For context, I met Thomas when we were randomly assigned to be roommates our freshman year of college. Nothing seemed to be off with him back then - yeah, he was out a lot and came back late at night, but I always figured he was just having fun with friends. It’s not like I wasn’t doing the same.
We had four semesters of living on-campus. Two years. In that time, he never struck me as particularly eccentric. Maybe a few little things, like how he never put any food in our minifridge, but nothing that warranted genuine concern.
It wasn’t until we moved into an apartment that things started to become strange.
I moved in about a week after he did, a few days before classes were going to start. I was supposed to come in at the same time, but my aunt died and I needed to help my dad with some aftermath there. It would’ve kept me longer had the start of the semester not snuck up - but that’s beside the point.
We viewed the apartment together initially, and it was a pretty nice, cozy place. Not exactly modern, but sure as hell cheap enough to make it worth it without said price being shady. Neither of us were bothered.
But when I was finally able to move in, the place looked worse for the wear, somehow. Significant enough that I noticed immediately. The paint in some places had started chipping severely, something Thomas didn’t even react to when I pointed out. The floors were mostly fine, but a few of the boards creaked particularly loud, which I hadn’t noticed at our viewing. Again, enough that it bothered me, and still not enough for Thomas to give a damn about it.
Then there was the fact that the lock to the remaining bedroom, mine, was broken. A problem not very easily fixable on a college budget. I asked Thomas about that one, making sure he actually answered me, but he just kind of shrugged it off and told me he hadn’t noticed it.
But, still. Okay. Whatever. Weird, but probably not a big deal besides losing our security deposit. It didn’t matter.
The semester started, and the weeks progressed. And that was when I started noticing things about Thomas.
Living in an apartment instead of a dorm was the most distant he’d ever been. It’s not like he was ever super talkative, but now it seemed like he’d only glance my way and move on - unwilling to do more. In fact, he only really talked to me if it was to snap at me about being clean, or quiet.
With the former, he was only a little bit of a clean freak back in our dorm. Incessant about his own side, but he only got really pressed about it if any of my mess seeped into his. Here and now, though, it really shined through how bad it was.
He never touched my room, or anything, but the rest of the apartment had to be spotless or he’d be pissed. A few times more recently, he’s thrown out my stuff because I “hadn’t touched it in too long” whatever that means. Nothing devastating, but one of those things was a spare charger I had to dig out of the trash and then get sprayed down with Febreze for. Nothing short of annoying, is what I’m getting at here. Why he suddenly became really anal about it was anyone’s guess at that point.
As for the being quiet part, that was an entirely new issue. Thomas never gave a damn if I was loud while playing a game before, but suddenly now it was worth slamming my door open without knocking over. I asked him to maybe be a little more polite about the issue when it came up, but I was again sort of just brushed off.
Still, it rubbed me the wrong way how suddenly angry he was getting about the issue. Yes, it was my fault, and I got better about it, but what the hell was with the switch-up?
Yet, I still just wrote it off. Maybe he had some mental or emotional stuff going on he didn’t want to talk about. I could be patient with him. Sure.
But it got worse.
A roommate who clearly labels what food is his in the fridge is nothing to be mad about. Still, a few weeks into the year, I did a deep-clean of the refrigerator - one that, to be fair, I had meant to do as soon as I moved in. But, it was too late for that, and now I had to take everything out to scrub it down.
Only a few things were his, most of them in the freezer. I took them out, setting them aside to clean it up quickly so nothing went bad. Probably no reason to worry about that, but whatever. Once I was done, I was checking over everything as I put it back in when I noticed something with his name on it had an especially pungent smell.
It was awful enough that it made my nose instinctively wrinkle up. I put it back down, hastily shoving everything else back into the fridge before turning to it.
Nothing really weird, just a piece of meat in tight saran wrap that looked to be still a little bloody. Frowning, I started unwrapping it to make sure Thomas hadn’t put rotten meat in the freezer. The odor only got more foul as I did. It was a smell difficult to describe; though it was what I was worried about, it didn’t smell like rotting meat. It just smelled like death.
Before I actually unwrapped the whole thing - it had a LOT of layers, something I only questioned after the fact - Thomas came home and stopped dead in the doorway.
“Why are you touching my shit?” He stormed over after a second, snatching the meat off the table and immediately starting to re-wrap it. His hands were shaking.
“It smells disgusting, man,” I told him, stepping back a little. “I wanted to check it wasn’t rotten.”
“It’s not. I’m on a diet,” He snapped. “Don’t take my food.”
“I wasn’t taking it!” I hissed back.
“Don’t touch it!” Thomas stuffed the meat back into the freezer at that, then swiftly retreated to his room - barely opening the door and sliding through. Leaving me to scrub my hands of that horrible stench.
It was then that I really got suspicious of Thomas. The other weird things layered onto that incident that made me start observing him closer.
I wasn’t trying to stalk my roommate by any means, but looking past the surface made me notice some more things. How half the creaking boards were in front of his room, how he always slipped into his room like he was hiding something in there, that most of his labeled food had that same disgusting odor of death when I checked. Well, sniff tested them. After the first time I was a little scared to unwrap another one.
Maybe it was stupid, but I’d read online somewhere that a reason for creaking floorboards could be that they had recently been lifted up. So another little investigation started, this one intentional. When Thomas left for class I started checking under the boards - and it wasn’t long before I turned up something.
A handsaw.
Off-putting thing to be hidden under my feet, to say the least. It looked pretty well-worn. Clean, but used. Aside from the saw, lifting the board let me see a mysterious reddish brown blotch stained into the underside of it.
That was enough for me to put the board back and stop thinking about it for now. At least, until I could come up with a plan.
I had a film major buddy, and I managed to convince him to let me use an old video camera of his for science. I hid it in a plant, and aimed it at the door to Thomas’s bedroom at leg level. Set up to stay at said friend’s for the night, and then let it play out.
In hindsight, a mediocre video camera was a really shitty pick for this, but it did the job enough. I didn’t get a live feed or anything, and I was left to wallow in anxiety the whole night, but when I got back while Thomas was out the next day I could dig the camera out and watch what it showed me. After charging it, anyway.
It caught eight hours of footage before dying. Most of it was nothing, which I sped through until Thomas was suddenly pulling up the floorboard. I jumped back and let the video play.
Thomas walked into frame, emotionlessly kneeling down and yanking the floorboard up. Pulling the handsaw out and putting it down again. He walked into his room, seemingly stowing it away, then left again for another hour or so.
When he came back, there was a woman our age with him. They were talking quietly enough that the video camera didn’t pick up the words, but I could make a guess what it was about. They disappeared into his bedroom, the lock clicking loudly. It remained quiet for another moment, before the worst, most horribly unsurprising sound met my ears.
A woman’s scream being cut short.
I could barely watch the next two hours of footage, all that remained before the camera died. But I did. I sat there in horror watching Thomas’s legs walk between his bedroom, the kitchen, and the door over and over again. Bringing things. Wrapping up pieces of meat. At one point near the end, stopping to sit at the table and eat something. I could only guess what.
I think typing this out has helped me process it a little, but Thomas is going to be home from his class soon. I’m kind of terrified to leave the room when he’s here. I’m worried he knows that I’ve got him figured out, or at least under enough suspicion to warrant police involvement.
I can’t confront him. That’s a horrible idea. But I think I hear his keys jingling, so I’m going to have to pass him if I want to go to the cops.
Wish me luck. If there’s no update, well, you know what happened to me.