Not A Cereal Guy
"--ck"
What the hell is happening before my very eyes right now? The man groans again but this time rolls over in pain with it. As he does I get a chance to study the wound on his back even better. There was a piece of wood sticking out of his back, not a branch but more like a broken off table leg or a piece of furniture.
"Holy fuck!" I repeat once more but louder. I then realize the door's still open and he's still laying halfway in the hallway, halfway in my apartment. "Oh god," I mumble to myself under my breath. Quickly, I bend down and make a poor attempt at dragging his body into my apartment and into my kitchen. Damn he was heavy. And damn he was burning up. His skin felt like it was on fire and sweat coated his entire body.
"Come on, dude, let's get you up," I say to him as I somehow manage to sit him up in the one foldable chair I had, facing forward so his back was facing me. I could feel him slightly helping me in the process of his getting up into the chair, so it's not like i was pulling up his whole body weight. Not that I could. This dude was about ten times the size I am.
"What the hell happened to you?" I said to him now standing in front of the chair so I could see his face. He looked angry, jaw clenched and eyes not daring to meet with mine. His forehead was beaded with droplets of sweat which caused a few strands of his black hair to stick to it. he doesn't say anything of course. Man this dude isn't talkative. Maybe it's the stick in his back.
"Helloooo, earth to stranger," I now say as I wave my hand in front of his face. "I would like to know why the hell there's a stick in your back and why the hell you were you laying outside of my apartment. Oh and I also wanna know why the hell your shirtless and look like you're about to barf all over my kitchen title--"
"Jesus, you ask a lot of questions," he finally spits out through gritted teeth. He groans in pain. It's almost as if just talking hurts.
I scoff. "Well excuse me if i'm confused and would like to figure out why I have a half naked stranger in my apartment."
"Can you just get the damn thing out!" he snaps at me and I jump slightly. Asshole.
"Me get it out?" I questioned, even more confused now about what's happening. "Why? Why can't you just go to a hospital?" That's when I remember. My phone. "Shit, my phone is broken too. Look, do you have your phone on you? I can call for you, since you obviously aren't in a...condition to do so."
"No!" he harshly demands. "No hospitals. Look just hurry up, I can--" he pauses to let out a slight wheeze slash scream and he clenches onto the back of the chair. "I can feel it moving deeper." Now I start to really panic. I want to question more on why there should be "no hospitals". But by the look on his face and the pain in his groans, I can tell there's no time for that.
"Okay, Okay, uh here," I swiftly move to stand behind him. "I really have no idea what i'm doing, this is your final warning," I pause to take a deep breath as I position my hands on the stick, ready to pull. "This is gonna hurt." I yank on the stick as I screw my eyes shut and he lets out an ear shattering scream. He grips both hands onto the back of the chair as he lets out a painful wail.
"Damnit!" he screams.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry I told you I had no idea what I was doing," I apologize in panic. I stare down at my hands and trembling fingers which are now covered in red. You'd think i wouldn't be fazed by this considering the number of zombie films I've watched.
"I think I'm gonna be sick," I admit aloud before gagging.
"Just pull it out!" the shirtless man sitting in the chair with his back facing me growls. Is man the right word to use? There's no time to question that right now, and there's definitely no time to question why I need to question that.
"You think I'm not trying?" I shout back. Never in a million years would I have imagined I'd be in a situation like this. What situation you may ask? A situation where there's a complete stranger sitting in my kitchen with a stick of wood stabbed deep into his shoulder blade.
The stranger screams as I try pulling on the stick again and I cringe at the sound as well as the slight spurt of blood that just shot out from the wound onto my I heart cheese fries t-shirt.
"Yep definitely going to be sick this time."
"Then take some fucking Pepto-Bismol! Just pull the damn thing out!" This time when he shouts I swear I see a flash of something in his eyes that terrifies me to the core. His back muscles tense.
"Okay, look here, buddy," I say as I let go of the stick which makes him groan in frustration. "I think you should think twice before you yell at the person who's trying to help you, who by the way is a complete STRANGER. I could've just sent you packing over to the neighbors across the hall who I've only met once but I can say for sure that they smell like beets and have a weird obsession with cat cardigan catalogs."
There's a silence for a moment all except for his heavy breaths and the ticking of my only wall decor at the moment which was a Garfield clock.
"Sorry," he seethes through his teeth as he looks back at me over his shoulder with cold dead eyes. I lock eyes with his for a moment, but it feels longer. Too long.
I swiftly grab the stick again and pull before all that surrounds me are screams of agony. I feel the stick loosen and inch out slightly.
"Yes!" I stop to scream and give myself a high five. "I did it!"
"Yeah now can you actually pull it out all the way!" he screams at me with even more impatience than before. My attention quickly settles back on him and the stick.
"Oh yeah, sorry." I grab the stick again, this time just with my right hand while I place my left hand right next to the stab wound on his back so I can pull better. his skin was so hot underneath mine it was practically burning my hand. I pull with my right, my weak arm doing the best it could by flexing and I never notice that I'm screaming along with him. but finally...
"I got it!'' I scream as the stick slips out of his back. I stumble back with the thing due to how hard I was pulling and the stick flies out of my hand all while I fall down on my ass. He stays in the chair panting facing away from me and gripping onto the back of the chair while all the muscles in his body flexed and unflexed.
...
What the hell just happened?!
I myself am now on the floor holding myself up on my elbows whilst my chest falls up and down with each unsteady breath I exhale. "Uh...are you okay?" I finally muster out between breaths. After a few beats of dead silence he slowly turns to look at me. As soon as his eyes lock with mine...he freaks.
Quickly, he stands up from out of the chair and turns around to face me. His eyes are sharp, ears perked and eyes wide, stance like an animal on alert. "Who the hell are you?" he questions me in an assertive tone. I'm now the one looking at him confused. He sounded completely different now. less angry and in pain. Now instead he sounded cold and more demanding.
"What do you mean who the hell am i? i'm the one who just fucking pulled something out of your back!" His eyes grew more confused after my response. His left arm shoots up to his right shoulder blade, feeling his back for the wound. His brows furrowed and he looked at me for a long moment before fixing his posture and standing up taller.
"Thank you," he says coldly. I stare up at him in response, and it takes me a second to remember that I'm on the floor. I stumbled up from off the ground and wiped off my butt from any dust or dirt that was on the floor.
"It's no problem, really. I mean what was I supposed to do?" He didn't say anything for a moment, just continued to stand there in front of me staring. He looked better, but he still looked weak. I could still see the drops of sweat on his skin and the slight sway to his balance as he tried to stay confidently upright. "We should probably dress the wound,'' I say as I start to make my way over to him so I can assess the damage. But he steps back away from me just as quickly.
"I'm fine," he says sternly. "I'm just--" he pauses and looks at me and I watch his adam's apple bob as he swallows. "Hungry." He stares at me for a moment longer, not my eyes but my lips...no...my neck? He quickly looks away.
"Well I don't have much, but I do have some fruit loops if you want. Even some cinnamon toast crunch if you would prefer that–"
"Gross," he grumbles under his breath but I still hear.
"Okay, not a cereal guy. Got it. Well there's really not much else i have–"
"I'm sure anything you have to offer me is gross," he interrupts me and I pause. Okay, rude? Who the hell does he think he is? Just because I live here doesn't automatically mean I eat pig slop. He should be lucky I even helped him in the first place.
"If I remember correctly, didn't I just basically save your life like two minutes ago?"
"You didn't save my life, alright. I would've been fine."
I laugh. "Yeah sure looked like it. And how did you even manage for that to happen anyways. Pick a fight with the wrong lumberjack?"
"Oh yeah, good one, hello kitty," he snaps back at me. I looked down at the pajama pants I'm wearing that were pink and had a hello kitty design on them. I usually didn't wear things like what I'm wearing now. But this is all I could manage to find in the jumbled up mess of my moving boxes. I look back up at him, but as soon as I do, his face grows angry again.
"Bye," is all he says as he quickly turns on his heel and rushes out of my apartment. Bye? Seriously? After all of that I still don't get an explanation about what just happened tonight?
I rush over to my kitchen sink and harshly start to scrub off all the blood on my hands. I watch as the water turns pink as it swirls down the drain, mixing with the semi-dried blood. I dry my hands on the end of my t-shirt because I have no paper towels or rags. That is when I also spot the blood staining my shirt.
I turn around and lean against the sink as I exhale a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding ever since that stranger entered my apartment. He was so strange, his body temperature abnormally hot, his eyes dark and filled with danger, and let's not forget to mention his injury. One i finally reopen my eyes after having them closed in contemplation for a moment, I look at the foldable chair that he was just previously sitting in before me. There were tiny spots of blood on it, but not that much. It was leaning slightly, probably because it's dirt cheap and wasn't meant for a man that size to sit on it. But the thing that irked me the most when I looked at the chair, was the indent marks he left from gabbing it so hard. He bent the metal back of the chair with his bare grip.
I gulp. Talk about strength. I shake my head and finally decide to move on from this. I couldn't think about it any longer and there were too many unsolved questions that my thinking wasn't going to get me anywhere. I go into my room where I had earlier set up a blowup mattress and an empty crate with a lamp on it. Just call me an interior designer. There was a window on the right wall and the wall directly in front of me when I walked into the room was blank. That must be a connecting wall to the neighbors next to me.
God, I hope they're at least normal...