It had seen the three times that the former owner of the building was stabbed. Fred Philiepe wasn’t the nicest owner of a building. Not that everyone that owns a building needs a stabbing. But on those three seperate occasions the persons involved weren’t the only persons that wanted to cut him.The first stabbing was with a steel paper knife. The renter was a tireless artist that only wanted to use the space as a safe, quiet harbor. She made cutaway dioramas of the ever growing downtown in Cincinnati.

The buildings grew and grew and they needed people to construct the architectural shadowless shadowbox models. Her name was Betty Fetty, for better or for worse.When Mr. Philiepe crossed through the creaky threshold of the forty year-old doorway, she heard him enter. Her red hair was twisted in her thumb that was used for perspective on her early sketches.

She didn’t mind his presence, but her morality told her that his presence wasn’t a good thing.His tired old shoes scraped the only paint on the floor. The flakes moved up and down through the grooves in the wood. She didn’t want to look away from her work. Fred took great advantage of this. He drew close to her without any permission or present knowledge of her emotional state.

That state was bad. Worse than bad, she was upset from her secret lover. Emile was kept hidden from her other friends and family. Emile had left in a foaming torment over this, and Betty threw herself into her work.

As Fred advanced, she felt her grip loosened on the stub of drawing charcoal. She gently reached for the shiny stainless steel ridged saftey cutter. The label “Husky” emblazened and flashed into her mind as her left hand gripped and tightened while his feet dragged closer.

His claw-like fingers began what could only be labeled a grope. Her immediate reaction flipped open the safety blade and slash and slash at the specter of his globule like body. She missed. But he got the point. Unfortunately, Betty didn’t believe this and swiped him again. A quick and drastic stroke across his chest left a mark.She was gone the next morning, no notice or final rent check.

His next two encounters where actually quite similar. With the obvious exception that the person was a man. Hardly a man, a boy, really. Edgar Whitherforque was also an aspiring artist. His realm of the arts was the set design for the ever-growing theatre troope that was situated next to downtown. This loft was located relatively close to the theatre and the gothic fountain dedicated to some old robber baron. This didn’t help Fred, especially the last time. His corpse was found in the fountain thought drowned. The reality of his death is a bit more mysterious. All that the papers reported was the findings that his body had three scars from knife fights.

These things didn’t matter to my old neighbor,