My Roomate

Jack: …

Policeman: Ready when you are.

Jack: Oh. Sorry. I was lost in thought. This is a little shocking, isn’t it? 

Policeman: Could you start by telling us your name?

Jack: Right, sure. Jack Dawins. Senior year. I’m head of the football team, maybe you’re heard of us? The Flying Pitbulls?

Policeman: Just tell us everything you know. 

Jack: Yeah, I’ll tell you. I met Anya on the first day of school. I mean, college. You know, at first I thought they made a mistake - guys and girls don’t room together - but I guess no one checked the listing properly.

Anya. Her name sounded strange in my mouth, like water. Some names are just made for certain people, you know? The name Anya belonged to a model, or an aspiring scuba diver. 

The real Anya was…peculiar. She was pretty - if you squinted a little. The quiet type - that one chick at the back of the room at parties, scrolling on her phone. She was very small. I know it's cruel to say, but yeah, insignificant. She had tons of hair - at least 4 or 5 feet long, always twisted into some fish braid or bun. The rare times she let it loose it would drip from her skull like ink. She left long strands of it all around the house, in the cracks of the floor, in the shower. She was weird, yeah, but it surprised me that she never brought anyone over. 

Policeman: Maybe she was being respectful towards you. 

Jack: Sure. Oh and, she was an art major - though I never saw her touch so much as a paint brush in all our time together. She did make all her clothes though, which I guess is something artsy. And flowers. She loved flowers. No, like…to the point where it was on the edge of obsession. She said flowers helped her say the things she couldn’t say out loud. I learnt their basic meanings. Sunflowers were good times. Petunias for anger. She usually kept those in a pot - so I guess she was mad all the time. Hyacinths were for gloom. She knew all the nerdy stuff about them, the latin names and the medicinal uses, etc. I only saw her put out chrysanthemums once - but the black clothes were pretty self explanatory. 

The flowers shed dried petals and leaves all around the tiny room. They filled the room with their stench -  heavy, clogging, like an old man’s breath. I’d wake to a peaceful Sunday morning, watching a dehydrated delilah struggle for breath in the lazy sun. I couldn’t be bothered to water them. She would cry when they died. 

We grew to tolerate each other. There was this one night where we shared a drink, talked a little. I told she should try smiling more, she told me I should try not being a disappointment to my parents. We left it at that. From then on it was kind of like a truce, yeah? I watered her plants. She stopped complaining about the girls I brought over. Cooperation. Symbiosis.

Policeman: …Go on. 

Jack: I guess she got comfortable with my presence. She made jokes, shared music preferences. I can see her standing in that space behind you, her skin washed out in the artificial light of the uncovered lightbulb. 

“Jack”, she said, stretching her back. “Do you have a purpose?”. 

Well, I didn’t know what to say to that.

“I guess.” I said. “I’m decent at football.” 

She sighed. “I don’t. Not really. No…easy answer to my existence. I’ve always believed that people are like puppets, floppy and stubborn. We need strings to prop us up, make us get up and dance. But I come with no strings attached.” 

Then, things changed. She changed. 

I came back from class one day to find red roses on the dining room table. For a foolish moment, I was petrified that she might be in love with me. I was relieved when she started disappearing at night - whoever it was she was visiting, it wasn’t me. Soon our room was crammed with roses - pulpous and fleshy, overripe, invading every corner of the cramped space. I knew she’d really fallen for the guy when she started wearing them to class. Collars of roses around her neck, behind her ears, or scattered in her hair, left loose and writhing. They never seemed to wilt. But then…things got bad. 

Policeman: How so?

Jack: She’d been crying. I come in and ask her what’s wrong and she just looks at me. Her eyes were dark…so dark. But Anya has blue eyes. And out of the corner of her eye socket, there’s this little leaf, a growing sprout. A red bud, furled up tightly, peeking out. And she was bleeding too, from a little scratch, though the colour was lost in that ocean of red petals. Now that I think about it, she was bleeding quite a lot. 

“It’s the thorns.” She said. “Everywhere. It's part of the package, right?”

Then she left. I knew it would kill her eventually. Whatever it was. I just didn’t expect it to happen so soon.

Policeman: Hold on. This is an investigation concerning Miss Williams’s disappearance, not murder.

Jack: Well, someone has got to be dead, right?

Policeman: How would you know?

Jack: I guess you didn’t see the dining table. She put out chrysanthemums this morning.