Harlan Ellison - No Doors, No Windows

“Consequently, Mr. Huggerson, sir, ah-hm, I would seriously recommend you not mention your scheme to Mr. Troyden, but try to work out some other, more amicable solution on your own.” And he put Mr. Huggerson in check.

Later, Mr. Huggerson bade farewell to his chess partner and started upstairs to his own room.

He did not stop at the second floor, but continued up to the third. He found himself at Harry Troyden’s door, and almost without volition, found himself knocking softly. From within he heard the sounds of a television set blaring in the room. The Carol Burnett Show.

He knocked a bit louder, and a moment later heard a grunted curse, and the sounds of Harry Troyden heaving himself to his feet. “I’m comin’, dammit, I’m comin’, don’t bang the damned thing down — oh, whaddaya want, Huggerson?”

That was one of the things Mr. Huggerson disliked most about Troyden. He always spoke with such profanity and such deprecation, never using the prefatory Mister that all the residents of the flophouse affected in due respect to one another’s age.

“I would like to speak to you a moment, Mr. Troyden.”

The landlord was a good head taller than Mr. Huggerson; he looked over the old man’s head as he snarled, “Well, okay. C’mon in fer a second.” He stood aside, allowing Mr. Huggerson to pad past him into the room. Mr. Huggerson’s bedroom slippers made a silken whispering on the carpet.

The room was quite dark, with only the blue-white square of the TV set casting weird shadows along the walls.

Harry Troyden lived in this less-than-sumptuous place, instead of one of his more regal properties uptown, more out of habit than anything else. He had started here, and had extended his holdings only through his son Omar’s sharp dealings; he lived here because he had always lived here. Harry Troyden, like his tenants, was a creature of habit.

He flipped on the lights in the room.

The naked bulbs shone down on him.

Mr. Huggerson marveled anew, as he did each time he saw Harry Troyden clearly.

Troyden was a subterranean creature brought up from the depths. He was squat and fat, built like a bloated cave-dwelling fish, with eyes that were mere puckers in the fish-white flesh of a totally bald head. He gave the impression of being a human toadstool of some kind. From the top of his ridged hairless scalp to the soles of his thick shoes, Harry Troyden was a completely repulsive creature.

Yet, to be sure, Mr. Huggerson reminded himself, he was the landlord.

“What can I do fer ya, Huggerson?” Troyden asked with half-interest, slumping back into the chair in front of the TV set. The chair groaned agonizingly, then settled to keeping its misery to itself.

“Well, Mr. Troyden …” Mr. Huggerson said slowly, “… I — I was wondering how business was, these days, what with —”

“Lousy, bud, just lousy! All them new condominiums goin’ up, they’re alla time tearin’ down an’ makin’ the section so hotsy-totsy, ya’d think they’d offer me a little gelt fer my locations. But do they? Hell, no, they don’t. You know what my kid Omar says to me just this morning? He says —”

Mr. Huggerson cut Troyden off, with what he hoped was not a brusque or rude sound. “Er.”

It brought the pale creature back to his late evening visitor. “Yeah. What is it now, Huggerson. I got the thing goin’ here an’ there’s a show on I wanna see what happened. So, what’s up?”

“Well, Mr. Troyden …” His voice faltered and he was embarrassed but decided to bull it through regardless. “I’ve found my finances aren’t what they were, and I know it isn’t the best thing to ask you, since you’re a businessman and this is your livelihood, but since I’ve been here eight years and we’re friends —” It was an assumption Mr. Huggerson was making for the first time on either of their parts. “— I felt, well, it isn’t so much to ask, but I was wondering if you might consider lowering, that is, slightly lowering my rent. You see, if I could pay six dollars a week, instead of ten, I could manage to make ends mee —”

Troyden came out of his chair like a porpoise breaking water. “Whajoosay?”

The sudden onslaught brought Mr. Huggerson to instant fright and contrition. He had sinned. More softly, he tried again. “Well, sir, you see, six dollars would be —”

He was poleaxed in mid-sentence. “Whaddaya talkin’? Whaddaya, crazy or somethin’? You know goddam well I can’t cut no rents. I been losin’ money on you buncha’ creeps fer years now. I onny letcha live on here at the old rents cause it was a sorta what? Status kwo, what my kid Omar said just this mornin’! He warned me, dammit, whyn’t I lissen ta him, he says ta me, Pop, he says, this here status kwo gotta change aroun’ here, these old cockers been livin’ here, no dough an’ like that — well, lissen, Huggerson, I’m gonna tell ya somethin’ …” He drew a great blast of air.

“Mr. Troyden, I —”

Troyden catapulted on without break. “You lissen here, old man. Lemme hand you some news. You ain’t gonna have to pay no ten no more. From now on, damn you old ingrates, you’re all gonna pay up rent. From now on that room a’ yours is gonna cost ya fifteen bucks a week. An’ that starts day after tomorra’ Satu’day. An’ if ya can’t pay, out ya go. Fifteen?” He stopped the length of time it took Mr. Huggerson’s heart to beat a million times — an instant — then shouted, “Fifteen, my ass! Your room costs thirty! Thirty bucks a week!”

He turned away in anger, crimson blotches in his subterranean paleness. He slumped back into his chair and mumbled, “Howdja like that? How’s ’at for ingrates. Omar was right about that status —”

He never quite finished. Mr. Huggerson had moved with the precision of a zombie as the fat man had turned away. He lifted the metal ashtray with the heavy weighted base, and moved in behind Troyden’s chair.

Without sense or reason or actual volition, all energy had drained from him as the cruelty and unreasonableness of the landlord’s words struck him forcibly. To not get the reduction was bad enough — but to pay twice again as much! It was horrible, it was torture; he had to put a stop to those words that were terribly, mercilessly destroying his universe. He had to stop the torment of this man. He had to!

Strangely, there had been no blood. The skull was crushed, of that he was certain, but the edge of the ashtray was clean, and there was no blood on the carpet where Troyden had fallen.

Then, and only then, when he had replaced the ashtray, did the horror of what he had done strike him.

Mr. Huggerson stumbled to the sofa. He had to feel around behind himself before sitting down, for fear he might miss the sofa entirely. He hung his weary head in his shaking hands and for the first time in many years he cried. It was terrible, this terrible, terrible thing he had done. Simply terrible. Oh, he hadn’t meant to do it, he hadn’t meant to kill Troyden. It was just that all those words, all those sounds that were so terrible, so terrible; he’d had to stop them before they drove him mad.

He had been tailored to fit this place, with all his friends here, and to think he would be driven into the street, it was just too much, too much for Mr. Huggerson to contemplate. And now — he hesitated to admit it to himself — he was a — murderer.

For a long, long time he sat there, shivering, crying sporadically. Finally, he knew he must draw himself together.

This would not do, he told himself. He was a man of pride and resolution, and this would not do. It would also do Ralph no good, were it to be known that his father was a murderer. He thought bitterly: if it didn’t bother Ralph to have his father living in such a place, why should it bother him if his father were a murderer; but he dismissed the thought as being unworthy.