TENENTS
(From the collection, "STORIES INSPIRED BY SIOUXSIE"
FOR TOAST
I’m sure you’re aware of the sort that puckers when they smoke? The Madam was no
exception. She’d lazily gobble the filter down to the bitter end of her tongue to inhale and when
she pulled the thing away driblets of saliva slipped from the toke. The Madam resembled a frog,
or a toad, depending on what school of reptile you admire. A flat face stretched her eyes too
close to her ears hidden behind years of split-ended hair flung back in a half hazard bun held in
place by a pencil, chewed only when she had run out of cigarettes. She was indeed elderly, but
should you ask for a precise age or even her birthday she would reply, “Why? What do you
want? TO GIVE ME SOMETHING? I’ve been handed my fair share already. Don’t concern
yourself with me.....Incidentally, I know your birthday. And what you got. I know much much
more than that, too. As a matter of fact, I know alot. Much more than you want me to....”
Tenants living beside the dear Madam rarely lasted. They were “forced” they often told
the landlord, to vacate. An uncomfortable sense of gloom shadowed the little half of the duplex
they let, thanks to the Madam and her lurking close by. They admitted repeatedly that they felt
spied on. Not only that, but the most privy of chats was left wide open for anyone to know
about, for the Madam made claim she knew their private dealings. She confessed to spouses of
affairs, to children of impending divorces, to authorities of alleged abuse. She slunk along walls,
the Madam did, and some of the better tenants could hear her.
Being the recluse that she was, the Madam had taken a fancy to keeping cats, as most
hermits do, for the cat requires fairly less attention and needful walks outside your domain than a
dog does. However, the cats she acquired through whatever resource or another (mostly hungry
ones dropping on her doorstep) quickly left her once they discovered that she was inclined to
bath them in the traditional feline matter. By this I mean she licked the cat as the cat would have
licked itself. As frightening an idea as this may be, imagine the cats sense of violation when she
would begin to slobber them with her wet ended tongue. Nonetheless, after one bathing (which
the Madam was apt to do nearly DAILY), the cats would refuge themselves in whatever hidden
corner or crevice they could find, never eating, never sleeping, but crouched in pensive pose
waiting for the next moment the front door would open. Then and there would the cat in current
question make a brake for it, forever outrunning the Madam and never returning. The occurrence
happened so often, the gaining and losing of a cat, that the Madam all together stopped offering
them names, yet instead insisted on calling them by their consecutive order in which she received
