This is an experimental suspense sci-fi story. I'm trying to get inspired to write bigger things. Writer's block always comes at a very inopportune time. I'm also experimenting with the point of views with this story. Note that it's in the first person POV despite how it reads later on. Hope y'all leave a review after. Thanks for reading!

I yawned for like the millionth time that night.

Lucia, my dorm-neighbor, nudged me as we walked back to the dorm after a study group at one of our other friend’s house near campus. “What have you been doing nights, huh?” she teased. “You weren’t nearly awake at school this afternoon either,” she noted.

I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I replied truthfully. “I feel like I hardly get any sleep lately—which totally makes no sense since—“

“Since you’ve been dozing off on practically all of your classes and even during breaks?” Lucia laughed. “And since you’re the first one knocked out every night?”

I grinned. “There’s that, yeah.” I shrugged again. I’d been constantly tired practically every moment for the past few weeks. I didn’t understand it either. Obviously, it had nothing to do with the amount of sleep I got as Lucia testifies to. I’d have liked to blame it on the monstrous workload we had this semester. But here at DSV University where we were on our third year, torture and academics were practically synonymous all year round every year.

“Well, we did have that paper due this Friday that we slaved over for about a week,” Lucia pointed out.

“Yeah,” I nodded in recall, “that too, I guess,” I shifted the books I was carrying to my other arm. “I am so glad we’ve got that stupid paper down. This last exam is going to blow off a huge chunk of acad stress off my mind and I have so gone weeks without going to the movies.”

“Hey, you and me both, sister,” Lucia agreed as we headed up the stairs leading to our rooms. “We should go sometime soon,” she suggested. “The last movie I think I saw was like Gladiator or something. That’s just borderline pathetic.”

I had to laugh. “No way, Gladiator’s like two years ago, man,” I reminded her. “And I remember a certain someone going to the movies with a certain Brad McNally just three weeks ago. You know the date she forgot to tell me about and I had to wait in the library for like two hours with—,” I pointed out.

“With Naomi Clairemont, right, right, I remember,” she burst out laughing.

“Oh man, speaking of the wicked witch,” I stopped short remembering. “I forgot to submit my stupid feature article for next week’s paper. Naomi’s going to have a fit,” I smacked my palm on my forehead.

Lucia rolled her eyes. “She’s such a queen,” she commented. “Just because she made editor-in-chief this year, as if the application exams were so hard.”

“Still she did set a deadline,” I said, “and it was today.”

“So email it to her,” she rationalized. “What’s all this new technology for if we don’t use it?”

We got to our floor. My room was the second door on the right.

I noticed the lights were still out. “That’s weird,” I said aloud. “Janet’s not in yet. I thought she’d be deep in techno-nerd world by now.”

Lucia shrugged, putting her key into the lock next door. “Who knows? Maybe hell froze over and she’s out on a date tonight.”

I had to laugh as I took my own set of keys out and opened my door.

“Maybe she was a crone in a past life,” she added.

I slid my hand up the wall to switch on the lights still shaking my head at Lucia’s pun as my roommate, Janet Meyers, was mostly geek and had zero social life, mostly kept to herself. My guess was she was probably in the library doing overtime—holy shit—

I stopped stunned, my jaw dropping as the light flooded my room.

“Hey, you know what else? Maybe in another dimension, she was—,” Lucia took a staggered step back as her eyes fell on my room, “Whoa! What the hell happened here??” she gasped, aghast

My room was, for the lack of a better term, a complete and total disaster. Paper was strewn all over the floor, chairs and tables were knocked over and aside, the pillows and sofas had stuffing leaking out of them, everything was banged up and broken.

“I d—I don’t know,” I shrugged flustered, blinking several times to check if maybe I was just seeing things. Then an awful thought dawned on me and I rushed into the room—headed straight for my computer. “Oh MAN!!!” I groaned loudly.

---

The computer was wrecked—totaled—completely destroyed—practically in fragments. All the disks and CDs were scattered around the room. The books were thrown off the bookcases, little figurines lay in broken pieces on the floor—even my closet was ransacked!

“Oh damn,” Lucia whined and I looked over. She was holding up my new suede jacket that she had found at the bottom of the closet in a hopelessly rumpled heap. “And I haven’t even had the chance to borrow this,” she said.

I had to roll my eyes. I was leaned back against the doorframe of my room watching the school authorities and some local police check out my room. I shook my head to myself in disbelief. Nobody still had the faintest idea what the hell happened in my room.

“Well,” the chubby police guy bent down to inspect the broken stuff on the floor, “looks like someone was looking real hard for something in here.”

“Or it could be some kind of prank by some of the other students,” the college Dean Mr. Newirth suggested. He and the Vice-Principal Mrs. O’Shady stood in one corner of the room.

“Do you have any idea as to who might want to do this sort of thing, Laney?” Mrs. O’Shady asked me.

I blinked, looked up then shook my head.

“That’s gotta be some kinda whacked up character,” Lucia shook her head, her hands on her hips as she resurveyed the mess.

“Well,” the police guy groaned as he straightened up, dusting his hands off, “there’s no sign of forcible entry. If you would just check, Ms. Carter,” he looked at me, “to see if anything is missing. In any case, there’s not much we can do here right now.” He shook his head to himself. “You might want to sleep somewhere else until this matter is settled—well, aside from security reasons of course.”

“Sure,” I nodded.

“Come on,” Lucia waved me over. “You can crash with Mindy and me.”

The police guy turned to the Dean. “If you wouldn’t mind keeping the room intact for a few days,” he started, pulling up the belt of his pants. “Some detectives may be in later to sniff around,” he told us. “If nothing was stolen and if the whereabouts of Ms. Meyers is assured, there’s pretty much nothing to go on with except a case of vandalism here,” he explained.

“Maybe a tornado hit the room,” Lucia kidded me, elbowing me in the ribs. “Maybe Janet failed a Math quiz.”

I managed to laugh. I was still a bit spooked. This was pretty much the most bizarre thing that’s ever happened to me—well, not counting the time when Lucia and I apparently did a duet of Auld Lang Syne drunk after a party once and woke up in the pool.

“Now we totally need to get some shut-eye,” Lucia noted. “Especially some of us who haven’t slept since the Stone Age. It’s like 3 in the morning!”

I agreed. “Yeah,” I said then saw the Dean and the Vice-Principal about to leave. I caught up with them.

“Yes, Ms. Carter?” Mr. Newirth prompted.

I gave him a sheepish grin before I started, “Um…about my paper…”