A month ago, after Julie moved out of our apartment in to get a place with her douchy boyfriend, I joined roommate.com to find someone looking for an apartment in Chi Town. I swore I was done with girls, (I loved Julie, but she drove me nuts), and I needed a change. So I sought attractive GUYS in the city… Danny’s profile made him out to be a decent enough guy, so I contacted him, we made arrangements to meet at the local Caribou Coffee.
I sat outside, my latte in hand, while the most beautiful man I had ever seen in my entire life walked up and sat down at my table. He was the spitting image of Heath Ledger. LITERALLY. It was as if the man had stepped out of A Knight’s Tale, with the breeze swirling around his sun-blonde Australian hair, his cheeky grin stretched across his perfect face. I tried not to reduce myself to a drooling fan girl, so I hid my mouth behind long sips from my latte cup.
(Seriously, imagine THIS beautiful man walking towards you. You'd drool like a fan girl too.)
“You must be Jacqueline.” He said. He even had an Australian accent. I swore Heath Ledger had died… it had been a big deal a couple years ago when Dark Knight came out. This couldn’t be him.
“Yes, but call me Jackie. And you’re Danny Ganger?” I said.
“Correct.” God, he’s so proper all the time. But that’s how he always answers. He can’t just say “Yeah” or “Yup”, he has to say, “Correct.”
Well the interview went well: I asked him if he smoked and he didn’t, I asked him if he would stay up late and blast music at 3 in the morning and he said he wouldn’t, I asked him if he had any pets and he told me he didn’t like animals; but when I asked him if there was anything else I should know, anything else that might concern me, he glanced up at the awning then back at me and said, “No, that’s pretty much it.” I know now that “pretty much it” is code for “I’m a shapeshifter”, “I’m a bloodsucking vampire”, or “I have an alien growing on the back of my head”. “Pretty much it”… ha… Shifters are ridiculous. No, guys are ridiculous.
Now some of you reading this might be thinking: What’s so bad about living with a shapeshifter? So what if he changes his shape every so often? Well, don’t forget that werewolves are shifters too and you wouldn’t want to be living with one of them during their time of the month. Danny isn’t evil or hungry for blood or anything, he’s just… confusing… and messy.
For this whole month he seemed pretty normal. He was a little awkward and shy but we were both getting used to the whole new living enviorment, and honestly we didn't see eachother that much. He worked during the day and I worked most nights at the Lotus Leaf. But last night, I saw him shape-shift for the first time, and honestly I thought he was gay.
I came back a little earlier than normal from work, exhausted, cold, smelling of fish; and the moment I threw my coat onto the couch, I saw a dripping wet black guy sway out of the shower and towards Danny’s bedroom wearing only a towel.
“Hey, you. Are you one of Danny’s friends?”
“Yeah uh, hi… I’m gonna go get some clothes on.”
“Oh let me just talk to Danny for a sec, then, um…. I’ll leave you two alone.”
I started for Danny’s door and the sexy black man stood in my way. He really was an attractive man, I thought. He had those Will Smith shoulders. Too bad he’s gay.
“You can’t talk to Danny” he said.
“Why not? I swear it will be real quick, then I’ll be out of your hair.”
“Because… uh…. He’s not in there.”
“What?” Suddenly my disappointment that Danny might be gay and the sexual attraction I felt for this half naked man in my apartment was suddenly smothered by a throat clenching fear.
“What did you do to Danny?” “Are you robbing us?” “What…” I slowly backed towards the door ready to run. His eyes widened and moved towards me.
“No, Danny’s fine. Really. I’m not robbing you. You said you’d be home at 2”
“How did you know when I come home? Are you stalking me!?” I exclaimed.
Let me just preface these next events and my actions with this: I used to hate it in movies when something terrible or horrible is coming towards the girl and she stares at it and screams allowing it a chance to eat her or blow her up instead of running away like a normal human being. After I saw Danny, change, I realized that when you see something so shocking, so putrid and vile, that sometimes your whole body locks up in paraplegic fear. Now I understand the stupid dumbfounded ingénue.
The black man’s face contorted and he crouched down on my Persian rug in the middle of the living room on all fours, his back arched, his head hung low. His spine shifted beneath his skin, his ribs clawed forward with the crinkle crackle of bones wrenching forward. He threw his head upwards, looking straight at the ceiling, his face wincing in silent pain as tears dripped from his eyes. With his mouth wide open, his teeth pushed forward and dropped to the floor like river pebbles, and he coughed and vomited a spray of tomato red blood. His eyes began to glaze over with a film until they were blind white, and then he took his nails and clawed at his eyes and face, ripping the eye film and his cheeks. I’m still haunted by that sound of skin ripping like canvass. He scratched at his entire body tearing off his black muscular skin in bloody heaps to the floor to reveal white smaller body beneath. Blond hair stretched out from his head and his body cracked and twisted until finally, he stopped. He stood up, panting, white, bloody, naked, and he stared into my eyes while trying to cover himself with the towel, and I realized that it was Heath Ledger… Danny.
When I came to my senses, I realized that I was pressed up against the door so hard that the grooves in the wood had left indents in my arms. I can’t remember if I screamed or stayed silent. I know that much of my energy was spent on trying not to vomit.
Danny looked down at himself ashamed and said, “I should have told you… I’m a little different. I can leave in the morning if you’d like.”
I paused, I thought about it, and I saw his eyebrows bending into that sad puppy face, and I told him that he could stay under these conditions:
1) That he cleans up the mess and buys me a new Persian rug.
2) That he must change in the bathroom from now on
3) That he uses Heath Ledger as his primary skin when he is around me and the apartment.
4) That we hang out so he can explain himself this weekend.
When I told him that he could stay and saw that Heath Ledger smile stretch across his bright face, all my reservations flew out the window.
I excused myself, made my way to the bathroom, and proceeded to vomit.
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