Bandages and Salt (PJO X BSD AU)

Chapter fifty-one

So he just ignores me once more and continues on with it all.

Bastard.

I knew that no plan should ever cost me more than it would the mark, so I switched to a third plan. One that was sure to turn heads, but that wasn't a price that I had to pay.

After a few days of unsuccessful complaining, I waited for the man to leave the bedroom before speaking quietly to the empty room as if under my breath, but just loud enough that I knew that he was sure to still hear me all the same in such an eternally quiet house.

"I can't... get through to him," I say slowly, almost ashamed to admit that the exhaustion in my voice didn't need to be faked or forever in any way. I most definitely would have been if the challenge itself wasn't proving to be as entertaining as it currently was. "This guy..." I continued solemnly. "He is a natural airhead."

He was not. I knew that he wasn't one. The postman may not possess even the boss's level of intelligence, but he did have the slug's uncanny ability to read me so thoroughly even though he hardly knew me at all. That alone was enough to know that he wasn't a complete fool. Even if he didn't understand the reasons behind my apparent concession.

The first thing that I asked for after the shift in my complacency was the puffer-fish's organ, sashimi. It was something that would be deadly if consumed. But the postman wasn't able to find it at the market, which wasn't surprising in the least.

The second deadly dish was grilled amanita virosa, but he proved unable to precise that as well and ends up making a stir fry dish instead with the vegetables that he just happened to have found while looking for the poisonous mushroom. It was amazing even as annoyance pulled my face into a look that could likely kill if given the power to do so.

It was a good thing for the postman that I wasn't.

The last dish, amd easiest to create, was a potato sprout salad that the stranger ended up making as a sandwich instead as there was not enough of the sprout for a full salad. But it was there. The attempt, however, failed spectacularly as there was not enough of the sprout present to be truly deadly, only serving to make me sick that night instead.

A part of me coukdnt he,o but wonder if I was just so truly hated so much by death that he would adamantly refuse to take me, or if the postman knew exactly what each of the ingredients had been and had chosen to craft simple lies as to why he couldn't get them. Though the latter made much more sense logically, with my luck I was more inclined to side with the former.

After spending the night ill and still restrained as I was pretending to be, I decided to wait the other out once more until he was willing to release me.

That did nothing to stop the relentless boarded though.

It hadn't taken long at all to realize that the postman lived almost as simply as I did, my small detour through the living room had been enough to inform me of that. The not - so - stranger had no real reading material other than that book that he had already read aloud to me, no television or games of any kind either.

The most interesting thing had been the older man's music collection, a set of records, but I'd listened to them enough that I could recite each of the songs by now. A fact that I had taken the time to point out to my dear postman so that he might be inclined to find something stimulating lest he be plagued by a poorly sung full out performance the next day. I was met with the expected lack of reaction.

"You really don't have anything else?" I asked in a disbelieving tone one day, my unbound hands moving lazily in front of me, picking at a stray tread on the hem of the shirt that the postman had given me to wear as my clothes were hazardously cut and soaked in my own blood. I couldn't say that it didn't feel good to be in something other than the mafia clothes that the doctor had given me, even if they did swallow me whole. "Any real entertainment?"