by Troy Hunter
Nate pulls up in front of it, parking on the grass beside a silver Chevy Cavalier. A sign indicates this is the Magnolia Bed and Breakfast. “Where did you end up learning about this place anyway?” I ask.
“I was looking for haunted houses within driving distance,” Nate says. “The owner of this one, Isabella, inherited it from her parents. She’s turned it into a bed and breakfast, but because she’s just opened, she hasn’t really had much business yet.”
I know that feeling.
“It’s nice,” I offer. “In a…Southern gothic kind of way.”
I hop out of his Porsche and stretch. Nate gets out, too, slamming the car door. I wince. Maybe I’m a bit too soft, but I treat my ten-year-old Kia like a princess. A princess made of glass. She’s very delicate and must be treated with care.
“Yeah,” Nate says. “She offered to just let us stay here if we wanted, but I figured we’d probably grab a hotel anyway. I don’t want you to, you know, not sleep all week because you’re scared.” Nate’s gleeful grin is infuriating.
“You can stop getting off on my misery any time you like,” I say.
“I could, yes,” Nate replies, “But where’s the fun in that?”
He goes to put me in a headlock, so I dart away. I’m not going to roughhouse on a complete stranger’s lawn. After leveling a glare at Nate, I walk towards the entrance of the house. When I feel his arms around my waist, I know I’ve made a mistake.
“Oh, come on!” I snap.
Nate lifts me easily off the ground. I shout and try to free myself, but he’s both stronger and bigger than me. We’ve spent our whole lives horse playing, and I know which of us is better at it, too.
“What if I just carry you inside like a sack of potatoes?” Nate growls. “Huh?”
I lean against him and cross my arms. Finally he lets me go, probably because I stopped fighting. I give him a weak punch to his shoulder to show my displeasure. Even if I’d tried to really punch him, I doubt it would’ve done any damage. Nate is built like a brick house, another perk of being fabulously wealthy. He can spend two hours a day with his personal trainer, who clearly does her job very well.
After that I make sure Nate walks in front of me, so I’ll see him coming if he tries anything else.
“Are you pouting?” Nate asks.
“No,” I reply.
Nate roars with laughter and throws an arm over my shoulders, adding insult to injury. I scowl at him but don’t brush him off.
“We could’ve stayed here,” I say. “It would’ve probably saved you money.” Not that that matters to him.
“True, but let’s be honest, we’ll probably get better service at the hotel—room service, free housekeeping and a pool.”
Maybe so, but at the same time I think we could’ve at least supported a local business. Nate has no reason not to, and the hotel we’re staying in is probably part of a chain. But if Nate does end up filming here, he’ll pay for the time and support them that way. That’s something I guess.
I’ve barely stepped outside and I already feel like I’m melting in the Southern humidity. The porch creaks forebodingly, making me question the integrity of the wood beneath us, but Nate doesn’t seem concerned. He waltzes right up to the front door and pounds on it with his fist.
A few seconds later, the door pops open.
This is, I assume, Isabella. I don’t know her age, obviously, but she looks to be in her mid-to-late forties. Her long, brown hair is pulled back, although her hair tie must be straining to hold the massive amount of curls cascading from it. She wears a long, powder-blue peasant dress and looks more like she should be a tarot card reader than the manager of a bed and breakfast. As she shakes Nate’s hand, her gold bangles clink together on her slender wrist. “Nate Descartes, I presume?” she asks.
“You must be Isabella,” Nate replies. “Charmant.”
Oh, he’s really turning on the charm, isn’t he? I smile and try my best to look like a trustworthy and respectable young man. Not that I lack trustworthiness and respectability, but I like to get into a certain mindset when greeting strangers. Especially ones I need to impress, or at least not offend. This is an important opportunity for Nate, after all.
“This is my friend Felix Monroe,” Nate says, gesturing towards me.
“Nice to meet you,” Isabella says, offering her hand.
I consciously raise my right hand to shake hers. One of the problems with being left-handed is that I always have to think extra carefully before I shake anyone’s hand. Thankfully, Isabella doesn’t seem to notice my clammy palm.
“Shall we go inside?” she asks Nate.
I inwardly sigh in relief.
“Sounds wonderful,” Nate replies.
Isabella guides us through the entryway. It looks a bit like I would expect a Southern grandma’s house to look. The loveseat is covered in a blue and green afghan. There are porcelain dolls all over the place and portraits of people I don’t recognize. I wonder if they’re relatives of Isabella’s or if she has them simply to create an atmosphere. The most impressive aspect of the place is the spiral staircase that rises majestically from the middle of the floor.
The place looks cluttered but not especially creepy, but I keep those thoughts to myself. I might share them with Nate, but certainly not with Isabella present.
“Are those the stairs where you said guests had seen a woman in white?” Nate inquires, pointing.
“Yes,” Isabella says. “A young woman with long, black hair and a white dress.”
“So you’re being haunted by Samara,” Nate says, entirely deadpan.
“Samara?” I ask.
“From The Ring,” Nate replies.
Isabella laughs hollowly. “I haven’t seen the apparition myself,” she says. “However, many guests will attest to it.”
Nate puts a hand on the stair railing and looks upward. “Well, it’s still visually interesting, at least,” he says.
The only way I could see this working would be if the plot of Nate’s script involves a grandmotherly woman turning out to be some sort of cannibalistic murderer, but I also concede that Nate sees a lot more potential in places than I do. He’s probably already imagining where he’s going to put the lightning and have everyone stand. Nate is probably thinking about his script right now and mentally noting places he needs to make alterations in order to fit the setting.
“There have been reports of strange sounds from the second floor too,” Isabella says, “But of course, I imagine you care more for the look of the place than ghost stories.”
“It’s a bit of both,” Nate says. “I’m looking for character.”
Isabella beckons for us to follow her. The further we go, the more this house really does look like it belongs to someone’s grandma. I’m beginning to question if it’s really the newness of her business keeping people away, or something else. The parlor is a hodgepodge of different styles all warring for dominance—plush, Victorian chairs, Renaissance-inspired drapes, a more modern piano. I’m not an interior designer and fully acknowledge that my apartment is decorated with anything that was on sale at Target when I needed it. My blue bedspread? On sale in August. My purple curtains? On sale in May. I try to hit somewhere between blue and gray, but that’s as close as I’ve ever come to interior design. Even so, those rose-colored walls can’t be the height of fashion. Not even in the Reconstruction era. Maybe Isabella should’ve turned this into a museum or a flea market rather than a bed and breakfast. Or an oddities store. I’ve never actually seen an oddities store, but I’m sure they probably exist somewhere in the world.
We wander into one of the bedrooms. It’s more to my taste, although there’s still an alarming number of crocheted items in the room. It is blue and silver, though, and the bedspread is legitimately nice. I do, however, question the decision to put a massive portrait of a stern, vaguely Victorian-looking man on the wall right above the headboard.
“One of your family members?” Nate asks, seeming t
o follow my train of thought.
“Actually, that’s Sigmund Freud,” Isabella replies.
Oh, dear God. Is it more hilarious or disturbing knowing that I could stay here and get fucked under a giant portrait of Freud? Either way, I bet Freud would have a few things to say about it.
“Freud? Really?” Nate asks.
“Yes,” Isabella says.
Nate climbs onto the bed and furrows his brow. “Hmm,” he says. “That might make for some interesting shots.”
Now I’m imagining a couple having wild sex under a portrait of Freud and getting murdered by someone with a butcher knife. That’s like…doubly, no, triply symbolic.
“My grandmother bought it,” Isabella says. “She was a very avid collector of oddities. You’ll find all sorts of strange curios throughout the house. Even I can’t tell you what some of them are. If my grandmother wanted something she bought it, regardless of what it was. I’d wager even she wouldn’t have been able to tell you what some of the stuff is.”
“No kidding,” Nate replies, pulling out his phone. “Well, we’re going to check into the hotel. I’ll come back tomorrow? At night, if that’s fine?”
Isabella nods. “Let me know when you figure out what time. I don’t imagine I’ll have any last-minute guests show up, but I can always hope, right? Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.”
“Something like that,” Nate says.
Before we leave, Nate snaps a photo of Freud’s portrait. Freud looks like he disapproves.
3
Nate
After twenty minutes staring blankly at my computer screen and not changing a single damn thing in my script, I decide it’s time to call it quits for the night. I close my laptop and leave it on the side-table. I spin around in my chair, and for a few seconds, I watch Felix. He’s already in bed, buried beneath the thick, floral comforter. I glance towards the TV. Stephen Colbert. Of course.
I’ve never understood how late-night comedy is entertaining and I’ve expressed this to Felix before. At least, I had until I realized Felix is completely obsessed with watching The Late Show. It’s the only show he has YouTube notifications for, and any time a snippet of the show is posted, Felix dives for his phone like it’s the Holy Grail.
“Isn’t he a little old for you, Kitten?” I ask.
Felix cuts his eyes towards me but says nothing. I smirk and look back at the TV screen. Admittedly, Colbert does have good taste in suits, but I doubt that’s why Felix enjoys watching him. Felix doesn’t know clothes. The poor man can’t tell Versace from Old Navy.
“Any chance I could persuade you to watch something else?” I ask.
“Something scary, you mean?” Felix asks.
“Not too scary. I don’t want you to run away screaming.”
“Hilarious,” Felix says.
He pulls up the guide regardless, and I grin. I’ve known since day-one I can get Felix to do anything I want. He only argues for show; deep down he’s the most easy-going person anybody will ever meet. Very selfless as well.
Too selfless. If I called him tomorrow and informed him I’d lost all my money in an unprecedented collapse of the stock market, he wouldn’t even hesitate to let me move into his miniscule apartment. He probably wouldn’t even make me contribute to the household bills. He might posture like he was, but he’d never put his foot down.
I wish he was more selfish, at least, more assertive. More confident and less proud. There’s no logical reason for him to keep working miserably at a dead-end job with the worst management team on the fucking planet. But it’s all an emotional thing for him. He feels like he has to work hard for his success. He feels like he’d be an abhorrent human being for sharing my excess money. He knows the world is unfair, and yet he feels like he still needs to follow the American philosophy of succeeding only if you work hard enough.
It doesn’t make an iota of sense. Felix Monroe should be Eliza Doolittle or Cinderella. His hard work should warrant him taking my money, but he refuses to accept that. He staunchly believes he must do everything on his own. But why?
“If you don’t pick, we’re watching Star Wars,” Felix says.
I’ll bet. The only celebrity Felix likes more than Colbert is Carrie Fisher. I like her, too, but while I respect Star Wars for being culturally and cinematically relevant, God, I hate just about everything else to do with it. I bound into bed beside Felix and read the options as he scrolls through everything under the horror section. Most of it is recent stuff I’ve seen in theaters.
“We could watch Cat People,” I say, spotting the old film. “It sounds like your kind of movie.” It is definitely not his kind of movie.
“What’s it about?”
“A woman who fears she’ll turn into a panther if she ever has sex,” I say, purposefully forcing a creepily cheerful tone. “Or becomes too angry. Rawr.”
“What?” Felix asks.
“It’s a classic horror film. They invented the Lewton bus,” I say. I don’t expect Felix to know what that is, so I keep talking, “In the film, the heroine Irena—who fears she’ll turn into a panther if aroused or angered—follows another woman, Alice. The film then cuts to Alice’s frightened face, and there’s a hissing noise. The audience is supposed to think Irena has transformed into a panther, but the hissing is actually a passing bus.”
“Huh.”
“It’s also called a cat scare,” I say. “Let’s say I’m hiding in your apartment from a serial killer—”
“Why would you be hiding—”
I wave my hand and cut him off. “Hiding from a serial killer. Maybe Jigsaw has placed a trap in your apartment. Then, I hear something, and I fear I’m about to die! But it turns out to be a cat,” I conclude.
“We’re not watching it,” Felix says. “I am not enduring two hours of you making bad jokes at my expense.”
As if I won’t make them anyway.
“It sounds like the kind of film Freud would have a lot to say about,” Felix replies. “The man was all about sex, after all.”
“It’s a bit more than that,” I say. “Freud pressed for the importance of therapy. He did some research on dreams, also.” But admittedly, he was all about sex, too. He may have gotten that part right, actually. “He’s still a very popular figure in the humanities, too,” I add. “Especially if you’re looking at literature or film. I can’t tell you how many indie filmmakers are hard-core Freud fans. It’s fucking insane.”
“The only thing I remember about Freud was what I learned in high school, and considering how uninteresting my teacher was, I probably learned even less than you,” Felix says.
I vaguely remember Felix complaining about his high school psychology teacher. He’d been a man who put coaching the basketball team before psychology and had, according to Felix, been out of the classroom more than he’d been in it.
“Men want to murder their fathers and marry their mothers,” Felix recites. “It was named after one of the Greek plays. I can’t remember which one, but I’m sure I read it.”
“It’s called the Oedipus complex.”
“Why do you know so much about Freud?” Felix asks.
Because how else would I understand David Lynch’s bizarre, surrealist films without psychoanalysis? As an aspiring filmmaker, I have lofty goals. I don’t want to create a B-movie or a Syfy original. I want to create art, but art is complicated. Despite having the best education money could buy, I can’t help but struggle with how vast the concept of art is. When I was a teenager, first wading into the idea of film, it’d been so simple. The older I get, though, the less I think I know, and I’m not used to being ignorant.
“Because I’m incredibly intelligent and a veritable Renaissance man with a wealth of knowledge,” I say.
“I suppose that makes up for your lack of modesty.”
“Nobody’s perfect, Kitten,” I reply.
Felix lowers his head, so his dark hair falls across his face. His green eyes are bright with mischief. “I didn�
��t tell you. When we were in Isabella’s house and saw that portrait of Freud? My first thought was about how hilarious it would be if there was a couple having sex in that bed, with Freud watching their every move.”
“Fucking with Freud,” I joke.
Felix shakes his head. “No,” he says. “That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Fucking or Freud?”
“Both,” he answers. “What do you want to watch?”
“Which Friday the Thirteenth is that?” I ask.
“Just…Friday the Thirteenth?”
“No, the year. I want to know if it’s the original or the remake.”
Felix yawns. “It’s from nineteen-eighty.”
“That’s the original,” I say.
Felix tosses the remote to me and burrows more deeply beneath the comforter.
“Tired?” I ask.
Felix nods. “My sleep schedule has been sporadic since I started doing all these unpredictable shifts. I’m tired all the time. Sick, too.”
“You’re overworked,” I say.
God, I wish I could just go into his workplace and get him fired. He’d be so much happier if he wasn’t working at that mismanaged, understaffed hellhole. But I know I can’t. I know this is his decision to make. He keeps working himself into the ground for that ungrateful company that would think nothing of having to replace his ass in two weeks if he actually did walk out one day.
“Then, it’s a good thing I’m taking this week off with you,” Felix replies. “Isn’t it?”
“So you can go back and work extra hard for missing time?” I ask.
Felix sighs. “Don’t do this,” he says. “We’ve had this same argument twenty billion different times. I’m never going to agree with you, and you’re never going to agree with me. Why bother?”
“Because I’m right,” I insist. “You work too hard for too little pay and it’s unfair. You have no sense of self-preservation, so someone has to look after you. Why not me?”
“I don’t need anyone to look after me. I’m not a wayward child,” Felix says.