November turned campus and my life into a barren wasteland. There were no visits. No offers for internships. I'd expected this year to be a little more eventful than last, true to the usual pattern, but was met by anticlimactic disappointment with each passing day. I felt tiny parts of myself flake off into the air and land like ash at my feet, my head and arms crumbling into dust, my body only one gust of wind away from completely disappearing. I didn't even have the luxury of peaceful boredom. Sure, nothing new was happening, but I knew that if something did, there was a 50/50 chance it would blow up in my face and send me careening over the edge. I didn't need excitement, I just needed something better than this. And I didn't need a masked intruder in my house to make things worse.

Everybody's willingness to get along and make new friends had been fully drained since the end of middle school—that, I knew. But it didn't stop my sleep-deprived brain from telling me everyone in my classes was already starting to form their own little friend groups. Cliques, if I could go so far as to say that. After all, throughout most of my day I'd unwittingly surrounded myself with the outgoing, extroverted kind rather than people who would just let me be alone in peace. And they didn't seem too interested in, I don't know, including me to some capacity either. I was in a horrible gray area of loneliness. At least, that's what my mind kept telling me on bad days.

I remembered the date better than I usually do: December 15th. Dr. Nakamura would not stop talking about anesthesia for a good hour, and that was what kept bouncing around in my head as I walked home. My face probably had lines pressed into it on either side from the seam of my jacket sleeve. I really needed a nap during that class. Somehow, I still managed to catch most of what she'd said:

"It's standard procedure to ask a patient what kind of medication they may be on, even more so if they have multiple prescriptions. Certain combinations of pharmaceutical drugs can make the normal dose of anesthesia dangerous, or even lethal." Nakamura pointed her signature meter stick at the first bullet point up on the board, eyes darting skeptically around the hall. "...Andy. Is there a problem?"

"No, ma'am."

Right. Andy sat in my row. I flinched at the sudden noise next to me and buried my face further into the crook of my elbow, gaze still following the procedure sheet she'd handed out. The professor continued after a split second's hesitation.

"...so they tend to lower the dose. If this is the case, 'anesthesia awareness' is more likely to occur. Patients who wake up during an operation usually feel little to no pain, but the event can be disturbing or even traumatic for them regardless. It is crucial for you all to know..."

After that, her voice sank underwater, and all I heard was a middle-aged woman babbling on 20 feet away from me, like a schoolteacher's brassy "wah" in Charlie Brown. Not the best example, on my part, of a university student hard at work. But what was I going to do.

I feel so tired all the time now. What happened?

In about a week I'd be heading to my parents' place for winter break. My day had been shitty, to say the least. I'd gotten back from a chock-full day of work, social navigations, and explaining myself to every single person who asked why professors fumble over my name so much. Not to say all of them do, but when it happens, my classmates notice. I was getting sick of it. I rammed open the front door with my shoulder after the first few failed attempts, thinking maybe it had gotten stuck. But that usually only happens in the summertime.

I caught a glance at the inside of the doorway. It looked like it'd been burnt by the door itself, the edges clean, the rest of its casing untouched. For whatever reason, my house didn't even feel like my house anymore...

Hold on.

Most people had ran out of fucks to give around senior year of high school, but I somehow managed to grow even more paranoid as the years went by. Looking into my past and generally who I am as a person, I guess it would make sense. But there's a key difference, at least for me, between thinking something is up and knowing something is up. This was definitely a knowing moment. I hesitated in going upstairs, narrowing my eyes. Instead I let my bag drop to the floor, loudly, and put a hand on my hip.

"I sure hope there isn't somebody else already up there," I called, scanning every room in my current line of sight. There weren't many I could see from here. I heard a soft hiss from up the stairs, like the sound of a fire being put out, and my hopes dropped significantly along with my shoulders.

"So I've got a new feral cat, is what I'm hearing from you."

Next came a cough as I ascended the stairs, and when I turned the corner a mixture of Jack's signature tar and some other liquid became visible, coating the floor. As a little cherry on top, it seemed to be coming from my room.

"Ah. Perfect! Just what I needed today, after that delightful pop quiz and the announcement of multiple lab projects..."

I trailed off as I took the sight in more and more, stepping as close as possible without actually touching the stuff.

...blood?

I looked up and at my door, the start of something horrible growing in the pit of my stomach. "Are you...is everything...please don't tell me you brought a body here, at the very least."

Another cough, and I heard Jack's weak voice from inside. "You're home."

"Well, of course I'm home, it's 6:00! What did you do this time?!" I tiptoed around the mess and tried to find a way of maneuvering myself into my own room. I made it about five feet with clean shoes, because as soon as I caught sight of him collapsed on the floor with dark blood pooling around his body, I held back a gasp and rushed to his side.

"Holy shit! What happened, is—is all this yours? How long have you just been lying here?!"

His face was buried in one of his arms, and he lifted his head to look at me. The mask was off and his eye sockets were practically twin waterfalls—if by water, you meant burning black goo. He mustered a sort of twisted, "it's funny to see you this worried about me" smile, but I had a feeling all of it was still real. I looked wildly around the room, spied his note on my desk, and reached up to open it.

"Hi this is really rushed I think something's going to happen and you're the only"

It stopped there. I was barely able to read it at first, it was practically sealed shut and his handwriting was atrocious. I glanced back at him, grabbed him by the shoulders (trying not to recoil at the stickiness of his sweater) and dragged him with some success to a table in the other room.

"So you go and almost get yourself killed, then first think to go to the most inexperienced 'doctor' on campus to help, huh?" I said through clenched teeth, laying him down and looking back at the trail of blood that had followed us. "Either I'm your only friend right now, or you love making my life so much harder than it has to be. Stay here."

"Oh, I have tons of friends. Tons and tons and tons, and maybe even a few more..." He giggled as I went to gather my supplies from the bathroom, with supplies being a more dignified phrase than "the first-aid kit my mother forces me to bring to campus every year."

"Where is a goddamn surgical needle when you need one...?" I grumbled to myself, racking my brain for where I could ever obtain something like that. Going to one of my professors was right out; the amount of questions they would have for me alone if I showed up back at the lecture hall, dragging some poor gray-skinned thing by the hood with tar and blood covering both of us...I couldn't exactly say that the idea of Jack being put away for life, or worse, upset me all that much. But there was no doubt someone would think I was complicit in his murders. Still, I wanted to help him, because...

Why do I want to help him?

I shut my eyes and banished the subject from my mind, focusing back on the more immediate problem here.

"Hey, where'd you get this table...? It's super comfy, I feel like...ha ha, I feel like I'm floating on a cloud!" Jack wheezed, his words almost incoherent from the blood in his mouth. "A really cold steel cloud," he singsonged. I made my way back to the room with as much as I could carry in both arms, laying the tools down on the floor (an extremely bad idea in any other situation) before leaning over him to examine any wounds. While his body was practically in hell, the look on his face said otherwise. It's like he's drunk. Or on laughing gas, maybe numbed beyond belief.

"You with me, buddy...?" I asked, carefully unzipping his hoodie but maintaining eye contact. "Because it kind of feels like—Jesus Christ!"

Some kind of nausea-inducing, misty smoke started coming off his body, swirling on the floor, around my feet, and in the air above him. He narrowed his eyelids.

"Oh. That's...new," he muttered. I looked down to see that his shirt had been completely torn and burnt, revealing a giant gash in his stomach from which the smoke poured out. I stepped back, afraid to even get near it.

No. You're doing this, whether you like it or not. What's a little mess if you can just wear gloves, right?

"Jack, what in hell is that?" My voice cracked and wavered, and he lazily turned his head.

"Eh, help first, explain later. You got one o' your..." he raised his hands with difficulty to poke the air, imitating a needle. "...little...prickly things?" He started laughing again. "You seem like you'd like those."

I glared at him, already reaching my limit with this vague nonsense, and nodded. "Alright. Okay, help first. Then you can help by telling me exactly what this stuff is and whether or not it'll kill me if I touch it. Deal?"

"Hm. Sawyer, Sawyer, Saw...oh, wait, how many jokes can I make out of your name?" He snickered to himself, then narrowed his eyelids at the ceiling. "I think I'm gonna start counting. Let me know if you can come up wi—"

"Do not start counting. Jack, will the smoke hurt me?" I said the words slowly and with long pauses in between, like I was talking to a preschooler. As I struggled to get a pair of latex gloves on without any snapping noises, he seemed to think about it, though I feared for a second that he was still trying to come up with jokes.

"Mm...uh. No. I mean, c'mon, it's just smoke. Can't be that bad."

Do you even know what happened to you at this point?!

"Okay," I breathed, grabbing a regular sewing needle and some extremely thin thread, hoping with all my heart that whatever kind of creature he was couldn't die from a little infection. "I'll take your word for it. Um, this might hurt a little, so...sorry, not sorry." With one final dig through the first-aid kit, I found some antibiotic cream and sighed with relief. Maybe antibodies also kill dark curses, or demonic entities, or whatever this is.

Treating somebody as used to pain as Jack in this weird, drunken, half-awake state was no less interesting than it was completely terrifying. Every other second I was afraid I'd done something wrong, and his utter lack of a reaction to anything but my voice didn't help to calm me down. Eventually came the time to give him stitches, and it was only then that I realized he had countless other cuts and bruises all over his body. All recent, all bleeding horribly, and all releasing that same nauseating smoke. I resisted the urge to bang my head into a nearby wall and kept working, telling myself that it would all be worth it once I'd finished.

I swear, this is going to come back and bite me somehow. He's going to snap out of this weird...thing he's in, remember everything that happened, and think I love him so much just because I decided to do this. And what am I going to do then, say it was nothing? Just another regular day, being a regular med student?!

"Name a single better way I could've tested my skills and education on the spot, Jack. I'll wait," I muttered as I looked him over one last time to make sure I hadn't missed anything that needed treatment. Though somebody else probably could've fixed you up with an internet tutorial or two. All the smoke had faded from the room, at least all that I could see. The only thing I could do now was wash him down or get him clean some other way, but...

Ew. Not today. Maybe when we're further along, friendship-wise, and he's acting like less of a child.

Jack started talking again before I could ask myself why I even considered us friends.

"Hey, hey, you, that...that was cool of you. Like, really..." His voice faded to a whisper as he leaned to one side of the table, maybe trying to fall asleep. I wasn't particularly moved.

"You think so? Well, thanks to you, I won't be able to have anyone over here for at least a week unless I want people to think I'm some mad scientist with a lust for blood! I mean, the floor, the stairs, whatever you touched in my room—"

Jack blew a raspberry and let a hand hang off the edge of the table closest to me, like he expected me to do something with that. "Who needs other people, you have me here!"

I didn't know exactly how to respond, other than, "...what?"

He turned back to me with a frown, eyebrows knit close together. "I said, who needs—"

"No, I heard what you said, buddy. I was just..." I hesitated and then sighed, taking my gloves off and setting them down on a dresser to be thrown out later. "Why are you saying these things? I get that you're delirious, or high, or something because of whatever mess you got yourself into. But usually when people are on drugs and alcohol, they're just loud and have no filter. All you're being is...weirdly nice to me," I realized out loud, starting to feel queasy. Jack opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out. He stayed quiet for a minute before sighing.

"I'm going to die, aren't I, Sawyer?"

That threw me for a loop. I tilted my head, eyes widened. "I'd like to say no...? I mean, if you are, then what did I just go to all that trouble for?"

His face lit up with surprise, and he struggled to prop himself up on his elbows. "Really? I-I'm not? It's just, I thought I would never see you again. You looked so scared, and there was so much...blood..." He looked at me through narrowed eyes like I was a completely different person. "Wow. I have so many friends, but I think you're, like, the best. The best of 'em all."

I found it in myself to smile, if only a little bit. He really knows about half of what's going on right now, doesn't he?

"Yeah, you're gonna be fine, Jack. Though maybe now would be a good time to explain what even happened to you in the first place?" I said expectantly, leaning forward with folded arms. He sniffed and flopped back down, stretching his limbs. A lot of the blood and tar coating his clothes had dried, a fact which came as an unpleasant surprise while I watched him move around on his makeshift bed.

"Oh, I remember. I remember—do I remember? No, something definitely happened. Big...boss guy, oh man, he was angry. Ugh, I hate this already," he grumbled, letting his head hang back and drumming his nails on the table. "Can I just sleep? Please, pretty please? I can tell you tomorrow, I'll be awake."

"But you are awake right now."

"Nope! I'm not. Not anymore. Sleep."

He didn't bother to close his eyes, simply facing the ceiling and not moving a muscle. I looked around the room—still a mess, still able to make my stomach churn from a single glance. As Jack lay there, motionless apart from his breathing, I started to wonder.

Was he acting that way because he thought this would be the last time I saw him? Was he really in pain, but put on a brave face so that I didn't have to worry even more?

Why would he care?

I furrowed my eyebrows, realizing something else. "Did you climb through my window like this? You know you could've just knocked. I mean, I wouldn't have been home anyways, but..."

I stopped talking when I noticed he'd already fallen asleep, true to his word.

...stupid boy.