The Most Twisted Thing I Ever Did

It was when I was in college and had three suitemates. One was my roommate, Kim (our school’s strongest female backstroke swimmer) and the other two roomed across the small lounge from us. The other two, Jan and Amy, were very pretty as far as features and figures, and always kept up their appearances, with makeup, attractive clothes, hair neatly done, nails perfect, and the whole nine yards as they say. Not like me; I just slapped on jeans and a tee and never wore a lick of makeup.

Our dorm was 10 stories tall and was coed. We lived on the "penthouse" level. The suite next to ours was a six and was all jock type party guys. They were okay for the most part. One of them was a bit of a problem, Mitch, but how much I did not know until Jan and Amy came to me one day.

“Sue, Mitch, has been following us around campus.” said Jan.

“So.”, I replied unimpressed.

“You don’t understand.” she said. “He’s really sick.” Then the whole story came out.

Let me just say here that Mitch was a handsome, well built, natural platinum blond, fair skinned, with blue eyes. He would have been a real stud muffin if he wasn't so repulsively egotistical. He was always wearing things in a banana yellow color to highlight his hair, like a fedora hat, or pants, bandanna, or his favorite converse canvas sneakers. He always wore those sneakers. He was pretty easy to spot on campus.

“He makes comments to us all of the time. He’ll say things like, ‘I know you babe’s want a piece of this, well, I’m right here just come and get me.’ Or ‘Hey I just came all over the bathroom in our suite, come and lick it off the walls’. Now he is just stalking us. We are afraid he will attack and rape us.”

“I had no idea all of this was going on. Have you reported it to the dorm's Resident Assistant?”

“Yes, but what can he do but give him warnings which Mitch just laughs off?” [Author’s note this was mid ‘70’s]

“What do you want me to do?”

“I don’t know. We thought maybe you could do something really sick to scare him off for good.” she said.

I knew what she was thinking. You ever know somebody where the communication was so much more than spoken? Just a look was all that was needed and you knew what the other person was thinking. That was what Jan was like. Jan was a psychology major. She was thinking that because I was a bio major I had access to really gross and disgusting stuff in the lab and would come up with something to scare him off for good. Clever of her that. We discussed it no further.

“I’ll think about it.”

“Thanks Sue!” I could see relief in her face and it made me feel protective. My suitemates were really good friends and I would do just about anything to help them out.

So, some time went by.

One day when all four of us returned to our room together there was a used condom hanging from our door knob. That was it; time for action.

All during the fall season, Cedar Waxwing birds had been getting drunk eating fermenting berries out on the quad and then flying into the reflective windows of nearby campus buildings and inadvertently killing themselves. So, those of us taking ornithology collected the birds for dissection and study pelts. We had about thirty birds by now.

I went up to the lab with a Ziploc bag, gathered up all of the little frozen birds, snapped off their heads and cut off their feet, put the parts in the bag, and returned to the dorm. Entering Mitch’s unlocked room when everyone was at class, I stuffed his prized banana yellow sneakers’ with the heads and feet, tipping the shoes forward and fled the scene. My parting thought as I glanced into his shoes was that you couldn’t really see the bird parts well, as they only filled about the front half of each shoe, and would he have to actually put his foot into the shoe to discover them?

I also worried that the ornithology professor would notice the shortage of bird parts.

The next day, I was summoned into the RA’s office. He did not look happy.

“Sue, look here. We’ve had this terrible, sick thing happen and we know it was you. A resident of our dorm found bird heads and feet stuffed into his tennis shoes and he was completely shocked and sickened; he even had to go to the infirmary. He insisted that we look into who could have done this terrible thing. He thought we might have a serial killer on our hands. It didn’t take long for us to figure out it was you. You are a bio major; we know you had access to the biology lab and these bird parts…” Then he just burst out laughing. “To tell you the truth we’ve had lots of reports of harassment on him, even from your suitemates, and we could never take any action. We understand your motivation and don’t feel that you will do anything like this again, but I have to tell you that any other trouble from you and you will be expelled.” Then he just smiled.

I nodded and told him he had nothing to worry about as I left.

So, I went back to my suite and my suitemates were there. Jan said, “You were brilliant! You out-psychoed him. He is terrified of you now. Our own little serial killer. We are safe with you now.” I felt all warm inside; mission accomplished.

And that is the story of the most twisted thing I ever did.

Epilogue: The ornithology professor never did notice the shortage of heads and feet, thanks goodness, and Mitch made himself scarce after that; he really was terrified of me. That’s me the big scary, 5 foot 4 inch, 100 pound serial killer.

(Photo credit: Finnish Beef to Pete and appologies to fine young man for being used so inappropriately.)