100 Yellow Doors

may 3rd, 2017/october 31st, 1961, 7:38 p.m.

Iman was getting used to these unorthodox trips—the sudden, jarring perplexity of being in class or curled in bed back at the dorms one moment and outside a vampire's door the next—and it seemed Julien was, too. This time, he opened his door almost immediately, carefully sidestepping a somewhat poorly-carved jack-o-lantern.

She looked up, picking herself up from the rain-soaked sidewalk. "How did you..."

Julien tapped his ears. "I heard you," he said, then disappeared behind the door for a moment, reappearing with a bowl of individually-wrapped chocolates. "Candy?"

Iman exhaled, accepting a midnight Milky Way on her way in the door. As she unwrapped it, heading mindlessly down the hall towards the kitchen, Julien cleared his throat and gestured toward the staircase instead. "I was up watching Dracula," Julien said, making the fact he had heard her outside his door even more confusing. He quirked his eyebrow. "You know, if you're not a scaredy-cat."

"Please," said Iman with a roll of her eyes, "what year is this—6o-something?"

"'61."

"Exactly. Horror hasn't even been invented yet, Julien."

Julien's eyebrow raised higher, but he was silent as he led Iman up the staircase, around the corner, and past at least four other doors before he stopped at one at the end of the hall. For the first time since meeting him here, in this place, she realized it was a large house for one person. What was Julien's life like when she wasn't here, she wondered? The majority of the time, anyway, where he was uninterrupted by randomly time-traveling women?

Iman swallowed. She realized she didn't precisely want to know.

The room was dark and quiet, besides the flickering black and white images reflected in the mirror beside the king-size bed, Bela Lugosi waltzing across the screen with his popped collar and slick hair as an orchestral suite played in the background. Julien rolled past her, finding a perch at the edge of his bed. He patted the spot beside him, his eyes shiny in the ill light.

Iman sat beside him, folding her legs beneath her as she squinted at the screen. The figures were grainy, the audio low against the pattering rain outside. It was strange, Iman thought, how she never got used to the stark contrasts between the present and the past. Every time she was reminded of all that had changed, all that was better and all that was worse, it was always a slap in the face.

The main girl appeared on the screen, all pale skin and hair, fluttering and careless disposition. Iman cringed as Dracula took the girl in his arms, the girl only letting out a small whimper and rolling her head to the side as he sipped from her skin.

Iman frowned, tilting her head. "It doesn't bother you?"

Julien didn't look away from the screen. "What?"

"This...this inaccurate representation," Iman said, as a chorus of childish cries of glee sounded somewhere outside. Trick-or-treating, even in the rain. She was young, but at the same time, youth was lost on her. "I mean, you don't really sleep in coffins, do you? And you're definitely not all that pasty."

Julien let out a laugh, sudden and endearing, like the flap of a butterfly wing. Iman liked the way it changed his face, how his eyes got small and smile lines appeared in his cheeks. "No, and no," he confirmed. "But it's funny. I don't watch it for accuracy; I watch it to laugh."

"So you're making fun of yourself?"

"In a way," he said, then paused, bumping Iman's knee with his own. "You know, I always sorta wanted a widow's peak."

Iman scoffed. "Be glad you don't have a widow's peak. You would look awful with a widow's peak."

"You think so?" Julien asked, holding his hair back with a hand. "I think it'd be very fitting."