I used to have a roommate, that is, until I killed her. Now she’s unrecognizable with her skin melting off her bones and muscles, only tufts of hair left on her head, and her pose losing its shape. Her eyes, however, taunt me, reminding me of her previous humanity. Once big and bright hazel doe eyes are now dull and ugly puke to me.
Before Fall Break, she was perfectly fine, unconventional hobbies and interests but kind and chatty. However, when I returned to campus after the Fall Break, she was a completely different person. Upon coming back, I opened our door to find the lights off, her stuff strewn across the floor, and spiderwebs and flies everywhere. There was rotten fruit on the window sill, on her bed, and one on the floor. She was bent over, eating the rotten apple on the floor, covered in fruit flies like a dog eating steak, foaming at the mouth and drooling. She didn’t notice me looming over her so I ran out of there to puke in the nearby toilet. Over the following days, she became even more disturbing — the hallowing of her body, the smell, the lack of any motor skills. I tried desperately to get rid of the flies, the fruit, and the spiderwebs, but every time they came back even worse. Friends had texted me to ask what was going on, she barely talked to anyone and she stopped going to classes. I didn’t know what to say. How could I explain what was going on? How could I explain how unhuman she was?
One night, under a spell of lucid dreaming, I dreamt that my roommate loomed over my body, her hot breath against my face. I heard her hiss, a click. She grabbed my arm and my face in her cold bony hands, dragging her nails across my skin. She spat out spider silk from her mouth and threaded it on top of me, trying to hold me to the bed. I felt the cool fibers over me as well as a gurgling sound as she spat more silk out. My throat ached. I rubbed my eyes and opened my eyes in abject horror as my dream was actually a reality. I knew something bad would have happened to me if I didn’t do something quick, so I kicked her off my bed and struggled out of the web she tried to trap me in. She weighed nothing, skin and bones, tumbling right out of my bed with a thump and a crack. As I freed myself, I grabbed something nearby on my nightstand: a hefty textbook on insects. I felt my vision blur as I began to hit her against the head with it. I threw her against the wall and I heard a blood-curdling scream as well as a crack. She let out a final gurgle before she slumped against the wall, blood dripping everywhere and coating everything. After a last convulsion, I turned away but still I saw, from her eye socket, a large black spider crawled out and onto her head.
I realized then that my roommate was dead, and had been dead for a while, since Fall Break. Yet I was the one to truly kill her, kill her body in the eyes of everyone around me and the law. As it came toward me I slammed my textbook against it, angry at what it had done to me. Afterwards, I dug its body into the carpet with a slippered foot.
I kept her body where it lay and didn’t bother to clean or dispose of it or the blood. The rotten fruit, the webs — they are here too. It all haunts me, the spider and what happened to Sara.
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