The Bat
There are not a lot of fancy furnishings in a dorm; sometimes there is a shelf someone brought along with their mini-fridge or perhaps a comfy chair, but most of the furniture is used and worn down by students before them. In this particular room, all of the original furnishings are in place. The desk is stained as well as the chair, and the current occupants of the room have done their best to put everything into its best arrangement. The walls are mostly bare aside from a couple cards from home carefully tacked onto the provided strip of cork board, and the room would feel overwhelmingly empty if not for the abundance of colored lights and the mismatching rug on the cold floors. A single ancient mirror dangles from a thin wire above a cluttered desk full of pictures and books. The pictures are of friends; snapshots of the group doing musical performances or other little activities like shopping or going out to lunch.
However, the point that draws the most attention at the desk is not the mess upon it or the pictures, but the small stuffed bat that hangs above it. Attached to the side of the mirror is a medium sized, hot pink, clip light whose purpose is to light up the desk in a way the fixed room light could not. On the neck of the lamp is where the bat hangs, wings wrapped unnaturally around it as if holding on for dear life. A traditional, living bat would wrap around the thin, flexible neck with its feet. Instead, this one has been attached to the lamp in a sort of hug, both of its wings velcroed together.
Something about the bat is both life like and overwhelmingly fake. Its eyes are a deep, shiny black with auburn rings that remain permanently open. The nose has long fallen off since its production, but the indent where the plastic nub had been sewn remains, along with the carefully stitched mouth. Small ears point from the top of the head which lies closest to the lamp head, and one is able to see the parts of the cheap felt fabric which has been worn thin and those that are still thick through the illumination of the light. The rest of the bat is a varying shade of tan, much like coffee that has a tad too much cream, made of a nicer cotton material. The wings are the darkest shade and have the barest details of a bat’s wings stitched into them.
Everyday it hangs over the desk like some sort of guardian. Many who come in and out of the room don’t even notice it, but the roommate will glance at it every once in awhile. He doesn’t ever ask after it, however, and it continues to be a silent question. Only one person has ever bothered to touch it recently, a single finger down the head from between the ears to the absent nose. Occasionally she will take it down to hug it, trapping the little thing between her thick arms and chest. She only holds it for a few moments before wrapping it back around the extension of the lamp, snapping the velcro pieces full of string and hair from its age together and letting it hang back in silence.