The Roommate

Meeting the Demon

Lucy was riding high on pins and needles as she smiled widely while walking up the stairs to her dorm room. This was it! She had taken her dad's challenge and with hard work, managed to get him to agree to let her attend Fairy Tail University. Was it easy? Absolutely not. Was it worth it? Absolutely hell yeah.

She stopped for a moment, setting her big pink duffle bag on the ground and pulled out her phone. A quick double check and she confirmed that she was standing in front of Student Housing, D Complex. Though she tilted her head noticing how the plaque on the wall was sprayed painted over with the phrase, "Sister Margaret's School for Wayward Freaks."

"The RA is like fucking insane, thinks he's Deadpool or some shit," a low voice whispered in her ear and Lucy jumped. She turned around and looked up into the face of a grinning, one-eyed, purple haired man. "call me Cobra," he said as he grabbed her bag.

"Um, Lucy Heartfilia," she said and promptly shook his hand.

"Okay, so you new, what room are you in?" he asked as he started walking towards the doors. Lucy double checked her email as she followed him.

"Room 246," she chirped, and Cobra stopped in his tracks. He spun around and shook his head before he moved to the side and took a seat on the bench, setting her bag at his feet. Cobra pulled out a pack of smokes and lit one as he ran his hand through his hair and whispered "fuck" several times.

She could feel the fear ride up her spine and swallowed the lump in her throat. This could not be good, and she looked up at the four-story building, shielding her eyes from the sun for a moment.

"Look, uh kiddo, about yer roommate," he said and patted the spot next to him.

Lucy took the spot offered and put her hands on her knees, trying to untense her shoulders. There were all kinds of things running through her mind about this. Not a single one of them good, in fact each passing thought kept getting bleaker and bleaker by the moment.

"Damnit, there was a mix up, you'll be rooming with well," he took a drag of the smoke, paused, exhaled and sighed, "his name is Mard Geer Tartaros. He's kind of complicated, so don't expect to have a roommate you can cry about boyfriends, share parties or in general make friends with, just not that demon's style."

She let out a nervous chuckle, "demon? Really?"

Cobra leaned back and crossed his arms over his graphic t-shirt, as he put his boots on top of her bag, Lucy frowned at that. He took another puff of smoke, "look, whatever he tells you for rules just go with it. Whatever he offers you for money, just shut up and take it."

Those dark thoughts were getting worse as she saw herself being handed a fistful of money as some ungodly ugly male tied her to a bed and fondled her. Lucy felt all the color drain out of her face as she stifled a gasp at the internal image.

Cobra glanced at her before flicking his cig butt, "oh shit! Not like that! Look it's a rumor I haven't been able to prove, otherwise he'd have to move out but," he scratched the back of his neck, "it's said he's a prostitute. I don't know any of the details and I have zero fucks to give on it. We're adults, big whoop if you have sex with other consenting adults for cash."

Lucy blinked multiple times in quick succession, her mind trying to process that, a male prostitute? Her roommate? What the hell kind of school was this? What happened to the other roommates? Why couldn't Cobra prove it? Someone had to of said something. Unless...

Lucy got a flash of a mental image of a knife against her throat and a gun to her head while she over a vat of acid on a shaky plank. A dreadful voice whispering for her to keep her mouth shut or else she'd be dead. She shut her eyes, took in a deep cleansing breath, counted to ten and shook her head, trying to force the badly written movie scene to leave her thoughts. Life couldn't be that bad! There was always a solution and things weren't as bad as her over active imagination could make them out to be.