After thirty minutes of trying to unstick from the disgusting bathroom wall, Nathaniel was on another bus back to his Chinatown apartment. The balled up 'final note' was crinkling around in his pocket, a constant noisy reminder of what his life had become. He could stick, his body seemed familiar as it had always been, yet extremely alien. He had a strange and worrying thought in the back of his mind, that he would wake up in his bed, completely turned into a spider. A bastard-like metamorphosis. The thought made Nathaniel shiver.
He'd go home, make some cereal, watch a movie and lie down. Maybe he'd use the internet, try to look up more information that may not have been present in all of his books.
The wind seemed colder, making Nathaniel want to curl up into the fetal position. He hugged his coat and bag to his chest and trudged through the strong gusts that knocked over garbage cans and stray trash. The building was so close, the ancient-seeming red brick beckoned him home. The entire day had been surprising after surprise after a horrible turn of events.
They'd lived in the apartment since his uncle died. Before, they'd managed to afford a relatively cheap rental house in Midtown, before they lost almost all of their money trying to pay off debts and the costs for the burial and the funeral. At least the apartment's landlord as sympathetic to their plight (albeit somewhat). The apartment only had two rooms, a small kitchen and a living room that doubled as the 'dining room'. Nathaniel took the smaller room, which included a smaller bed. A measly single bed, his feet often hung over the edge in an uncomfortable fashion. He bore it, and it wasn't worth complaining about it to his mom. It would just make her more stressed.
Nathaniel reached the door, fishing the keys out from his coat pocket, and clunkily slamming the key into the door. It shuddered with a creak before giving him access.
The apartment only had four floors, two rooms on each. two other families lived in the apartment, but the rest were occupied by other single people, couples, or the rare elderly person. Nathaniel lived on the fourth floor, across from a young couple who were both at Empire State. Sometimes when they picked up mail at the same time, Nathaniel would pick their brains about what it was like in University. It was sort of endearing at first but gradually grew to an obvious annoyance. He didn't get mail with the couple anymore.
The stairs leading to the fourth floor were slippery, most likely from just being washed. His limbs felt like bricks, weighing him down and making is movements become progressively more sluggish with every painful step. Nathaniel finally reached their apartment, number 8, and let himself in.
He and his mother were both busy, so the apartment wasn't cleaned as often as it should've been. dust covered the bookshelf, and the counters had some particularly grimy bits. He dropped his bag on the old couch and lumbered to the cupboards in the kitchen to find the cereal. The only thing left was a can of beans and a box of captain crunch. He held it close to his ear, shaking to hear if anything was inside.
...Nothing.
BAM BAM BAM.
A loud knocking irrupted his thoughts. It was aggressive, almost threatening. Nathaniel froze, listening to the knocking become increasingly louder and louder, more forceful and angry. He crept toward the door. There was a small peephole where he could look through, to see the person on the other side. Before he could reach it, however, it swung open.
Standing in the doorway was a disheveled Professor Parker.
"Nathaniel! Where is it!" Parker ran up to him, grabbing him by his shoulders. Nathaniel was in his grasp and watched as Professor Parker's eyes darted everywhere, seemingly scanning his body, then the rest of the room, until his eyes finally laid on the backpack he had gifted to Nathaniel earlier in the day.
Nathaniel was pushed back by Parker, and he ran to the couch, pulling all the contents out of the bag. He then turned it upside down, shaking out all of the books and papers and pencils Nathaniel had put them in there earlier in the day. His hands dug through the bag like a frenzied animal, looking for any trace of something Nathaniel had known about all day.
He must've been looking for the spider.