Death's Apprentice

31

My arm burned as I pulled Death up the stairs. New scratches covered his face. I knew better than to search for a pulse, but looking at his overly pale face made me want to. The moment his body laid fully on the porch, unable to bear the strain on my arm, I dropped him. His head banged against the wood. I apologized, forgetting he was unconcious.

I sighed. I thought I was the one who was supposed to get hurt. A fresh surge of pain reminded me, hey, I did get hurt. That didn't change the fact I still had to find the key to the house. I knew it was in the cloak, but taking off an improvised tourniquet seemed like a bad idea. Nevertheless, it seemed to be my only choice when I couldn't get to the pockets. Taking a deep breath, I untied it. Blood began pouring down my arm. I did my best to ignore and searched through the pockets.

My hand closed around the key. Frantically, I unlocked the door. I wish  my feet would've made a sound against the floor as I dashed to the bathroom. Random bottles and tubes clattered to the floor from the medicine cabinet. I grabbed every roll of bandages and the alcohol and the neosporin. It wouldn't hurt to grab needles and stuff to stitch up the worst injuries, but it surprised me enough that Death had bandages in his house. I wrapped my wound as tight as I could before going back for Death. The pool of blood beneath him dripped between the boards.

Cawing filled the air, despite the lack of crows and any other living thing. Droplets splattered on the porch, from rain not from birds. I pulled Death inside. A trail of gold led through the house and into the living room. With some struggling I managed to get him onto the couch. I stared at him.

Sweat plastered his hair to his head. I gently tousled it, his eyes cracked open.

"Kid?"

Before I could respond, his eyes fluttered closed. I shook him.

"Leave me alone," he groaned and tried to smack my hands away. "Let me sleep."

"I'm no expert, but letting someone in your condition fall asleep is probably a horrible idea." Sure he couldn't die, but did I want to test what could be worse than that? No. Did I want to know how he was up this fast? Yes. Before I could ask, his head fell back to the cushion.

This repeated for the next couple hours with him drifting in and out of conciousness. Despite the amount of time that passed, none of the wounds began to clot. Every time I would try to dress a wound, he would wake up long enough to shove me away. I gave up after the eight time.

My body draped the arms of a chair when a load groan broke through Death's lips. He sat up and rubbed his head. "What happened?"

"Take a guess," I said, sitting up and reaching for the supplies I managed to gather. "Now take the shirt off."

"What?!"

"Death, you have booty shorts on. That's worse the taking your shirt off."

He didn't argue after that. He pulled his shirt off and tossed it to the side. I almost threw up, but thankfully some of the senseless violence and brutal deaths were beginning to desensitize me to these types of injuries. Injuries that would be fatal to anyone who didn't happen to be Death. His hand once again pressed to his stomach, Death looked like he was about to lose his lunch.

I sat next to him and dabbed at the scratches on his face.

"I don't remember getting these." He brushed his fingers against one of them, pulling them away to stare at his blood.

"You kinda fell off the banister into the bushes. Oh, hey, before I forget, can you do something about this?" I lifted my arm. Death fumbled with the bandages. After a minute, I rolled my eyes. "Death, you don't have your gloves on and these are cotton bandages."