My Roommate Is a Time Traveler

It started with the doorknob.

Our dorm room had a cheap brass knob that clicked loudly when turned — the kind you couldn’t sneak past if you tried. But every night, between 2:00 and 2:10 a.m., it never made a sound. No creak, no click. Just empty space where a person used to be.

I didn’t think much of it at first. My roommate, Mara, was quiet. Too quiet, in fact. We’d been living together for two months and she still hadn’t added a single poster to her side of the room. No plants. No pictures. No mess. Only a meticulously packed leather satchel she kept locked beneath her bed.

She was polite — eerily so. She said “good morning” like she was reading it from a script. She rarely ate with me, claiming the cafeteria food “wasn’t compatible.” I assumed that meant allergies or a diet. I never questioned it.

But the night I got food poisoning and lay groaning on the floor of our bathroom, I noticed it. 2:06 a.m. Her bed was empty. Her satchel, gone. Her shoes, missing.

I was too sick to chase her down. But the next day, I asked, “Were you out last night?”

She blinked slowly. “No.”

I stared. “Your bed was empty at 2 a.m.”

She hesitated — then smiled. “Must’ve been dreaming.”

It wasn’t a dream.

So I started tracking it. I wasn’t trying to invade her privacy. But curiosity eats at you, especially when your roommate starts talking in her sleep — in languages you don’t recognize. One night I heard her whisper in ancient Greek. The next week, something that sounded like medieval Latin. I looked it up. The words roughly translated to: “I’ll be back before the moon breaks.”

That wasn’t comforting.

Eventually, I confronted her.

“You leave every night. You don’t make a sound. Your bag is gone. Your clothes change. Where do you go?”

She didn’t answer.

I tried again. “Are you in trouble?”

Mara set down her journal. “It’s not that simple.”

“Try me.”

She studied me like she was measuring time itself. Then, softly, she said, “I’m a time traveler.”

I laughed. Until I didn’t.

Because Mara stood and opened her satchel. Inside were things no college student should have: a folded newspaper from 1902, a vial labeled “Plague Cure — Experimental”, a photograph of Nikola Tesla shaking hands with a child that looked suspiciously like Mara.

“I don’t expect you to believe me,” she said. “Most people can’t. That’s why I leave at night.”

I couldn’t speak.

She continued. “There’s a tear in time. I can access it for nine minutes every night. It’s not enough to change the world — not entirely — but enough to visit it. Study it. Sometimes… fix it.”

I whispered, “Why you?”

“I don’t know. I found a clock when I was thirteen. It was buried beneath floorboards in my grandmother’s house. When I turned the hands backward, everything shifted.”

I stared at the clock she pulled from her satchel. Ornate. Gold. Humming with something that didn’t feel like electricity.

“I’ve been careful,” she said. “But it’s getting harder. The centuries pull at you. You leave pieces behind.”

“What does that mean?”

She didn’t answer.

Over the next few weeks, I started noticing things. Her voice shifted — sometimes old-fashioned, sometimes modern. She could recite Shakespeare from memory but didn’t know what TikTok was. She got a perfect score on her history midterm, then asked me who Beyoncé was.

One morning, she returned with blood on her collar. She wouldn’t tell me what happened. Just that “it had to be done.”

I didn’t sleep much after that.

I wanted to tell someone. But who would believe me?

Besides, part of me didn’t want to ruin the magic. It was terrifying, yes — but fascinating. She brought back a button from the Titanic. A parchment with Leonardo da Vinci’s notes — signed. She even taught me how to waltz using the style from 1880s Vienna.

Then, one night, she didn’t come back.

I waited until morning. Her bed remained untouched. The satchel sat open on her desk — empty.

Days passed. I filed a report with campus housing. They assumed she’d dropped out. No record of her enrollment existed anymore. No transcripts. No ID. Nothing.

It was as if time had erased her.

But sometimes, at exactly 2:06 a.m., the doorknob clicks.

I never see anyone come in.

But every now and then, I find something new on my desk: a pressed flower from a region I’ve never heard of. A letter addressed to “the only person who ever believed me.” And once — just once — a photograph.

It was me, sitting in our dorm, next to Mara.

Except the timestamp read: August 14, 2123.

I still live in that dorm.

Because maybe, one night, she’ll return.

And I’ll be ready.