"I promise, Susan," we said in Unison, almost pleading. "The Void was better yesterday."

Susan just stood there, eyes wide, jaw dropped, and any other cliche for surprise. We're not too concerned with adjectives when the Void starts acting up. There are more important things to be worried about than adjectives.

The Void groaned. It had already thrown off two of my posters. They had fallen to the floor, ripped and mangled. It did this while we were sleeping and nearly gave us a heart attack. After scolding It for ruining $20 worth of art and part of the barrier we'd built, It had rumbled and twisted and somehow did all this while doing nothing at all, because It is a Void, and a Void is Nothing, and Nothing cannot become a different Nothing, except that this one had.

"You..." Susan muttered. "You weren't kidding."

"Yeah, I can't tell you exactly what's different-"

"You have a Void. In your room."

"...yeah, and It's been acting really weird since whatever that was showed up."

"What-whatever you think replaced your roommate?" she laughed. "Do you really think something replaced him?"

"Are you really questioning me right now? In front of the Void that shares my room?" The Void growled in agreement. We nodded at it in gratitude. Always treat a Void with respect. "Look, you're the first person to actually see It besides us."

"Us?"

"Me." We quickly corrected ourselves. We didn't feel like explaining something else to Susan today. She already seemed overwhelmed. "So will you help? Help me figure this out?"

She laughed a little too quickly, a little too loudly. She did not laugh out of genuine happiness. She laughed out of fear. "Do I have much of a choice?" she asked, seemingly directed at the Void. It emitted a sense of urgency.

We smiled.

Our roommate was Different. 

We couldn't think of what made them Different, only that they were now, and it made us uncomfortable. There was something in their eyes that had not been there earlier that day. They smiled a little wider than they should've. And, worst of all, they looked directly at the Void.

They came into our room and instead of looking at us or rolling their eyes at the wall of posters we were leaning against, they looked right above, right into its deepest nothingness, and smirked. They smirked. I glanced back at it as it growled with unease. Nothing's more concerning than something that can make my Void uneasy just by looking at it. The Roommate just stood there, holding eye contact (or whatever the alternative would be). I tried to do our work without them noticing us too much, but I was silently yelling at us to get up, do something, dammit. I sat and acted productive and waited for them to leave. 

The second they walked out the door I threw our computer into its bag and bolted. We checked down both ends of the hall and the Roommate was nowhere to be seen. I freaked out for a second before I could convince us to run to the stairs. 

-----------------

"What are you talking about?" Joan laughed. "How could he be different? I saw him this morning and he was fine. He helped me with that dumb Cal II stuff."

I shook our head hard enough to make our hair messy. "I swear to you there is something wrong with him."

She raised an eyebrow, not taking us seriously. "And what, exactly, do you think is so wrong with him?"

We leaned closer to her so no one else could hear. "It's not him anymore," we whispered. 

Joan scoffed and rolled her eyes. "Yeah, okay." 

"Really, I swear, this is someone, something else taking his place for some reason!"

She looked us dead in the eyes. "I don't know what you're trying to do here, but it's getting old. There's no reason anyone would have to try and...try and replace him. You should be able to think that through and realize how dumb it sounds." 

We stood, feeling like she had just slapped us. You know she's right, I thought. This is the dumbest thing you've come up with so far. 

But you know what we saw! I retorted. There was definitely something...off. 

Well, what are we supposed to do about it? Go back and ask them "Hey, what are you, and what did you do with our roommate? Why are you making the Void uncomfortable? How are you making the Void uncomfortable?!" I snapped back. 

You know what? I intervened. Maybe. Maybe that's exactly what we're gonna do. And if they're not there, maybe the Void could give us something. 

I was nodding when I realized Joan hadn't left like we thought she had. Instead, she was giving us this weird look. "Hello?" she waved her hand in front of our face. "Where did you go? It's not polite to directly ignore someone like that, you know."

It's not polite to call us "dumb", either, I wanted to say, but I held it back. "Sorry."

"I was just saying...I don't know how on Earth you got this idea stuck in your head but I was thinking...I was thinking it wouldn't hurt to help you out...somehow." She pressed her lips together so that they made a flat line and sighed. "I don't know what you expected me to do about this or what, if anything, you've planned to do about it, but I guess since you came and told me before anyone else, I'll help." Joan let her head fall slightly to one side and gave a small smile. 

We didn't really have much of a plan besides going back to the room. We were hoping they weren't there again. But now, we were really needing our real Roommate to stay wherever he was, because this might be the last time Joan helped us out. 

We smiled back.

“You can’t possibly…” I whisper.

But you attempt it anyway.

“I’ve already tried,” I add.

Your hand grips the lid.

The jam jar is opened.

There is a void in my room.

Not like something's missing, no. There is literally a void in my room. A deep, vast, nothingness instead of a wall. It's been there for a few weeks now.

It is located on the left wall, right by my bed. It seems to be sort of stuck there by some even more unknown force. I hung my posters on it.

Somehow, the things I stick on the void have weight. I can lean against them like a normal wall. Right now, I'm leaning against a stack of pillows that in turn are leaning against posters of the Beatles and Captain America, that are somehow attached to the void. I stuck them up there with Scotch tape a while ago but I don't think that's what's holding them in their place. 

It makes this noise sometimes, like it's trying to talk to me. Sometimes I can tell what it means. Either I've gotten better at understanding it, or it's gotten better at English. I don't know. It can't quite hold a conversation but it's almost got short sentences down. I think it can read, too, but I don't know. I don't know how it senses anything. It is literally nothing. 

Lately I've been writing about it to sort of procrastinate my schoolwork. It seems fine with this, because it seems to like the attention I have to give it in order to write about it. It seems to need a lot of attention, actually. Like, I don't have to feed it or anything (I think), but it gets mad if I try to ignore it. In other words, it'll scream in my ear until I tell it off. It's not pleasant. Sometimes I'll scream back, any noise I make absorbed into its enormous nothing. It feels good.

I'll come home sometimes and forget it's there. When I walk in, it kind of hits me that I am sharing a living space with a literal void. I'll come in and it'll be watching Jessica Jones or something on Netflix. I should set up some parental controls. I don't know what it's capable of, but I know for a fact that there are things I don't think I want it to try. Some things are just bad influences on nothings, you know. 

It started screaming again. I think I hear the neighbors outside. Sounds like they've lost their cat. 

I sit on my bed, staring blankly at the computer screen. I don't have the energy to sit up properly, slouching instead against the wall of pillows I've built up behind me to keep me from falling through the actual wall into the dark unknown on the other side. The "actual wall" is nothing more than a few posters and photographs that somehow are able to hold real physical weight against the void. I look back as I think about it and stare at what's supporting me, a poster of the Beatles next to a drawing my friend gave me years ago. The void shifts and groans behind them, a swirling vortex of pure darkness that still manages to be totally dark yet contain something like stars. I shove my computer off my lap and lean forward to grab my phone off the table by my bed, flopping back against my wall with a noise. 

The void mimics my noise. I scoff. Trying to ignore its intensifying roar, I pull up one of my writing apps. "Still nothing," I tell it. 

It makes a noise that I've learned translates roughly to "Why not?" It takes the same tone as a whining teenager sometimes. It gets annoying, but I can't really scold a vast nothingness, so I have to just deal with it.

"I dunno, I guess it just wasn't good enough," I say, shaking my head. A mass of the nothing seeps out from between my wall of posters and peers over my shoulder to read my screen. "That's not very polite, you know."

It makes another noise that is, in fact, the very opposite of polite, so I won't repeat it.

It's not its fault. For some reason, it is confined to the space where my wall should be, so I can't really blame it for its lack of social understanding. It also seems to have very bad sight, or its version of it, as it keeps getting closer to my phone. I try to shove it away with my hand.

"Quit that," I scold the void. 

"But it's been days," the void groans in response, its roar still growing in agitation. 

"I know." I sigh. "I know how much it meant to you, to us, but you've gotta realize: we may not have gotten it."

"WHY NOT" it roars again, right in my ear.

I cringe. "Look, just 'cause we entered something doesn't mean we're gonna get it. That's not how the world works."

It makes another extremely impolite roar, along with its attempt at a gesture it must have learned from watching TV. I have to remember not to leave the remote in my room. It has to have some sort of supervision.

"I know you don't get it! I'm sorry! There's nothing I can do about it!" I throw my head back against my pillow. The extrusion of void flops itself down on my face. I shove it off with some effort. It must be taught.

the undying, undisputable unity of the packed stadium

the energy emanating from every body

the screaming girl about to make me go deaf behind me who's having the best day of her life

the chorus of the sold out arena continuing the lyrics in unison when the lead holds out the mic

the surrealism of the lights from everyone's phones

the waving arms that make the pit look like an anemone in a current

the pride of being part of something big and exciting and alive and real

I've watched you grow up. You used to be so small. Remember that? Remember when we used to go running through the giant oak trees in your back yard, the ones that would drop millions of acorns? Your mom would give you a quarter for every bucket you filled with acorns. We'd start to fill as many as we could, but then you got distracted and tried to make a fort out of leaves, and when you'd get frustrated that it wasn't working the  way you wanted it to, we jumped and stomped through the pile, spreading the leaves and more acorns through the yard.

Remember how stormy it used to get in the summers, and how you were terrified of the thunder? You used to dive under your blankets whenever the lightning would flash, squishing your ears and your eyes so that the only thing you could sense was me. I'd keep you company on those long, loud nights when you couldn't sleep. 

And when you stayed up so late doing homework every night in high school? I tried to get you back, tried to distract you from that boring stuff so we could have fun again. It'd been so long since we'd done anything fun like we used to. I was starting to forget. You must have, too.

You stopped listening to me. You started taking something to "help your focus", to tune me out. You only caught glimpses of me when you hadn't slept for days, or when you had too much caffeine. Even then, I don't think you recognized me. 

You've gotten so big now. You're doing something important, I guess. Too important to have fun with me anymore. Too important to remember. 

I remember when I used to be important. 

When we were small, Marienkaefer and I had this ongoing collaborative story featuring Logan Craine and Donna Briar, a sort of pseudo-Sherlock Holmes type of thing. Logan was mine, and Donna was Marienkaefer's. The characters were these absurd geniuses. Donna was a certified doctor at 15, Logan was a detective. After developing and progressing the story for a few months, it was decided that they were actually the children of John Watson and Sherlock Holmes, respectively. It was almost fanfiction, to be honest. We had a lot of fun with those stories, but they eventually sort of died off until recently, when we dug a few up from the archives of our Google Docs. I've been using Logan Craine as my name since we came up with the idea, and I've included Logan in my current storyline because I nearly forgot how much I loved our characters and how much went into developing them, and I wanted to hold onto that.

if one asks you what secrets you keep

you'll respond with, I trust, not a peep

for while I lay here napping

my pillow, my dreams trapping

in my favorite location: asleep