Exclusive Evil - Strange Dorms

Your life needs bonus humor. Three notes on this one:

1) I wrote this for fancy outlets months ago, but it fell through the cracks. Certain atrocities were new–you'll know which ones. I'm putting it out before the next atrocities.

2) Uketsu writes format-bending mysteries. Common knowledge among readers, less among editors. Reading strains editorial schedules.

3) I hope you love it.

FILE 1: The Room That Ate Students

Cousin Viola loved her curse. Each new roommate dropped out before midterms, leaving her a human-sized single. I leapt on the story: three victims could get me The Minerva Muckraker's cover, or a famous repost. The alleged haunting lent the story flavor, and admin welcomed distractions from bankrolling air strikes.

Viola lived in Koch Hall, a bold experiment in graduate housing. The experiment: stuffing PhD hopefuls in an old tenement. One more run-down than my dorm, and my dorm was a crime. Inside, I found an era’s wreckage. The smell still haunts me.

Viola: Being cursed rules. I've lost three useless roommates in three semesters. They always leave a few rich kid toys behind, and eBay's always buying. One more Steam Deck, and I can quit proctoring.

Ace Reporter: Unless I solve the case.

Viola: Please don’t.

Ace: What if admin blames you?

Viola: Jen, admin let the NYPD chokeslam protesters. I'll be fine.

Ace: Right. Well, I’ll do a quick lap. Just to appraise his stuff.

Ace: Bleak.

Viola: Rude. What’s the kid’s notebook for? One of your anime things?

Ace: Your salvation. Help me peek under this loft.

Viola: Good point, maybe there’s loot behind the dolls.

Viola: What's this dresser made of? Depression?

Ace: You’re close. Look down here.

Viola: More dolls.

Ace: His phone’s by the ladder. Most people would rather lose an arm.

Ace: Cracking a VaultBox is tough. And he doesn't seem sporty.

Viola: As long as it works. Though I'll wipe it before selling it, I'm not a monster.

Ace: Hold off on both. I know what happened here.

Viola: Sick. Think we'd get much for his bike?

Ace: Too much rust, it’s jungle-humid in here. Also, I know why Sean dropped out. And your other friends.

Viola: "Friends" is strong. But let's hear it.

Ace: They went mad. Without me, you'd be next.

Viola: A phone case can't tell you that.

Ace: You’ll see. Starting with this kitchen.

Viola: Bedroom.

Ace: No it isn't. There’s negative privacy, even by New York standards.

Viola: It's not too bad. Though I passed Sean's bed to enter. Or leave. Or make food. Or shower. Yeah, this room sucks.

Ace: Hell itself. This room erased his love life. A touch famine.

Viola: He had a good face.

Ace: Doesn't matter. Look at the loft bed's position.

Viola: For one, it’s a loft bed.

Ace: True! And every sense is a problem. It’s next to an exposed window. Open, it invites drafts, noise, and vermin. Closed, your apartment smells…like this. And your neighbors see everything, so nothing happens. Then there’s the old bedsheet splitting your rooms. You could hear everything—

Viola: You're reaching. Couldn't he just...entertain himself?

Ace: Too exposed. Sadly, Sean found a darker outlet.

Viola: Reading?

Ace: Be serious. Look under the loft again.

Viola: Rat's nest. Though I like his Volleyball Princess Nayuta figurines. They add character.

Ace: ...Okay. Most people put a futon, or a desk. This is all storage. He spent all his time above, exposed.

Viola: Yeah, dude lived on his phone.

Ace: And it’s inaccessible storage: the dresser and doll case block off the rest. Nudging them took both of us. Sean wasn’t studying, working out, entertaining himself, or going out. Leaving one outlet.

Viola: AI girlfriend?

Ace: AI girlfriend. With the dolls, I'm certain. Volleyball Princess Nayuta wouldn't judge him, or the aroma in here, or the climb down the loft bed ladder. And texting her looks like normal doomscrolling, to anyone watching or listening.

Viola: So when ChatGPT 4 went down, he snapped?

Ace: That's what I thought, before the phone.

Viola: Uh-huh. You’re daydreaming and calling it detective work.

Ace: That's all cops do. But I'm right. Check out these stickers.

Viola: Dateless cope. Pretty common.

Ace: Jilted cope. "Newly heartless." “Welcome back to the squat rack.” These are classic breakup affirmations.

Viola: Think they’ll hurt the resale value?

Ace: They’re covering other stickers. Which is part of my point. Peel them back...

Viola: Weird. I thought he liked Nayuta.

Ace: Something came between them.

Viola: How? LLMs are yes-bots. He should've gone nuts from affirmation.

Ace: You can finish this one.

Viola: Aha! Damn, thought that would work. I'm lost. Adrift.

Ace: Think. When you've eliminated the smart and sane, what's left?

Viola: His AI girlfriend dumped him.

Ace: Keep pushing.

Viola: His AI girlfriend was a live scammer! He had a fake real girlfriend. Real fake girlfriend? Half-real?

Ace: Hell's catfish. When you want a mannequin, nothing’s worse than a real person. Sean’s mind cracked like an egg. Along with his screen: he spiked his phone like a volleyball.

Viola: Sucks for Sean. But you said you knew what happened to all my roommates.

Ace: Oh yeah, easy. Look at your floor plan.

Viola: M'kay.

Ace: It's mold. The only ventilation on this side’s the voyeur window. This side has the bathroom, and you live like hogs. Classic setup for fungus. Your roommates ate more spores than OxiClean. Which, by the way, you need. Badly.

Viola: Why haven't I gone nuts?

Ace: You’re halfway there. And you have a usable window and a little distance. It bought you some time.

Viola: Wow. Thank you, seriously.

Ace: Money’s fine.

Viola: Come get a hug.

Ace: Pay me. With money.

Viola: Gotta go. I hear some expensive mold hallucinations.

Afterword

Cheapskate’s surprise at the mold was genuine. But how’d Viola know Volleyball Princess Nayuta by name? After calling my Case Closed notebook “an anime thing?” I think she knows our catfish well. Call it a conspiracy theory, or even slander. But if Viola didn't want that, she should’ve paid me.

FILE 2 - The Wealth of Nations

____ was almost the perfect RA: barely present. A rumor of authority, too busy with the campus Republicans to fret over who snorted what. Two weeks ago, he disappeared entirely. Becoming the perfect RA.

Then I found him naked and unmoving in the hallway.

Nothing too odd—I almost stepped over him without noticing he was sober. Not one can of Jackson Lite lay nearby. Vomit-free hair. He didn’t even smell like partying. A stranger. Only the vice grip on his phone told me he still lived.

Ace Reporter: What happened?

RA: Blerghl.

I wrote it down and entered his room. A backup lead couldn’t hurt—Viola might call Grandma to kill the mold story. Inside, I sketched the ruins of the future.

I returned to confront a dumb, doomed failure. The man of tomorrow. Two gentle kicks to the ribs got him upright.

Ace: You should be ashamed.

RA: Water…

Ace: Later. For now, I can fix your screwup.

RA: Please, water.

Ace: But I want half.

RA: Piss off.

Ace: Bye. Have fun guessing.

RA: Wait! What do you think happened?

Ace: First, there’s your room.

RA: Looks like a room.

Ace: Nearly barren. No desk. No mattress. No tequila. Like you’re on a gap semester in an asylum. 

RA: I keep things tidy.

Ace: With bottled urine?

RA: Okay, I keep it minimalist. The bottles have their own corner.

Ace: Three two-liter bottles. You’ve been minimalist for about a week. Even the stock school furniture’s gone. Each undergrad gets a cardboard desk and shaky bed frame. You threw out your furniture. And almost everything else.

RA: Like I said, minimaxxing.

Ace: Maybe. Then there’s your desktop. Well, its carcass.

RA: Nice drawing. I'ma grab some clothes.        

Ace: When I’m done. It’s massive, with a tryhard logo. I’d assume you’re streaming, especially with the urine. But it’s sideways, with a foot-sized dent. No gamer treats their baby that way.

RA: Maybe I lost at Sprinter.

Ace: Marathon. I’m on the right track. There isn’t one embarrassing sticker on this tower. You wanted something quick and dirty, and flipped out when you screwed it up. Typical Brooklyn guy.

RA: That’s completely inappropriate. If RA’s had power, you’d be in trouble.

Ace: Dork or not, no one that bought their own hardware treats it like this. Not that it’s easy to explain. If you had your own freakout money, there’d be a bigger, shinier gamerbox here by now. You’re on the Daddy Scholarship.

RA: Nothing wrong with that. Legacies are vital to…stuff. I’m still self-made.

Ace: A confession. But I think you tried to become self-made. And almost earned enough to drop out. Whatever made you throw out your furniture, you thought you could afford it.

RA: The hell is this? Cold reading?

Ace: Basically. And the spirits showed me your trash.

RA: Looks like a healthy American wastebasket to me.

Ace: Neater than mine, aside from burying your homework. Healthy? Nah. There’s two boxes of Hustle Candy in here. They’re basically coke.

RA: I’ve been studying.

Ace: Don’t insult me. Between the Hustle Candy and the urine…you didn’t sleep for days. Maybe weeks. You certainly haven’t left the room. But you don’t play anything. So what else drives multiple monitors? Sleepless, total obsession? Bottles full of urine?

RA: Crypto.

Ace: Yesterday’s scam. This isn’t a gaming hole. It’s a gambling hole.

RA: Ah, shit.

Ace: A dishonest one. A mark would still be plugging away in a furnished dorm, waiting for a break. This smelly tomb tells a different story.

RA: Don’t say it. I really don’t need the reminder.

Ace: I think you won. Big. You watched an insider bet like a hawk. For weeks. With all these MREs, you wouldn’t even need takeout.

RA: Please.

Ace: And you lost the fucking password.

RA: God, let me die.

Ace: You’ve been looking since. Hence the furniture purge. And scratched floor—you really don’t take care of things. Everything that wasn’t related to cashing in or staying alive had to go. And if you left—even to use a toilet, like an adult—someone might come looking for their RA’s help. And steal everything.

RA: You mentioned helping? When’s that start?

Ace: Soon. Don’t worry, your all-MRE diet wasn’t for nothing.

RA: They’re for bodybuilding.

Ace: You’re naked. I can see they aren’t. But they do say what type of nepobaby you are.

RA: Fitness. My father won Mr. Olympia.

Ace: Drone strikes. Well, military-something, based on your Campus Republican bit and martial approach to tech support. Dad’s high-up enough for it to be your personality, and sketchy enough for you not to tell your advisees.

RA: You got me! That’s my dark secret. I love caffeine and hate taxes. We can stop playing now.

Ace: Almost done. Polymarket addicts are split between insider traders and the dead. So what’s a nepo-general know that the rest of us don’t?

RA: In my defense—

Ace: You knew about the fucking war. All this Twitch-streamer gear is what a moron thinks he needs to watch and cash a bet, rather than a phone made after 2010. Instead of warning a few hospitals and orphanages, you turned your room into a Polymarket hedge fund.

RA: You wouldn’t have?

Ace: No, I’m still a human being. I don’t hear “mass death” and think “the casino will love this.” Or throw a tantrum when I can’t collect.

RA: Whatever, wokie. Can you open my account or not?

Ace: Half.

RA: A quarter.

Ace: Half.

RA: A third.

Ace: Sixty percent.

RA: Half! Half! Where is it?

Ace: Alakazam.

RA: Cool. How’s the brick from my blowoff class going to make us rich?

Ace: It’s still here, after you threw out your bed. Because brains remember details weak minds don’t.

RA: Okay? I didn’t join the Campus Republicans to let history jerk me around. That’s a paperweight.

Ace: None of your other books survived the purge. Think hard.

RA: The deal’s off, you’ve got jack all. You’re a glorified tarot reader, and I need to find pants. I don’t know what I was thinking.

Ace: Actually…neither do I. Sorry for letting you down.

RA: I knew detectives were fake. Dad says they’re just the modern slave patrol. He really admires them.

Afterword:

My bet panned out. Hypocritical, I suppose.

____ wrote RaytheonJr2005 on the first page of the otherwise untouched Colonialism: Now and Now. And, true to American opsec, used his Minerva email as his username. I logged in to find twenty thousand dollars in debt. The war bet had paid out, handsomely. But he’d also bet on The White House pulling out. Each week of chaos put him further in the red, and he couldn’t log in to back out.

I screenshotted the wreckage and left him to it.

FILE 3 - Graduation

My skull throbbed in protest of life. On instinct, I reached for my Tylenol stool. Air. The pulses continued.

Perhaps I’d slept upside down, head to foot. Good parties had that effect. I rolled to the other side of the bed, which stopped existing a foot shorter than expected. The landing took more time, and hit harder. At least five feet harder. I took the blow with grace.

Ace: Fucking hell!

My sister cackled from the bottom bunk. Even though she didn’t go to Minerva, and my dorm didn’t have a bunk bed. Both embarrassments belonged in an upstate zip code I’d disavowed. An impossibility. Then where was I?

Loser: Morning, bigshot. Want your notepad from last time, or a freshie?

I limped to my bruised feet. Kidnapping? A cult? Time to work fast. I explored my cell.

Loser: Well, good afternoon. It’s like, 3.

Ace: Quiet. I’m investigating.

Loser: Yeah, I wouldn’t want to remember that noise either.

Ace: These posters…

Ace: Half awesome, half garbage.

Loser: Uh-huh. Here’s the situation. After you—

Ace: It’s like I live here, but with a talking monkey. And one poster’s missing. Did the monkey eat it?

Loser: Wow. You can solve this yourself, Columbo.

Ace: Hush, I’ll get you a Chiquita later. For now, some nut tore half this middle poster off…

Ace: Ah, the Weavers. I almost forgot Minerva has a football team. Imagine flipping over a team that hasn’t won since democracy.

Loser: I’m glad they did. Dad wouldn’t let me take it down. The scepter logo’s not very relatable.

Ace: A picture’s coming together, despite the headache and monkey noises. This is my childhood bedroom, and you’re my younger, dumber sibling. But why? We’re weeks from break. Even then, I’ll be interning for slave wages downtown.

Loser: The plot biggens.

Ace: Thickens. Someone—maybe you, in a jealous fit—tore down this poster of my achievement. Odd, you should be used to my shadow by now.

Loser: Keep going. Just remember I could’ve helped.

Ace: I’ve seen Memento. I’m sure my clues are on point. I’ll start with my luggage.

Loser: Which is out, full, and unlocked, Detective Holmes. You haven’t been here long.

Ace: Solving this is my thing. Find your own thing.

Ace: It’s all flammable. Where are my clothes? Books? Uppers?

Loser: Garage. They didn’t even make it into the house.

Ace: Then this must be important. It’s my only low-proof souvenir.

Ace: An award? An award! I thought I’d retire an unrecognized great. This is amazing!

Loser: Hmm.

Ace: It must’ve been the Viola story. And the Tehran bets, if admin let me run it. Though they rarely catch anything before it hits the real news. Oh no.

Loser: Eyup.

Ace: So I, an award-winning student award-winner, am here with a new alcohol problem. Instead of at Minerva, finishing my award-winning semester.

Loser: Eyup, squared.

Ace: Kay, am I suspended?

Kay: Nah.

Failure: Oh God, I’m expelled.

Kay: Sorry. Minerva prefers journalism pointed away from donors. And the war. And mold.

Failure: And these dents by the bed…I’ve fallen at least three…how many times have we had this conversation?

Kay: I babied you through it the first round. Now it’s a concussion check. I think you’re fine.

Failure: Christ, what am I gonna do?

Kay: So far? Drink while I finish your transfer apps. Take your time, I get it. But stop calling me monkey. And stay out of my stash.

Afterword

Viola sent a card. A graduation card, so the mold may still be an issue. Still, a gesture. Kay thinks I should frame it.

____‘s old password didn’t work, until I added a “2.” Last month, he placed an outside bet on “Uppity Journo Flunks Out.” Perhaps lawsuit-worthy, but I chose peace. Peace and a quick transfer to another account. The first step to recovering from my education.

What a time. Clearly written by a normal, healthy mind. If you loved it, or liked it, or jest want to help me out, share it.