“I get it.”
“The point is that once you gaze into the abyss—”
“The abyss gazes into you.”
“Who told you that?”
“It’s a cliché. Everybody knows that.”
Vom frowned. “Damn. And I thought I’d made that up. Well, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that we’re stuck with each other, and we can’t go back. Me, a timeless devouring force and you, a delicious chewy morsel wrapped around a crunchy calcium treat.”
She moved a few steps farther from him.
“What?” he said. “It’s a compliment.”
She took stock of her situation. She was bound to a horror from beyond time and space, and she was probably going slowly mad because of it.
“Is the apartment still mine?”
“You bet,” said Vom. “It’s a package deal.”
There was a bright side at least.
“So what do you say?” He extended his hand. “Roomies?”
Noticing snapping jaws buried in the fur in Vom’s palms, she kept her hands in her pockets and nodded.
They walked back to West’s apartment building of horrors. She wasn’t crazy about living there, but she had no place else to go. She couldn’t call on any of her friends. Not with Vom and his endless appetite following her.
The building didn’t look right. She’d run away without glancing back upon her escape, but she saw it with new eyes this time. It was a jutting tower of strange angles, disappearing into a swirling green vortex in the sky. The brick walls shimmered and shifted as she walked closer, like one of those cheap 3-D card images that never quite worked the way the inventor had hoped.
The vortex growled, and the building shuddered, expanding and contracting. She climbed the short flight of stairs to the front doors. The creaky old doors opened without her touching the handles, and hot wind poured over her. She saw the portal as a huge mouth. One of thousands scattered across the cosmos, all part of a single impossibly huge creature dwelling across multiple realities. And all the people, animals, and even monsters like Vom were merely skittering atoms drifting between its toes. Although it probably didn’t have toes. Or if it did, each of those toes could crush a universe. Except for the big toe. That could probably crush several at once.
Vom walked inside, and she expected the lesser devouring monster to be devoured by the larger one. But it didn’t happen.
“Are you coming?” he asked her.
She pushed the inhuman thoughts away, gritted her teeth, and followed him. The otherness outside the apartment disappeared once she was across the threshold. The heat faded to a mildly uncomfortable warmth. The air was a bit humid, but nothing she couldn’t handle.
One of the apartment doors opened, and West stuck his head out. He sported an extra pair of eyes above the normal set. And his bushy beard writhed a bit. Not the beard itself, but whatever was underneath it, whatever passed for West’s chin. Not that she wanted to think about that.
“Still alive, Number Five?” he asked, though the answer should’ve been obvious.
She nodded.
“You wouldn’t happen to have any Monopoly money on you, would you, Number Five?”
She shook her head.
“Damn. The mole lords are not going to be happy about that.”
He withdrew into his room and shut the door without another word.
“He’s a crazy old bird,” said Vom, “but he’s harmless.”
Considering the source of the reassurance, Diana didn’t find this very comforting.
She noticed for the first time that every door in the building was different. Different size. Different color. Different style. Nothing in the building matched. The carpeting appeared to be assembled from a thousand discarded scraps. The walls were brick, then wood paneling, then stucco, then polka-dotted wallpaper. Nothing lined up in a conventional way. The hall seemed askew. The stairs curved downward, giving one the impression of walking down when going up. The doors tilted at odd angles, though never the same angle. And the numbers marking the apartments were all in different fonts. The entire building was like a hastily constructed model, put together from bits and pieces of other models by a maker who was only vaguely familiar with traditional design conventions.
She hadn’t noticed any of this before. Or maybe it hadn’t looked like this before. Maybe this was all a byproduct of her new perceptions. Either way, it weirded her out.
They passed the gruesome puppy beast in front of Apartment Two. The door opened a crack, and she glimpsed a shadowy figure.
“Hey,” the figure whispered.
The puppy snarled, and the door slammed shut.
The apartment was exactly as she’d left it. She’d expected it to be as twisted and skewed as the rest of her new universe, but everything was in order. Except that the coffee table had had a big bite taken out of it.
“Sorry,” said Vom. “Kind of hard to put on the brakes once I get going.”
He helped her push the refrigerator back against the wall. Someone knocked.
He answered the door before she could stop him.
A short blond woman in her forties and a hulking bat-like creature in a sweater vest stepped into the apartment.
“Congratulations.” She gave Vom a polite hug. “We just heard about your early parole.”
“Stacey, Peter. I thought you’d have moved out by now.”
“We’re working on it,” she said.
The bat gurgled.
“Now, Peter,” said the woman. “Be nice.”
The creature lumbered over to Diana. She recoiled from the grinning monster and his saber-like fangs. He thrust a lump wrapped in tinfoil into her arms. “Yours,” he said as drool dripped down his chin.
“Now, Peter,” said Stacey. “Is that any way to treat our new neighbor?”
Diana held the lump in limp hands. It was warm. And was it squirming or was that just her imagination? How the hell could she even tell anymore?
“You’ll have to excuse Peter. He always gets a little grumpy after a few hours of hosting.”
“No problem,” replied Diana.
Peter pounced on Stacey. He squeezed her in a tight embrace. They howled in one terrible harmony as his body collapsed into a frail mortal shell while she took on the bat-monster shape. The only difference was that now it wore a floral-print dress.
Peter smoothed the few strands of hair on his balding head. “That’s better. You must be Vom’s new warden.”
“I must be,” said Diana.
The Stacey-thing snatched the tinfoil lump and bit into it.
“We just got a new breadmaker,” said Peter. “The missus has been dying for a chance to try it out.”
“Pumpernickel,” cooed Stacey-thing. “Goood.”
“For Heaven’s sake, honey, don’t eat it all.”
She offered the loaf to Diana with a sheepish smile. Bread crumbs and bits of tinfoil were stuck between Stacey’s pointed teeth.
Diana politely turned the offering away. “No, thank you. Maybe later.”
“I’ll take that.” Vom snatched the bread and shoved it into the mouth in his potbelly.
CHAPTER FOUR
Once a week Calvin and Sharon spent the night together, doing something. It was an informal arrangement, and since they lived together they already saw each other regularly. But there was only one night when it was expected, when they would leave the apartment together and see a movie, get some dinner, or maybe just hang out at a coffee shop and talk.