Malin slumped back against the couch, atop a fresh blanket. Machiavelli sat down next to him, placing a roll of gauze and the ointment in his lap as he did so. He faced Malin’s back, as the stranger had requested. For what reason, the doctor didn’t entirely understand. Something about eye contact, perhaps? Or general shyness. How many days can a stranger stay in your house before you know them? Two plates sat on the overturned cardboard box, their matching contents–sandwiches lacking maggots or mold–left untouched for the time being. A water bottle, half-drunk, laid at the foot of the couch. 

“Alright,” Machiavelli said slowly, “I’ll wrap your head back up, and you tell me how you got here. What all these injuries mean. Alright?”

Malin said nothing in response. The doctor stayed perfectly still.

“Whenever you want, I suppose. I don’t mean to force you.”

“Just get started with the gauze, okay?” Malin said.

Machiavelli couldn’t help but feel warm inside when Malin actually responded. He smothered any emotion in his voice as he spoke, “Right away.”

His fingers were still nimble under their own bandaging, though it took a little work to get the gauze to unstick from itself. Machiavelli bit the tip of his finger once had unwound the gauze–he had gone to the store just the day prior, why hadn’t he thought about getting an eyepatch or some similar covering? There was no time to get up and go out again. So he resigned to stretching the gauze across Malin’s head, initially going against the grain of his injuries. 

“Once upon a time,” Malin began, almost theatrical in his tone, “there was a crow.”

“What? I didn’t ask for a fairytale,” Machiavelli ran his hand along the gauze, layering it over itself. Malin ignored his words.

“The crow had a specific talent,” he continued, “He could see danger. No hawk, no cat, no hunter could escape his vision. Even the most treacherous of beasts could not escape his sight. The crow was…” Malin paused, closing his eye, “...extremely proud of this skill. He had curated his flight patterns to avoid the dangers he saw, and lived a long life because of it. But the simplicity of his flights ate away at him. There was nothing to worry about, and somehow that felt wrong. The crow wanted something more.”

Layer after layer built on Malin’s head, smothering his hair. His head moved wherever Machiavelli pulled it, unresisting and almost malleable. He talked throughout it all. 

“One day, a cat took notice of the crow, and the crow took notice of the cat. However, instead of immediately flying away, the crow perched on a ledge above the cat and allowed it to inspect him. Fragile whiskers touched the crow’s ink-black feathers. And, at last, the cat spoke. ‘My,’ the cat said, ‘I’ve never seen you so close before. Usually you’re so high up in the air. Why are you down here, then?’”

“You’re a strange one,” Machiavelli muttered, wrapping the bandage up and down the top of Malin’s head, “Maybe you still haven’t gotten enough blood back.”

Malin showed no sign of hearing him. “‘I’m here because I am burning,’ the crow said, ‘There is something I want that I have not allowed myself to have. I know the dangers of your tongue and mouth, so I fly from you and your kind. But the thought of a playful chase, of narrowly escaping your teeth, I hunger for it. I want to experience that.’ And, of course, this surprised the cat. He was no good hunter, and didn’t particularly want to chase any crows at that moment. He was much happier with the food his owners got him. And yet, here was quite a cunning crow, asking for a chase. Or was he really cunning at all?”

Malin rubbed the gauze over his missing eye for a second, just a second. A chill traveled throughout his body. He took a drink of water, his words never quite leaving the heavy air around the two of them.

“‘Well then,’ the cat responded, ‘I’ll be just what you need. I’ll chase you.’ and the crow thanked him dearly. The cat began to jump to reach the crow, excited for their games. The crow, in return, fluttered a ways off. The cat followed, and so began their chase. Any sign of teeth from the cat was a playful smile, at least at first. And, because the crow was so far away from other animals, he did not recognize the change on the cat’s face as he grew hungrier and hungrier.”

Machiavelli took a deep breath in. He was almost done covering the injuries on Malin’s head. One hand sifted through Malin’s hair, working out knots and rearranging strands back into what Machiavelli assumed was his natural part. 

“After a few days of their chase, the cat finally caught the crow under his paw. The crow grinned, playfully laughed and scrambled around to get out, to continue the chase. But the cat would not raise his paw. And the crow understood then that their definitions of ‘chase’ and ‘hunger’ were no longer the same. Something about the crow’s presence had changed the cat.”

“This fairytale has little to do with your appearance on my doorstep.” Machiavelli lied.

“Ah, you’re jumping ahead,” Malin clasped his hands together, “The crow did escape, just barely. Torn wings and all. But the experience filled him with so much fear and excitement that he sought out other cats. The crow did not delude himself. He knew every cat would eventually gain a taste for him. If the crow could enjoy his suffering so the cats would bother no other crows, then so be it. Everyone benefited. The crow would not say he was suffering.”

“I,” Machiavelli said slowly, “am not a cat.”

Malin moved, adjusted his posture just so, as if he had slipped out of a trance. His eye burned into Machiavelli’s own.

“Sometimes cats are pampered and well trained,” he said simply. His head jerked to the side the moment Machiavelli finished tying the bandages against the back of his head.

This chapter contains the following trigger warnings:

Reference to the ingestion of rotten food (and insects)
Self-Victim Blaming / Guilt
Light descriptions of blood and gore

Please note that Malin's feelings about himself (ie, the victim blaming) do not reflect my opinion of people in or escaping from abusive situations. You deserve to heal and to be safe!

“I don’t know what makes you believe I have some negative intent,” Machiavelli frowned, leaning back and away from Malin’s glare. Ave, years ago, clutching that bird, saw something in him that Malin must see now. But what has changed? What could be the same between these two moments in time?

“I never said that,” Malin had one hand over his mouth, “And I don’t know how a half-unconscious sentence of mine has stopped you from calling anyone.”

“Do you want me to now…?”

“Of course not,” Malin gave a closed-mouth smile. 

Machiavelli groaned. He got up, walked over to the box, and sat behind it, opposite of Malin. He hunched forward, avoiding eye contact, using one arm as support for his head. A deep sigh disturbed the dust of the room.

“If your story is anything to go off of, I don’t suppose you were mauled by an actual cat. If so, it must have been a hoard, or a mountain lion, or something…” He didn’t want to think about what held him back from calling an ambulance. Machiavelli’s gaze dropped to the stitching on Malin’s neck. The injuries he wove together weren’t from claws. Not with the dragging, intricate, almost artistically deliberate marks. Not with the pieces of metal he picked out of Malin’s skin. Machiavelli’s pointer finger and thumb struggled to build a scab over where he held the shards after digging them out. He twisted his hand around, viewing his bandaged fingertips from all angles.