Fiction Friday #12

Rented

There wasn't anything odd about the phone call Ned had received. It was just the voice of a young man on the other end asking about the room above the garage. Ned assumed that he was just another new student going to the arts college in the fall, at least twenty had called since he'd put the add in the paper two weeks ago. A couple had seemed okay when they came to check the place out, but they both said they couldn't afford the deposit until they got their financial aid in two months and Ned wouldn't rent without deposit in hand. The kid on the phone swore that he had the money, now. Ned shrugged to himself and they set up an appointment for the next day.

Noon, the next day, on his lunch hour, Ned pulled into his driveway and saw someone in a black hooded sweatshirt, with the hood pulled up, sitting on the porch.

Must be the kid, he thought. Nice to have one that actually shows up on time.

Ned opened the door and climbed out of the car, using the top of the door to help pull him up. The door groaned and the suspension tilted as he gave it his whole weight. It was getting close to the time he needed a new car, this one just wasn't running the way he thought it should. And the tires on the driver's side kept losing air faster than the passenger's side, giving the car an annoying tilt. That was something the renter was supposed to help provided, a new car.

"Uh, Jasper?" he called to the porch. "Is that you?"

"Yeah," said the kid in a pleasant but bored sounding voice, standing up, hands in the kangaroo pouch. He was wearing black pants and sneakers to go with his sweatshirt.

Ned stared. Maybe it was because he was under the porch, but Jasper's clothes were so black it was hard to see where the sweatshirt ended and the pants began, same at the shoes, like the black of the clothes just ate the shadows. Oddly enough, the sneakers had white tread that looked like it glowed.

"Okay," said Ned, walking to the porch. When he got there, he put out his clammy hand. "I'm Ned. We talked on the phone last night."

"Yeah," said the kid, "I figured." He took a breath, sighed, and said, "Jasper." He pulled a hand from the pocket. It was all white and looked like bones.

Freaky art school kids, thought Ned, taking Jasper's hand.

The hand was cold and hard. Ned wasn't feeling a painted hand or a hand in a glove. No, he was feeling bones. Hard, cold bones. A chill shot up his spine and Ned felt his balls climb up into his stomach to stay safe.

"Uh," said Ned, shaking Jasper's bones. "It's nice to meet you."

"Sure," said Jasper. "You can let go of my hand now."

Ned let go and shook his hand a little, hoping the kid didn't notice. It had to be some trick. He thought that the kid must have slipped a fake hand up his sleeve. Jasper just wanted to freak him out.

"So, the place is back here," said Ned, pointing to the breezeway between the house and the garage. "It's over the garage."

"And it's furnished, right?" asked Jasper, putting his hand back in the pocket.

"Yeah, said Ned, looking into the hood. There was nothing there. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. No hood cast a shadow like that. No hood that he'd ever heard of. Maybe something an astronaut wore so he wouldn't be blinded in space, but there was nothing on earth that could explain the darkness under that hood. Too dark. Dark as those pictures of space. He wondered if it was cold under there. Cold like space. That's what it looked like. A spot of space with nothing in it. Nothing.

"Can I see it?"

"What!" Ned shook his head and blinked his eyes, hard.

"The room," said Jasper, "can I see it?"

"Oh, uh, sure," said Ned, walking away. He didn't hear the kid following him, but he also didn't want to turn around and check. "The first door here," he said, waving his hand, "goes into the garage. This one," he stopped and groped his coat, "goes up to the apartment. I'll show you as soon as I find the... Ah! Here it is." He pulled a key, and a peppermint, from the inside pocket, and unlocked the door.

Ned flicked a switch inside the door way, stepped back, holding the door, and said, "The door at the top is unlocked. Go ahead and go in when you get up there. After you." He bowed a little.

Jasper took the stairs with ease. Ned didn't. He firmly believed that when the contractor built the garage the stairs were built steeper than normal stairs. Every time he took them, by the time he got to the top, Ned was gasping like a fish on the deck of a boat. This climb was no different.

When he got to the landing on the top, Ned put one hand on the wall, leaned into, started breathing deep, and cursed the contractor he hired. Through the open door, he could see Jasper looking around the apartment.

It was basically one long room over the three car garage. the kitchen -- complete with a fridge, a full range, and a split sink -- was separated from the rest of the apartment by a counter and a vinyl floor that also went around the corner into the bathroom, no tub in there, but it didn't feel cramped, even to Ned. The rest of the room was covered in muddy brown carpet and painted in a ivory. Along the long walls, there were two windows, with curtains, not blinds. The far wall, across from the kitchen, had a sliding glass door, with blinds for privacy, that led onto a small, but usable, porch, which was mostly covered by the roof. The room was furnished with the family's old cherry colored couch (Ned thought it had been defective because his normal spot was squishier and lower than the rest of the couch.), his wife's mother's old and stained coffee table, a secondhand cabinet with their old TV on it, the queen-sized be he and Liz used to share (The springs of which had never worked properly, his side was always lower than Liz's side, even when no one was on the mattress.) before they got the king, and the dining room table and chairs, actually made out of cherry, that Ned and Liz got from his parents as a wedding gift. The small closet was near the bathroom.

In many ways, it reminded Ned of the first place he and Liz had lived together. He half sighed and half gasped, remembering their first years together. He wondered, for a second, what happened to the woman he had married.

"So," wheezed Ned, finally stepping into the room, "What do you think?"

"This work?" asked Jasper, pointing at the TV.

"It's a little old, but it works. We had to get a new clicker, though. I wrote the code to the TV on some tape and put the tape in with the batteries so we couldn't rub them off." Ned shrugged, "You probably don't care about that, though."

"Just curious," said Jasper, turning toward the porch.

"So, you going to school out here this fall?" asked Ned, using great care as he sat on one of the dining room chairs.

"No."

"Oh. But you have a job, right?"

"Yeah, I have a job," said Jasper, opening and closing one set of curtains.

"Then you wouldn't have, uh, any trouble paying the rent?"

"No. No trouble paying." Jasper sat on the bed and bounced a little. "You know one side of the bed is lower than the other?"

"Yeah. I think the springs on that side were defective," said Ned.

"Defective," said Jasper, getting up.

"It started slumping like that a few months after we bought it. We didn't mistreat it or anything, though."

"Right. There a dresser?" Jasper asked, opening the closet door and taking a look inside.

"We have a couple in the garage. You could choose one and we could haul it up here before you moved in."

"Parking?"

"You'd have to park on the street. Sorry," said Ned, adding quickly, "but I have all the forms and everything ready to go so you can get a permit so you won't get ticketed."

Jasper nodded.

"What do you think?" asked Ned.

"It'll do."

Jasper pulled his eerie hands out of the large pocket and was holding a large wad of bills. "First." He counted some bills. "Last." He counted some more. "And deposit." He counted a third time and dropped the stack on the table.

Ned searched through his pockets, again, and found the lease and a pen. "It's through next June," he said. "I thought we'd be getting a student."

"Fine," said Jasper, taking the pen from Ned, who shivered when the odd bone like fingers grazed his hand.

Ned counted the cash while Jasper signed. "You can move in on the first, okay?"

"Fine," said Jasper, finishing up.

Ned pulled the copy of the back and handed it and the key to the bottom door over. "The key to the top door is in the drawer by the oven," he said, offering his hand to Jasper.

Jasper took the hand, but didn't shake it, just sort of held it. Ned's balls jumped back up into his stomach and tried to even climb higher.

After a minute that felt like forever to Ned, Jasper let go, grabbed the other key from the drawer, and left. Ned let out a breath that he didn't know he was holding, pushed himself up, and headed down the stairs to his car. Outside, Jasper was no where to be seen, and the hand Ned used to shake with was cold, freezing cold.

As he drove away, Ned groped through the hamburger wrappers on the passenger seat for his phone to call Liz at her job.

"This is Liz," she said after he fought his way through the maze of people who answered the phone.

Ned moved the phone from his right ear to the left and said, "Liz, honey, it's me."

"Uh huh," she said.

"I, uh, I... Well, I rented the apartment?"

"What?"

"The, uh, the apartment. Above the garage?" Ned said. "I rented it to a--"

"You rented it?" asked Liz in her I'm-not-mad voice she used when she was angry. "You rented it, without talking to me first?"

"Yeah, well, I sort of had to."

"You had to?"

"Well, he was... odd. He was dressed all in black. And his hood. And the white on his shoes. And the cold hands."

"His shoes? His hands? Ned," said Liz, "I don't understand."

"He paid in cash, Liz," said Ned, moving the phone from hand, and ear, to the other. "Cash. Who carries that much cash?"

"Ned, we live in a state in the middle of nowhere. Are you trying to tell me that some mobster's kid has come here to learn how to prance around on stage like some San Francisco fairy?"

"What? No. He said he wasn't going to school here."

"Then what's he doing here."

"I don't know, honey. I don't know."

Liz sighed, "Ned, I have to get back to work. We'll talk about this evening."

"But Liz," Ned said into the phone.

"This evening, Ned." And she hung up the phone.

Ned hung up his phone, too, and wondered how he was going to explain to his wife that, starting Sunday, the Grim Reaper was going to be living above their garage.