THE OFT-DOODLED SKULLS OF KATHERINE S.

     Katherine S. had just moved into her new apartment not far from Dirty John's Grocery in the Spring of 1982. It was a small but very nice one bedroom with plenty of storage space for her hats and shoes. She loved to sit in the privacy of her new kitchen, read the morning paper, and drink coffee before going off to face the challenges of the day. She had no real artistic leanings and was surprised to find herself absently doodling when at home in the apartment. She never doodled during lectures or at class, but at home-no matter what she was doing-when she looked down any scrap of paper nearby was literally covered with tiny drawings. Even more peculiar, all of them depicting the same image. She was compulsively drawing human skulls.

     Drawing skulls on everything was the sort of activity she thought was reserved for those who listen to heavy metal music, and for teenage boys who become preoccupied with death to the same degree they were unsuccessful with teenage girls. Katherine favored Andy Williams to Motorhead and her only interest in death was to avoid it for as long as she could. It was all very odd, she thought, but with more pressing concerns to distract her, she didn't spend much time analyzing where this subliminal imagery was coming from.

     The doodling continued until one day she decided to attempt a deliberate, life-sized drawing of the skull she constantly drew in miniature. She bought a sketch pad and some pencils, then spent the better part of two hours creating an incredibly detailed portrait of the bones of the human head. Katherine had as little anatomy instruction as artistic training and when her completed sketch was compared to a medical textbook, was delighted to learn she had reproduced the bone structure almost perfectly. With great pride she hung the picture on the outside of her apartment door. Friends and neighbors were very impressed with Katherine's newfound artistic ability-although she found that she had much less success in attempting to capture any other image on paper. In fact, with the completion of the life sized portrait, even the doodling of the tiny skulls had ceased.

     A month after hanging the drawing, Katherine missed a rent payment. Her landlord agreed to stop by the apartment to pick up the late check. He was visibly upset by the sketch on the door.

     "What is this all about?" He asked.

     "I don't know," She said, "it's a little weird, but I drew it. I thought about hanging it in the house, but somehow I felt the best place was on my door. Should I take it down?"

     "Why would you draw such a thing?" He probed.

     "Well, when I moved in, I found myself constantly doodling these little skulls. I thought if I drew a big one, spent some time on it, I could get it out of my system. It worked." Katherine told him.

     The landlord paused for a long time, and then said slowly, "I've rented this apartment for years. Every time a woman rents the place they tell me the same thing. They doodle skulls on everything and then, sooner or later, they make a big picture of one and put it on the door of the apartment. Every single time."

     "That's a little odd." Katherine said.

     "Well, not so odd if you know the whole story. I bought the place cheap about 20 years ago, bought it after a young girl was murdered here. Murdered in your apartment. The killer, her boyfriend, was caught but they couldn't find the body. They almost had to let him go, you see-no Corpus Delecti. The police had searched the house, but didn't find anything, then somebody finally thought to look in the basement, in the furnace. Turned out the boyfriend had cut her up in pieces and burned her body in there. When they sifted through the ashes all that was left was her skull."