Half the Rent, All the Terror

Rent in SoHo was demonic. Not in the cutesy “New York is hell” kind of way, but in the very real, very soul-devouring sense. Isabel Navarro had been living off boxed mac and cheese and dreams since her last roommate moved out—lured away by a boyfriend with a brownstone in Park Slope and a working dishwasher. Traitor.

Isabel, a 29-year-old social media manager by day and wine mom-in-training by night, had done the math six times. She couldn’t swing the place solo. Not with rent going up another $450 next month. So she did the unthinkable. She posted an ad online:

ISO roommate for 2BR/1BA in SoHo. Must love dogs (I don’t have one, I just hope we get one eventually), not allergic to sarcasm, and willing to pay half. Artists, weirdos, and tragic poets welcome. Serial killers and vampires need not apply.

She chuckled as she typed that last bit. "With my luck, I’ll probably get a vampire."

She should’ve knocked on wood.

The email came the next day. Subject: Re: Apartment Availability

Hello Isabel,

I saw your listing and I would love to see the place. I have recently moved from Europe and am in need of lodging. I am quiet, clean, and respectful. I don’t mind if you have a dog. I will not be bringing one. Would tomorrow at 7:30 pm work for a visit?

Her name was Lina Dvorak, and her profile photo was—well, unsettling. Pale skin. Dark hair. Old-world kind of pretty, like someone had tried to AI-generate a Czech duchess from 1864. She looked like she should be holding a goblet and a grudge.

Still. Rent was rent.

Isabel agreed to meet.

Lina arrived exactly at 7:30 p.m.

She didn’t knock. She stood at the threshold and, with perfect posture and a strange sort of formality, asked, “May I come in?”

Isabel blinked. “Uh. Sure?”

The moment Lina stepped over the threshold, Isabel’s stomach twisted. Something primal, something instinctual deep in her gut hissed wrong, but she smiled anyway and gave the tour.

Lina nodded thoughtfully at the kitchen, peered into the bathroom like she was evaluating a crypt, and lingered in the empty bedroom with a satisfied sigh. “This will do.”

She signed the lease that night.

It didn’t take long for the weirdness to start.

First came the curtains.

Lina brought in heavy velvet drapes—midnight blue and deep burgundy—and installed them over every window in the apartment, including the tiny kitchen one above the sink. Natural light became a memory. Isabel swore she hadn’t seen her own shadow in days.

“Sensitive eyes,” Lina explained with a tight smile. “Sunlight gives me headaches.”

Then there were the dates.

Lina brought home different people every few days. Always after sunset. Isabel would hear soft laughter and footsteps heading into Lina’s room, followed by hours of silence. In the morning, her “guests” left looking like extras from a Victorian sanatorium—ashen, dazed, blinking at the sky like they hadn’t seen it in a decade.

“Fun night?” Isabel once asked one of them, a guy in a Metallica T-shirt swaying unsteadily toward the door.

“Huh?” he muttered, lips pale and cracked. “What day is it?”

Isabel made a mental note to buy pepper spray.

Then came the food thing.

Isabel ordered pizza and wings one night, laid out paper plates, and invited Lina to join her.

Lina sat down at the table with a Victorian silver place setting. Forks, knives, spoons in sizes Isabel didn’t even recognize. She cut a wing delicately with a tiny serrated blade and chewed it like it might bite back.

When Isabel offered garlic knots, Lina winced and pushed her chair back.

“I’m… allergic,” she said quietly. “Terribly so.”

Then came the kicker.

One evening, while reorganizing the fridge, Isabel reached for a glass bottle labeled “Lina’s Milk” in blood-red Sharpie. The glass was old-fashioned, the liquid inside opaque and reddish—not quite milk, not quite juice.

Isabel barely brushed the bottle before a cold voice called out from behind her.

“Don’t touch that.”

She turned to find Lina standing silently in the hallway, eyes darker than ever. Not angry. Just… there. Like a statue that had moved when you weren’t looking.

“Right. Sorry,” Isabel muttered, shoving it back in place and closing the fridge.

That night, she dreamt of fangs and freezing water.

A week later, things boiled over.

Isabel’s best friend, Jules, came over for wine and ranting. As they sat on the couch, drinking Pinot and watching old rom-coms, Jules caught a glimpse of Lina’s door creaking open. From inside, a pale hand emerged. It gently plucked the corkscrew off the counter and vanished again.

Jules blinked. “Your roommate gives me Van Helsing vibes.”

“Please don’t say that word in this apartment,” Isabel muttered.

Jules leaned in. “You don’t think she’s… you know. Actually…”

Isabel laughed. Too hard. Too high-pitched. “Vampires don’t exist. She’s just… European.”

But after Jules left, Isabel started Googling. “Signs your roommate is a vampire.” “Why do my roommate’s dates look like cryptkeepers?” “Garlic allergy vampire or medical issue?”

She fell asleep at her laptop, haunted by forums filled with tinfoil-hat theories and one too many Romanian folktales.

The breaking point came on a Friday night.

Lina brought home a girl with blue hair and septum rings. Isabel stayed up, scrolling through TikToks and pretending not to listen. Hours passed. Midnight hit. The apartment went quiet.

At 3 a.m., Isabel heard a whisper through the wall. A voice—not Lina’s—murmuring, “No, please, I changed my mind…”

Isabel jumped out of bed and ran to Lina’s door. It was locked.

She knocked. “Lina? Hey, is everything okay in there?”

No answer.

She banged harder. “Lina?!”

Footsteps. Then the sound of something dragging.

When the door opened, Lina stood there—impossibly calm. Her lips were slightly redder than usual.

“She’s sleeping,” she said. “A bit of a fainting spell. Too much to drink.”

“You’re hurting people,” Isabel said, heart pounding. “I don’t know what you’re doing, but it’s not right.”

Lina’s eyes glinted. “They come to me willingly. What happens after… is simply nature.”

“You’re a vampire.”

Silence.

Then: “I prefer the term nocturnal immortal.”

Isabel stumbled back.

She tried to evict her.

But Lina had paid her share of the rent early—in cash, in crisp bills that smelled faintly of incense and something older. There was no legal reason to kick her out. And besides… who would believe her?

“My roommate’s a vampire,” she told her landlord.

He laughed. “I once rented to a guy who collected mannequin heads. Be glad she doesn’t leave those in the living room.”

Isabel tried garlic. Holy water. Even ordered a dozen crucifixes from Amazon.

Lina smirked at them.

“You think those work on real monsters?” she whispered, walking past.

That night, all the crucifixes were gone.

Eventually, Isabel stopped bringing friends over. She stopped dating. She stopped opening the curtains, because what was the point?

She and Lina coexisted—like a normal roommate situation, if one roommate was a 300-year-old creature of the night and the other was a perpetually sleep-deprived millennial with caffeine dependency and a slow-burning existential crisis.

But something inside Isabel began to shift.

She started listening. Watching.

Lina never hurt her. Never even tried. If anything, she was oddly protective.

“Why me?” Isabel asked one night over tea. “Why this apartment?”

Lina stirred her cup—black as ink, no sugar. “Because you said no vampires allowed.”

“That makes zero sense.”

“On the contrary. Your invitation was sealed by denial. And I… am drawn to contradictions.”

“You’re insane.”

“I’m very old. There’s a difference.”

One night, Lina sat down beside her and asked, “Would you like to know what I remember most?”

Isabel, half-asleep, nodded.

“The first time I saw a sunrise. I was seven. My brother held my hand. We stood in the Carpathians. The sky was lavender and gold. I didn’t know it would be my last.”

There was a pause.

“I miss it.”

For the first time, Isabel saw her not as a monster, but as a woman—cursed, exiled from the light.

“I could open the curtains tomorrow,” Isabel said softly.

Lina looked away. “I wouldn’t survive it.”

They sat in silence, side by side.

Time passed. Months melted together.

And something strange happened.

They became friends.

Lina taught Isabel how to make blood sausage from scratch (though she declined to sample it). Isabel taught Lina how to order coffee from a bodega without scaring the barista. They shared a calendar—Lina marked off blood donations and Isabel tracked deadlines. It was… bizarrely normal.

But Isabel never stopped wondering: What happens when Lina decides to feed on someone who doesn't come willingly? What happens when she loses control?

Then one day, Lina didn’t come home.

A full day passed. Then two. Then three.

Isabel filed a missing person report, but they barely took her seriously.

On the fifth day, the lock on the front door clicked at midnight.

Lina stumbled in, cloak torn, skin scorched, eyes wild.

“What happened?” Isabel cried, helping her to the couch.

“Vatican,” Lina rasped. “Hunters. They’ve returned.”

Isabel froze. “You mean… like actual…?”

Lina nodded. “They found me. They always do.”

That night, Isabel hid her.

She pulled down the holy symbols. Burned the garlic. Drew blackout curtains tighter than ever.

She protected her vampire roommate.

It wasn’t the future she had imagined.

It wasn’t safe. Or easy.

But rent in SoHo was still hell, and Isabel had decided: if she was going to survive this city, she needed someone who knew how to survive worse.

Besides—her luck had always been terrible.

But maybe, just maybe, it brought her the roommate she never knew she needed.

Even if she kept blood in the fridge.

Even if she stole corkscrews at midnight.

Even if she didn’t know how to eat pizza right.

They made it work.

And in New York?

That was the closest thing to a miracle. Even if that miracle came in the form of a nightmare.