The Roommate

            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. 

                      

On Guaynabo, The Illuminated City of Puerto Rico

            “How did your maid treat you?” asked the nimble professor.  He was aged, crooked from the head to his sacral curve.  He waded down but he smiled gingerly at his students, encircling him.  “Alba, how did your maid treat you?” he asked cunningly, seeing if he could get his desired answer. 

            “I never had a maid,” she responded, looking sideways to confirm that no other person acted otherwise.  She was shy, and for a moment thought wealthy students surrounded her and she feared she was the only exception.  But a firmer looking classmate agreed, stating that no one had maids these days, at least not like J.D. Salinger proposed in his Nine Stories. 

            In unison, bursts of anger and repulsion resounded from the class.  Many shouted but Roberto was the only one to speak clearly enough for me to hear.  He said, “We’re not Guaynabitos!  You know, rich kids!”  As he splattered his comment, my mind went blank with repulsion.  Well, unfortunately I am your biased narrator.  Now, Roberto will tell you that the streets from Guaynabo are crowded with wealthy, high-class executives whose only funk in life is that the new Mercedes did not come in blue.  But, I will tell you contrary.

            I never had a maid, though I wanted to say that I did in front of the class.  In fact, after the class finished the unified commotion, I rather hoped Prof. Fiet would ask me the same question.  That way, I could have given them rather a nice shock.  But then I remembered that earlier in the period, the professor had asked me directly in front of the class if there had been any homework.  Unfortunately, I was the only one who had done it and therefore in a moment’s notice I became the teacher’s pet while everyone glared at him as he emphasized everyone’s mistake by inquiring personally if they had prepared the work.  So, I think it was best that, on top of being teacher’s pet, I was not rich girl.

            Guaynabo is insulted constantly.  The phrase Guaynabito is used constantly all over the Island.  Lately, the prejudiced word has evolved into Guaynabicha, a hybrid from the words Guaynabo and bitch.  People joke that the municipal money in Guaynabo is spent mostly buying palm trees and painting sidewalks.  But Guayanbo is much more than that.  It is the city that bred me, cultured me, and educated me.  I grew up in Garden Hills, where the sidewalks are for joggers and the circular streets are plenty. 

We are people with big personalities…we are persistent and we often have the most success.  But, contrary to common belief, Guaynabo’s citizens earn their happiness—we work hard and we struggle, just like everyone else.  We just attract exceptionally good people…mothers who are always in PTA meetings, fathers who lift away the obstacles for his family, women who can teach Chanel a thing or two…and even men who resemble Roman gods.  Our students were not enrolled in the best schools of the Island; they made them.  Our houses are big…the bigger to fit our thriving personalities!  We are a collection of happy people, from Torrimar to Paseos.  Why does the rest of Puerto Rico loathe us?  Have they forgotten the historical importance of Caparra?  They do not understand; Guaynabo is a hybrid of Latino pride and North American precision.  Then…if we are so good, what is the point of residing in the hatred?  Why do they wallow in prejudice?  We are Puerto Ricans!  Or at least we used to be.  Call me a Guaynabicha one more time…I dare you.