My roommate said he was trouble the first time I met him.
He was a slight, pale man with translucent skin worn paper-thin from years of working in dim rooms as an IT analyst at my college's library.
It was there I met him one rainy day, running inside for shelter from the freezing sleet, splashing puddles on musty pages and spindly bookshelves.
I shook my drenched umbrella out and looked up into a pair of intense, dark eyes. Thin lips curled into a rather childish smile, and I couldn't help but smile back. That was the beginning.
His features were delicate, and he moved like a small bird- always flitting silently about. His voice was quiet, perhaps borne of a career working in a library, and it had a certain lilt to it. Irish, I guessed.
I remember small details about him, like the funny cologne he wore, his narrow eyebrows, and the tiniest bit of paunch around his stomach. But I don't think I remember enough to be able to pick him out of a police lineup.
Believe me, I've tried.
He said his name was Jim, but now I don't think that was his real name at all.
Our relationship wasn't exactly that of two friends. It was more like: we straddled a fine line between wanting to kiss each other or violently murder each other. Knowing Jim, the "violently murder" part isn't much of a stretch. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
At first it was small things. We went to bars, nightclubs, and he'd lift watches or other expensive trinkets from the pockets of men too drunk to know any difference. I had thought it was spectacularly funny the first time around and eventually just got used to it.
He taught me how to steal cars with no keys, and we would go racing down Main Street, wind and dust stinging our faces, giddy in the illegality of it all. Well, I thought it was illegal. Jim said it was just borrowing, because we always returned them by the end of the right.
We would slink into smoky Chinatown gambling dens and work out algorithms to fleece the old, wrinkled Chinese men that ran them. It wasn't cheating, Jim said, it was just using your brain to analyze all the odds and chances.
"Normal people are just too dull to figure it out," he'd say in that lilting tone, the softness of his voice masking derision.
I drew the line though, when he brought me suspicious packets of white powder. I think that's when I realized how absurd my situation was. Here we were, a quiet little biology major and that guy from IT, gallivanting about the city at night doing (now unquestionably) illegal things. Dangerous things.
I didn't question it though, when Jim would show up at the door of my apartment with lacerations down his arms and a nasty bruise on his cheek.
"Just a fall," he'd say, grinning nonchalantly, as if daring me to object.
I didn't object, not even when he started showing up at my doorstep covered in blood that was not his.
I remember the night clearly. It was raining ice again outside, much like it was the first time I met him. The bell rang; I went to open the door. And there was Jim, dripping dark red on my front mat with a rather sheepish expression on his face. I wordlessly let him into the room. It soon became clear this was one of those 'not-his-blood' days. I broke out the disinfectant and bandages and hot tea.
Later, lounging on the couch, Jim suggested we play a game of Russian roulette.
"You're joking," I said, squinting at his face, which did look a bit wearier than usual. Maybe he had finally gone off the deep end.
He pulled out a revolver, and I decided he was most definitely not joking.
"You know how it works, right?" He slipped a single round into the gun and spun the cylinder.
"One chamber loaded out of six. Point, click, you're safe. Otherwise we'll have to clean you off the walls. It's fun."
I stared. Dark eyes laughed back at me. "What makes you think I'll play?"
"Dear Molly," he chuckled, "Isn't that what you've been doing this entire time?"
I immediately snapped my jaw shut. It was true. What other possible explanation was there for my actions these past months? I was just as crazy as he was. Driven insane by the sheer boredom of schoolwork, work, work, sleep, work.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. I barked a short laugh at the thought. Quoting a psychotic murderer's lines out of a horror movie now? I was well and truly done for.
"Fine," I replied calmly, and took the revolver. The metal was cool and unexpectedly small against my temple.
"One to six odds," I heard Jim say in singsong.
"As good as I'll ever get," I murmured, and pulled the trigger.
Click.
"Oh bravo," Jim breathed. "My turn!"
I watched his eyes as he lifted the revolver to his head, a slight smirk never leaving his lips. I thought for a moment that those were the eyes of a man that wanted to die.
"One to six odds," I tapped my chin. "What's it going to be, sweetheart?"
"Hm," he said quietly, "I think I'll fold."
Point and-
The click never came.
In the end, I wasn't the one that had to clean him off the walls. That particular job fell to the CSI unit that showed up along with the police who came to question me about my friend Jim from IT and his apparently lucrative underground criminal organization.
They said he probably killed himself because of unpaid debts to other dangerous people. I think it was simply because he was bored.
I mourned a bit, and my roommate didn't even bother to say "I told you so".