"You're exactly the sort of person Veggie Tales warned me about"
I put this in the subreddit but thought tumblr might appreciate it too. funny story, Hunter in a dress is easier to draw than normal hunter apparently. ik the hair blends into the bg but I needed this out of my WIPs immediately cuz it's been sitting there since April. enjoy?
My College Roommate Does Not Keep Food In His Minifridge
By u/quemuin (that's me!). Originally posted to r/NoSleep on 09/09/2025,
One thing anybody will tell you about me is that I have always had insane luck. My parents are great, my childhood was great, my opportunities were and remain to be abundant, and I have plenty of friends. Luck has her limits, and I was sprinting to the end of my rope. I say this because last winter semester, my freshman year of college, I endured a rooming situation unlike any I’ve ever heard of.
Let me begin here; if you have any experience with higher education you would know that sleep is an absolute necessity whenever it can be afforded. Since I’m a light sleeper, I had hoped that I wouldn’t have to room with anyone. Upon meeting Dylan, I decided to be optimistic.
This whole situation is so bizarre because Dylan seemed alright at first! He was really clean, too. That was the first thing I noticed about him. His hair was neatly combed over on one side. His collared shirt was pressed. He used one of those cool professor briefcases made of leather instead of a regular backpack. I met him right after orientation, so we were outside under a clear blue sky. The sun practically glinted off his perfect, pearlescent teeth. Well, not quite perfect. He had a bit of snaggle tooth going on over his left canine. Dylan was perfect, but not too perfect. Just human enough.
Anyway, I remember his firm handshake. Web-to-web, firm but not painful. Dylan was making an exceptional first impression so far. “Hey! Good to meet you, man. Joseph, right?” he said.
“Just Joe is fine. Good to meet you too.” I replied as casually as I knew how. As much as I still hated the idea of living in the same singular room as another person for a whole year (I’m an only child… old habits die hard), I felt that I had lucked out with Dylan. He was clean, polite, and overall seemed like a pretty chill guy. I did not want him thinking I was some kind of awkward freak.
As it turns out, I wouldn’t be worrying about myself coming off freakish for much longer.
Dylan laughed stiffly and for far too long like I was a sitcom and he was a laugh track. “Yeah, man. Cool. See you later.”
Him being awkward was only the tip of the iceberg. Even though Dylan had only one class with me, I saw him manage to flirt with every girl in there and fail spectacularly every time.
His side of our tiny dorm was always clean; bed made, his side of the desk at the window always free of his books and pencils, etcetera etcetera. The strangest bit about his side of the dorm was a stainless steel minifridge he’d plugged into the wall near the door.
“I’m totally not gonna steal all your snacks, bro.” I joked when he’d brought it out of its box on move-in day.
Dylan had stiffened up, clearly uncomfortable. “I don’t put food in here.” he said sternly.
“Oh…?” I was curious.
“I’m.. uh… I’m a bio major. It’s for labs and projects and… stuff.” Dylan floundered through his explanation.
“My bad, man. That’s cool! You do you.” I said, not thinking anything of it at the time. I liked to assume the best in people. I still do.
Even with all of Dylan's weirdness, that was very tolerable compared to the other stuff. On a night I will never forget, Dylan and I were sitting in our room doing homework about two weeks into the semester. Dylan had come back earlier than myself, so he took up our only desk and only chair. This left me with my bunk or the floor, so I elected to sit cross-legged on my bottom bunk. It was nearly lights-out, so it was relatively quiet since the day was winding to a close.
The quiet didn't last for much longer.
I was so locked into writing my paper that I didn't quite register the sound at first, but it was just irregular enough to catch my attention. It was a wet sound, as if someone was digging fingers into an open wound repeatedly. This noise was accompanied by strained breathing, almost a very quiet groaning.
In a moment I knew that the only thing in the room that could be making sounds like that was Dylan. Listen, I know what this sounds like. I know I should've told him off or even straight up yelled at him, but I made the mistake of looking. It was an accident. I didn't mean to.
Dylan was shaking where he sat, head bowed. One of his hands was hiding his face, and the other was in his lap. I could see that the forearm attached to the hand in his lap was tensing repeatedly, like his hand was grabbing at… something. Since the desk was facing the window, I couldn't see exactly what he was doing, but I didn’t want to, anyway. It was just weird. The strange groaning escaping from his throat and out between his fingers was just the cherry on the top of this absurd situation. The whole picture fills me with indescribable fear even now as I recount it. I looked away again when I remembered what I had thought was happening initially, but when I replayed the scene in my mind, Dylan looked more like he was having a seizure than anything else. But, I still wasn't quite sure either way. Some people are just weird like that.
This went on for what felt like an hour, but it could have been five minutes. I tried to ignore it, but just couldn't. The fleshy squelching seemed to get louder the more I tried to get back on track with my paper. Eventually, I had had enough. Just as I opened my mouth to tell him to knock it off, he relaxed with a quiet sigh. There was a shifting of fabric, and then he was still.
Then, he did something I will never forget. After a moment, he took a glass tupperware container I did not see he had been holding before and corked it. I’m still not sure where he got the lid. Then, he got up and walked across our tiny dorm to his mini-fridge and placed the sealed container inside. He went back to his homework as if he hadn't just done the single strangest thing I'd ever seen.
It occurred to me after the fact that the container must have some organic material for him to be putting it in a minifridge. Bio major, my ass. Even if he was a bio major, I was starting to think that minifridge had nothing to do with it. My view of the container as he had been carrying it was obscured because of how he was holding it and the fact I'd been looking at it from the corner of my eye. I did not ask him about it. Not yet, anyway. It could just be some harmless little ritual. He could be donating his… stuff…. for all I knew. But, whatever it was shouldn't have happened while I was around. Half of me wanted to keep to myself with a ‘to each their own’ attitude, but the other half of me was screaming. I’ve never felt so disgustingly violated in my life before.
The next time it happened, I didn't actually see the majority of it. I was walking back to the dorm with a friend I’d made in those first weeks, and I’d had the unfortunate luck to open the door first. There Dylan was, shaking and convulsing in his chair. My body blocked Aaron, the friend in question, from seeing anything, so I was the only one who saw Dylan startle, shift around a little, and get back to chipping away at his homework. To his credit, he was at least trying to be slick about it. When he thought I was buried in my textbook, I got a clear view of a new container; the contents were translucent and clumpy. The light coming in from the window shone onto it, casting a red sheen of light through it. I wasn't able to scrutinize it long enough to tell what it actually was. I don’t know what exactly I’d seen, anyway.
In his haste to hide the evidence of what he was doing, Dylan had not noticed that he had spilled some of this mystery substance onto the carpet beneath his desk.
At that point, I remember rationalizing what I had seen. I was reasonably concerned about some kind of biohazard. The second Dylan escaped our dorm, probably to wash his hands or something, I was on the floor with paper towels looking for the spill. I could see a little wet spot which was how I was convinced I didn’t hallucinate it, but there wasn't much other substantial evidence. I even carefully pried into the carpet to see if it was just hidden, but nothing came of it. It was like the carpet had simply sucked up the stuff.
Later that evening, I was nodding off at the desk over a textbook. I was careful not to use Dylan's chair. When I could no longer hold my eyes open, I was out like a light.
I dreamt that I was back home. I was in my childhood bedroom, the too-warm light from the streetlamp jutting in through the window and the shadow of the tree just outside stark in the harsh light. As clear as day, I felt clean sheets against my skin and resistance from the blanket when I tried to turn onto my side due to my mother having tucked the bottom corners under the mattress. I always hated when she did that, but a pang of fond nostalgia hit me anyway. I was eight again and everything was right in the world.
In this state of in-between with my college dorm and my childhood bedroom, I almost drifted off into a dream within the dream. Then came the footsteps passing outside my door, which was cracked open only a couple inches.
You know how you can tell who's walking around the house just from the pattern of their footsteps? My dad's were always slightly uneven, and my mom's were steady but slow. This is why a spike of fear lodged itself in my throat; I could not identify the owner of those footsteps.
These were light and stumbling, like a toddler taking their first steps, and at the same time I understood that this thing must be far larger than a toddler. I felt these footsteps more than I could hear them. This intruder passed by my door once, made its way down to the end of the hall, and then started making its way back. Somehow, in the haze of this oddly vivid dream, I just knew that I was in danger.
The intruder made no other sound as it passed by my door again. I decided that when it started down the hall again, passed my door, and wound up with its back to me, I would make a run for it.
Sure enough, it shuffled past my door again about a minute later. I let it get to the end of the hall before I broke out of my bed, flung open the door, and ran. I tried to listen to know if it was following, but I realized I couldn't hear much of anything over my own heavy footsteps and hammering heartbeat. I made the mistake of glancing over my shoulder.
Now, I didn't see much in the half a second I was looking at it. It was dark and blurry and huge. Its eyes were scrunched shut like some newborn mammal, but its mouth hung agape. I understood at once that it was hungry.
I ran for the back door as it was easier to open than the front door in my eight-year-old body. Somehow, I escaped out into the night. As I turned back again to find out if it could open doors or not, I tripped on a root, split my skull open, and woke up.
The first thing I did was check the time; it was just three past midnight. My dorm was dark and Dylan was not back yet. The open pages of my text book were soaked in sweat.
I had this dream every night for the rest of the week. On Sunday, I'd had enough, so after chapel I decided I was going to talk to the school's resident priest. The conversation I had with him is another story entirely and ultimately did not help my situation even though the nightmares seemed to halt after that.
There’s many, many other weird stories to tell about Dylan, but I’m concerned more with the fact I saw him around campus last week when classes started up again this fall. Even though he’s someone else’s problem now, I started having that nightmare again. This is, as I say, much more concerning to me than rehashing more of what he did. Any advice would be appreciated.
