Blood Story

Blood. It seemed to be everywhere these days. Not in the sense that it was physically there, although it was. It had seeped into the cracks into the floorboards, it ran down the walls to coagulate into sticky pools on the floor. It was on him too, in him. He wasn’t merely covered, or even soaked, no it permeated every inch of his miserable being, inside and out, right down to his soul.

But that wasn’t the heart of it. Later, he would begin the ritual of cleaning it off himself. The ritual was well-worn as an old pair of shoes, sliding on quick and easy, the feet falling into their familiar indents in the soles. It seemed he might have to be a little more thorough than usual this time around. The blood had gotten into his hair and dried up, keeping it in its disheveled state more effectively than hair jel. He could feel it squishing between his toes, there was a caking of it under his fingernails, dying them red, it was even in his mouth; oh God, he’d somehow gotten it in his mouth. His breath wheezed past the blood that had begun to slowly trickle down his throat to surely end up in his stomach, covering him both inside and out. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to spit his mouthful, for that still wasn’t the heart of it.

The reality of the situation was this. He felt sick to his stomach, and not because of the blood marching down his throat to curdle in his innards. It was because although he knew there was blood in his mouth, could even feel it there, he couldn’t taste even the barest hint of its metallic tang. He could stare down at his hands, see their glistening coating of crimson, know that he was supposed to feel horrified, know that it was deeply, truly wrong, and go right on not caring anyway. A horrible numbness lay over him, covering him more completely than the blood. It was happening again, he needed to leave, needed to get away from this place, time was running out. But he remained rooted in place, and the only things running were time and blood. The crimson pool that had begun to solidify around his feet held him in place more strongly than shackles ever had.

He found himself staring into the dead eyes of a corpse. Those hollow orbs fogged over with death seemed to rebuke him. The longer he gazed, the more the eyes returned the favor, life beginning to spin in aimless circles within the fog, silently mocking him for his current predicament. He began to question whether the corpse was alive or dead; perhaps he was losing his touch. He cocked his head, and the body seemed to do the same. He asked with his eyes if it was alive. The head nodded, then promptly fell off. It hit the floor with a splat and a small splash. He saw himself reflected in the corpses eyes, and didn’t know which pair seemed more dead. His own, or this lifeless heads’ that somehow managed to keep looking at him, keep judging him all the way down to the floor.

A vague sense of discomfort started to creep over his skin as the dead eyes bored into his own as if to reach straight into his soul and reveal all his ugly sins in the light of day, and there certainly were many. The feeling crawled up his spine and settled in his neck, burrowing under his skin and into his muscles. His head jerked to the side with a violent twitch that hurt his neck, breaking the hold those dead eyes had held over him and finally freeing him from his reverie.

The man looked around at the carnage and blithely wondered if he should try to clean up. Nine dead, blood everywhere; he decided not to bother. Though he supposed he never did anyway. It seemed to be a ritual at this point, a tradition. It had certainly gone on long enough. He would swoop in like grim death itself, he would come, and kill, and leave, with nothing but death and blood on his wake, almost like a calling card. Or that’s what the news said at least. He didn’t make a habit of reading it but ended up doing it anyway.

Trying to move, he discovered his feet were stuck to the ground. He pried them loose and looked with satisfaction at the two distinct footprints in the blood. Just another piece of evidence that this act was performed by a person, well maybe some people wouldn’t consider him a person, he’d seen that in the news too. Just a man, then, just a man. Not the grim reaper, risen from the depths of hell, come to carve the living souls from these bodies and drag them down with it. They were a small but definitely proof that the killer was indeed human, though some people still wondered. And they would have to wonder longer still, for the man, or not man, cast his eyes around the room one last time and nodded to himself. He’d come, he’d killed, and now, it was time to leave.