I was amidst writing about a little dead girl and a dark angel that gets his highs off of watching innocent souls go to heaven, from an inner-city hospital – when she apologized for falling asleep in my room.

 

I exited my world of black wings and glowing souls and turned to her and said, “That’s OK.”

 

She said she hadn’t meant to doze, didn’t mean to doze now; it’s just that sleep often eluded her in an insomniac shuffle and that she just felt warm and cozy and safe, here, with me, and she hadn’t felt like that for some time.

 

I said I understood…then I looked around, at the voodoo doll nailed to the wall (all gargoyle grins and dangly charms and stone carved rosary), at the skull face mirror with a crack in it – seven years bad in its jaws, at the wood carved death’s head mask and matching and cackling staff, at the glaring rubber raven upon the speaker, at the iron wrought Halloween candle screens, at the eerily churning green glowing globe, at the miniature haunted tree, at the Godzilla figurine (signed in gold pen by the actors who played him), at the erratic and flickering Halloween lights, at the neon Bates Motel sign, at he Jack Skelington and Jaws and Army of Darkness posters, at the cage containing a midnight black serpent – I looked at these things and thought how strange that she should find all of this soothing.

 

But then…I do too.

 

I smiled, but my smile was not as big as the voodoo-doll grin.