I had just
arrived in my dorm on a rainy August morning, ready a new beginning, otherwise
known as a new semester. I was so happy
to be away from home, fleeing from my responsibilities, from my overwhelming
family. I was going to miss my cat the
most, I knew. She was orange and white,
and sort of snobbish-looking. She was
the laziest thing I had ever set my eyes on.
I would miss her, but it eased my mind to know that I would see her
every other weekend.
As I walked
by the hallway towards my assigned room, a malodor seemed to follow me, as if
derailing my thoughts into it. I could
think only of it and how odd it was that this odor remained following me, as I
trotted forward towards my new destiny.
It stunk of death and sweat. I
got closer and closer, and suddenly I could hear screams of terror coming from
inside my new room! I swung the door
open furiously and to my surprise, instead of a torture chamber, I found a stately-pleasure
dome! I could only see body parts and
limbs entangled within each other in a reverie of gusto! Screaming while throwing their heads back
with pleasure, only the man—presumably my new roommate—seemed at all to notice
my presence. He glared up at me as he
devoured one of the women’s necks and stuck himself into her with the greatest
dominion I had ever seen. I was shocked
and immediately hurried out of the room, slamming the door as I gripped my
resounding chest. What had I just
witnessed?
I returned a
little after nine o’clock to my dorm, fearful that I would again find my
roommate grasped within a myriad of women and that so it would be for the rest
of the semester. But as I twisted the
doorknob and made my way in, I found the room completely empty. The suitcases I had left behind in my hurry
had been neatly placed on the very top of my cot. The room had been organized and one could
barely tell it was the same room I had beheld in a frenzy of skin and squeals. My eyes wandered around towards my roommate’s
half of the room and what I saw was an organized yet peculiar set of
belongings. I beheld glass cases, in
which were preserved butterflies, about twenty, all of different colors—splendid
hues that ranged from the deepest blue to the brightest yellow. Maybe
he’s into Biology, I thought, as I scrutinized the rest of his
belongings.
As I loomed
over his leather-bound book collection, the doorknob shook, and my roommate
swung the door ajar, revealing his large, imposing stature. He looked over to where I was standing,
realizing that I had been snooping his stuff.
Yet he simply shrugged his shoulders and walked over to his bed, saying
not a word.
That first night,
I had an uneasy feeling in my sleep—I swayed back and forth between the sheets,
finding no comfort, no consolation. I
did not know anything about my roommate, the person residing so near me—the
thought drove me mad with fear. Who was he?
The
next few weeks following the beginning of term were similar—we spoke not and I
would come into the room in the most inopportune moments. Once I walked in and he was staring at a
trembling dog, just glaring at him. Confused,
I walked out and, upon returning, the dog was gone. I had the intrepidness of inquiring about it as
he lay studying in his desk. He simply
responded with a slouch of his shoulders as he sought out a pen and paper. He wrote vigorously for about an hour until,
presumably getting bored, he rose with a start, lay down on the bed and shut
his eyes. When I woke up that morning,
he was in the exact same position I had last seen him—he had not stirred, not
even an inch. I tried not to think of
him, but even his ghastly stench followed me.
It was all over me when I woke, as if he had been near me in my sleep.
One dreadful
evening, while I lay in a most harrowing reverie, I felt something trickle down
my unwary face. I sensed the warmth of a
being suspended over me, scrutinizing me with a touch. As I felt the move of a finger reach over my
throat, the hairs in the back of my neck stood on end and I wheezed from
fear. The fingers twitched, wrapping
themselves over my neck, gripping and squeezing malignantly my every
fiber. I tried to breathe but my breath
was lost in a frenzy of exasperation, turning into an animalistic panting that
overpowered the room with echoes of dread and horror. My eyes shot open—there was no one, nothing,
staring back at me. I, in fact, was
alone in that cursed room! My heart was
pounding as I examined my surroundings.
In the very darkest corner, next to the unlit floor lamp, it gawked at
me. The whites of its eyes fixed upon my
quivering body. Oh God, you would not
believe, my friend, the dread I felt interred within my very bones!
The fiend
crawled towards me in all four limbs as I staggered back into my bed, hiding
under the covers like a child masking itself from el Cuco. For a moment, as I muttered obscenities in
the general direction of the situation, I felt the room grow quite, still. I’m
dreaming, thought I. Slowly, I
lowered the covers inch by inch. I
screeched in terror as my vision revealed the brute over me, salivating,
hankering for my blood.
He leaped on
top of me, driving its fangs into my skin, splintering it from my horrified
figure. I felt the sting as my skin was
torn off from me. I felt him chewing me,
savoring me like a delectable dish hardly ever served; I was his delicacy. My heart raced as I struggled under his grip,
under the biting, mastication, relishing of my meat. But whatever my exertion of force, his was
double! Whenever I writhed under his
dominion, he need only smash his fist against my head and I was still. He devoured me.
It lifted
itself from my ruined façade that gushed and spewed black torrents of blood;
the floors, the mattress—everything was covered in my blood. The fiend admired
its achievement—a wreckage of bone, muscle and torn skin. One of my eyeballs hung low beside my cheek,
held on only by a small strand of muscle and tissue. He passed his rouged
tongue by the corner of his mouth in order to lick off a string of carnage
hanging from it, savoring the last bit of the feast.
Qui
suis-je? A motionless, still, lifeless, cadaver. He carried me off into the night, burying my
few remains in the neighboring wasteland of Río Piedras. No one ever found out what became of me, my
friend. Except you.
