Rent Controlled

 “So how many horrific murders or gruesome deaths have happened here?” I asked casually as I looked around the old but well maintained kitchen with entirely new appliances.

The landlord quickly suppressed a nervous expression that I might not have caught if I hadn't spent so much of my life relying on my ability to know exactly what everyone around me was feeling to survive.

“N..none,” he answered before adding, “Well, okay, there was one, but it was a century and a half ago and the locks have been replaced twice since then. Much more secure.” He knocked against the door-frame leading from the kitchen to the tiny back yard, which was really more of a grassy stoop than an actual yard, and the grass had a strangely dark color to it, like it was perpetually in shadow even when the sun managed to peek between the apartment buildings surrounding the house and shine directly on it.

“Okay,” I said as I turned on the eyes of the electric stove to make sure they all worked and set the oven to preheat. It was a really nice piece, unlike the rest of the appliances that looked like the cheapest ones you could get. “Then why is the rent a a tiny fraction of what this oven cost?” They were already starting to radiate heat by the time I finished my sentence, so I turned them all back off.

“I got a really good deal on that oven. My cousin, Jerry, runs the plant where they manufacture them and really took care of me,” He answered as though that had been what I meant.

“Uh-huh,” I said with a nod as I stood up and tucked the strands of hair that had fallen into my face while I was looking at the oven behind my ear. “But that doesn't tell me why the rent is so cheap.”

He didn't even try to hide the nervous expression this time, looking everywhere in the kitchen but at me before finally saying, “Well, it's an old house, and sometimes old houses like this make weird noises at night that may or may not have convinced every tenant who's tried to live here that it's haunted.” He licked his lips nervously as he added, “It's ridiculous, of course, but you know how people are.”

“Uh-huh,” I once again replied. “And if everyone is convinced the place is haunted, why not just tear it down?”

“City ordinances,” he answered with a shrug. “It's old enough that you have to get unanimous approval from the council to tear it down, and there's always some old biddy who likes the aesthetic of having it around.”

“Okay...okay,” I said as I led the landlord back into the fully furnished living room with its hardwood floors that were definitely older than me even if they weren't the original installation. “Well, lucky for you I can't afford to live anywhere else even if I did believe in ghosts, so when can I move in?”

“As soon as you pay first and last months' rent and the security deposit,” he answered with a hungry smile.

I let out a deep sigh as I pulled the money out of my purse and handed it to him, knowing that left me with exactly twenty-three dollars and eighty-five cents until my next payday, which could be tomorrow or could be next week. Stupid gig economy, I thought to myself as the landlord pocketed the money and pulled out the rental agreement for me to sign.

Five minutes later, he was gone, and I started the process of moving what few possessions I had managed to retain from my piece of crap car to my really nice but possibly haunted house that cost less than a one-bedroom apartment in any of the buildings around it.

I spent most of the afternoon getting to know the house. It had three floors, if you counted the attic, but each floor was fairly small, so it had a kind of gothic tower look to it from the outside. The first floor had the living room and kitchen, along with a small restroom.

The floor above it contained the only bedroom and another, larger, restroom, though not by much, and the addition of a bathtub actually made it feel more cramped than the one downstairs with just a toilet and sink in it.

Above that was an attic that someone had set up a single antique armchair next to a tiny table with a little lamp on it, and that meager bit of furniture effectively filled the space.

“Yeah, I don't know about that,” I said to myself, but didn't actually move it. I simply went back down to the bedroom, opting to worry about the attic later.

The furniture in the bedroom matched the appliances in the kitchen better than it matched the actual house, which could really be said about all of the furniture. It had all clearly been replaced recently, and most of it looked pretty cheap, giving me the impression that the landlord hadn't been kidding about getting a deal on the oven. The particle-board furniture clashed with the Gothic Revival architecture of the little house, but I couldn't have cared less about that. If I'd had to buy the furniture and appliances myself, and actually had the money to do so, the only difference would be a cheaper oven.

As it was, the very nice stove top attached to the oven did a great job of heating up the ramen noodles and canned chicken I made myself for dinner before collapsing onto the thin mattress that reminded me of the dorms at college. Not the most comfortable place to sleep, but it's not like I hadn't slept in worse places.

Right as I started to drift off to sleep, a weird groaning noise emanated from the wall right next to my head. “Shut up, stupid wall,” I mumbled to myself in a way that probably sounded more like, “Shhhhppssspppiddall,” coming out of my already half-asleep mouth.

The groan shifted tones in a way that sounded very much like it was trying to say, “Get out,” but dragged out across several seconds by a mouth that lacked some of the necessary bits to properly form words.

I wasn't nearly awake enough to care, though, and promptly fell asleep with the thought, “No wonder people think the place is haunted,” floating across my mind.

The next thing I knew, I was startled awake by something dripping on my face. The wet splash as the droplet of what I assumed had to be water jerked me out of my sleep and led to me rolling over and wiping my face off on my blanket before falling right back asleep until another droplet landed right in my ear.

I made a series of half-conscious noises of alarm that basically amounted to angry babbling as I rubbed my ear and frantically shook my head, trying to get the liquid to come out. Another drop landed on my head as I tried to clean my ear, so I wiped it with my other hand. I went to wipe my hand on the blanket but paused when the moonlight streaming in through my window showed me the wet spot on my hand looked dark.

“Ummm,” I said as I stared blankly at my hand only for another drop to land right in my palm, splashing more of the dark liquid across my hand with a flash of what looked almost red in the moonlight.

“Nope,” I muttered with a shake of my head as I climbed out of bed and went to the bathroom.

As I flicked on the lights, I swear I caught a glimpse of a bloody woman wearing an old nightshirt behind me, but I pointedly ignored it, instead focusing on the red spots on my face from where the liquid had dripped on me.

“Okay, no, I know that looks like blood, but it can't be,” I said to myself as I reached for a towel. “Whatever it is, I don't want it on my face, but it isn't blood, and the groans were just old pipes.” I ran warm water out of the sink to get the towel wet so I could wipe the mysterious liquid that definitely wasn't blood off my face. The water got hot much faster than I was expecting for how old the house was, but I certainly wasn't going to complain about that.

Steam rose from the sink as I pressed the towel against my face and scrubbed off the mysterious liquid. I sighed contentedly as I lowered the towel, feeling much better right up until I opened my eyes and saw the words, “Get out,” writing themselves in the steam on the cheap mirror.

My sigh shifted to an exhausted tone as I turned off the water and went back into the bedroom, flipping on the lamp right next to the bathroom door as I did. Between it and the moonlight, I could see the words, “Get out!” scrawled across the walls and ceiling hundreds of times in the same liquid that I was becoming more and more convinced was actually blood.

“Oookay...” I said as I looked around the room. “Definitely warming up to the idea of this place being haunted.” I let out another weary sigh as I reached for my spare blanket, only to find blood had dripped all over it, too.

“No wonder all the furniture is new,” I muttered bitterly as I dropped it back onto the cheap plastic chair and headed downstairs only to find the walls, ceiling, and floor in the living room matched the bedroom. Both couches had the words scrawled across the cushions, leaving me no doubt that trying to sleep there would be just as bad as in the bed when I realized that there was one piece of furniture that wasn't new.

With yet another sigh, this one with a defeated tone, I climbed the stairs all the way back up to the attic. As I flicked on the lamp, I caught a quick glimpse of a pale woman covered in blood sitting in the chair, but she once again vanished before I could really pay attention to her.

“Okay,” I said with a nod before sitting down in what I had to assume was her chair. “I guess this is what we're doing.”

The lamp flickered briefly, and I saw a flash like the afterimage of a lightning bolt that looked like a face very close to my own screaming soundlessly as the walls around me groaned for her.

When the lamp came back on completely, the words, “Get out of my chair!” were scrawled across the slanted wall that also served as the ceiling of the attic.

“Sure,” I said with a shrug. “Just as soon as you clean up the bed so I can go back to sleep.”

The lamp flickered again, and I got the impression of the bloody face once more, but with a confused expression this time around. The word, “What?” had replaced the demand, though it was still written in wet blood.

“I'm tired. It's been a long week. My girlfriend kicked me out after cheating on me with a dude, which is so much more insulting than if she'd left me for Clarissa like I was expecting. I've been bouncing from couch to couch for the past few days and just spent the last of my money renting this place, only to find you when all I want is to get some sleep and then get to work piecing my life back together.”

The lights flickered again, and the afterimage of the face had reverted back to the scream, changing the bloody message to, “I don't care! Get out!”

I rolled my eyes, earning another flicker of lights and an angry sounding groan to accompany the screaming face as the message became, “I'll eat your soul!”

“Oh, have at it,” I answered with a bemused chuckle. “You may want to find a way to season it, though. It's probably going to taste pretty bitter.”

Another flicker, another menacing afterimage, and another groan from the walls brought a new bloody message that read, “I'll rip your spine out through your spleen and then strangle you with it!”

That one brought an entire laugh from me. “Then do it,” I answered with a sardonic smile. “But I don't think you can, or the landlord would have been legally obligated to tell me about a string of mysterious deaths in this house beyond that one murder, which I'm assuming was you.”

Another flicker of the lights brought the face so close to mine I would have felt it's breath on my cheek if it had any and the words, “Why won't you run?!?” dripping down the wall.

I shrugged as I replied, “I was raised by an un-medicated bi-polar ex-marine who joined the U.S. Postal Service when he left the military. Do you really think there's anything you can say or do that's worse than the childhood trauma I've already spent a couple of decades in therapy working through?”

Blood started pouring down the walls as screams echoed through the house and the lamp flickered more than the episode of that old anime that caused epileptic seizures. I simply crossed my arms and kept an unimpressed expression on my face as the blood sloshed across the floor, stopping just short of the feet of the chair. I lifted my bare feet up to keep the blood from getting on them and waited.

“Just leave!” flashed a message on the wall, prompting another laugh from me.

“Look, I'm going to be real with you- I can't afford to live somewhere that isn't haunted and if you keep chasing off tenants, the owner is eventually going to just burn the house down, blame faulty wiring, and build cheap, crappy apartments. Is that really where you want to spend the rest of your afterlife?”

The blood slowly stopped streaming from the walls, leaving just enough to spell out the words, “Cheap apartments?”

“Of course. What, did you think the owner would be happy to pay taxes on a house he can't keep rented out and is constantly having to replace all the furniture in?”

There was a pause as the remaining blood all seeped into the walls and floor, leaving the wood slightly dark for a few seconds before fading back to their regular colors. I almost reached the point of getting up to check if the ghost had gotten the blood out of the bed, too, when the words, “What are you suggesting?” appeared on the wall, still written in blood but somehow less ominous than the previous messages anyway.

I thought about that for a second before answering, “How about you tell me why you're so adamant that no one live here and from there we'll figure out a way to live, er, exist here together.”

The blood shifted around on the wall, this time without the flicker of the lights to obscure the process, and spelled out, “I really don't like people.”

“Totally fair,” I answered with a nod. “People kind of suck most of the time, like my ex.”

“Yeah, that was messed up of her,” the blood swirled around to spell out. “You should invite her over one night! I can make her hallucinate flying rats with bat wings coming out of the walls and getting tangled in her hair”

“Oh, wow, that's brutal, but would also mean having to see her again, so that's a hard pass,” I answered despite really wanting to see her reaction to that.

“Are you sure?” the blood spelled. “I could also spray blood out of sinks at her, or just kind of float through her and give her a weird chill.” The light flickered and I saw a flash of the bloody face with a laughing expression on her face. “If I do it too many times, she'll pee herself!” the blood spelled out.

I laughed along with the ghost at that as I said, “I take it you discovered that by doing it?”

The blood shifted around to spell out, “Hahaha, oh yeah, and to a guy who absolutely deserved it. You should have seen his face,” before the lights flickered and I caught a flash of the ghost's imitating the guy, eliciting more laughter from me.

“Oh, I think we're going to get along just fine, especially if you can get all of the blood out of my bed.”

“Of course I can,” the blood spelled. “But how do I know you won't mess up my house like everyone else tries to?”

“I'll tell you what,” I said with a thoughtful expression. “How about if I ever do something you don't like, you just tell me. I promise I'll stop, and I'll run any changes I make to the décor by you before I actually do anything.”

“You will?” the blood asked.

“Of course! We have a lot in common, like hating people in general and wanting to make people we don't like pee themselves, so I really do think we'll get along. Besides, this place is rent-controlled and costs less than the cheapest apartment in this whole city.”

I heard a sharp tapping noise, like someone drumming their finger on the wall as they thought about something before the blood shifted around to spell, “Okay, you can stay, for now.”

“Awesome,” I answered, “Now about the blood in my bed...”