The Vermin Under Her Bed

My well-meaning roommate lived by a single, twisted creed: whatever you fear most will inevitably find you. And because she believed that with the fervor of a zealot, she made it her personal mission to cure me through exposure therapy. The first time happened when she realized I couldn’t swim. As we were walking past the campus reflection pond, she shoved me straight into the murky, weed-choked water. I inhaled half the pond before someone fished me out, choking and blue-lipped, on the verge of drowning. The second time, she noticed my borderline-clinical germaphobia. Her solution was to dump a mountain of her own sour, unwashed socks—months of sweat fermented into stiff fabric—directly onto my face while I slept. "I’m only doing this because I love you, Sam!" she’d chirp, wearing that insufferable, saintly halo. "I’m conditioning you! You can thank me later!" Then came the day she overheard me mention my visceral, gut-churning terror of roaches. So over the fall break, she went online, ordered batches of live roach egg capsules, and sneaked them right beneath my bed frame. When I caught on, I didn’t cry. I almost laughed out loud. In her desperate rush to terrorize me, she hadn’t bothered using whatever scraps of brain she had left. By the time those eggs were scheduled to hatch, I’d already be packed and moved out of the dorm, staying in an honors suite for the statewide academic decathlon. … When I returned to the dorm after the holiday weekend, I unlocked the door to find my roommate, Kaitlyn, crouched suspiciously beside the foot of my bed. "Kaitlyn. What are you doing down there?" Her spine locked. She pressed her lips together and pushed herself up, smoothing down her knitted sweater. "Nothing, Sam! Honestly." She flashed me a wide, scrubbed-clean smile. "I just saw how dusty it was under your frame. I thought I’d be a good roommate and sweep up for you." I clenched my fists in the pockets of my jacket, reading right through her. Another round of the same tired, psycho-narcissistic playbook. Kaitlyn treated fear like a challenge issued specifically to her, turning my boundaries into her personal training camp under the banner of "helping me grow". "Is that so?" I pressed a hand to my collarbone, feigning wide-eyed bewilderment. "Funny. I don’t see a broom anywhere near you. Why did you look like you were trying to break into a safe?" The sunshine dropped from Kaitlyn’s face, replaced by an instant, practiced pout. "Sam, wow. Why do you always assume the worst of me?" Her brows knit together, and right on cue, the rims of her eyes turned pink. "Are you still holding a grudge over the pond thing? Seriously?!" She took a step closer, voice trembling with martyr-like conviction. "Everything I do is for your own good! I’m pushing you out of your comfort zone so you can actually survive in the real world! What you fear is what you manifest. I’m just trying to desensitize you before life hits you harder. How does that make me the villain?" My ears practically ached from hearing this same monologue on repeat since move-in day. I locked eyes with her, my tone dropping to ice. "There’s a difference between building character and psychological torture. You aren’t helping me, Kaitlyn. You’re harassing me." Before the final syllable left my mouth, a sob caught in her throat. "Is that really what you think of me?!" Tears threatened to spill over her flushed cheeks. "You forgot that when you fell into the water, I ran around in a blind panic looking for someone to pull you out? And those socks—do you think I "enjoyed" saving dirty laundry? I did it so you wouldn’t have a panic attack every time something touches you! I put all my energy into fixing your issues, and I get treated like garbage. Excuse me for caring!" It was artful, really. In thirty seconds flat, she had flipped the board, transforming her sadism into selfless devotion and painting me as an ungrateful brute. I took a slow, deliberate breath. "Training requires consent," I said, keeping my voice level. "What you call exposure therapy is just an excuse to get off on my distress. You don’t care if I break, as long as you get your thrill." Kaitlyn let the tears spill down her cheeks, glistening under the fluorescent bulbs. "Why are you twisting everything?" she choked out. "Sam, why won’t you just let people love you? The universe tests you on what you run from! If I make you face it here, in a safe space, you won’t get blindsided later! Do you know how hard I pray for you every single time? How much I’m rooting for you to conquer it?!" Staring at her tear-streaked, self-righteous expression, the sheer absurdity of it made my jaw tighten. Cruelty wrapped in pink cellophane and tied with a ribbon of faux empathy. I swallowed the bile rising in my throat and tilted my head. "Fine. Let’s pretend you’re Mother Teresa for a second. That still doesn’t answer my question. What were you doing under my bed just now?" The question caught her off guard. She choked on her own breath, caught in the headlights for two ticking seconds, before her composure fully fractured into theatrics. "Why do you have to interrogate me like a criminal?! I can’t do this anymore. You really don’t deserve anyone’s kindness!" She sniffled aggressively, wiping her sleeve across her nose. "Fine! I’m done! From now on, whatever happens to you, whatever you’re terrified of, I won’t lift a finger. Don’t come crying to me when your life falls apart because you were too proud to let someone help you!" Without waiting for me to speak, she covered her face with both hands and bolted out the door, her sneakers squeaking down the linoleum hallway. I didn’t chase after her. I didn’t even blink. Instead, I dropped to my knees and pulled up the dust ruffle. Sure enough. Tucked into the hollow corners of the iron frame, lined up in neat little clusters, were dozens of tiny, dark, capsule-shaped egg cases. Oothecae. If these hatched while I was asleep, hundreds—thousands—of nymphs would swarm over my mattress, into my sheets, across my skin. To break me, Kaitlyn was willing to turn her own living quarters into a biohazard zone. A faint, cold smile touched the corners of my lips. I grabbed the dustpan and broom from behind the door. Within three minutes, I had swept every single capsule off my floorboards, leaving not a trace of dust behind. Then, sliding the dustpan along the linoleum, I tipped the entire haul directly beneath the box spring of Kaitlyn’s bed, sliding them far into the dark recesses where she’d never see them. Once the job was done, I slung my backpack over my shoulder and headed across the quad for evening seminar. The lecture hall had been brightly lit when I walked down the hall, but the second my hand pushed open the heavy wooden door, the overhead fixtures went black. Total, suffocating darkness swallowed the room. My heart slammed against my ribs like a trapped bird. A cold, suffocating shudder ripped down my spine, and beads of sweat instantly broke across my forehead, trickling cold down my temples. Nobody on this campus knew that I suffered from severe night blindness. Even fewer knew about the night when I was seven, lost in a crowded festival after sunset, dragged into an alley by a stranger before a security guard happened to shine a flashlight into the dark. Darkness wasn’t just an absence of light to me; it was the smell of damp brick and a suffocating hand over my mouth. My chest heaved. The air turned thin. "Turn the lights on!" my voice cracked, high and frayed with panic. "Please, turn them on!" I couldn’t see a single outline, but through the ringing in my ears, I could hear the muffled rustling of fabric, the suppressed snickers, the collective holding of breath. No one moved to flip a switch. I bit down on the inside of my lip until the metallic taste of blood flooded my mouth, trying to ground myself. But the primal terror overtook my limbs, and my knees gave out. I sank down onto the linoleum, clutching my backpack like a shield. Seconds stretched into agonizing minutes before the bank of industrial lights buzzed back to life with a blinding click. The entire hall erupted into laughter. "Holy shit, look at her!" "She’s literally on the floor shaking! Are you serious? It was dark for like, thirty seconds!" "God, what an actress. Who the hell acts like that over a power flicker?" Trembling, I forced my head up. There, sitting on the tiered risers in the back row, was Kaitlyn. Her chin was resting on her folded hands, a sweet, cat-that-ate-the-canary smile playing on her lips. It was her. Another curated session of her twisted exposure therapy. "Did you cut the power, Kaitlyn?" I forced myself up, pushing through the cold tremors in my calves, and walked straight down the aisle toward her. Kaitlyn’s smile melted instantly, replaced by wide, wounded doe eyes. "Sam, why are you coming at me like that? I was only trying to help!" My chest burned with fury so sharp it felt like glass in my lungs. "You kill the lights in a public lecture hall, trigger a panic attack, and humiliate me in front of fifty people, and you call that helping?!" Kaitlyn’s voice broke into a delicate, tremulous whisper that carried across the quieted room. "I did it because I care about you! Did you forget what I always tell you? What you fear, you attract! The more terrified you are of the dark, the more helpless you’ll be when you’re caught in it alone! I wanted you to face the void, to realize you wouldn’t die! If you could just push through the fear, you’d be free!" She looked around the room, appealing to the spectators with shimmering eyes. "I knew you’d hate me for it. I knew everyone would judge me, but I was willing to ruin my own reputation just to help my friend overcome her trauma. Is caring about someone really a crime?" Her delivery was flawless—so vulnerable, so dripping with altruistic martyrdom that the temperature in the room shifted instantly. The sidelong glances from our classmates turned sharp, aimed squarely at me. I watched her, my chest rising and falling, disgust curdling in my gut. She had mastered the art of weaponizing her own tears to rewrite reality. "Right," I said, my voice deadpan and icy clear. "In that case, Kaitlyn, I have a confession. I have a crippling phobia of cold, hard cash. Since you believe whatever we fear will find us, why haven’t you transferred your allowance to my checking account? Where’s my desensitization training for that?" A stunned silence dropped over the lecture hall. A few people blinked, thrown off by the logic. For half a beat, Kaitlyn’s mask slipped, exposing a flash of raw, ugly venom. "Ah!" Suddenly, she threw her upper body backward, stumbling dramatically against the row of desks before crashing hard onto her knees. "Sam… why did you push me?!" Tears burst from her eyes in heavy, dramatic drops as she clutched her shoulder, pivoting the narrative on a dime. "I was just trying to help you! I never had any bad intentions… Even if you don’t appreciate it, you don’t have to get violent!" I stared at her, paralyzed by the sheer audacity. I hadn’t moved an inch. My hands hadn’t even left my pockets. Kaitlyn remained sprawled on the floor, weeping into the scuffed floorboards. "Besides, nobody is afraid of money! You’re just mocking me! You’re trying to scam me into paying you! What did I ever do to deserve being bullied like this?!" Before I could speak, our resident advisor and floor leader, Bridget, barged through the aisle. Her jaw was set, eyes blazing with righteous fury, and without a word of warning, she shoved me backward with both hands. I caught my heel on an iron chair leg and slammed hard against the wooden podium. A dull, sickening pain shot straight up my spine, rattling the vertebrae in my neck. "That is enough, Sam!" Bridget barked, stepping directly between me and Kaitlyn like a mother hen guarding a chick. "Kaitlyn went out of her way to look out for you, and instead of showing a shred of basic gratitude, you put hands on her?!" Hearing her defender, Kaitlyn’s sobs reached a crescendo, her slender shoulders heaving pathetically. "Bridget, please don’t yell at her… It’s my fault. I meddled. I shouldn’t have tried to help her be stronger if it only made her hate me this much." The softer Kaitlyn played it, the more the mob turned on me. "Jesus, Sam is actually a psycho." "Seriously. Kaitlyn’s been bending over backward trying to help her get some spine, and she repays her with a shove?" "Did you hear that shit about the money? She’s literally trying to shake Kaitlyn down." Someone let out a nasty scoff from the middle row. "I mean, look at her. She’s broke, bitter, and looking for an excuse to extort someone who actually has cash. That’s why she’s been targeting Kaitlyn all semester. Rotten to the core." The whispers mounted into a chorus of casual, brutal condemnation. From the floor, buried in her hands, Kaitlyn peered through her parted fingers. For a split second, our eyes met. There wasn’t a single tear in her eyes—only a cold, glittering triumph. Bridget stepped into my space, her hand darting out to grab the collar of my jacket, yanking hard enough to wrench my neck. "Get down on your knees," Bridget hissed. "Apologize to Kaitlyn. Right now." Pain flared across my collarbone, but I ripped her hand away with a violent jerk of my shoulder. "I didn’t push her," I ground out through clenched teeth. "She threw herself down. She’s staging this—" "Oh, cut the crap!" a guy in the front row shouted. "We’re all sitting right here! We have eyes!" "Look at Kaitlyn, she’s hyperventilating! You think she’s faking that?!" "Some people are just born ungrateful. Has a persecution complex, always crying that someone’s out to get her!" Kaitlyn lifted her head, sniffling softly, the picture of bruised innocence. "Please, guys, stop yelling at Sam… She’s just overwhelmed. Maybe my methods were too intense. Maybe I pushed too hard. It’s on me." I dug my fingernails into my palms until the skin nearly split. I don’t pick fights. I keep my head down, I study, and I mind my business. But I don’t lay down and take a beating, either. If Kaitlyn wanted a war, she had no idea what she had just started. Bridget took my silence for defeat. "Nothing to say now? Realized how pathetic you look?" She clamped a heavy hand onto my shoulder, trying to force my weight downward. "On your knees. Apologize, or you’re done on this hall." I locked my knees, standing rigid, my eyes burning into hers. "I did nothing wrong. I’m not apologizing for a lie." That was the spark that set off the powder keg. The room erupted. Shouts, curses, and insults rained down on me from every corner. Someone kicked the back of my calf from behind, sending me stumbling to the floor beside the podium. "Kaitlyn is way too soft on you! Anyone else would have left you to rot!" "Vicious little parasite. She doesn’t deserve an ounce of grace!" A flicker of pure, unadulterated euphoria passed over Kaitlyn’s features before she scrambled up, rushing over with outstretched hands, pretending to protect me. "Stop, please! Don’t hurt her! I don’t blame her, I swear I don’t!" Right on cue, a girl near the side wall—some campus micro-influencer named Brittany who spent her life filming dance trends for TikTok—pulled out her phone and aimed the lens directly into my face. "Well, since Sam refuses to take accountability, let’s let the internet decide!" Brittany announced to her screen, her voice dripping with self-righteous performance. "Hey guys, look at this. This is our classmate, Sam. Our sweet friend Kaitlyn spent weeks trying to help her with her phobias, and Sam just assaulted her in the middle of class and tried to extort her for cash!" The live counter began to tick upward rapidly. Comments rolled across the display in a neon blur. Brittany leaned in, angling the camera to catch me wiping the sweat from my brow. "Still got that attitude, Sam? Don’t worry, this whole clip is going straight to the campus forum. Let’s see what the dean has to say about campus violence!" By midnight, my name was trending across the university’s private channels. The forum boards were an absolute bloodbath. "Is Sam mentally ill? How could anyone treat Kaitlyn like that?" "I had a lab with her last semester, she was always creepy and antisocial. Definitely a sociopath." "She can’t take a simple joke, throws a tantrum, and acts like a victim. Drop out already!" "The money comment was vile. Broke behavior at its finest." "Isn’t she supposed to represent the department at the state academic cup next week? Someone that toxic doesn’t deserve to represent our school!" By morning, the narrative had mutated into something monstrous. I was a serial bully, an abuser, a biological menace lurking in the residential halls. At eight sharp, an official bulletin was posted on the department board. My spot on the academic competition team was revoked, effective immediately, and I was placed on a one-week mandatory administrative leave to "reflect on my conduct." A cheer practically echoed through the student center. "Good riddance! She should be expelled!" "Taking up an honors spot while terrorizing her peers? Karma works fast!" "Suspension isn’t enough. Put it on her permanent transcript!" My academic advisor, Professor Abbott, called me into her office thirty minutes later. She rubbed her temples, looking at me with cold disappointment. "Sam, I really thought you had potential. How could you let things escalate to this point?" I let out a slow, ragged breath. "Professor, I didn’t push anyone. I didn’t ask for money. Kaitlyn has been systematically harassing me for months—" She looked up, her expression hardening. "The entire hall signed a petition, Sam. There’s video evidence of your altercation. Are you seriously going to sit here and play the victim?" She slid the paperwork across the desk. "A week off-campus is lenient. Go home, cool off, and think about how you treat people." There was no point in arguing with someone who had already decided the verdict. I gave a single, curt nod. "Understood." The moment I stepped out of the humanities building, my phone buzzed with an incoming FaceTime from my mother. "Samantha! What on earth are you doing over there?!" her voice shrieked through the speaker before the video even stabilized. "The university called me! At your age, having a dean call your parents—do you have any idea how humiliating that is?!" "Mom, listen to me—" "Listen to what?! A girl tries to be nice to you, and you assault her?! And now your scholarship competition is gone? Do you know how much money we poured into your tuition? You ungrateful, selfish girl!" I let the phone rest flat against my thigh, listening to the static of her disappointment wash over me without offering another word. Everyone occupied the moral high ground. No one asked what it felt like to be pushed into freezing water, to wake up with rot against your mouth, to be plunged into pitch-black terror while fifty people laughed. I hung up, walked back to the dorm under the burning glares of passing students, and pushed through the door of 503. Bridget was lounging on her desk chair, ankles crossed, scrolling on her phone. She looked up and let out a dry, theatrical snort. "Oh, look who’s back. Suspension taste sweet? We told you to apologize, but you had to play the martyr. Lost your precious competition spot over your own pride. Happy now?" Kaitlyn sat on the edge of her bed, dabbing a tissue at the dry corners of her eyes. "Bridget, don’t rub it in… She just made a mistake. If Sam had just trusted me, none of this would have happened. It really is a shame about the academic cup, though. Such a missed opportunity." I didn’t answer. I didn’t even look at them. I just took a quiet glance around the room. The late summer heat had turned the dorm into an incubator. The humidity was thick, oppressive, and heavy—the exact conditions needed to accelerate an incubation cycle. While they packed their bags for their afternoon lecture, I pulled out my duffel bag, packed my laptop, my textbooks, and my essential documents, and walked out without making a sound. By the time I checked into a budget motel three miles off campus and set my bags down, the dorm group chat exploded. I unlocked my phone and tapped on the first uploaded photo. Kaitlyn’s bed was completely alive. Thousands of dark, glistening nymphs, freshly hatched, swarming across her sheets, her pillows, her mattress in a thick, writhing carpet.