My Roommate's A Fun Guy

I know everyone has that one bad roommate at some point in their lives, but you’re never really ready when it happens for the first time. At least, I wasn’t when I got paired with goth-poser Mia Nelson in my junior year of college. Could have been worse, I guess. We, or at least I, was lucky enough to have two separate rooms and, thank God, separate bathrooms. The kitchen and living room is still a shared space. 

Mia never comes out of her room except to cook canned soup and toast, leaving the pots and bowls in the sink for me to deal with. That's basically the one interaction we regularly have. 

Spring break finally rolled around and Mia sent me a text. We exchanged numbers when we first moved in, but rarely needed to use them for any reason. 

(Mia - 10:36 PM) im going to florida for spring break. family stuff.

(Jackie - 6:02 AM) How long?

(Mia - 7:18 PM) the whole break.

(Jackie - 7:19 PM) Okay.

She left early in the morning on Saturday. I would have gone home too, but I see my folks enough that I’d rather spend that time resting. That was the plan, until my friend Alana wanted to do some lacrosse practice with me since she knew I played it in high school. Just my luck, even though it was only practice, I tore my achilles tendon after tripping over my own feet. Alana was so apologetic and blamed herself, but I should have known better too. This was on Sunday, the day before classes started up again, and I was given the big plastic boot on my right foot and told to rest for at least two weeks. 

All my professors are luckily able to let me Zoom into class, with varying degrees of effectiveness. I just found myself stuck on the couch for easy access to the fridge, knowing I’d just fall asleep if I stayed in bed. Then she came back. 

It’s around noon on Monday when the apartment door opens. Mia steps in, no luggage or even a bag, in shorts and a t-shirt. She’s usually in a sweatshirt and long pants, but now our usual outfits have become inverted. 

“Oh, hey Mia. Have a good break?”

“Mmhm. Did you get hurt?”

“Yeah, I tore a tendon playing lacrosse. I’m gonna be stuck here for a bit.”

“Ouch! Will that heal fast?”

“I hope so.”

“Good. Hope is good,” she says with a weird lilt of positive energy I’ve not seen from her. I guess she did have a good time at home. The next couple of days go by easy, with Mia being a bit more proactive in checking up on me than expected. She doesn’t make her usual soup, just eats the sliced bread raw, which I’ll admit is weird but cravings can be like that. 

On Thursday, Geoff lets himself in unannounced. Geoff is Mia’s boyfriend who shows up every now and then to whom Mia gave a key to the apartment. I don’t think she’s allowed to do that, but Geoff hasn’t given off any bad vibes that makes me worried about anything. He just comes around to pick up Mia when they go out. 

“Oh, hey Jackie.” 

“Hey Geoff.” 

“Is uh… Is Mia in?”

“As always.” Yeah, as always. He’s never asked that before. “Why?”

“She isn’t answering her phone. Are you sure she’s here?”

“Yeah, I’m sure she’s in her room.” Geoff goes to the door to Mia’s room, but the knob doesn’t budge. He knocks. 

“Hey, Mia, are you alright?”

“Yes, I’m fine, Geoff.” She says from the other side of the door. 

“Okay, ‘cause you weren’t answering your phone.” 

“My phone died.” 

“Then are you charging it?” 

“The charger isn’t working.”

“Oh, got it. Do you need a new one?”

“It’s fine, Geoff, just go.” 

“Well, come on, we haven’t seen each other since the… Since you went home. I was thinking we could-”

“No, Geoff! I want you to leave me alone!” Mia suddenly shouts. Geoff steps away from the door. 

“I’m sorry, Mia. Just let me know if I can do anything for you.” Geoff laments before he puts his hands in his pockets and goes to leave. Before he reaches the front door, I motion for him to come over to me. He sits in the chair across from me, looking longingly towards Mia’s room. 

“What’s going on with her? She’s been acting weird,” I ask Geoff. 

“She’s… going through some stuff right now.”

“Details, Geoff.” 

“I really shouldn’t say, it’s kind of private.” 

“I have to live with her, so I think I ought to know,” I explain. Geoff sighs and leans closer towards me. 

“She just lost both her parents. She was at their funeral in Jacksonville.”

“Oh, my God. What happened to them?” 

“Mia didn’t tell me. She just said they’ve were sick before… Anyway, I think she just needs some space. If she needs help, can you call me?” 

“Yeah. Yeah, of course.” 

“Thanks, Jackie. I hope that heals fast,” Geoff motions to the boot before he leaves. I give an awkward smile. It’s raining outside. 

As I finish my last class of the day, I fold up my laptop and wrench myself up towards my room, when Mia opens her door. She slowly comes out, looking at me intently. 

“Oh, hey, I was just about to head to bed. How are you-”

“Can you stay for a bit?” she asks me. 

“Uh, yeah, sure.” I try to pretend I don’t know what’s going on with her anymore, that Geoff didn’t already tell me. I sit back down on the couch, but to my surprise, she rests on top of me, her head on my shoulder. She avoids my bad foot at least, but I think Geoff should really be here doing this. 

“You alright?” I ask her as she weighs down on my chest. 

“I’m fine, Jackie. You’re just… very warm,” she says as she looks up to me. Her eyes are red like she’s been crying, but the eyelids are completely dry. I assume she must have been crying for hours, then. 

“Hey, it’s alright. Geoff told me what happened. I’m so sorry. That should never happen to anyone.” I hold her by the shoulder. It’s ice fucking cold. I take my hand off just as soon as I put it on. 

“What should never happen?” 

“Losing your parents. And both at once, too, that’s just-”

“Oh, yeah, right. It’s so terrible that happened,” she says in a very passive voice. I’m starting to feel really worried about her mental health. Grief can make people become so self-destructive, and with how introverted she is, it might be too late before someone realizes what’s going on. 

“Do you want to talk to someone on campus? Like a therapist or a doctor or-”

“No! No doctors. I’m fine, Jackie. I just need time. Just a few more days and it will be like nothing happened.” 

“You don’t have to do that, you shouldn’t forget what happened. But I guess… Just take care of yourself, Mia. I’ll be here if you need me,” I offer as I stroke her dark hair. It feels grainy, sandy. I take my hand back and look at it. Yellow flecks cover my palm. When was the last time she showered?

“Mia, you should shower. It might help you sleep,” I suggest while trying to hide my disgust. She stares out the window. 

“Mia?” She suddenly gets off of me and stands at the window, the rain lightly falling on the glass and making the dark night even darker. However, just outside is the apartment grove. That’s where the rotting picnic benches, the grill that no one ever uses, and the thick tree wrapped in orange lightbulbs are. Even in the wet nights, those lights turn on each time to invite people to use the grove as a hangout spot, but the most it serves is a place for people to store their bicycles. The light doesn’t bleed into our bedrooms, at least not mine, so it was never really an annoyance. 

“That tree is so pretty, Jackie,” Mia swoons at the sight of the decoration tree. Has she never seen it before at night?

“Yeah, it is. Umm, if you want to talk about anything, I can stay up for a little while longer.”

“Ah, I’ve kept you up long enough. You should sleep,” Mia says, not looking away from the tree outside. I’m still worried but equally tired, so I leave her to it. At least she seems communicative, if not a little off, but I think I would be too under the circumstances.

The next morning I wake up with a sore throat. Feels like a cold, or a flu. Just what I needed right now. I drag myself back to the couch, but I can barely even stare at my laptop screen for too long before I get a headache. I email my professors that I will be absent from the Zoom lessons and just rest, my forearm over my eyes, a jug of water from the fridge at my side. 

The TV blares on suddenly, jolting me awake from my semi-conscious state hours later. I look over and see Mia sitting on the floor criss-cross, less than a foot away from the TV screen, just watching the commercials. The volume is way too loud. 

“Mia… Hey Mia!” I shout at her with my hoarse throat, which causes me to cough profusely. It stings like hell. 

“What’s up?” Mia replies without moving her head. 

“Sorry, I’m just feeling a little sick. Could you, just like, turn the volume down a bit?” 

“You can mute it. I’m just watching,” Mia says. She picks up the remote and hands it over to me, her head not moving in the slightest. Her shoulder pops loudly as she raises her arm to give me the remote. I take it from her and immediately mute the TV. Now she’s just staring at mute images. No idea what that’s gonna do to her eyes. I take a big sip from the water jug and put my arm back over my eyes to rest in the silence. I can’t even hear Mia breathing. 

I have no idea how much time passed, but I actually fell asleep this time, only to be woken up by a violent cough. It hurts. I feel like I can’t breathe. The moment I get a break from it, I drink more water. Room temperature, but it will have to do. 

I look out the window. Dark, past sundown. I look at the TV. Mia is still sitting there, staring at it. I feel feverish. This flu is working really quickly. 

“Hey Mia…” My voice barely gets out. She sharply looks at me, a crack in her neck as she does so. Her eyes are white, filmy, and dry. Jesus, can she even see right now? 

“What’s up?”

“Uh… Would you mind making me some-”

“Food. Yep. I’m on it.” I watch her stand up from her seated position, or as best as I can call standing up. Her limbs twitch as she rises, her ankles and wrists snapping in several different directions in a matter of seconds. I notice the bruising on her knees and her elbows. I notice that she’s wearing the same clothes as when she got back on Monday, yellow stains on the neck of her shirt. I know I should get up and do something, call someone, but my phone is in my bedroom and I can barely move. I think just time is the last thing Mia needs right now. 

In hardly any time at all, Mia comes back. 

“Here you go!” she says cheerily, presenting me with a plate of three slices of bread, mold forming on the corners. 

“Uh, Mia… Could I have some soup? I’ll pay you back for it…” I explain, followed by a hacking cough. 

“Soup?”

“Soup, for Christssakes! You make it all the time!” 

“Oh, I, uh… I don’t know how to make soup,” she calmly explains. She takes one of the bread slices before me and chews on it, the late-night programs of the TV still flashing behind her. This isn’t grief. Either she’s gone insane, always has been, or some fucked up third option. 

“Mia, you need to see a doctor…”

“Me? You’re the sick one.”

“No, something isn’t right. You’re not acting normal. Can you bring me my phone?” 

“I don’t want a doctor. I’m fine, Jackie. Here, you should eat. It will make you feel better.” Mia picks up one of the moldy pieces of bread and brings it closer to my face. Despite every muscle in my body aching, I flinch back and slap her hand away from me. Ice fucking cold again. 

“Mia, stop it! You’re actually scaring me!” 

“Oh, I’m sorry. I don’t want to scare you.” 

“Then what’s going on?”

“We didn’t really hang out before and I thought we could be friends…” Mia explains solemnly. I cough more. It hurts. She doesn’t react. 

“That’s fine, I think we could be friends too, but not right now. Look, just get me my phone and then we can be friends.”

“Really?” She smiles. Her teeth are yellow as shit. 

“Yeah. It’s by my pillow,” I instruct as I point at the door to my room. As Mia turns to go to my room, her eyes pass the window outside. She stops, then walks back over to it. 

“Mia, my phone…”

“That tree is so pretty, Jackie,” she repeats in the exact same tone as last night. 

“Mia, get me my phone, now!”

“I wanna go climb it!” She quickly turns for the front door to our apartment, no shoes on, no regard for what I asked of her. I try to stand and protest, but I only fall off the couch and knock over my water jug. 

“Mia, don’t! You’re not safe!” I shout between coughs. 

“I’m fine, Jackie! It will be fun!” Mia says as she leaves, slamming the door behind her. I don’t have the energy to get up, let alone follow her. I can’t even turn my head to look at the tree outside. I just lay until sleep takes me. Maybe it took minutes, but it felt like days. 

I have weird dreams. A nightmare. I feel small. I feel my arms being pulled. I feel something like a treadmill beneath my feet making me run. I’m blind. I can’t see anything. I can’t hear anything. I can’t smell anything. But I can feel someone pulling me, moving me, and I don’t like it. I keep wanting to wake up, yet I can’t. 

Eventually I do come back to myself, early in the morning before the sun has risen. The carpet is wet beneath my face from drool. It’s wet beneath my stomach from the water jug. I push myself off the ground and stand. My muscles aren’t aching anymore. My throat doesn’t hurt either. These brief fits of feeling better after waking up when sick don’t last very long, so I’d better use it while I can and find Mia. 

I have a flashlight in the utility drawer of the kitchen. I step to go get it, but the plastic boot weighs me down and slams into the leg of the coffee table. Damn thing. My tendon doesn’t seem to be hurting anymore, either. I pull at the straps of the boot and take the whole thing off, standing back on my bare foot. It feels fine now. I take the flashlight and rush down to the grove. 

The lights covering the tree have turned off at this point, so the hedged area is rather dark. I shine my light around and call Mia’s name. No sign of her. What did she say she wanted to do, climb the tree? That was hours ago, so there is surely no way… I check anyway, and scan the branches with the light. 

I find her. She isn’t moving. Her arms and legs are wrapped around a thick branch, contorted and pretzeled into knots. Her mouth is biting onto a smaller branch, her teeth somehow breaking through the bark and locked in. Her skin is pale and her cheeks are gaunt, devoid of any moisture, just a husk. Her eyes are gone. There are just black holes with tall, brown flanges growing out from them. The flanges also sprout out from her nose and the sides of her mouth. As my light shines on her face, the light catches little yellow specks floating off the flanges, carried by the wind. 

I take a step back and drop the flashlight. It hits me right in the toes. I don't feel it. 

“Jesus… Mia…” I say out loud. I don’t expect a response, yet I get one. Inside my head. 

“I’m fine, Jackie.”