Oh boy....
So, I've had a series of roommates that didn't work out, but this last roommate was so bad that my other roommate and I just agreed to eat the cost and not bother trying to find another.
This was a person I had met through a mutual friend and chatted with a handful of times. She seemed pretty calm and laid back. A bit shy actually. The type of person you'd never have to worry about making noise or throwing unannounced parties or anything. I offered to let her take the room that was being vacated in my apartment because the roommate before her was so bad that my other roomie and I refused to let him live with us (the story of this new roommate is so bad, though, that I chose to tell it over the myriad of anecdotes I could share about the guy before her.)
So, she moves in. Everything's great. She keeps to herself most of the time, doesn't cause any sort of loud noises, is clean and orderly, etc. Absolutely nothing to critique.
One night at about 10:00 pm three weeks after moving in, she knocks on my door and I let her in. She asks if I want to have a few drinks and kick it. I was just browsing the internet (possibly on gaf) and not much else that night so I said sure, give me like fifteen minutes and I'll make us a few drinks.
I go out to the kitchen and make her and I something simple. Jack and coke or something. We hear the people in the apartment beside us playing some loud music so we decide to go over there and hang with them for a while (they're friends, we weren't encroaching on strangers.)
Everything is fine so far. We're listening to music, having drinks, smoking weed and having a good ol' time. People get real faded and start dancing. She and I are dancing together for a while. I won't lead you on though- that's where any romantic side plot ends. Were it not for the alcohol, I wouldn't have even gone as far as dancing with a girl that I live with. You're asking for an uncomfortable living situation doing that.
So, we spend some more time partying with the neighbors, and as the night drags on I tell her I'm getting tired and I'm gonna walk back to the apartment to go to sleep. She says ok and tells me she's gonna hang out a bit longer. Cool, night's over (or so I think.)
I'm back in my room. I've stripped down to my underwear at this point (it's how I sleep) and am lying in bed, eyes closed. Now, it usually takes me a good bit of time to fall asleep, so about 25-30 minutes after lying down I'm finally on the verge of sleep, right at the precipice of consciousness.
At that moment, I hear my roommate out in the living room saying, "Cat, get out! Get out cat!" She keeps saying that for a couple minutes before I decide to put on clothes and see what's happening. I walk out to the living room and see her standing in the doorway smoking a cigarette while some stray cat has plunked down in our living room. I guess it walked in while she was smoking.
I'm a bit puzzled as to why she didn't just take the cat out herself, but nonetheless I grab the cat and walk him outside. She steps out onto the patio as I do that, and as I'm walking back inside I start shutting the door. Before it shuts though, she says "Keep it open, I have a friend coming."
This is where it gets weird.
First of all, it was 4 AM at this point. It was hard to believe any friend was about to come over at that hour, especially since she hadn't had any guests over up to this point. Now all of a sudden she has someone coming by at four in the morning? Regardless, I don't care enough to question it so I just say "Oh, no worries. I'm not locking the door. Just closing it so the cat doesn't run back in."
I expect her to say "ok" or any variant thereof. Just some basic acknowledgement of what I had said without any sort of rebuttal was perfectly within the realm of expectations of how I thought she'd respond.
Nope. She says, aggressively this time, "I SAID I have a FRIEND COMING!"
At this point, I'm a little concerned. She's getting confrontational for seemingly no reason. I try to explain to her again: "I know you don't want the cat coming back inside, that's why I'm shutting the door. But it's not locked, so you ca-"
She cuts me off and starts screaming ,"YOU DON'T KNOW ME LIKE THAT. YOU DON'T KNOW ME. WE'RE ROOMMATES, THAT'S IT. THAT'S IT."
At this point I'm baffled as to why she's reacting this way. I'm a very level-headed person. I'm not sarcastic or condescending, nor do I accidentally come across that way. There's no way she's misinterpreting what I'm saying as mockery or abrasiveness. I try to ask why she's upset, but she keeps yelling about how we're just roommates and that I don't really know her and is chanting, "Just go back inside! Go back inside! Just go to sleep."
Again, I'm puzzled at this point but also don't want to deal with it at 4 AM. I went back inside as she insisted and tried going to sleep.
Another 45-ish minutes pass. I'm still awake in my room because my nerves are shot at this point. I hear someone out in the living room say, "Thomas? Is Thomas there?" I assume this is the friend she was talking about and go out to see what he wants. I'm thinking she must have explained what had happened to him from her perspective and he's pissed about whatever she told him.
Nope. I go out to the living room and there are two police officers standing there. They explain to me that she called them, but is now refusing to talk to them, and start questioning me about what had happened. I tell them everything I've told you all up to this point, and they say, "Ok, and at any point in the night did you slip anything into her drink? Did you drug her?"
I say, "No, I'm not that kind of guy. She even watched me make the drinks!"
They reply, "Ok, we just need a statement for the record because she's claiming you attempted to rape her."
Wow.
I continue insisting nothing of the sort happened and tell them we spent most of the night with the neighbors who can verify what I'm saying. They say ok and tell me they don't want to have to come back, and then they leave.
My roommate didn't come back inside that night. Or the day after. Or the day after that.
Now, I'm going to skip a whole part 2 of this story as to why she disappeared and how I found out the explanation behind it all. This story is too long already. What I ultimately found out, though, is that she suffers from paranoid schizophenia and had stopped taking her medication the same time she moved in. Sure enough, symptoms tend to manifest about three weeks after ceasing medication, and that's what led to her breakdown that night.
