Dead in Hollywood
As I pull the final box out of the back seat of my car, I bump the door shut with my hip and glance up at my new apartment complex. It was old and looked like a good storm could knock it over, but after sleeping in a shared attic bedroom with my brother for two years, this place was a paradise. I push open the door and begin making my way to the third floor. The building had no working elevator, which made moving by myself a nightmare, but it’s over after this box.
Apartment 33 is at the end of the third-floor hall on the left. The hall was dark, and I couldn’t see much, but I could hear insects chittering, and what I assumed were rats clawing at the insides of the walls. I made it to the door and nudged it open. Unlike the hall, the apartment was completely lit up. I already wasn’t keen on the dark, but also, I wanted to keep as many of the creepy crawlers out as possible. There’s not much in the world I hate more than bugs, but still, this is better than the alternative.
I toss the box on the futon in the living room, which is the first room you walk into. I can’t help but feel like the layout is awkward. There was the living room, and on both sides of it was a door to a bedroom. I only needed one bedroom, but this was all they had. Then, at the back left of the living room, there was an entryway to a small kitchen. When I say small, I mean I don’t understand how anyone could actually cook anything in there. That was fine though, I don’t eat anything that I can’t microwave. Then on the back right side of the living room, there was a bathroom.
The bathroom was my least favorite room because it was honestly just fucking creepy. The floor was missing tiles, and there was bare concrete where they should’ve been. There were several holes in the walls. Some were clearly made by fists, but others were much larger. The bathtub was an old claw-foot tub, and the inside was stained a dirty yellow color. There was a window above the tub with a beautiful view of the truck stop across the street and the dumpster. Welcome to Hollywood, I thought, and laughed. Who knew California was just as shitty as everywhere else? I can’t put my finger on why, but I know in my bones that something is wrong with this place. At least this room for sure.
I suddenly feel very lightheaded, so I sit down on the toilet, hoping it will pass. It does not, so I pull the unlabeled bottle of pills out of my pocket and pop two of the tiny football-shaped pills into my mouth. Within a few minutes, I feel like I can stand up, and I’m completely mellow. Last year, at the ripe age of thirty, I figured out one simple truth about myself. I fucking love any kind of benzodiazepines. Alprazolam, which is what I just took, is my favorite by far, but any will do. Any time I feel a little anxiety, I take two. Any time I want to have fun, I take four. Come to think of it, that would make unpacking much better. I pop two more and head back to the living room.
I sit on the futon and go to open the box that’s closest to me, but before I can, I begin to hear crying. It sounded like two, maybe three, small children crying. These walls must be paper thin, I think before ripping the box open. Video games and movies. There’s nowhere to put them yet since I haven’t put together any furniture, so I decide I should start with that instead. I make my way to my tool bag, which is by the spare bedroom, and as I get to it, the crying has become so loud that it sounds like it’s actually coming from inside. The thought freaks me out. It definitely needs investigating, though. I take the hammer from the bag and decide to bring it along. This room was empty this morning, but the apartment door was unlocked all day, so who knows? Could be squatters.
A blinding bright light comes from the room. Perhaps it seemed brighter than before because the drugs were confusing me, but I was sure they weren’t causing the rest of what I was seeing. Against the center of the wall in front of me, there was a crib. Two children, whom I guessed were around one to two years old, stood holding onto the side of the crib, crying. There were pink flowers painted elegantly all over the walls, and toys on the floor, none of which had been there before. The toys and crib looked old-fashioned; they had to have been antiques.
Suddenly, I hear another sound coming from my left. I glance over and discover why I thought there might have been three children crying. Someone else had been sniffling. There was a young woman, probably early twenties, backed into the corner, just staring at the children and crying. Her outfit looked as vintage as the other things in the room. Her blouse showed not one bit of skin. Her skirt, while tight, was down to her ankles. She wore no shoes or socks, and this made the outfit seem strange to me. One thing I thought, before even thinking to ask what was the matter or why they were in my apartment, was that she was drop-dead gorgeous. I’m not proud of this, given the situation, but her figure was a perfect hourglass, her eyes were a beautiful green, she had shoulder-length black hair, and the cutest dimples I’d ever seen.
I glance down at the hammer, which feels foolish now, and toss it back out into the living room. I clear my throat and say, “Excuse me ma’am, are you alright?” There’s no answer. The children begin coughing because of how hard they’re crying now, and the young woman whimpers. I step closer to her. One of the children begins making a choking noise, and the woman starts sobbing and runs for the door. As I’m trying to figure out why she’s not helping the children, or why she won’t acknowledge me, she collides with me. Or, she should have, but there was no collision at all. Her body brushed through mine like a breeze, filling my body with a freezing sensation. I turned to look after her, but she was gone. Then I turned to see that the rest of the room was also empty, dark and gloomy, how I remembered it.
As I stared at where there was just a crib and two crying kids, girls, I think, because of the flowers, a knock came at the door. I don’t realize it at first. Not because I’m fighting with myself internally about what I just saw, I am, but because it also just hit me how fucking high I really was. The knock comes again, and this time I’m able to partially return to reality. I make my way to the door, wondering what kind of crack head neighbors I might have, and which one this will be. I open the door, and feel the blood drain from my face completely.
Standing in front of me was the girl I had seen in the spare room. Well, kind of, this girl wasn’t dressed in clothes from the 1940’s. She wore a Dead Kennedys crop top that had a V cut down the center, revealing a fair amount of cleavage. She wore black jean shorts, with fishnets on underneath, and a pair of black Chucks to tie it all together. It was undeniably her, though. Same hair, dimples, eyes, and body. Before saying anything, I looked around to see if there were kids. There were not.
“Hey,” she said, “are you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” I unintentionally laughed out loud at this. “Yeah, hi, sorry, I’m fine. How can I help you?” She smiles, and when she does, I don’t believe there’s a single girl in the world as pretty as her. “Well, my name is Claire, and I used to live here. I felt like taking a walk down memory lane today. May I come in?” I’m going to be honest, I know that anyone I ever tell this story to would think letting the ghost girl in was crazy, but I cannot express how fucking hot she is. “Come on in, I’m Alex by the way.” I offer her a glass of water, and she declines. She takes off a pull-string backpack with a Misfits skull on it, opens it up, and pulls out a bottle of bourbon and a bag of weed. “How much do you like to party, Alex?” She asks, setting both on the coffee table. I pull the pill bottle out and set it down with her stash. “I’ll share if you share. I have something else to throw in as well,” I say with a grin. “We’ll see who can party harder, but first let me change out of these work clothes, and grab my other surprise.” If I was going to have any shot, dirty basketball shorts and a sweat-stained shirt were not the move.
I excused myself to my room and discarded my dirty clothes. I pull on the black skinny jeans I wore every day, and slip my Choking Victim hoodie on over my head. It might be pathetic, but I feel like matching her punk aesthetic will help my chances. I stop and stare in the mirror, messing up my hair a little on purpose. I pause, trying to figure out what I’m forgetting, and then the light bulb in my head comes on. I go to the dresser and pull out an eight ball of coke from my underwear drawer. Lots of downers on that table out there, gotta make sure we come back up. I also grab my little cutting tray and my razor blade, then head back to the living room. I don’t see her right away, then I look over and find her staring into the bathroom.
The color was gone from her face this time, as she stared at the tub. Then she looked at me and said, “This room has seen better days, yeah? It really matches the exterior. God, this place is such a shithole. Sorry, no offense.” She threw in this last bit as if I could actually be mad or disagree. It was a shithole. “No offense taken,” I say, and flash her the bag in my hand with a smirk. At that, her eyes seemed to light up. “Well, let’s get down to business then, shall we?” She asked.
We started with shots, and on the third one, we both popped a pill in our mouths and washed it down with liquid fire. She lit a joint as I cut up our first line, and when we finished with those, she crawled into my lap and took her shirt off. She grabbed me by the back of the neck and pulled me close. We start making out and running our hands all over each other. We are both shedding clothes in the process, until finally, there are no clothes left and she’s on top of me, riding me like a mechanical bull. She grabs my hands and pulls them to her breasts; I squeeze them, and all I can think is this is no ghost. I don’t know what the fuck I saw earlier, but this was real. Before I finish the thought, I move my hands to her hips and slam her down as I explode inside of her.
We took our time getting up, still exploring each other’s bodies with our hands. Eventually we put our underwear back on, but leave the other clothes scattered about. She curled up on the futon, and passed out. I consider cuddling up next to her, but go for more coke instead. I begin to wonder if I’m developing a full-on drug problem, as I cut the fattest line I’ve ever seen. I go for the bourbon first, and take a few gulps. I go to put the straw in my nose when I hear a scream from my room. It startles me, and I shoot to my feet, dropping the straw without realizing it. Then there were more screams. It’s Claire’s voice, but she’s still asleep on the futon right next to me. I walk slowly to the door. The distress screams continue, and then a man yells, “Shut the fuck up,” and there was a loud cracking noise, and her next cry was one of pain. I ran to the door now and pushed it open. The man was getting up from the bed and pulling up his pants. Claire was on the bed with her dress pushed up past her waist, and she was sobbing, worse than when I saw her with the children. The man had a belt wrapped in his hand, and when she pulled her hands away from her face, I saw the bloody belt mark on her cheek. “That’ll teach you to tell me no. You’ll never forget me now. My seed is strong.”
“Alex,” came a sleepy voice from behind me. I turn to look at her, and she’s looking over at the coffee table, probably considering what to do next. I look back in my room, and the scene that was there had vanished. I make my way back to her, and before I know what I’m about to say, I blurt out, “So do you have any kids?” She looks at me blankly for what feels like a long time, and then calmly says, “No, they’re not for me.” Then she looks at my comically large line of cocaine and says, “Are you going to do all of that?” I picked the straw up off of the floor and did all of it. I was going to bow as a joke, but a coughing fit hit me as I bent down, and it sent me to the floor. She reached down and helped me up. As soon as I’m on my feet, the children begin to cry again. Her face stiffens. She says nothing, but stares at the bathroom door. “Wait, can you hear it too?” I ask. She does not reply, but walks to the bathroom and opens the door. I join her in the doorway.
I look inside and see ghost Claire bathing the two small girls. They’re crying hysterically, and she is as well. She always was, it seemed, at least in whatever timeline this was. My Claire seemed much different. Their screams get louder and louder, and ghost Claire begins to shake. After a minute, the shaking stops even though the screaming has hit a new peak. She says something quietly, and even though I can’t make it out completely, I believe it was, “Please forgive me,” then she grabs both children by the backs of their heads and slams them under the water. I gasp and take a step forward. I see them struggling under the water, and I want to help, but I can’t move. I’m completely frozen, and I mean that literally. I tried with everything I had, and didn’t move an inch. Eventually, the children were motionless too. The scene disappeared, but there was still sniffling behind me. “I told you they weren’t for me.” Her voice was different now. It was older, and when I turned to face her, I didn’t want to be surprised that she had aged at least sixty years, but I was. Mostly because she wasn’t just older. She was clearly dead. A walking corpse. She still only wore the underwear, and I really wish that we would’ve gotten fully dressed, as the visual was disturbing to say the least. “You aren’t a ghost, so what are you?” I ask.
“That’s sort of complicated, and I’m afraid we don’t have much time now, but I’ll explain as best I can,” she says. “Many would call me a revenant. Which is partly true, but that’s not all. I’m a shifter, as you can see, although I can only take the shape of myself from different time periods. I usually look how you’ve seen me before, but once someone’s fate is sealed, they can only see me for what I truly am. Some would call me a banshee, but that’s not entirely true. A banshee’s cries warn of the death of a loved one, while my cries basically sign the death certificate of all who hear them. In truth, what I am is a walking curse. I prayed to the goddess of curses after that man did what he did to me, and it backfired. Now I’m as you see me, and I will be this way for eternity.” I’m fully aware that she’s mentioned my fate in a negative light a few times now, and as if she could read my mind, she motions for me to follow her.
She walked to the living room out to the living room and pointed to the floor. I looked and saw my lifeless body lying where I had fallen earlier. “Heart attack,” she said. I wanted to ask why she did this to me, but I could no longer speak. I looked down, and I was beginning to disappear. She read this final thought just like she did the last. Was I communicating with her telepathically now? “It’s part of the curse that I stay here, and as long as I’m bound here, my story will tell itself on repeat to all who enter. This wasn’t personal in any way, Alex. I actually enjoyed your company a lot, and I truly mean it when I say that I wish I met you in my lifetime. I’ve never had a lover as kind as you were to me today. I was pretty much only ever abused by the ones who were supposed to care. You, though — you could’ve saved me, I think, had only you been born in the 20’s.”
There’s so much I want to say, but my body fades fast now, and even quicker than I entered the world, I blink out of existence forever.
