Sometimes Known as the Ghost Queen
Halfway through my first year I could no longer take living in a single occupancy room, I talked with the residence life staff and they offered me a roommate. I had to move clear across campus, out of what I had come to know of as the “safe” area, and into an area I wouldn’t even walk in the daylight.
I didn’t meet my roommate until move in day, right after semester break was over I enlisted a few friends to help me move in. They refused to go inside the building at first and only after meeting and being assured by the RA who looked like they had seen far too much.
My roommate at first didn’t seem too far from human, they seemed to only smile when someone smiled at them first. When they spoke they didn’t say “I” they said “We” and didn’t seem to notice the strange looks that others would give them when they did so.
During the rest of that year nothing happened. They wouldn’t let me line windows or doors with salt or with nails, claiming they were too clumsy and would end up stepping on the nails or that the salt was too messy and would end up all over the place.
It wasn’t until the second year when anything really happened. We had requested to be roommates with each other again and had learned each other’s full legal names. I had brought my boyfriend over to meet them, he didn’t go to the university, but he sat in on enough of my classes to have basically been a student. He was pagan, they had gotten into a conversation on his religion while i was coming back from class one day. By the time I had gotten there he was telling them about his deities of choice, which are Persephone and Hades. I had never seen them more interested in something before. They were grinning widely and nodding with understanding while he spoke.
It was at that time in which things had finally started adding up in my head, but it wasn’t until we had lost a few fish from our shared fish tank that I really thought anything of it. My roommate had started using window crayons to draw symbols on her windows after each fish was lost.
My boyfriend had been over when I had lost the second one. He had made a joking comment in an attempt to make light of the losses that caused my roommate to freeze and stare him down until he explained it was a joke and that he had meant nothing of it. They calmed and smiled a bit strangely and didn’t seem to be hung up on it. The next few times lost fish I heard them mumbling the phrase under their breath.
I had to leave the school halfway through the year, my grades had dropped low enough that I was no longer able to continue. My roommate hugged me when I left and wished me well. I moved in with my boyfriend and we have only lost two fish since, both times he sent the phrase to my now ex roommate, she responded with a winking emoji face.
I still refuse to say the phrase, those five words would only mean another pet lost and another winkie face received.
“The Ghost Queen strikes again”
x
