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🍈 Femoid

by S. A. B. Marcie

I was hauled from the comedy club in such a fervour that night, that I left my keys behind. Have to knock on the door to get Mr. Chang to let me in. 

Dax isn’t home. It’s chilly. His room is empty. So’s the pantry. The relatively few belongings he had in the common area—the broken, upside-down bike, the clarinet in its case, the giant Monster-brand Halo helmet—are gone. Looks like how it did when we moved in. 

For our maiden week in this place, we unpacked nothing but the pots and pans, a couple personal items. Took turns making each other lunch and dinner. He wasn’t a bad cook in those days—could throw together a mean chicken cacciatore. He insisted on using Vegeta seasoning because it reminded him of Dragon Ball Z. I’d done most of the heavy lifting by finding us a couch, setting up the WIFI, hanging his corkboard up. I’d wake him up so we could catch the same bus up to SFUBC. If it worked out, we’d take the same one home. We had fun those first months. The first year or two. 

He did his best to clean his room before leaving. Stains are still visible on the floor near where the garbage bag was. Some milk residue on the ceiling. The smell lingers. Did he get his deposit back? Or did he tell Mr. Chang I’d clean it? Knowing Mr. Chang, I’ll have another roommate as of tomorrow, without notice. What kind of person would want in on this setup? A divorced businessman, a Crystal Cafe nona. Someone like Winston—Dad? That’s what he had to do after leaving Janice—Mom. Start all over again with an unknown roommate. 

When you’re away from your own room for the wrong reasons, you have to reintroduce yourself to it when you return. It’s the same as when you come home hungover, and the sun’s passive-aggressively angry at you, while acting like its usual self. Your room welcomes you, but it wants a word.

Dax must have watered my plants, because most are still alive, including Veenie. He even fed her a worm snack. I pet Joe Rogan and apologize in the form of an unreserved collapse onto the bed. It’s so quiet I could cry. No more spasmodic grunting. No more key-clicking. No more yawns so big they cause him to fall out of his gaming chair. No more “eiiughhhhs.”

With little else to do, I pull out my phone and search up a written walkthrough for the last section, Episode 5, of Life Is Strange. I start from after the events of the Vortex Club’s party. We’re kidnapped by Mr. Jefferson—it was the homeroom teacher all along—for getting too close to the truth behind the missing girls in town. The chapter is called “Polarized.”

I scan through the summary of events, from the temporal superpower god mode tomfoolery, to stopping the big baddie with the help of Chloe’s “step douche,” to more timeline hopping, to kissing/rejecting Warren, the love interest, to finally making it back to your best friend, Chloe, as the town stands on the brink of destruction at the hands of a hurricane your powers have caused.

Here’s the thing: All the shit you’ve done up to this point doesn’t matter. The game has only these two endings: Sacrifice Chloe so that the town may be saved—this will satisfy Pacific Northwest indie Poseidon—or save Chloe and let the town be eviscerated. All of your other small choices, like saving Kate or letting her jump to her death, all the things you could have fretted about, change only the amount of people who show up to Chloe’s funeral if you let her die, or who’s inconvenienced by the storm if you save her. 

If we’d done the worst run-through possible, torched our whole playthrough, it wouldn’t have mattered. It would have been forgiven. It would have only ever come down to friend or home. 

Dax left a singular cantaloupe in the fridge. I slice it up and don’t bother to take the skin off before texting him a message: