Roommate

I woke up the same as always, a tug-of-war with the promise of the day versus the comfort of my slumber. Rounds one and two of the game resulted in a draw, with sleep winning out in round three. The game lasted long enough that the world of my dream had flitted away leaving only dissonant puzzle pieces. The back of the head of a ginger boy, my bloody hands with no wounds, the high-pitch yap of a small dog. I tried to gather the pieces with a sudden urgency but they slipped through my fingers like sand. There was a weight in my stomach the size of a bowling ball. The pressure in my sinuses warned me of rain. My sheets seemed uneven and scratchy. I sat up with a start. I had slept for long enough. 

The bed is perfectly centered in the room with none of it's four edges tangent to any of the eight walls. The walls, painted a sort of light red, angle inward on a curve meeting at a single point at the top. The walls are blank because the art that had hung there deeply distrurbed me and the paintings now rest in a pile stacked face-down under-neath the foot of my bed. Thinking of them, the images come back to me in a nauseating wave. 

A man in uniform, a soldier of some sort, riding a black horse yet both him and the horse had holes where the eyes should be. A different horse, this one speckled grey, drinking from a red pond, a pond in which a smaller version of the same horse, presumably its kin, was bleeding into. There were six more paintings of the mutilated horse variety, one for each wall. 

I couldn’t understand the usefulness of the art. They hung eight paintings in the room and yet they couldn’t bother with a window or a door. I think those two words everyday but I can’t for the life of me figure out what they mean or how I know them. Everyday I ask myself, what is a window? What is a door? Why do I seem to think they would be useful in my situation? Yet, I can never come to a conclusion. How can I when nothing has changed. 

My legs swing over the edge of the white bed with white bedding and my feet find the cool white tiled floor. I drape a white sheet around myself and walk over to the white vanity slowly to abate the wind chill. How rude of them to have only dressed me in such a petite outfit. Simple cotton bloomers and a simple cotton tunic provide little protection from the glacial air. 

The vanity mirror is where I spend the majority of my hours because, when I peer in, I see someone I do not recognize staring back at me. It's an odd thing to not know your roommate. I am embarrassed to change into my other tunic in fear that she is watching. Every time I look at her, she's looking straight at me which leads me to believe she's always watching. 

On the first day, I had climbed on the vanity in order to remove the bloody horse painting from the wall above it which I performed with ease. When it came to removing the vanity, however, every time i would pull away from the wall, the girl in the mirror would pull towards the wall resulting in a net movement of zero. When I pulled away, she greeted me with this look of crazed rage. I crawled under the vanity in fear and lay there with my muscles clenched themselves for three slumbers. 

When I had mustered up the courage (and had developed a severe kink in my neck), I decided it was time to get up and I focused on relaxing my face so as not to come off as a threat. I wrapped my fingers weakly around the table top of the vanity and peaked just the top of my forehead into my roommate's view. Oddly enough, I could see only the top of her forehead meaning she was doing the same. I peeked up a little higher and so did she. Her eyes were wide and wet with fear. I began to laugh. She was scared of me! I released the fear in my face (and she did, too) and we both began to laugh. I shared with her a sympathetic look, apologizing for trying to remove her vanity and she apologized to me for not letting me remove her vanity. This exchange lifted a great tension from our relationship, that is for certain, but she would still have to work to gain my trust. 

Every day since, I wake up, I sit at the vanity and I get to know her. She seems nice enough but I am skeptical that her nice-ness is motivated by some closeted desire. Does she want my bed? Why should she when she has a perfectly identical one on the other side of the glass. Maybe it's just as cold on her side of the glass and she is hoping that I share some of my blankets. Little does she know that is never going to happen. 

Every time I wake, I am a little colder than the night before. I initially jumped to the conclusion that the girl in the mirror has been stealing my blankets. Before I accused her I needed evidence. I approached the mirror cautiously and she did the same. I was shivering from the cold and she was shaking in fear, which stood out to me as peculiarly suspicious. We stood square to each other, her body blocking her bed and my body blocking her view of mine. I took tiny steps to the side hoping to coerce her into doing the same and once I had a clear view of her bed, I stood my ground and non-conspicuously counted her sheets and blankets. Five layers. I bid her good day and returned to my own bed. I started to count my own sheets and blankets, but stopped mid-count when I felt her eyes on me. I glanced back at the mirror and sure enough she was also crouched on her bed, counting her bedding, her eyes staring daggers into mine. Oh, is that how you want to play this? I asked her. I kept my eyes locked on hers as I finished counting. Five layers. I grunt. She grunts back. I guess we’re even then, we agree. We bid each other good night and climb into bed. 

I woke up, colder than ever. I feel a sharp pain in my middle section that I get quite often but have learned to ignore. I greet the girl in the mirror and it's the first time I noticed how small she looks, how unwell. Her skin is pulled taunt over her skeleton and her ribs and hip bones protrude out through the tunic. I wrap my hands around my thigh. With my middle fingers touching in the back, my thumbs can wrap around and touch in the front, but just barely. I look up to see the girl in the mirror performing the same measurement. 

A thought intrudes my consciousness and overcomes my whole train of thought. I want to put the girl's thigh in my mouth, chomp down on it with teeth, rip the muscle from the bone, and swallow the meat down my throat. I somehow know this will subside the pain in my stomach. 

Soon, I can’t look at her without thinking about it. And I can tell in her eyes that she's thinking it, too. That’s when I know, if I don’t do it, she will. It’s me or her. It’s her or me. 

And I am determined to survive.