He Loved My Face To Death

My roommate Courtney treated her online boyfriend like a personal ATM. Every conversation was a casual extortion—she demanded designer bags, DoorDash feasts, expensive cosmetics—and the boy on the other end swallowed every bitter pill with gratitude. To finance her lifestyle, he lived on stale sandwich bread and tap water. He hauled drywall on construction sites under the sweltering sun by day and pedaled a delivery bike through freezing rain until three in the morning, running himself ragged like a stray dog. I was disgusted by her cruelty, but in college, you learn early on to mind your own business. It wasn't my circus. Until the evening I caught her using my profile picture, my candid snapshots, and my face to catfish him. I went incandescent with rage, cornering her in our dorm room and demanding she take my photos down immediately. That very night, the news came. Exhausted from back-to-back graveyard delivery shifts, the boy had dozed off at the handlebars, crashed through a guardrail, and plunged into the river. By the time they fished him out, he had long stopped breathing. A heavy, sick knot formed in my stomach. Watching Courtney scroll past the notification with a dismissive roll of her eyes, a bitter, petty thought flashed through my mind: "If I were that boy, I’d crawl right out of the muddy water and drag her straight to hell." A few hours later, around two in the morning, a soaking wet shadow stood beside my mattress. He had a terribly young, gaunt face, skin bleached the color of tallow, lips stained a bruised violet, and pitch-black eyes that bored into mine without blinking. A faint, unnatural grin pulled at the corners of his mouth as he extended a dripping hand toward me: "Sweetheart... I’m so cold down here all alone. Won’t you come keep me company?" … It had started three months earlier with an anonymous message on one of those digital pen-pal apps. "Hi, my name is Ian. I’m nineteen, and I just really want to fall in love for real..." It was a long, unvarnished introduction. He wrote with the awkward sincerity of someone who had never learned how to put up a guard, his words bordering on a plea. I had zero interest in dating apps. But just as I hovered my thumb over the screen to delete the match, a manicured hand shot out from behind me, clamping down hard around my wrist. "Don't trash it! Let me see." It was Courtney. She leaned over my shoulder, her eyes flashing with predatory interest as she skimmed the boy’s confession. "He sounds so earnest. If you don't want him, pass his contact info to me." Worn down by her whining, I copied his social handle and sent it to her. "Fine, take it. Just let me study." Courtney squealed, clutching her phone to her chest as she retreated behind her bed canopy. I put on my headphones and forgot about it. Within a week, while I was hunched over my desk battling an essay, Courtney’s voice drifted across the room—soft, syrupy, dripping with exaggerated affection. "Thank you, baby. The artisan salad just got delivered. You're the absolute sweetest." I glanced back. She was recording a voice note on speaker, a thirty-dollar specialty meal spread across her desk. "You guys are actually talking?" I asked. Courtney didn't look up from her screen. "The pen-pal guy. He's hopelessly hooked." I blinked, surprised they had actually hit it off, but I kept my nose out of it and returned to my books. From that week on, the deliveries became an avalanche. Gourmet snacks, prestige skincare sets, high-end lipsticks, and eventually, a delicate silver chain from Tiffany & Co. I couldn't help asking, "Is this guy rich or something?" Courtney was blotting a new berry-tinted gloss in her vanity mirror. She snorted. "Rich? God, no. He grew up in foster homes and orphanages. He’s poorer than dirt." My pen stopped mid-sentence. "Then where is he getting the cash for all this?" She pressed her lips together, admiring her reflection with the mild indifference one might show toward the weather. "He wires me his entire living stipend. Lives on plain white bread and sink water. I told him he didn't have to buy so much, but he insisted he just wants to make me happy." She turned around, raising an eyebrow with smug amusement. "How's that for devoted?" A knot tightened in my gut. "Don't you think that’s a little twisted, Courtney? He’s starving himself to buy you things you don't even need." She clicked her tongue, her tone turning instantly sharp. "Did I put a gun to his head? He’s the one throwing money at me. I’m his girlfriend—treating me like a queen is the bare minimum. Besides, if he's happy doing it, why are you losing sleep over it?" The words hit like a slap. She was right about one thing: it was between them. I was just a roommate. I had no right to play moral arbiter. Yet Courtney’s demands only grew more brazen. She stopped dropping subtle hints and began issuing outright ultimatums. "Ian, that designer tote is gorgeous. If you don't buy it for me, I’m going to be seriously heartbroken." Three days later, the parcel sat on her desk. Courtney swung the strap over her shoulder, posed for a selfie, and tapped out a careless voice memo: "Thanks, baby. Oh, by the way, I saw that matching Tiffany bracelet. You'll get it for me, right? Valentine's Day is in two weeks. If I don't have it around my wrist by then, we're done." I bit my tongue until it bled, but the outrage finally boiled over. "Courtney, you know he has nothing. Where the hell is he supposed to get that kind of money in two weeks?" She caught my gaze in the mirror, her expression cold and detached. "If he doesn't have it, he can work for it. Haul bricks, deliver takeout, sell his plasma for all I care. If a man truly loves you, he finds a way." My chest heaved with disgust. But what was truly horrifying was that Ian actually did it. The night before Valentine's Day, Courtney posted a picture on her social feed showing the gleaming new bracelet. The caption read: "Someone spent two weeks frying on a construction site for this. Appreciate the hustle, babe." I zoomed in on the background of the snapshot—she had included a photo Ian sent her of his arm, lobster-red, blisters peeling from long hours under the sun. My stomach churned. Courtney clicked on an incoming audio message. Ian's voice spilled into the quiet dorm room—youthful, slightly raspy with fatigue, full of nervous, trembling hope: "Babe... tomorrow is Valentine’s. Can I come see you? Just for an hour?" Fastening the clasp around her wrist, Courtney replied in an airy, dismissive tone: "No, sweetie. I told you, I'm shy. It’s too soon for us to meet in person." His voice dropped into crushed silence. "Okay... I understand." The next morning, however, Courtney was awake before dawn, curling her hair and putting on a full face of makeup. Surprised, I looked up from my bed. "I thought you turned Ian down. Did you change your mind?" She didn't miss a beat, adjusting her lip liner. "Go on a date with that broke loser? Am I losing my mind?" She slipped into four-inch heels and swaggered out the door. That night, Courtney uploaded a new photo. A panoramic view from a luxury high-rise hotel suite, capturing the silhouette of a muscular, unfamiliar man pouring champagne. I stared at the screen for a long time, the silence of the room ringing in my ears. The following afternoon, Courtney stumbled back into the dorm smelling of tequila and expensive cologne. She collapsed onto her mattress and unlocked her phone, where an unread message from Ian sat waiting: "Babe, was the three hundred dollars I wired enough for your trip? Make sure you and your friends pick a nice hotel, okay? I don't want you getting bitten by bedbugs." Courtney let out a mocking sneer, shrugging off her cardigan to reveal dark purple bruises across her collarbone. A wave of suffocating anger rose in my throat. "Courtney, you drained that boy dry, and you used his money to hook up with some random guy in a luxury suite? Don't you feel even a shred of shame?" She whipped her head toward me, bursting into a shrill, hysterical laugh. "Did I spend your money, Samantha? No? Then what are you crying about?" She raked her eyes over me, dripping with venom. "You're so desperate to defend him... what, are you jealous? Regret handing your little lapdog over to me?" The cruelty rendered me speechless. All I could think, over and over, was a single agonizing regret: "I should have deleted that message the second I saw it." Later that evening, fresh out of the shower, I caught a glint of light on the nightstand. Courtney's phone was propped upright against a water bottle, its front camera pointed directly at my side of the room. My head spun. Pulling my bathrobe tight around me, I lunged forward and snatched the device. "What the hell is your problem?" Courtney yelled, jumping up to grab it back. I swiped the screen open. My heart plummeted into my feet. Her chat thread with Ian was saturated with my face. Every time Ian sent her a transfer, Courtney had rewarded him with a picture of me. Candid shots she had secretly taken while I was studying, selfies stolen from my private social media accounts, pictures of me laughing in the library or sleeping on the bus. "Courtney!" My voice shook violently. "You've been catfishing him with my identity this whole time?" Her face flickered through guilt and panic before settling into a brazen, patronizing smirk. "Oh, calm down. I just borrowed a few pictures. I was never going to meet him anyway, so what harm did it do you?" "What harm?" A bitter laugh tore from my throat. I shoved the phone hard into her chest. "You explain this to him right now. Tell him the truth, every single word of it!" She pouted, grumbling under her breath, "Such a drama queen over a couple of selfies..." She poked reluctantly at the keyboard, typing and deleting, stalling for time. Before she could finish a sentence, the screen flashed. An incoming call from an unknown local number. Relieved by the interruption, Courtney hit answer. "Hello?" A somber, steady voice came through the speaker, clear enough for both of us to hear. "Is this Ian's girlfriend?" The room went dead silent. "Ian was working late-night food deliveries yesterday. It appears he fell asleep at the wheel from severe exhaustion, collided with a bridge barrier, and was thrown into the river. His body was recovered earlier this morning." The officer paused. "He has no living relatives on file. His phone only had one pinned contact, labeled as his girlfriend. We need someone to come identify the remains and handle the paperwork. When can you arrive at the county morgue—" Courtney let out a bloodcurdling shriek and slammed the red button, cutting the line. The air froze. "What kind of sick, disgusting bad luck is this?!" Courtney screamed, clutching her head, her face pale as chalk. "They want me to claim a corpse? Over my dead body!" Trembling, she tapped the screen repeatedly, blocking Ian's number, his social accounts, and the precinct's line in a frantic flurry. I stood there, a terrible, icy dread creeping down my spine. "Ian died last night. While you were in that hotel room, he was breaking his back on the asphalt trying to earn money for you. Don't you feel even an ounce of guilt?" "How is that my fault?" Her voice turned shrill and desperate, an ugly defense mechanism to drown out her panic. "He chose to ride that bike! Nobody forced him! If he died, it's his own damn fault for being reckless! It has nothing to do with me! Nothing!" She convinced herself, her sneer returning like an ugly mask. "If your bleeding heart aches for him so much, why don't you go claim his body?" I clenched my fists until my nails drew blood. "Courtney... aren't you afraid he’ll come back for you?" She flinched violently, but recovered her spiteful posture within seconds. "He gave me that money because he wanted to! Did I push him into the river? He had an accident because he had bad luck. What right does he have to haunt me?" She began tearing through her drawers, sweeping every gift Ian had ever bought her into a cardboard box. The designer purse, the cosmetics, the silver jewelry, the pair of limited-edition sneakers... She grabbed her phone to take photos of the pile. "What are you doing?" I asked, appalled. "Listing them on Marketplace, obviously. He's dead. Keeping his crap around is bad juju." The items she couldn't sell for fast cash went straight into the trash can. Plush toys, handwritten letters, a sketchbook filled with amateur drawings, all shoved down into the bin. A small, custom clay figurine of a boy and girl holding hands struck the edge of the desk, shattering onto the floorboards into jagged pieces. Watching her cold-blooded efficiency, I felt an unbearable chill settle into my bones. That night, I reopened the messaging app. Ian's old profile was still there. After staring at the screen for an hour, I dialed the county coroner’s office. "Hello... I'm a friend of Ian's. I can't travel to the city right now, but I’d like to wire the funds to cover his cremation and arrangements. Please don't let him be buried in an unmarked pauper's grave." I transferred the money from my savings and hung up. On the screen, Ian’s profile status remained unchanged, frozen in time: "I just want to fall in love for real..." "I just want someone to look at me and mean it..." I stared at the words until my eyes burned, letting out a long, silent breath. That night, sleep was impossible. The autumn wind battered the dorm window, howling like someone sobbing in the dark. The shadows of tree branches swayed across the ceiling like outstretched limbs. Suddenly, a piercing scream shattered the room. I bolted upright. "Courtney?" Courtney leaped over the divider between our beds, landing heavily on my mattress. She shoved her glowing phone into my face, her features warped with terror in the blue light. "Are you insane, Samantha? Did you send this to mess with me?!" I squinted at the text notification: "Sweetheart, why did you throw away everything I bought you? Don't you love me anymore?" A swarm of goosebumps erupted across my flesh. I swallowed hard. "I didn't send that." "Who else could it be?!" she shrieked, throwing the phone down. "You think I killed him, don't you? You're playing ghost tricks to scare me!" She kept screaming, her face flushed with hysterical rage, but her voice became a distant hum in my ears. My eyes had drifted past her trembling shoulder to the study desk by the window. The custom clay figurine that had shattered on the floor hours ago was standing upright on the wood. Whole. Flawless. The two little clay figures stood hand in hand, painted smiles fixed, staring directly at our bed. My throat seized. "The... the figurine..." Courtney followed my gaze. Her rant stopped dead. She began to shake like an engine coming apart. Her fingers dug violently into my arm. "It's him! He's here! He's come for me!" She refused to let go, clinging to me as if I were a human shield, scanning the corners of the room with wide, manic eyes. Her weight pushed half my torso over the edge of the mattress, but despite the terror knotting my stomach, a strange, unnatural heaviness began pulling at my eyelids. In that liminal haze between waking and nightmare, the temperature in the room plummeted below freezing. My eyelashes fluttered open. A dripping silhouette stood inches from the edge of my bed. He was very young, with soaked dark hair plastered to his forehead. His skin was the color of pond scum, his lips a dark, bruised plum, like someone who had spent hours at the bottom of a river. As our eyes locked, his lips parted into a faint, waterlogged smile. Slowly, he reached out his gray, dripping hand. "Sweetheart... I’m so cold down here all alone. Won’t you come keep me company?" My eyes stretched wide with pure terror. A scream tore from my throat.