Most people given to superstitious notions would never be caught living in a building with a thirteenth floor let alone live on said floor.  

The glowing numbers above the metal doors showed he was ascending from the twelfth to the fourteenth but everything about the floor gave Simon the impression that the numerical designation meant little in a world that didn't care about petty human labels and mortal attempts to skirt such issues.  If there was a problem in the building, Simon could pretty much guarantee that the “fourteenth” floor was where it had originated.

        He took a deep breath and a moment of refuge in thinking of Cassie.  It was her lips, he decided, that were the only outstanding feature in her overwhelmingly normal appearance.  She had the most perfect cupid bow shaped lips.  They looked like the kind of lips that would be hand painted on a china doll.  

        The elevator doors opened and it took Simon a moment to react.  In that small space everything was fine.  There was no crisis and no impending problems.  He could be at total peace.

        A noise to the left of the doors broke him from his reverie.  It sounded like the gentle crumpling of a plastic grocery bag.  Next there was a thump and an excited, though whispered, sound of triumph.  Simon waited until he heard the crumpling plastic sound again, exited the elevator, and, as quietly as he could, turned the corner that lead to the vending machine area.

        Kneeling in front of the vending machine was a boy who looked nearly eleven years old, dressed in a brown t-shirt and green shorts.  The boy had worked his arm up into the vending machine through the drop bin.  Once he could see his hand on the other side of the plastic window, the boy shifted and tried to find a way to put more of his arm through, not content to be able to reach a few packs of gum and bags of chips.  The more tempting prize still hung beyond his reach taunting him with glossy packaging promising the joys of sugary perfection.  Simon shook his head but waited.

        The boy spread his fingers apart and grunted as he tried to stretch towards the candy.  After a few tries he put the tips of his fingers together and made the same sounds of effort Simon had heard before.  His fingers appeared to melt together and then began to elongate as a whole.  The flesh whipped about as it continued to lengthen.  As it reached its maximum length the end flattened and small suction cups emerged.  The boy smiled and wound the tentacle up towards a candy with orange packaging and yellow lettering.

        “Dammit, Timmy!” Simon barked just before the boy's tentacle made contact with the prized object.  The boy jerked back violently, and the drop door slammed on the boy’s tentacle causing him to yelp in pain.  He turned to Simon with a mixture of shock, shame, and anger.

        “Jesus, Simon!  I nearly inked myself!”  Timmy leaned down and opened the bin door to allow the tentacle to retract and shift back into its human form.

        “Yeah, well that's the least of your worries.  How many times have I told you to stay out of there?”

        Timmy rolled his eyes and then looked down at the ground like a typical child his age.

        “We don't just set this machine up here for you to help yourself whenever you like without money.  Keep this up and we'll remove it.”

        That got his attention.  The boy looked up with the biggest puppy dog eyes Simon had ever seen.  Timmy seemed truly about to weep at the thought.

        “But, Maman doesn't allow me off this floor.  What would I do then?”

        “Maybe do some chores and earn some nickels like a regular little boy?”

        The boy’s face crinkled with a look of disgust.

        “How's your mom doing anyway?”

“She’s pregnant so alright, I guess,” Timmy said obviously bored with the idea of a new brother or sister.

        A light dimly flickered somewhere in Simon's brain.  Suddenly the clogged drains made sense.

        “Right.  Well, I've got stuff to take care of,” Simon said, backing away with an urgency. “If I catch you again I'm making sure your mom knows and in her current state I'm sure you don't want that.  And don't think that I don't know that it's you and your little Irish friend that have been jamming up that machine with gold doubloons.”

        As soon as Simon turned his back Timmy stuck out his tongue at him; pink flesh dotted with tiny black barbs.

        For Simon, walking down the hall of the thirteenth floor was always a potential nightmare of calamity and awkwardness.  Because many of the residents couldn't leave the floor without fear of discovery by humans they had little contact with anyone but each other.  As a result Simon's presence on the floor was something of a novelty to the residents; a fresh face after hundreds of years of supernatural relationships with the same few people.

        Simon walked two doors away from the vending machine to 1305 and took a deep breath.  Cocking his head he tried to listen to the noises on the other side of the door to anticipate how the encounter would go.  Fortunately all he could hear was the sound of a television.  It was a good sign.  He placed his hand on the doorknob and turned it.  

        It was a habit of his to not even look inside 1305 if he could help it.  There were so many things that went on in there that if he didn't avoid looking it would worry him a great deal.  As soon as he opened the door he pivoted to the left where hung a clipboard and pen, which he removed, and began to write a list of apartment numbers and dates as much as a month in the future.

        Had Simon actually looked up he would have seen a studio apartment with a gaping hole in the center surrounded with a ring of shredded carpet, bits of wood, concrete, and rebar that had once been the floor and separation between 1305 and 1205.  A myriad of cables and ropes that were anchored to the wall hung over the rubble and dangled into the pit.  Along one wall was a sink that was covered in a thick dust that had accumulated over the years no doubt from the work going on in the center of the room.  The cupboards were covered in slightly less dust but sat partially open with their contents, bits of pipe, electrical wiring, and insulation, practically falling out.

        In one corner of the room sat the TV surrounded by a mound of empty soda cans and discarded chip bags.  Directly in front of the TV sat a figure in a plastic pink lawn chair.

        “Morning, Ike.  Where are the boys?”

        Ike shifted his three foot tall, corpulent, and scaly green form to glare at whoever was annoying him.  Ike didn't like being taken away from his shows, and Ike was always watching something.  The look would have seemed threatening if it wasn't offset by his comically large nose.  Recognizing Simon, Ike smiled, revealing a set of savagely jagged teeth

        “Oh, hey Simon.  They're down there somewhere,” he said pointing to the hole and then quickly shifted his attention back to the television.

        “What are you watching?”

        “History special on ancient construction.”

        “Really.  Like what, pyramids and stuff.”

        “Yeah.  They're on Stonehenge.”

        Simon walked up behind the gremlin to look at what he was watching.  

        “They've got it all wrong,” Ike sighed with dismay.

        “Well, why are you watching it then?”

        “Just to see how you humans would have managed it.  You lot are great at reverse engineering but tend to go the long way round it.  It makes me laugh. You monkeys are always so sure about how things are done for a couple centuries and eventually figure out the right way after your technology has surpassed it.”

        “Wait, you know how it was actually done?”

        “Yep.”

        “And it wasn't humans?”

        “No.  Would have been rubbish at it, especially back then.  You can barely manage a skyscraper let alone something like the Colossus of Rhodes.”

        “Wait, now I know that....”

        Like so many things at so many times in so many situations on that floor of the building, Simon chose to let it go.

        “Right.”

        “Oi!” Ike yelled without taking his gaze from the television set.  “Simon's here!”

        Four of the ropes that dangled into the hole began to wobble back and forth over the rubble and soon four heads popped out.

        “Simon!” one in a yellow construction hat shouted, happily showing his jagged sharp teeth.

        “Hey lad, it's been awhile since we'd seen you.  Thought maybe you'd forgotten the likes of us,” said the one in a pair of goggles.

        “Oi, lads, I bet you he's been hanging 'round with Anita.  That would explain his forgetfulness,” chortled one sporting a helmet of the German World War One variety with a spike on top.  The jab caused them all to break into giggles and snorts.

        “Ha ha ha.  Very funny,” Simon replied without humor.

        “No boys, Simon's a real man of honor, you all know that,” spoke the fourth who was clearly the head of the group.  His black eyes were brighter than the others and his nose shorter. His ears were bigger, which was the tried and true ancient method of determining which gremlin in a bunch was the leader.  

        “That and he's a bashful timid thing around the ladies,” the leader quipped with a smirk setting off another round of giggles and good natured ribbing about his possible sexual orientation.

        “Alright, alright.  I haven't been by in a while because I haven't had to, but we've got a fresh round of complaints.”  Simon began to read from the clipboard which had each complaint put in writing so the gremlins would have a physical reminder.  “Mrs. Hamer on the third floor and Mr. Stockton on the ninth are complaining about the pipes banging so you guys are banned from those floors.  And what the hell are you guys up to on the eleventh floor?”

        The four gremlins looked at each other nervously.  Again Simon resolved that it was probably better not to know.

        “Ok.  Well, whatever it is I'm tired of trying to explain the diesel and bacon smell.  Make it stop.  And that's about it, any questions?”

        The four shook their heads and all gave Simon the thumbs up, a human custom they learned from watching “Happy Days”.  With a few more jokes about Simon they zipped back down into the hole.

        “So,” Simon said cautiously to Ike. “How did they make Stonehenge?”

        Ike turned around with a grin.  

        “You really want to know?”

        “Yeah, and what was it for?”

        Ike told him, and Simon very quickly realized that he was, in fact, better served by listening to the voice in his head that told him ignorance was actually blissful.  He backed away slowly, placed the clipboard back on its place in the wall and walked out the door without a word

        “Alrighty then,” Simon muttered as soon as the door was safely closed and began to move further down the hall.  

        He looked up just in time to see Lou walking towards him.  His face was covered in hair and a half of a wolf's snout protruded from his face.

        “Hey Lou.  That time of the month again?”

        “Fuck you,” the werewolf snarled as he walked by.

        It was typical of their antagonistic relationship.  Ever since they first met they respected each other but had nothing good to say to or about each other.

        The werewolf turned around halfway down the hall.

        “And Warren Zevon still sucks.”

        “Oh, C'mon man.  That's not fair.  Just cause of one song?  It wasn't even directed at you.”

        It was a long standing argument between them.  Simon shook his head as the werewolf held high a middle finger and slipped into the stairwell.  

        He kept moving down the hall, his focus on Timmy's apartment, hoping no one else would feel the need to be chatty, especially 1314.

        Simon passed 1309 when he heard the door open and a voice call out his name.  It sounded shy and cute like a teenage schoolgirl.  He stopped and sighed.  

        “Hey, Anita.”

        He turned around, reluctantly meeting her gaze.  Anita was a bit of a confusion for Simon.  He felt that he should be attracted to her.  He was aware on some biological level that she was female, but nothing more than that.  

        Everything about her would have been considered beautiful, and her body he understood to be seductive.  It was as if she had all of the parts and pieces that should have made her irresistible to men, and women for that matter, but it was lacking something to make it real.

        Around any other woman Simon fumbled, stuttered and mentally locked up.  Other women of lesser beauty entranced him.  He found Anita to be almost an annoyance.  Simon felt for her the same as he would if she was a cousin, nothing more.

        Anita leaned against the door seductively, wearing only a blue button up shirt which, no doubt, belonged to a previous lover.  Her bare thighs shifted against each other in the universal signal of sexual need.  She took a strand of her lovely hair and brushed it against her full lips.  

        “Hey, um, I'm a little short this month.  Can you maybe help me out?”

        Simon knew that she wasn't talking about the rent.  Every resident of the thirteenth floor lived there rent free.  Anita was referring to other needs, other appetites.  The moon exerted its pull on her in a different manner than Lou.

        “Sorry, can't help you with that,” Simon shrugged.  Despite feeling disaffected by her considerable charms, Simon found that his feet were actually moving him toward her.

        “C'mon Simon, it really isn't that difficult to like me, is it?”

        He found himself within arm’s reach of her.  Somewhere inside him an alarm sounded a warning.  Her finger grazed her shirt and another button popped open exposing another inch of cleavage, not that there were many inches left as low as she already had it.

        Still he felt nothing.

        “Listen, I don't know how to break it to you other than the ways I have before. I like you as a person, a tenant.  And you're gorgeous, I mean you're any man's dream, just not mine.  I simply do not feel that way about you.”

        She let out a big, throaty laugh and tossed her hair.  Her voice shifted slightly deeper and to more of a whisper.

        “Oh Simon, that’s no problem.  I can take care of that if I could just touch...”

        She moved her finger towards his face and stopped just as the door behind Simon opened.  It felt as if the very temperature of the air had changed.

        Anita's face changed from its smokey, bedroom eyes and seductive smile to one of irritated disappointment.

        “Anita,” a calm yet firm voice spoke from the doorway, “Let him go.  We've talked about this.”

        Anita crossed her arms and without a word turned and slammed her door shut.

        Simon twitched.

        “Ok, that was a lot closer than it's ever been before,” he said turning to face Vincent.  Pale and shockingly blond, Vincent replaced his vintage 80's Ray-Bans over his eyes.

        “It is as she said.  The more desperate she becomes the more powerful she is at attracting others.”

        “But, I didn't feel anything.”

        “Yet your body moved,” Vincent said finishing the thought for him.  “It is not as unusual as you might think.  She normally trolls the bars.  In a stupor of alcohol one is not shocked at the lack of control.  You may have to be particularly offensive if you want to avoid her in the future.”

        Simon sighed and shook his head.

        “Would you like a cup of tea, Simon?”

        He looked up at Vincent, noticing for the first time that the room behind him was completely dark.  The light from the hallway fell across the room behind Vincent like a long rectangle.  Simon wondered what lurked in the dark behind the man in sunglasses.  Vincent had entertained him on a number of occasions.  Each time Simon was overcome with a sense of foreboding about entering the room, as if something else lived in there other than Vincent.  If he was quiet enough Simon could sometimes hear it breathe.  He found himself staring beyond Vincent, into the inky room, both scared of what he might see and yet strangely drawn.

        “Simon?”

        Simon shook his head trying to focus.

        “Yeah?”

        “Tea?”

        “Oh, right.  Sorry, Vince.  I've, uh, gotta take a raincheck on that.  I'm headed over to the Vandersham's.  Looking for the cause of a clog on seventh floor.”

        “Ah, yes.  Actually I'm fairly certain you'll find the cause there.  Mrs. Vandersham is pregnant, quite remarkably.”

        “Yeah.  Talked to Timmy this morning and he said as much.”

        There was a protracted silence between them that grew steadily more uncomfortable.  They each looked to the other, Vincent’s gaze tangible and steady behind the sunglasses.  Simon looked to the ground, and then shuffled a bit before finally breaking the silence.

        “Right, so I'll get back to you on that tea?”  Simon blurted out.

        “Sounds fine, Simon.  Good day.” Vincent said shutting the door.

        Most of the time talking to Vincent wasn't that awkward.  Over the past 5 years he and Simon had become rather good friends.  The trouble came in his entrance or exit from social situations.  There is a certain grace and fluidity of conversation that most people have but neither Simon nor Vincent possessed.  These people simply flow in and out of social situations effortlessly.  People like Simon were natural roadblocks to this flow, bringing even the most accomplished conversationalist to an abrupt halt.  Vincent had merely forgotten some of the finer points of human interaction over the past few centuries.

        Simon paused before the door to the Vandersham's apartment.  As usual, he found himself having to choke back the urge to just run away and abandon his post.  If the Reliquary fell down it wouldn't be the end of the world, right?  Some sense of honor and duty slithered inside him and he brought his knuckles to rap on the door.

        The sound from the other side was not encouraging.  It lay somewhere between the squawking of a large bird and the squeal of a pig.  It was not a sound that Simon was accustomed to hearing from behind that particular door.  Despite his fears he knocked again.

        “Mrs. Vandersham?”  He paused.  “Are you alright?”

        The sound came again, this time deeper and mixed with a baby's cooing.  Simon became increasingly concerned and tried the doorknob, which moved freely.  He decided the best course of action was to open the door at least a crack.  If it was too awful or gruesome he could quietly close it and then run from the horror.

        Simon eased the door open, half expecting it to creak and alert whatever was inside.  Instead it opened smoothly, revealing an extremely typical family apartment; two bedrooms, living room, kitchen, toys placed randomly about.  The air was still and tense.  He could smell the plug-in air freshener and some other scent he couldn't quite place.  

        Taking a cautious step inside, he called out again.  In response he heard the sound of someone or something thrashing in water in the bathroom, followed by the same sound from before.  

Simon began to inch his way toward the bathroom.  The water splashed again and Simon peeked around the corner to see a large tentacle thrust out from behind the bath curtain, twitch as if having a seizure, and then retracted.

        Simon charged in, threw open the curtain and instantly wished he hadn't.  In the tub, submerged in the same black substance that had been clogging up Mrs. Grubberman's pipes, lay Mrs. Vandersham somewhere between human appearance and whatever she would call her other shape.  Clearly she had been trying to shift into a form that was easier for Simon's brain to deal with after he knocked.  

        Simon gaped at the mass of mismatched flesh and parts before him.  Six tentacles were where her legs should have been.  Between those tentacles and her chest the skin color shifted violently between a normal human shade and mottled brown and purple.  Two tentacles melded together to form her right arm and the large tentacle flailed about as if she was trying to shake it into human form.  Her head was bald but small ridges formed quickly and lengthened, shifting into long thin tentacles and finally hair.  On her neck the funnels on either side receded entirely and then fleshed over.  

The area that should have been her mouth was closed but soon split opened with a scream like he had heard before.  The beak rotated mid-scream and formed into her teeth.  The most unsettling thing about the whole change was her eyes.  They didn't seem angry or menacing but severely pained.

        When her left tentacle finally became a hand Mrs. Vandersham grabbed the shower curtain and covered her tentacled lower half.

        “Oh, Simon, I'm so, so very sorry,” she said on the verge of tears

        Simon backed away and finally shielded his eyes with a hand.  He slumped shocked onto the toilet seat.

        “Wow, Uh.  No, I'm...no, I'm sorry.  I heard a noise and thought maybe you were in trouble, but oh, God.”

        Simon looked up at her cautiously.  Thankfully only her head was visible.  She looked embarrassed to an extreme degree.  

Though he was sure she could look anyway she wished, Mrs. Vandersham tended to look like a typical soccer mom in order to blend in- late thirties, brunette, curvy, and generally attractive.  In that form, Simon thought to himself, bursting in like that would have been a different shade of awkward, rather than his current nightmare.  Now he was sure he would never be able to look at her the same way ever again.

        “I'm so sorry you had to see that.  I just...Timmy was supposed to be here to take care of whoever happens by or calls on the phone.  I never thought...”

        “No, no.  It's ok.  I've just never seen anything like that.  Wow.  I mean, there was Lou that one time at the poker game when we all forgot the full moon, but...wow...”

        “So, what did you stop by for then?” Mrs. Vandersham asked trying to prompt him out of his shock.

        “Well, kind of seems silly now, but we had a complaint about clogged drain from a few floors below so I thought I'd check out your apartment to see if the cause was up here and...yeah.”

        “And?”

        “Well, apparently the drain is being clogged by what looks like...uh...the same stuff you are...uh, soaking in.”

        “Oh.  Right.  It's fluid that our kind secretes in order to...”

        “Yeah.” Simon said forcefully, not wanting to hear anymore. “Yeah, you're pregnant I heard.  I just need to, uh, figure out how we can maybe stop it from getting into the pipes.  Can I, uh, look at that faucet end?”

        “Ok.  I can't turn my lower half human because of my condition.  Hopefully it won't be too weird for you to work around tentacles.”

        “Nope, uh.  This will be fine actually.  I've been exposed to a lot of weird today so tentacles should fit right in.”

        If anything could have made the job more awkward or distracting it would've been trying to work around Mrs. Vandersham's naked, shapely legs.

        Simon opened the opposite end of the curtain and looked at the faucet and overflow drain. He needed to check the main drain for leaks but certainly didn't want to put his hand in.  Looking at the tentacles writhing before him through the black sludge Simon decided on a different route.

        “Um, Mrs. Vandersham?  How, uh, sensitive are your tentacles?”

        “Pretty sensitive.  I can feel a killer whale swimming off from its pod from about five miles.”

        Simon smiled uncomfortably as he tried not to imagine Mrs. Vandersham consuming an entire killer whale.

        “Right, ok, good.  Can you feel around the drain to see if you feel any water flowing through, even the smallest amount?”

        One of the tentacles slipped under the black liquid.

        “Nope.  Not even a bit.”

        The problem began to take over his mind, which thankfully dissipated some of the awkwardness of the situation.  Holding back his hair so as not to get it even close to the black spotted liquid, Simon craned his neck around to look at the overflow drain.  Below the metal the caulking had been eaten away leaving a space.

        “Is this stuff caustic?”

        “Not to things like stone or porcelain. ”

        “Plastics?”

        Mrs. Vandersham looked into the depths of the liquid, clearly unsure.

        “Hand me that rubber duckie” she said pointing on the back of the toilet.  

        Simon tossed it to her and she dipped the orange beak into the black.  It didn't sizzle or smoke but once she pulled it out the bill was gone.

        “Well, I guess that explains that” Simon grinned.  “How is it with metals?”

        “I think my husband said it wouldn't eat through anything that wasn't an alloy.”

        “Good deal.  Copper pipes run through this whole building, so that's a plus.  I think it'll help if you just bail out the tub into the sink instead of using the over flow we won't have this problem.”

        “Thanks Simon.  I'll let Bill know when he gets home.  So sorry that we inconvenienced someone in the downstairs.”

        Simon smirked.  It was how they referred to the other tenants, the way Alaskans refer to the contiguous 48 states as the “lower 48”.  Not with disdain, quite matter of factly about a people mostly ignorant that there is an “upstairs” at all.

        The moment protracted and Simon mentally scrambled trying to find a way out of the situation with the half naked, half squid lady.  He saw a path to go down, polite conversation, that might have led him to an easy out.  

        “So when's the baby due, then?”

        “They'll be ready to greet the world in about 3 weeks or so.”

        “Wait, they?  How many are you having?”

        “Well, I'm carrying ten-thousand eggs.”

        Simon's mind boggled for a moment as he imagined chasing ten-thousand Timmy's around the building, trying to keep them away from the “normal” residents.

        “Ten-thousand?  How come Timmy's been an only child for so long then?”

        “Um, well,” Mrs. Vandersham started nervously. “They fight each other.”

        “Oh, God,” muttered in a voice apparently too low to be heard since Mrs. Vandersham continued.  With his face in his hands he shook his head and groaned as if about to be sick while he was helpless to do anything but listen.

        “I deposit my eggs here and then over the next couple of days they fight  using each other as a food source until only one or two remain.  Twins run in my family, but Timmy won out at the last minute.  He's still always such an amazingly hungry boy.”

        “OK!” Simon said loudly but not too rudely.  As usual he was going to have to force an exit.

        “Well, thank you for that.  Um, I'm going to go and see if there's anything else I need to do today.  I'm sure someone somewhere has something broken.”

        He left the room thinking he was free until Mrs. Vandersham called out.

        “Oh, Simon?”

        “Yeah?”

        “When the baby is born and has, well, devoured it's sib..”

        “Yeah, you mentioned that bit...” Simon said interrupting so as not to add to the mental image.

        “Would you consider coming to the baby dedication?”

        Simon felt strange going from disgusted to warm hearted so quickly.

        “Of course.  I'd be happy to. That would be really nice.”

        “And things are going to get busy around here and Bill wanted to be the one to ask you but, would you consider being the baby's godfather?  We've got a godmother already picked out and it would mean so much to us.”

        Simon hoped that his face wasn't registering the thought running through his mind.  All he could imagine was the savage little squidling tyke devouring its own brothers and sisters.  How do you take something like that out to the park for ice cream?  He imagined pinning a picture of the two of them, Simon with his arm around a giant squid, on his bedroom wall.

        “Yeah,” he replied as nominally as he could.  “I'd be honored.”

        Simon turned on his heel and walked out the door with a full body shiver.