Microhorror Writing Contest

Clive, by Bradley Michael

The wind moving the branches didn’t bite her skin. Each step down the path was silent, despite the frost coating on the ground. Chloe has walked down this beaten trail countless times with Alan, but today, she walks alone. And with each step down, her memories began to replay.

“Want to see a dead body?” Alan asked her the first time she walked with him. It was a man face down in the mud. He looked so peaceful, lying still in the ground. Chloe thought he would move if she looked hard enough. “Creepy, isn’t it?”

They named him Clive that day, and Clive became their new best friend. No one knew about him. Why ruin the best secret the two had? With every visit afterwards, Clive was still there, resting in the ground.

"I wonder how he died?" Chloe remembers asking on one visit.

"Who knows; maybe he was murdered." Alan gave her a shove, scaring her half to death.

"You almost made me fall!" She shouted at him, smacking his arm as all he could do was laugh.

Their hangout spot would be perched on the ledge, letting their legs hang down, where, down below, lay Clive.

Eventually, Clive began to deteriorate. His pungent smell would go away. His bones were all that was left. They marked his resting place with a makeshift wooden cross made from two sticks tied together with Chloe's Converse shoelaces. He had remained there for years. Only Chloe and Alan had claimed his presence.

Chloe and Alan got older and went their separate ways once high school came around. They would meet again in college and visit Clive with his makeshift cross under the ledge.

In their college years, their romance would blossom. "I love you’s" were said, and love was made. At the same time, Clive would be in attendance for it all.

As Chloe walked closer, she began to remember how it all went wrong. They argued more in their relationship, and trust between the two was lost. Clive couldn't help them, but he heard it all until they were no longer together.

Chloe approached the ledge and remembered how their relationship ended. There was fighting. Yelling, cursing, "I love you's" became "I hate you’s." It all happened so fast. She stared down at the wooden cross, for Clive was still resting, but he was no longer alone.

Crunches of leaves came from behind Chloe. Two kids, about the same age as her and Alan were when they met. The girl, pulling the boy, eagerly asks him, "Want to see a dead body?" For they stood next to Chloe, or through her, and all three looked down to find a woman lying face down in the mud.

"I wonder how she died," the skittish boy asked.

With a little shove, scaring him half to death, the girl replied ghoulishly, "Probably murdered!"