A Little Fiction and Fun

Just Hanging Around on Halloween

"Are you Jennifer?" a voice called from behind the closed door. I was Jennifer and this place was getting stranger and stranger.
The sound of unlocking hasps and disengaged chains echoed throughout the hallway. The heavy metal door swung open to reveal both my new roommate and my new apartment.
I had answered the ad encouraging "any and all" to apply to share a "bed, bath and whatever" in a "happening area of Baltimore, Md." I needed a place to live and I needed it cheap.
"So what do you think?" Mary asked, as she spread her robed-arms to indicate the apartment we would ostensibly share.
It was strange. The entire apartment consisted of a living room, a galley kitchen, a small bedroom and a tiny bathroom. No wonder the monthly price was less than $200.
I set my pocketbook on the couch, hefted off my windbreaker, and laid it on top. In less than a minute I had given the entire apartment the once-over. It was now required that I give this potential roommate the once-over.
She wore a long black robe. It was constructed of a heavy felt, had a hood that hung down the back and huge "batwing" sleeves. On her feet, Mary wore simple black shower shoes. Her nails were painted jet black and matched the color of her long hair. I was just beginning to peg her as a witch, when she said:
"You don't got anything against witches do you?"
Mary's appearance coupled with this question caused me to be wary. "No. Why do you ask?"
And I really didn't have anything against witches not that I ever thought about it.
Mary flopped down on the couch, pulled up an ashtray, and lit a cigarette with theatrical flourish.

"Cause I'm a witch," she said, exhaling a plume of smoke with the reply.
Okay...my mind acquiesced. I sat down adjacent to Mary and lit my own cigarette. Apartments, even those with roommates, going for less that $200 per month and with smoking encouraged, were rare indeed. So I had to share it with a witch? I informed Mary that I had no cause against witches.
The woman positively cackled. I exhaled my own plume of smoke and settled back into the bowels of the couch. I could handle this, I told myself. Even if I didn't get the bedroom.

Mary wasn't really a witch, of course, and I was glad of this in spite of my cavalier attitude. She was a painter and her paintings were definitely dark. Well, dark is the word I would use to describe them. One of Mary's paintings take the entire width of the small bedroom wall (yes, I got the bedroom...Mary likes to entertain sometimes late into the night). It has the same texture as one of those velvet Elvis paintings, only there isn't any Elvis in this picture.
Rats. There are thousands of rats in this Mary-painted picture. All sizes and all in various shades of grey. The many rats run along a ten foot long frame towards a head, now falling with spattering blood, from a guillotine which has just removed it from its body.
Strange.
Then there is the picture in the living room. This one is not quite as wide as the one in the bedroom. It is, instead, very tall. It is a painting, again in black velvet, of a skeleton. Entwined throughout, over and under the rib bones and hanging lazily from the pelvic bones, are many kinds of snakes.
Weird.