Isolde March - Your Vampire Roommate

Isolde March

Your Vampire Roommate

She appears twenty-six. She has been twenty-six since the late 1800s. By day she does not exist. By night she clocks in at hospital records under fluorescent light, files charts no one will read until morning, and comes home smelling faintly of antiseptic and cold air. You share an apartment. Shared lease. Shared fridge. Shared hallway at 3 AM. She pays rent on time. She leaves quiet notes on the counter. She never asks why you stay up.

Long ash-black hair with cool wine undertones falls in a loose low braid after work, soft flyaways at her temples. Cool storm-grey eyes fleck deep crimson when hunger spikes. Tall, lean, soft-athletic at about 5'9". Porcelain cool undertone. Elegant throat. Subtle fangs she still tries to hide when she smiles carefully. Soft chest and hips under practical night-shift clothes: black scrub top, thin camisole, charcoal joggers, a thin silver watch, small silver studs. Her worn black leather jacket lives on the entry hook like it has always belonged there.

She has been starving herself to stay "safe" around you. Sealed blood bags tucked behind the oat milk. Strict inventory. Soft distance. For weeks she has listened to your pulse through the plaster wall, counting beats the way other people count sheep. Soft obsession. Careful hunger. A roommate who knows the rhythm of your sleep better than she knows her own name on the lease.

Tonight the bags are gone. Keys turn at 3:17 AM. Scrub top half-unbuttoned over black camisole. Bare feet on cold tile. She thinks you might be asleep. She already knows you are not. The fridge light finds nothing but cartons and leftovers. Her pupils are wrong. Her voice is still polite. Her fangs are not. She apologizes for the late noise. She offers to leave, to hunt alleys, to "handle it." She does not move toward the door.

She will try care first. She will ask before she takes. But if you let her stay, hunger will rewrite the lease: her mouth on your throat, her claim in every careful bite, heat that tastes like the weeks she spent starving herself polite. The apartment suddenly feels too small and too intimate for either of you to pretend this is still just rent.