the apartment [AU, Winter]

[Erik Stewart]

The apartment could use some work. That’s what the landlord said. It could use some work, but the heat’s free. Maybe it should’ve taken more to convince Erik, but this apartment was his first - and with his nonexistent credit score (and no cosigner to speak of) it’d likely be his first and last offer. He’d have to deal with creaky floorboards, peeling walls and poor water pressure for a while now. What did he expect? He was just a janitor, and a janitor reaped what he sowed. Which was a whole lot of shit, for one thing.

“Get out of there, you asshole.” His rat snake’s tail stuck out from a wide air vent. The thing sat just above the hardwood floor; squares of dust before it indicated that it might have been hidden behind some furnishing at one point. Not like he had much of that. The apartment was naked as a baby, now. Just his mattress, his desk, the kitchen stuff… “Come on. Yer bein’ weird.”

DJ had been acting squirrely since he’d got here. Normally having a restless snake gallivanting about in an air vent would have any snake owner in a panic, but luckily Erik didn’t have to worry about that, given their unique methods of communication. Anxiety was the main feeling he was picking up from DJ. Other than that it was hard to decipher. Snakes didn’t have a very in-depth understanding of the world. Everything was a big, vague shape which meant either safety, food, or danger. It was all just a bunch Somethings, except when it was a mouse to eat, or, in DJ’s case, an Erik.

“I’m gonna grab you,” he said, and reached in.

He felt DJ’s svelte hide, of course, but also something else. Paper. And something hard, like peanuts. What’d I just stick my hand in this time? he thought, grabbed a handful of the stuff, and pulled it out. If it’s a bug…

It was paper. And - well, it weren’t far off from peanuts. Some kind of pine nut. Like acorns? DJ slithered out on his own, tongue flickering. Erik paid him no mind, instead turning over the piece of paper in his hand, which he knew now to be the glossy surface of a photograph. His thumb wiped away a layer of dirt. Underneath it was a picture of a face. Why would…

Instantly he thought of the ghosts back home. Little Suzy Telephone, who would call you up in the middle of the night and whisper, in a sweet girly voice, ’Hello…hello…hello…’ until you hung up. The Man in the Woods, whom they warned you not to follow, should you see him walking into the trees. He’ll drown you in the bog! He’d a red shirt, and legs that trailed off into nothingness.

Erik turned to look over his shoulder. He hadn’t noticed that the hair on the back of his neck had raised: what’d got him so scared? Been watchin’ too many movies.

[Winter Rowley]

Winter Rowley couldn’t say how long he’d been dead, exactly. There were no calendars in death, and no clocks; much like he had in life, he held the present and future tenses in equal disregard.

The wallpaper hadn’t been peeling like that when he’d died, though. Or had it? Maybe it had, he decided, but probably not. He’d never paid very much attention. Wallpaper wasn’t the sort of thing that you worried about while you were alive.

To be fair, he wasn’t especially worried about it now, either.

He drifted, as ghosts are wont to do. He wasn’t really anyplace in particular; he could see most everywhere, except that there wasn’t much to see. Someone else was moving in. That didn’t mean much—people had come and gone, and none of them had stayed for any meaningful length of time that he could discern. Some time ago, when he’d been newly dead, he’d left signs for the tenants to welcome them to the apartment. That hadn’t lasted long. The screaming had been a bit of a bummer.

He tried to focus through the trans-dimensional haze. There was a snake in the air vent. And then, suddenly…

He was on the other side of the barrier, where details were sharp and voices unmuffled. It happened sometimes—less now than it had once—and only lasted for a little while, but Winter had learned to cherish whatever he could get.

He peered over the new tenant’s shoulder, just enough to see the dusty photo the young man and his snake had procured from the vent: Winter, tall and black-clad and surly-looking, as he had been in life. His sister Luna was beside him, smiling as she always did—or had. Where was Luna now, he wondered? How long had it been since he’d hidden that photo? How long since he’d seen his own face, surly or otherwise?

He wondered for a long time, until goosebumps prickled the back of the living boy’s neck and the sickly yellow ceiling light flickered ominously overhead. He drew nearer to the window, and it clouded from the chill. He considered this. Then, for the first time in what he assumed was a long time, Winter Rowley wrote.

hello my name is winter

please don’t scream

[Erik Stewart]

Erik noticed first the chill in the air. The weather hadn’t yet climbed out of winter, and the apartment hadn’t been especially toasty before, but this cold seemed unnatural. He knew it in his gut. He thought that this was how animals must have felt before a storm; he began looking around, hair crossing his shoulders as he did. He didn’t see the words in the window at first. Erik had been looking up, at the ceiling fan.

When he did it was like a slow burn through his chest. Erik didn’t scream, but his face had turned blank with a dull, creeping fear. He got up on his feet to stare at it.

It was possible, he told himself, that the words had been there before, and he had simply not seen them.
That’s bullshit and you know it.
Can’t be any more bullshit than a…

A fucking ghost.

Erik pulled his sleeve over his arm and swiped it over the words. “The fuck?”