Ensnared

Chapter Two

 Dried blood cakes my hair to my skull. With each breath, my side screams in agony. I can feel my broken ribs trying to mend themselves, and it just makes the stabbing pain worse. My eyes feel glued shut, but I still force them to crack open and immediately regret doing so.

The room is spinning. Laying on the floor, I try to roll over. My body rejects the motion and I heave remnants of the tart I ate earlier onto my kitchen tiles. A rough groan leaves my lips, and I force myself to try and sit up again. My body fights me, but with nothing left in my stomach, I'm able to push through and sit up, leaning against the wall.

It's dark out, or the shades are closed, I can't really tell. Now that I'm sitting up, my ribs complain a bit less, and my brain turns its attention to my left arm. It feels seared, like I set it on a grill and just left it there. My entire apartment stinks of sorcerer, and I can hear his heartbeat echoing from the corner. It is slow and heavy, so he must be asleep.

Quietly I stand, gritting my teeth through the pain, and walk over to him. I take a moment to look him over. He looks rather non-threatening asleep, though the massive bloodstain on my couch is enough to set me off. I got that couch from Living Spaces, and it was a pain in the ass to haul up all those stairs! I mean, it seemed like a lot of work for the people delivering it. Also, it was the only couch I could find that matches my coffee table, and they don't even make it anymore! I take a deep breath to calm myself. It would be too easy to just kill him in his sleep, and he'd deserve it for ruining the furniture, much less my body. I am really tempted. I could just snap his neck right now.

But I need answers. Are there more people coming after me? Why aren't I dead yet? I walk over to the living room light switch, and flip it on.

And nothing. He doesn't even stir, or grumble! If I couldn't hear his heart, I'd have assumed he was dead.

I fold my arms and look around for something to wake him up. Pots and pans are too cliche, and I'm not about to scratch up my nice cookware by banging them together like some sort of animal. I eye the couch. It was already ruined by the stain anyways, so might as well use it. I walk behind it, stick my foot under the couch, and pull my leg upwards, hard. Thankfully the man is on the edge of it, so it flips over rather easily, landing right on top of him,

"Good morning!" I shout over the panicked commotion of the other man wriggling himself out from under the couch, "Sleep well?"

He stutters, having the audacity to look caught off guard.

"Hey now, why don't we just sit down and talk about this, yeah?" His words stumble out as he scrambles to his feet.

The other man rubs at his arm that had been clipped by the couch. He has a tattoo, a hideous tattoo of some vine, and to be honest, it's tacky.

Under the ink, his arm doesn't look broken but he continues to anxiously rub at it like a baby. His heart rattles in his chest, and nervousness oozes off of him.

"Oh, you want to talk?" I can't help but let my bitterness show through. I'm truly not trying to hide it. "Yes, please, sit on my blood soaked couch! How the hell did you even get blood on it?"

I begin my interrogation. The sorcerer looks confused. Maybe he hadn't been expecting my first reaction to be about furniture, but in my opinion, it's well warranted.

"Oh? Oh, well, when you walked in, I panicked, and it was the heaviest thing I had around to knock you out with," He speaks as if he rehearsed his response.

"You threw a couch at me?! What, couldn't use a spell or something?!"

"I mean, I used magic to throw it at you. Actual knockout magic is a lot more work than levitation," So I'm not even worth the effort to be gently knocked out with a spell, I got hit with 200 lbs of wood and upholstery instead. Great. I fold my arms which still hurt. It's been a long time since my body has had to work this hard to heal me.