OddWalt

       It's only a matter of time before the police figure out where they fell
from. They'll be knocking here any second. They're going to think I'm a
seriously sick bastard, and I wish I could think of something to say to
convince them otherwise.
       Walt was a strange one from the start, but I like to party late sometimes
and I'm a little negligent with the cleaning so I know I can't afford to be too
selective when it comes to roommates. Walt seemed wimpy, but nice
enough. He shuffled his feet when he came to look at the room, eyes glued
to the floor. Worn jeans, button-down shirt, thick Buddy Holly glasses, pale
skin with some swollen pimples. Just out of college upstate, he told me.
When he wanted the room, I said fine. I knew I wasn't going to get a high-
powered lawyer or anything living here.
       He moved in the next day with one suitcase. He bought a used futon, a
desk and chair, and a lamp. It was like he was trying to recreate his dorm
room. He said he worked for some caterer or something. I think he was a
baker—I remember something about sacks of flour.
       Every night after work he would just go straight to his room with a bag
of take-out and close the door. I have no idea what he did in there.
Sometimes I'd hear the window slamming open or closed. One night I
asked him through the door what was going on in there. "Nothing," he
shouted. But his voice sounded like he was scared to death. I figured as
long as he didn't break anything, though, it was really none of my business.
       Eventually he started talking to me. One night I was making some mac
and cheese, and he asked me if I felt the presence of something.
       "Presence?"
       "Outside. By the windows. Looking in."
       "This window?"
       He shook his head. "All of them." We were on the eighth floor. The
kitchen window was the only one with a fire escape.
       "Probably pigeons," I said.
       He nodded and went back to his room with his glass of water.
       Walt made all kinds of strange comments like that. I remember when I
asked him early on if he had a girlfriend.
       "It got her," he said quickly under his breath. "That's the whole reason I
came here." He turned around, went back to his room, and that was the
end of it.
       Walt never went out at night, either—I mean not for anything. I tried to
get him to meet my buds a couple of times. I thought it might do him some
good, but he just wanted to stay in his little closet dorm room and read
those weird horror novels of his all night.
       "It's out there," he said one night when I was pressing him on it.
       "What's out there?"
       "It's waiting for me."
       "What's waiting?"
       "I don't know!" he shouted. "If I knew, maybe I could do something
about it!" He stomped back to his room, slamming the door behind him.
       He didn't talk to me after that for a couple of days. I just kept out of his
way, hoping he was busy looking for another apartment. But then he
actually apologized to me. I was slumping back in the couch watching TV
one night with the lights off when he sat down in the chair and, totally out of
the blue, said he was sorry.
       "Don't worry about it, Walt." I turned back to the TV, figuring he didn't
really want the conversation to continue.
       "It's just that this thing has been following me," he said.
       I muted the TV and put down the remote. "What thing?"
       "I don't know." He was looking down at the rug, picking his fingernails.
       "You've seen something?" I asked.
       He shook his head. I watched the blue light from the TV flicker on his
oily skin, reflect off his thick glasses. "When I'm outside," he said, "I have to
always keep moving to keep ahead of it. If I even start to slow down, I can
feel it get closer."
       "But you've never seen it?" I asked.
       He shook his head again. "I can smell it, though. It's got this warm,
decayed breath. I can feel the back of my neck getting moist. My glasses
get all cloudy with this oily yellow film. But whenever I turn around to see it,
there's never anything there."
       I had no idea what to say to him. I was thinking what he really needed
was a good psychiatrist, but how do you tell someone something like that?
I mean, this guy was spilling his guts out to me, right?
       "When I'm alone in my room," he kept going, "it taunts me from outside,
rattling the windows, whispering gibberish. I turn the light off to look outside,
and there's never anything there. Just the street, other people's apartments,
that fat guy who walks around in his underwear. You ever see him?"
       The question took me by surprise. Walt wasn't smiling or anything, just
asking me a serious question. "No," I answered, "I never noticed him."
       "He wears pink boxers."
       That actually made me laugh a little. It broke the tension. But Walt still
looked serious.
       "You think I'm crazy, right?" he asked me.
       "No, not at all."
       Of course, I thought he was a total nut case, but we've got some pretty
sharp kitchen knives, so I thought it was best not to test the waters with him.
It seemed unlikely that this wimpy, frightened guy could be a danger, but he
seemed kind of disturbed to me.
       "Doesn't he have any friends?" Simone asked me one night when Walt
was locked away in his room.
       "Not that I can tell."
       "Poor guy."
       It was actually the night after Simone broke up with me that I finally
talked Walt into going out to a bar. I was regretting it on the way over there.
Walt was holding his head down and trying to take short breaths from his
mouth like some rotten odor was overwhelming him. He kept looking
behind him, nervous as hell, and walking faster and faster every second
with his big clumsy feet. I was sure he was going to trip any second. Every
so often, he'd take off his glasses and scrub them with the bottom of his tee
shirt. I don't think there was even a smudge on them.
       In the bar, he calmed down a little. I got a bottle of Coors; he got a
whiskey sour.
       "Did she give you a reason?" Walt asked me when I started bitching
about Simone.
       "She told me back when we first started going out that she didn't like
sticking with one guy too long, so that was the excuse she gave me."
       "You kind of expected it, then."
       I shook my head. "I didn't really believe her. I mean, it's a stupid
reason." I took a gulp of beer. "Man, she was incredible, though."
       "She was," Walt nodded, and actually smiled even though he was still
looking down at the wooden table.
       "I meant her personality, Walt."
       He shrugged. "She had a great body too."
       "Yeah, she did," I conceded. I gulped my beer to finish it off, then
waved over the waitress and asked for another. When she walked away, I
turned back to Walt and asked him, "So you said you had a girlfriend?" I
figured now was the time to ask, maybe get a sympathy explanation.
       "Maggie," he muttered, and took a long sip of his whiskey sour through
the stirrer.
       "Maggie. What happened to her?"
       "She got killed."
       "Shit, Walt."
       Walt looked up, right at me for maybe the first time since I'd met him.
"They found her in the street outside her parent's house. She was mauled,
completely pulverized. They said it was probably a hit and run driver, but no
one heard a thing, and a car doesn't do that kind of stuff to a body. They
told me maybe some rats got to her afterward."
       Walt looked down and took a sip of his drink before continuing, his
eyes back on the table. "No one ever explained why she was walking in the
street like that right outside her house in the middle of the night. I'd dropped
her off. She went straight inside. I waited until the light went on in her room
before I drove away."
       The waitress brought my beer, and I took a sip immediately. "That's
why you came here?" I asked.
       He nodded. "I thought I could get away from it."
       "The thing, you mean."
       He nodded again. "Maggie was the one who first told me about it.
Maybe she went out to confront it that night. Or maybe it lured her out
somehow." Walt was holding the tiny stirrer awkwardly in his thick fingers.
They were jittery, so I tried to ask him something to divert the topic.
       "Where you from, Walt?"
       "I told you," he glanced at me in irritation. "Up near Albany."
       "Yeah, that's right."
       We each downed a few drinks that night. I was a bit buzzed, but Walt
showed no signs of inebriation at all.
       It was drizzling when we left to go home. Walt gave a repeat
performance of the walk to the bar—the weird breathing, the quick glances
behind him, him cleaning his glasses every other block. At least they were
wet this time so he had an excuse. But things got really weird when we got
home.
       As we climbed the steps in front of our building, Walt noticed someone
sitting on one of the concrete benches beside the entrance. I hadn't even
seen her, sitting in the shadows like that. Man, she was a sight, though.
She was just a kid, maybe barely in college. Tiny, cloaked in this dark gray
wool overcoat that was way too big for her. She had slim legs in black
fishnet stockings and sexy black high heeled shoes. She was holding the
sides of her head with her hands, her fingers spread wide as if she had a
bad headache. I couldn't see much of her face since she was sitting in the
shadow and wearing a black baseball cap, but her skin was pale and her
black eyeliner was streaked down her cheeks like she'd been crying.
       I guess Walt was the chivalrous type; he just went right up to her and
asked her if she needed any help. Still holding her head with her fingers,
she slowly shook it back and forth without a word.
       "You want us to walk you home?" I asked, trying to get in on the
humanitarian act. She shook her head again the same way.
       Now that we were close to her, I could see the thick coat of strawberry
red lipstick she had on. She was actually probably a high school student.
There's a club near our apartment, Alien Dreams, that all the kids like to go
to. I figured she'd told her parents she was sleeping over at a friend's
house, they'd gone out dancing, and her friends had ditched her for some
older guys. I was a little drunk, of course, so it made perfect sense to me
when Walt asked her inside to get warm and make a phone call. She
nodded her head ever so slightly.
       Walt put his arm through hers and helped her balance as she stood
up. Her other hand kept holding onto her head. Walt asked her what her
name was but she wouldn't say a word.
       We went upstairs in the elevator and I got to look at her more carefully
in the fluorescent light. Her skin was white as a sheet, her lipstick a striking
red. The short black hair peeking from beneath her cap was soaked. The
elevator was filled with a rank, musty smell from her wool coat. I tried not to
stare, but it was hard not to look at her. Her brown eyes just gazed ahead
without even acknowledging us. I wondered what kind of drugs she was on,
and how much of a problem we were going to have with her when she came
down from her high.
       The elevator opened on our floor and Walt led her down the hallway. I
unlocked the door and we went inside. Walt asked her if she wanted to
take off her coat, but she ignored him. She walked slowly to the couch, her
right hand still holding her head, and flopped down without adjusting her
coat or skirt. Walt took off his coat and went to sit beside her. I brought a
chair from the kitchen for myself. Walt might have wanted to be alone with
her, but I thought there could be trouble soon and I didn't want to leave them
alone.
       I kept the light dim out of courtesy for her headache. She continued to
hold her head in both hands the whole time, kept her black cap on so we
could barely see her face, and slowly shook her head no to all our
questions. Would you like some food? No. Something to drink? No. Do
you need to make a phone call? No. We finally got the message and left
her alone. I flicked on the TV and started looking for something to watch.
       Her gray overcoat was split open and her skirt rode pretty high so it
was hard from my angle not to steal glances at her uncrossed thighs, thin
and creamy in the black fishnet. I could barely pay attention to the TV. I
think Walt knew what I was doing, and he was getting annoyed with me. He
got up to look out the window.
       On one station I saw a picture of Alien Dreams and stopped turning. It
was one of those 24 hour special news reports they show during
commercials. The TV reporter, a young black woman, was speaking in that
fake TV reporter tone of concern: "Witnesses say that young Devon
Wilam's boyfriend went on a devastating rampage at this downtown
nightclub. For no apparent reason, he unsheathed a large hunting knife he
had been hiding under his pant leg and viciously attacked his girlfriend of
over nine months."
       Walt moved to the other window to continue his search.
       "Some witnesses say the young woman's head was severed from her
body, others say they saw her walking out of this trendy nightclub
unharmed. Her boyfriend is now in custody, but the whereabouts of Devon
Wilam remain a mystery."
       Walt began to turn around, but she was much too fast for either of us,
springing from the couch and hurling herself at him. Halfway across the
room, her head fell off her neck and hit the floor with a thud. I was barely out
of my chair by the time she made contact with him.
So how do you explain this to the police? Your roommate and the body of a
decapitated girl smash through your window and fall eight floors. Her head,
with its young, lascivious lips and wide pubescent eyes, is still lying on your
floor in a spattering of blood, its black baseball cap now askew. How do
you explain you had nothing to do with this?