“Dammit!”
“What’s wrong?”
“My clothes! They’re ruined!” I fished a red piece of paper out of the washing machine. Be it a ticket or flyer, it was now wet, crumpled, and shredded.
Solange came to my side. Her perfume, a blend of sandalwood and something I could not put my nose on, overwhelmed even the smell of laundry detergent. She stunk up the whole apartment with it, just like her strange foods.
“Lucky for you, you look fabulous in pink.” Solange offered me a bright smile, showing me a perfect set of white teeth. I hid a grimace.
“Gee, thanks.”
Solange’s smile fell. “No! I didn’t mean it like that. Just trying to make you feel better, Samantha. Maybe we can go shopping, get you some new clothes? We can make a day of it.”
I told her maybe. She slithered back to the couch like a snake, and I escaped to my bedroom, shutting my blinds to keep the sun out. I called my mom.
“Sweetheart, we’ll send some extra spending cash this month. But these things happen. It was just an accident. Remember that time your sister –”
“Mom, I think she did it on purpose!”
The woman paused on the other end. “Do you have any proof? Any reason to think your roommate sabotaged your laundry?”
I thought hard, digging, searching. “No. But I was out all morning. She was the only one here. And-and she’s still putting those annoying sticky notes on everything!”
I heard another sigh. “Sam, you’ve got to get along with Solange. She’s a good tenant. She doesn’t cause any trouble other than those stupid sticky notes you’ve been obsessing about. Have you been getting enough sleep, honey? Are you having bad dreams again? You know you can talk to me about anything.”
Our conversation died shortly after.
Outside my bedroom, Solange was still on the couch. I cleared my throat.
“I was wondering if I could talk to you about—”
“My notes,” she said, already aware.
“Maybe you can try to learn French another way? Instead of labeling everything in the house?” I went to the fridge where a bright orange sticky note displayed a word I could not read. “What’s this say? It doesn’t look French.”
Solange didn’t respond. She watched me with those big brown eyes, studying my twitching fingers. Fingers that itched to toss her dozens of notes into the trash.
“This place looks like a kindergarten classroom,” I said. “It totally clashes with my decor.”
“I understand. Just let me leave them up until my next exam?” Solange chuckled, “You can’t have color without light. And honestly, they brighten up my mood and help keep the bad guys away.”
I could have cared less about her mood. However, I waited a week or two. In the meanwhile, I was growing impatient, and it was affecting me in the worst ways. I began snapping at everyone, including my friends and even Gary. One night, after our date, he came over, although I didn’t want him to. By that point, I hated spending time in my own apartment.
“Where’s your roommate?” Gary asked.
I shrugged.
Suddenly, he cracked open her bedroom door. “Whoa,” he said and disappeared.
“Gary!”
Gary didn’t listen. I followed him into Solange’s room. My mouth fell open. If I thought there were a lot of sticky notes throughout my apartment, the bedroom was a hive. Small, square pieces of colored paper clung to everything from the ceiling to the floorboards. Written in her scribbled handwriting were words I could not read. But they weren’t meant to be deciphered that way. It was only when I stood back that the words formed larger images. The many drawings began to shapeshift and come to life. A barking dog. A man’s smirking face. A begging woman. A butcher slicing meat.
“What is this?” I heard Gary ask. Suddenly, he began to tear them down. One by one, he pulled the notes off of the walls, off of surfaces, off of furniture like Solange’s headboard and office chair. And I helped.
I reveled in removing the colors dotting the rest of the house. It felt good. I felt lighter and safer, too. When I was done, I shuttered the window blinds. Before he left, Gary and I made love, and I showered and changed, feeling a shift in the air.
That night, Solange did not return home.
But my nightmares did.
The barking dog bared its teeth demonically. The smirking man chased me. Monsters jeered at me in my sleep. And then, I began to see them while awake.
In desperation, I found one of Solange’s notepads. I could hear them laughing as I stuck colored paper to the walls while writing words like “Get out” and “Leave.” But the monsters had escaped the realm of my nightmares; the evil Solange had so painstakingly kept at bay.
Fiction © Copyright Christina Persaud
Image courtesy of Pixabay.co