#Marky Mark might be a little to liberal with the alcohol

[entomolog-t]

The Shadow We Cast

Chapter 3 is here!! Happy I could sneak in another chapter while updating Bite Me weekly! Fun fact: All plants and animals Sal refers to are real things, he just doesn't know what they're called. Bonus points to anyone who figures them out!

Sal and Mark being two normal guys, having normal conversation during a normal meal. Everything is fine and nothing is weird (as long as Mark keeps drinking).

Word Count: 2761

Previous Chapter: Chapter 2

Next Chapter: Chapter 4

CW: Adult language, minor injury (blood, wound), substances (beer)

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I took another drink. 

A good, long drink. 

I knew I was just prolonging the inevitable, but hey, alcohol has a way of clouding judgement, and for once impairment was exactly what I needed. How many beers would it take before hawk meat sounded like a good idea? However many that number was, I clearly still had a long way to go.

I was buzzed for sure- I felt the flush in my cheeks and a slight tingle in my lips. Yet the wild new reality in front of me kept my mind oddly clear and feeling painfully sober. With a sigh, I began to remove the meat from the barbecue. Despite Sal being situated out of sight on the patio set behind me, I could practically feel him perk up with interest. The thought of the tiny man sent my mind whirling once again. I could barely wrap my head around the absurdity of the past 24 hours, let alone what I was supposed to do from here… Coming face to face with a man no bigger than my hand who apparently lives somewhere on my property, has a pet spider, and is capable of killing a hawk? The mental summary of events was wild enough to have me glancing over my shoulder every few minutes to make sure Sal was really still there… and yet, amidst all the madness, there was a strange sense of normalcy. We were just two dudes having a barbecue and sipping beers as if we were just friendly neighbours- as long as I pretended it was chicken.

"Done?" Sal's voice was filled with an almost childlike excitement as I killed the propane. Enough stalling, I thought, just get it over with. I eyed the meat with disdain as I began to stack it on a plate. 

"All set." I confirmed, desperately trying to hide the dread in my voice.

Despite my overall anticipatory disgust, a smile tugged at the corners of my lips as I turned to see Sal’s tiny figure with his back pressed up against a beer can. I couldn't help but feel a twinge of envy at the thought of leaning against the cool metal in this overbearing heat.

As I sat down, Sal sprung up, all too eager to get his hands on his prized catch. His excitement seemed to quell my inhibitions far more than the alcohol had managed. Before any better judgement could manifest, I took a bite.

And it was… frankly, not bad. 

The meat had a unique flavour, strong and slightly gamey, a bizzare combination of chicken and beef. Paired with the sweetness and distinct spice of the sauce it was actually pretty-

A slurry of the most cringe inducing noises rose up from just beneath me -the sound like a grotesque amalgamation of a wild dog and a toddler chewing on something wet. How someone so small could make such a repulsive commotion while eating was beyond me. I dreaded looking down, but like driving past a car crash, there was a morbid curiosity that tugged at my gaze like a magnet. 

Shirtless and sauce-covered, Sal had dragged an outrageously large chunk of meat onto his lap and was tearing into as if he was killing the poor creature a second time- ripping out handfuls of meat and devouring them, scarfing it down as if he hadn’t eaten in days. 

I paused, a question nagging at the edges of my brain.

Did he eat regularly?

It's not like he could casually stroll to a grocery store when he was hungry. A wave of guilt hit me- pressuring me to keep my judgments on his borderline feral table etiquette to myself.  

As if he could sense my gaze fixed on him, Sal looked up towards me, a ridiculously wide grin plastered across his face. Without even bothering to swallow, he shoots, me a compliment, 

“This is good.”

I tear off a chunk of a paper towel and push it towards him. 

“Thanks man, I’m glad you like it.” I say, feeling as though his enthusiasm is starting to rub off, “Thanks for bringing the hawk.” Sal tilts his head, and I gesture towards the food. He smiles and nods, trying to commit the foreign word to memory. 

As he went back to his meal, I couldn’t help but stare. The guy was unbelievably small. His size in and of itself was mind-boggling, but what was even more absurd was someone his stature being able to take down a hawk- I mean, sure he was built to shit, but what good would some muscle do against what had essentially been some kind of dragon to him?

How the Hell had he managed to kill a hawk?

Trying my best not to be too obvious, I leaned forward, eyeing him more closely. He had a very distinct look to him. His dirty blond hair was a strange middle ground between a mohawk and a mullet, the sides cut short to reveal pointed ears that looked like they belonged in some fantasy game and not on a real being. He had a strong jaw, contrasted by a friendly smile. But what stood out most were the scars. 

Every inch of his being, while admittedly was not a lot, bore a tapestry of scars in various shapes and sizes. Gashes ran across his chest, and what appeared to be some sort of bite mark hung around his shoulder. His limbs were a patchwork of scrapes and cuts, almost giving him the appearance of stripped skin if it wasn’t for their haphazard arrangement. 

Under closer scrutiny a number of the jagged scrapes were far too fresh to be considered scars at all, though clearly in time they'd join in the tapestry. I nearly scoffed at the sight, Minor scrapes and bruises from battling it out with a bird of prey? What was this guy? Some sort of gnome warrior? Some tax funded super weapon? A super powered action figure brought to life by a child’s wish- I might have had too much to drink. 

“How did you manage to, you know,”I gestured vaguely at the meat, “kill it?”

Mouth absolutely stuffed to its fullest, he looked up at me and grinned, a smug pride lighting up his face. Thankfully, he swallowed before speaking. 

“Jumped at it.” He said it matter of factly, and resumed eating as if it should have been considered an adequate answer. When he looked up and was met with whatever baffled face I must have been pulling he chuckled. Wiping his hands off on the piece of napkin, he stood. In one motion, he produced a blade so quickly it was almost as if he conjured it from thin air, having drawn from some concealed barely perceptible pocket on his pants. 

“Hoks,” The word sounds foreign in his mouth, “aim for where you're at, sometimes they aim where you’ll go. Real precise. Can’t go backwards though. You close that distance at the right time and they just can’t account for it. Just gotta get past those claws'' As he spoke he tossed around the blade with a concerning amount of nonchalance. Even more concerning, the way he spoke was as if he expected me to go out hunting hawk with this newfound information. Jump at it? I mean, sure, the logic was there, however the execution was beyond wild. It felt like telling someone the way to avoid getting hit by a train was to just jump out of the way. Sure, it wasn’t wrong, but the whole concept really embodied the notion of “easier said than done.”

“And then what?” I ask, feeling like he was glossing over quite a few steps with his method of just jump at it, “You just …?” I gestured for him to continue, and if the grin that plastered his face was any indicator he was more than willing to go on. 

“It’s quite the revolutionary concept...” He continues, twirling his blade casually, as if fiddling with a pencil, “Pretty complex stuff.” His voice lowers, and I find myself being pulled in- both figuratively enthralled and literally drawing myself nearer to hear him speak. He locks eyes with me, his face taking on a more hardened look. 

He tosses his blade up- catching it by its hilt and pointing directly at me.

“You stab it.”

There's a moment of silence before he erupts into laughter. 

Hearty guffaws fill the air as he doubles over, clearly pleased with his own joke and the dumbfounded expression that was left smeared on my face. 

I roll my eyes, and try to cover my mouth in an attempt to hide the reluctant smirk that creeps across my lips, but the gesture does nothing to stop the chuckle that wells up behind my hand. I shake my head,

“And you're okay..? Like, it um- didn’t get you anywhere or something?”

With a smirk, Sal shrugs, 

“For the most part.”

Before I can ask him to elaborate he pulls down the band of his pants just enough to show a bloodied cloth hastily taped to the side of his hip extending towards his glute. Peeling back the improvised bandage, Sal reveals a nasty gash which looked like it would be a few inches long had he been of human size. 

“A little slice from the beak,” He explained, “Lucky it just grazed me.”

I can feel my brow furrow as I lean in closer. It wasn’t a horrifying injury, but by no means would a gash like that be considered mild, or as he said “just grazed.” I winced. 

“Oh, fuck- dude that looks, um, not great. Do you need anything..?”

He snorted. 

“What? You plan on doing the stitches yourself, big man?” he laughs, waving me away as he goes to reapply the bandage. 

He pauses. 

“On second thought- You wanna grab me some… um…” He stops, looking a bit confused, “Grocery weed..?” 

Whatever I had been expecting him to ask, nothing had prepared me for “grocery weed.” 

What the fuck is grocery weed? 

“You… you want weed?” 

No. Nope. Recant all previous thoughts of sanity- A tiny man and/or potential gnome warrior killing a hawk and then trying to bum a doobie was just not real. Nope. I had really lost it. 

The questionably real little man points to the yard, 

“Big leaves, round edges? Has those little sprouting bits good for making bread?”

I stared at him dumbly. 

“Bread?” I repeated. Sal pursed his lips. He strolled over to my hand and patted the back of it, looking up at me expectantly. 

“I’ll show you.” I turned my hand palm up and he clambered in, directing me down the porch and towards the driveway. All the while my mind fumbled with the very real sensation of his shifting weight in my palm. 

“There!” He hopped up, leaning over the edge of my hand andI curled my fingers inwards reflexively. He gestured towards a weed jutting up from the gravel. I titled my head, a bit surprised. I knew the plant, in the sense that I had definitely seen it around, though I highly doubted it was called grocery weed. It vaguely resembles a cluster of spinach leaves, with a few almost cattail-like stalks extending upwards from the centre. I thought it was a little strange that despite having seen this weed fairly often, I had no clue what it was actually called. 

Trying to be mindful of my not so safety conscious passenger, I knelt down slowly, careful not to jostle him. He directs me, telling me he just needs a few leaves and he’ll be fine. I feel my brow knit in confusion but I acquiesce nonetheless before bringing him and the “not-weed-weed” back to the porch.  

Sal hops off onto the table, leaves in hand and I reach for another drink. Taking a sip, I watch as  he fiddles with the bandages, re-exposing the gash. To my surprise, he takes a bite of the leaf. I tilt my head.

“So what are you do-” He spits a chewed green mass into his palm, “-ing…”

My question trails off. I watch in horror as he takes the mush and slaps it overtop of the open wound.

“DUDE!” I turn my head away to hide a gag. 

What the fuck did I just witness?

He raises an eyebrow, his expression a mix between confusion and judgement as he reapplies the bandage overtop of the borderline spit up.

“What?” 

I scoff, for a moment blanking on what I should say. Sanitary concerns? Oral bacteria? Sepsis? A slew of health concerns fill my mind, but just two words make it passed my lips, 

“That's nasty.”

He waves me off. Dismissing my disgust with a wave of his hand. 

“That,” he says, nodding to the bandage, “works like a charm.”

While I highly doubted that a chewed up weed smeared onto an open wound was more effective than an antiseptic, I couldn’t deny he very clearly had far more experience in dealing with open wounds than myself- the patchwork decorating his skin acted as a pretty solid letter of reference for his abilities. 

“Are you actually going to need stitches?” I ask, wondering if he’d at least let me offer him some disinfectant. 

Sal shrugged.

“Maybe? Depends how well the grocery weed works. Worst case it’s not like stitches are that hard.” 

What was he? Some sort of field medic? “Not that hard” to administer self suturing?? Not to mention what did he even use at his size??

“...how?” Maybe it was the beer, maybe it was the strangeness of it all, but the question just seemed to fall out before I’d even realised I’d spoken. 

Though the question had been vague at best, Sal seemed to understand my confusion. 

“Oh, I used Betty’s silk. It’s pretty thin, but the stuff is wicked strong.” He continues talking but my mind seems to freeze. Betty? Who’s Betty… and why did she have silk- Oh. 

I shudder at the memory of the spider just… crawling all over him. Spider silk?? He uses SPIDER SILK?? How do you even get- I put a stop to that line of thought as quickly as it had started.

Nope. No. Don’t think about it. Just drink. 

As I try to drown my own thoughts by taking another drink I hear Sal continuing on, saying something about sharpening a wasp’s “egg stinger” to use as a needle and very quickly decide it’s high time for a change in topics. 

With all the charismatic finesse of a 5 year old, I point to a particularly gruesome looking scar that ran straight up his back. 

“Oh man, that looks brutal. How’d that happen?”

He stops mid sentence, looking over his shoulder as he tries to follow where I was pointing. His brows furrow, before he shrugs.

“Not too sure. I’ve had that one since I was real young. I think… I fell off something and got caught by a thorn? Maybe?” He chews his lip, reconsidering. “Or it might have been a long mouse?” Did he mean some kind of weasel? I pale at the thought of an even smaller version of him facing off against one of those viscous little things. He waves his hand, dismissing the topic, “In any case, it's too long ago for me to remember.”

I tilt my head. Surely he couldn’t have been that young not to remember getting attacked by a, relatively speaking, monstrous creature. I mean, he didn’t look like he could be much older than his mid twenties at most- I mean… maybe tiny gnome warrior field medics might age differently? What if he’s like… 50? 100?? As soon as the thought is in my head the words seem to just slip out, the alcohol doing its magic in lubricating the conversation. 

“So like… how old are you?”

He shrugs as he makes his way back toward the food. 

“Dunno.” 

“You don’t know how old you are?” I say, baffled at the revelation. He sits down and resumes eating. 

“I mean, the days all blend together. Time passes whether I count it or not. What’s the point in counting if I’m not counting towards something?”

I’m not sure if it's the alcohol or if he had some sage gnomic wisdom to bestow but his words seem to strike a chord within me. I nod, but say nothing. Instead I finish the rest of my beer, mulling over his words. 

What was I counting for?

#Sal is still a gremlin in case anyone had any doubts #Mark is *suffering* #Sal is amazing at advice #Just do the thing correctly and you'll do the thing correctly #Marky Mark might be a little to liberal with the alcohol #g/t #giant/tiny #g/t fluff #g/t writing #giant tiny #Tiny man #Macro/micro #TSWC #The Shadow we Cast #MarkOC #SalOC #Entowrites #sfw g/t