My roommate is a chud. On board with every right-wing thing of the past few years to varying degrees, former military cop, standard chud. He's also a wifebeater who attacked his ex-wife with a gun. I didn't know this until after I moved in, but felony domestic violence conviction which he swears was her fault. And he's killed before, with justifiable circumstances but he gleefully brags about doing so and all the other ways he could. To top it off, he's my landlord's 2nd favourite dog and anything he does is backed up because he acts as the enforcer and handyman for the house.

If I were a smart man, I'd have listened to either of the exes who met my roommate and didn't trust him from the get-go. Both warned me. I figured as a strong man I've defended myself against larger threats and the rent is about $200 cheaper than other options I could afford as a student. While I was still on his good side, all of his abusive tendencies were directed elsewhere so it was never an acute threat.

He started out this year trying to make the landlord cancel my lease. There were dishes in the sink that six people use so surely it must be me. That little loss of control made him snap, try to render me homeless with less than a month's notice, and then lie about it when I asked him if he knew what the landlord was talking about. The waitlist for affordable housing is a year long in this area so my options were quitting my education or putting up with his shit and indulging his need for a clean sink. When the rest of the house didn't though, his mood never improved.

Since then he's escalated, unilaterally as I don't retaliate or do anything beyond ask "What the fuck is wrong with you?", to property destruction wherever it offends him. There are weeds in my garden, the product of the open pasture next door, so clearly I must be introducing them and the solution is to run over the entire garden with a lawnmower. To set an arbitrary 30 minute time limit on harvesting my own garden before he destroys it to "kill weeds". For reference's sake, I'm studying plant science and have done weed control on a large flower farm but that bounced right off him. This then evolved into cutting my houseplants when they "get in his way". Not saying anything, not moving them, not even houseplants that are in any walking path or head space, just whatever he doesn't like.

When property destruction didn't provoke a response other than asking "What the fuck is wrong with you?", he's now graduated to cutting off my internet access. Despite him asking me to teach him how to pirate software and everyone else doing so, a warning came from our ISP about a flagged game torrent and he used that as pretense to immediately blacklist every device of mine. This is two weeks before finals and I live 10 miles from the nearest place with internet access, taking daily classes online.

If it were just attacking me for specific things I do, sure. I can navigate around that. He's going off the deep end in a way that I can't rationalise with him over and that his partner is too timid to go against him on. He's stealing the mailbox key so that only he can access it, setting every possible rule he can for the house despite not following them, finding any new avenue he can to inflict maximum cruelty the moment he's challenged.

It's building toward something. Given his history, something violent and probably trying to kill me. Given how rapidly he's escalating and how otherwise reactionary he is, probably soon. It's an abusive situation I can't escape until July without breaking the lease, nor can I talk him down from it or turn to anyone in the house including the landlord. Until he assaults me I can't file charges, but as I know it's coming and he stays up all night I can't sleep and have a loaded gun next to my bed.

The fuck do I do? Emergency medicine broke my stress processing abilities so this is really driving me toward a dark and claustrophobic place. I don't see a recourse.