HELL TO PAY

by

Cindy Rosmus

          Squatters, we felt like, on a construction site. Nonstop sawing, drilling, banging. On Sundays, too. Even God, I thought, took a day off.

          Like that weird mansion, the Winchester, in California. That never stopped building itself! I pictured stairways leading to doors that opened to . . . nowhere.

          Except . . . hell.

          When we saw them in the hall, the workers looked right through us.

          One day, I thought, I’d sneak through one of those doors.

          We paid rent. But not enough for these new landlords. Trying to squeeze us out, like the last bit of toothpaste from a no-frills tube. Greedy, inconsiderate fucks.

But old-timers, like Dan Brennan in 2-C, and Miss Roberts in 1-C, defied them. Refused to leave. Forty years they lived here. Reaganomics, Hair Metal bands like Poison, Motley Crüe; my wild youth was just taking off when they moved in plastic-covered couches, and other gross stuff. Most I’m sure was still here.

If they could torch us, we’d be ashes.

But we came with the building. Brennan’s empty snake tank with the new blonde wood floors. The stench of cat piss with antique white walls. Creaking, old bones with marble shower tiles. The lack of heat in those fancy-pants bathrooms would make new tenants sick.

Like us.

Radiators died. DIY heating units took over, with remotes we couldn’t figure out. Forced to pay our own heat now, so Miss Roberts slept under five afghan shawls, topped by shivering cats. On her sad monthly check, she couldn’t afford food for herself.

So she shared theirs.

Freezing hallways, too. So you saw your breath in the air. But not the workers’.

This had to stop.

One day, on the workers’ lunch break, I walked the halls in my own afghan. So many rooms had been destroyed and rebuilt. Like a war zone, debris was everywhere. In one corner, an empty Coors Light bottle. A foil-wrapped half-sandwich. A banana peel.

Dust swirled in front of me. Like a Dickensian ghost, it beckoned.

My stomach tightened. “No.”

It turned and seemed to float up the stairs.

I started back to my own place. But where was it? Suddenly, I felt confused. Lost, in my own apartment building!

“It’s not fair!” I yelled up the stairs. “This is my home!”

Is it?

Wrapping myself snugly in the afghan, I followed the spectral voice up to the next floor, then the next, then one more.

Not realizing that we’d passed the top floor a while back, I walked into a palatial, toasty-warm room. In the distance, was familiar laughter, meows. A cork popping. The smell of meatballs in gravy like only I could make.

I left the afghan where it fell.

Cindy Rosmus originally hails from the Ironbound section of Newark, NJ, once voted the “unfriendliest city on the planet.” She talks like Anybodys from West Side Story and everybody from Saturday Night Fever. Her noir/horror/bizarro stories have been published in places like Shotgun Honey, Megazine, Dark Dossier, Danse Macabre, The Rye Whiskey Review, Under the Bleachers, Punk Noir, and Rock and a Hard Place. She is the editor/art director of Yellow Mama and has published seven collections of short stories. Cindy is a Gemini, a Christian, and an animal rights advocate.