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I decided to compromise and stay in the living room, my boxes piled beside me on the floor by the couch. My cards were already out on the table. I didn’t see any reason to be hanging around outside or in the corridor since I was already there, but I decided not to cross the line into the bedrooms or bathroom before making proper introductions. It was only polite.
Digging through my backpack, I excavated the battered copy of I Await the Devil’s Coming and awaited the arrival of my new roommate.
I hadn’t heard the shower, but I’d heard the door. Looking up in time to see Rachel, the girl from class and the fountain, stride in, clad in nothing but a towel. Her skin was still carrying the sheen of a recent shower. That’s what I had smelled. Her shampoo and whatever else she used.
I kind of expected a scream. Perfectly understandable under the circumstances. Instead, I was faced with something much worse. A cold, silent, terror. Like I was going to brutally rape and torture her before carrying her remains out in a suitcase the next morning Henry Lee Lucas style.
“Hi,” I tried.
Silence. Her expression did not move one inch. A tear beginning to roll down her cheek. I pulled out my keys and held them up as though trying to amuse an infant.
“I’m your new roommate. Because of the new regulations. Crazy, hey?”
Without a word, she backed away and burst into a run, going into what I assumed to be her bedroom. The door slamming so hard the windows in the living room shook.
I was surprised by her reaction but not furious. People tended to fear things that were different, and I was about as different as it was possible to get. Not in the usual ways people tried to distinguish themselves. By what they wore, or the music they liked or who they slept with.
Even politics has become a mark of pride. The two sides playing off each other as though there was that much of a difference between cats and dogs. Even the self-proclaimed ‘anarchists’ were picking from the set menu of options like they were ordering Chinese. All the ‘choices’ pre-set, even among the ‘deviants.’
I was deviant in a different way. Inside the head. My thoughts on the universe and humanity’s place in it, tended not to match up with the consensus. Therefore, very little of what I thought did either.
Giving it a respectable amount of time, I put my pack back on and started hauling boxes to the room where the door wasn’t closed. It was about twice as much space I needed, the bed roughly double the size of the one in cluster housing. I could pull it out from the wall a little and run laps around it. Burning a fair few calories in the process. At least I could if I ate many. By circumstance more than intent I’d gotten used to about fifteen hundred calories a day. Which was how I managed to style so athletic looking despite not having kicked a ball in my life.
I found a place for everything. Using the nightstand, which was similar to the one in cluster housing. There wasn’t a bookshelf but there was a desk, so I lined them up across the back of it. Using two of the heavier, hardcover edition laid flat as bookends
With everything else where it needed to be, there was only one last order of business. Raise the flag and claim my territory, letting my intentions be known. The tacks going into each of the four corners with a satisfying sound.
I backed up a bit to take in the glory of the duochrome Old Glory. The cause of more than one fight back when I had it hung as a curtain in my bedroom window at home. Indoctrinated losers literally knocking on the door wanting to fight me. Not getting the joke. Seeming to get even more upset after I explained it.
I was going to stay. It was where I was put and I wasn’t leaving. My presence upset Rachel, and even if I didn’t know why, I had enough empathy in my dark little briquette of a heart to not want to provoke her. We would just have to steer clear of each other for a while. How hard could it be?Chapter Seven - RachelI was frozen. Emotions completely shutdown. Better than letting what might happen out. The white lights I was focusing on in my mind getting so bright it was nearly blinding. My body didn’t quite get the memo and the tear started to fall. I could sense a tear rolling down my cheek.
I wanted to wipe it away but that would require acknowledging it was there in the first place. Acknowledging my weakness. I had to be brave even though I didn’t feel it at all. There was no way I was going to give him even more advantages than the ones he already had.
