait, my treasures adorned with emeralds and amethysts and sapphires, disguised in beauty, yet deadly to the unsuspecting. Cunning in their game, as I am.

From my lair, you enticed me with promises I could not dismiss, offered light, and then tainted it with wind and clouds and rain. Your deceit begat this tormented soul–my mind twisted and tangled. The dark daggers in your eyes, my love, mirror the pain inflicted upon my heart, torn and ravaged.

Lovelorn and lost, my innocence raped, I unleashed my dark secret. The dragonflies and I are as one, alike in our assault, and I preyed on you, but unlike mine, your crimson wounds will heal. An imperfect suffering is yours, but I promise to return.

Today a man in white inquired as to why I harbor a sinister side. I smiled and asked, “Do you like dragonflies?” He did not answer, only closed the door. I thought I heard a key turn.

September 4, 2008

MicroHorror Featured Pick -- "Strip Tarot"

Each week you'll find a new 666-words-or-less story from MicroHorror showcased here on Hermitosis. Perhaps I'm impartial, but Kevin Sweeney managed to fire my imagination with just five sentences:

"Strip Tarot"
by Kevin Sweeney

The Hanged Man, the Fool, the five of cups, the five of swords, the ace of coins.

The Devil, the World, the Female Pope, the seven of wands, the nine of swords.

“Take it off,” he said, grinning.

“Sorry pal, Erebus hold ‘em rules, remember?” she said.

Damn. Aces wild. He sighed, and pulled the flesh from his skull.

August 30, 2008

MicroHorror Featured Pick -- "Hide"

Each week you'll find a new 666-words-or-less story from MicroHorror showcased here on Hermitosis. Hopefully this mysterious vignette by D. Hall will cast a shadow over any lakeside holiday plans you're entertaining:

"Hide"
by D. Hall

Sun high and warm, cicadas hum and hiss. The heavy, heavy air is stirred by light breeze like a breath between two pages, like air inside a bottle. The surface of a pond reflects a bird’s eye reflecting ripples, reflecting flitting shadows. Below the surface dead leaves and pond-weed and mud. Only insects and birds are here, only empty nests and the threat of other voices.

He’s not here, says nothing, watching the forest watch you. Behind branches and leaves, needles and old, dry rot–he could be there. Step, step, the stones cry out for stepping, for slipping, for scratching and for gashes. Again, the breeze comes and its hand along with it, pushing trees aside and they bend and curve. Branches part, another branch appears, the tunnel opening and shutting like an eye with too many lids. Did you see him there, his hands up to you and white?

Your hands now, not the wind and not his, and they push aside branches and briars and other things that grab and other eyes that peer. Who should lay their legs across the trail, knobby knees upturned and scabbed and hard as wood? Your feet protest. He’s there again. His back is to you, and his neck is smeared with dirt. Bugs hum now, and the wind hums as well. Your blood hums in your veins. Birds’ eyes or your eyes now push on the inside of your skull. Can you see it now? His step turn step turn, arms up, fingers wide, eyes closed mouth open and spilling, and hot heavy heat on you and sweat too. He is there now, by the pond. You can see the mud on his neck, and the hair there too, and the points of shoulder blades through his shirt.

An insect’s wings by your ear, the rigid vibration of papery lift. Wind and hands and voices and hard black eyes. His breath again, the smell of pond water. Limp leaves give way to an empty bank and no footprints in the mud. Only you by the pond and the shimmering heat of summer, while beneath the surface fingers of white-green flit.

August 22, 2008

MicroHorror Featured Pick -- "Good Samaritan"

Last Thursday we kicked off a new feature in which one 666-words-or-less story from MicroHorror will be showcased here every week. I actually found this week's pick by Thomas Wiloch rather touching... which is why I should never be a parent. Enjoy:

"Good Samaritan"
by Thomas Wiloch

I try so hard to be helpful. But the life of a Good Samaritan is a difficult one. Just this morning I nailed bird wings to the children’s backs so they could fly to school. But the children complained about the blood all over their clothing, and about how the nails were too long and had pierced their hearts and lungs. Not one of them used the wings to fly to school. Not one of them thanked me for trying to improve their lives.

But I’m an optimist. I always believe that “things will get better.” I believe in the power of helping others.

Tomorrow I will gather the children before me and apologize to them for the damage I caused. I will make it up to them. At no cost, I will nail satellite dishes to their heads so they can communicate telepathically among themselves.

They doubtless will have much to discuss.

August 14, 2008

MicroHorror Featured Pick -- "Best Laid Plans"

MicroHorror publishes terrifying works of extremely short fiction -- 666 words or fewer, to be exact. If you think it sounds easy, why not submit your own? Starting today I'll be featuring a weekly stand-out selection for your enjoyment (or extreme distaste, depending).

I'm kicking off this feature with Oonah V. Joslin's excellent story, equal parts impact and economy:

"Best Laid Plans"
by Oonah V. Joslin

Aunt Augusta’s wedding dress was peach and cream like her complexion. The high buttoned Edwardian-style collar was fastened by means of pearls and the tailored sleeves were similarly pinned close to her arms from elbow to wrist. A ruff of gossamer lace covered her delicate hands to the fingers and the bouquet of saffron and white lilies dropped like a frond of elderflowers from her left hand over the full skirt: cream clouds of satin, overlaid with a cobweb of the same lace peachy, seeded with pearls that danced like daisy chains on a spring day. The bodice betrayed no sign of breasts. It crumpled inwards where it should point out and the tiny waist required either the slenderest of figures or the boniest of corsets. Her right hand barely brushed the polished wood of the wrought iron of the banister. She had the appearance of an elegant phantom teetering on the brink of existence, standing tall at the top of the sweeping flight of stairs.

The place was just as I’d imagined it. I remembered the photograph well. But this was no photograph for I was here, in the hallway of what used to be our ancestral home and was now considered to be a very fine wedding venue. And she was there too, not quite in the flesh, as beneath that dress and veiled head, I saw only bone and I already knew there was no future in those hollow eyes. It struck me that I should run but my legs refused the call. The maître d’ beside me saw nothing at all and continued to talk about dates and times and guests. All at once the figure lurched and toppled, just as I’d been told she had all those years ago, breaking her neck, and a plume of ice-gray dust replaced her broken ghost upon the floor.

I was offered some water. I turned and fled.

I would marry Nick at the church of his choice, in the town hall, at the football ground if that’s what he wanted and I would never set foot in that house again. Such romantic notions are of no importance. I’d cancel that wedding dress too. I rushed home to his arms. I wouldn’t tell him where I’d been. It was a silly idea and I was cured. I would go straight in and upstairs and kiss him and tell him I loved him and that I was sorry for being such a silly, stubborn bitch.

The key turned in the lock but the door would not open. “Nick,” I shouted. “Nick?… Nick? What’s behind the door?”

“Nick?”

Copyright: © 2008 Oonah V. Joslin