It’s Week 1 of Horrah Novembah! Before I bestow my first delightful story upon you, I want to add a trigger warning – this story is literally called “Blood”. There will be blood. I’ve also been told the story is gross. (Mom, you won’t like it!) Reader beware! Enjoy.
Blood
With blood on her hands, she closed the front door. She was careful not to smear any on the doorknob or the lock. She heard the lock click into place and felt the smallest weight lift off her shoulders. It was replaced by another yoke slowly lowering around her neck. The weight was so heavy she feared she might leave footprints in the wooden floor as she made her way to the kitchen. Holding her hands out in front of her, she let her bag slip off her shoulder, being careful not to touch it. Something clinked as the bag made contact with the table. She kicked her shoes off, each one hitting the far wall with a clunk. The cool tile floor felt good on her feet.
She looked down as she carefully removed her yellow raincoat. Her button-down blouse and jeans beneath it soaked through with the same red liquid dried in her nail beds. She carefully examined the coat, a faint scent of rubber and something earthy emanating from it. When she was satisfied nothing had transferred, she draped the coat over the kitchen chair. She quickly washed her hands in the kitchen sink, only bothering to remove the freshest blood.
Making her way back down the hallway toward the basement door at the end, her pace slowed. Hung on the door was a child’s finger painting. An array of paint colors, smeared across the construction paper, ending in a solid hand print of dark red. The paper had crinkled as it dried. For the briefest moment, she stood still in front of it before raising her hand to press over the small hand print. She looked at her hand, still red with another kind of paint. She felt her head swim the way it does right before tears surface, like she could feel the salt water surging upwards. She shook them away, her hand dropping back to her side.
She knelt before the small table in the hallway just outside the basement door. After carefully pulling the drawer out until it fell free, she reached back in the empty space and retracted a key. She unlocked the door before replacing the key. The drawer slid back into place as easily as it had come out.
Without giving the painting another look, she went through the door. The house was so quiet tonight. The storms had subsided. No rain, no thunder. Only the silence, the darkness, and her. Another comforting click of a lock before she turned on the light.
Each step down the stairs felt like wading in deeper and deeper. One more creaking wooden step and her head would be under the proverbial water. A nightly cleansing; a drowning.
The concrete of the basement was colder than the kitchen floor.
She turned on the second switch that illuminated the rest of the basement and her eyes took a moment to acclimate. Her grandfather’s old wooden work bench stood against the wall to her left. His tools still in their proper place with a few new ones she had added.
Past the work bench, the wall was lined with neatly stacked chopped wood. She gathered a few in her arms. The wood stove sat at the far end of the room. The hinges groaned as she opened the heavy metal door.
“Oh hush,” she said as she placed the wood inside.
She stood and began unbuttoning her blouse. She tore it into strips before setting each of them on fire, one by one, and tucking them under and around the logs. While the fire grew, she turned on the hot water at the utility tub on the wall opposite the stacked wood. She gathered her scrubbers and brushes as the water ran. She placed them on a shelf between the utility tub and the washer and dryer.
She checked the fire again before removing her camisole and tearing it into pieces of kindling as well. She added these to the building flames and stoked the fire with a poker. When the flames were high and steady, she removed her jeans and cut them, careful not to let the shears come in contact with the red. She added each piece of fabric methodically, waiting for the fire to partially consume the previous addition. She checked her under garments and breathed a short sigh of relief. Bras are so expensive.
After she’d placed each piece of fabric into the wood stove, the water was finally hot. As if she were a surgeon prepping for an operation, she scrubbed her hands and arms. With the same level of attention, she cleaned her chest, clavicles, neck and face. In the mirror hanging from a rafter behind the utility sink, she checked her hair to see if there were any concerns. It looked clean but she decided to wash it anyway.
When she was done washing, she took a perfectly white, perfectly folded towel from the top of what could have been a store display on the other side of the utility tub. Like it had been freshly laundered at a hotel, it smelled sterile. She smiled thinking of that first hotel stay and the maid that shared all her laundering secrets.
She dried herself off and wrapped her hair up in an ice cream twist on top of her head. She stoked the fire again before unrolling a strip of wax paper on top of the work bench. She opened the deepest drawer at the bottom of the workbench and retrieved a mason jar.
“Damn it,” she muttered as she remembered the two jars still in her bag on the kitchen table. The drawer clinked as she gently pushed it closed with her ankle.
She opened another drawer and retrieved the rest of her tools. Pushing that drawer closed with her elbow, she slid a piece of wood on the top of the workbench to reveal a bottle of rubbing alcohol.
She connected the tube to the needle and unscrewed the top of the mason jar. Taking one side of the rubber tourniquet in her mouth, she wrapped the rest around her arm and pulled tight. She examined her veins. Is today a cephalic or a cubital kind of day? She made a fist and released it. Cubital, it is.
She pressed a cotton ball to the top of the rubbing alcohol and flipped it over, the liquid sloshing to the top of the bottle. She checked her veins again before cleaning the area with the cotton ball. She picked up the needle and placed the other end of the tubing into the mason jar.
The needle slid into her arm with ease. It had almost amused her the first time she’d done it. How easy it was to press something sharp through skin. The blood began to fill the tube and drip into the jar. She laid her head down on her arm and watched as the jar filled. She watched as her pain, her joy, her anger, her sorrow, her happiness, her fear, her apologies, her blood drained from her arm and into a glass container. Another piece of her soul. Something she could see and touch.
As the level rose to the 16 oz mark, she bit the tourniquet to release it, removed the needle and replaced it with gauze as if in one movement. She sat for a few moments, holding the gauze on the needle mark and staring into the jar. She felt the edges of her mouth curl into a calm smile. She breathed a deep sigh before wrapping the purple bandage tape around her arm and screwing the top back onto the mason jar.
She turned around to look at the basement. She was looking forward to the rest of the cleaning, the smell of disinfectant, the assurance that not a drop of blood would be left behind. With the jar in her hand, she made her way back to the staircase. Standing to the side of the stairs, she set the jar on a step and with some effort, pulled out a stack of large plastic storage containers with a loud scrape. With “Christmas stuff”, “Memorabilia”, and “Miscellaneous” pushed to the side, she picked up the jar and ducked under the staircase. Once under, she stood tall and opened a large wooden door. Behind it was a smaller metal door that opened into a walk-in cooler. Inside, she flipped another switch and a single bulb in the middle of the ceiling flickered to life.
The room was only about six feet by six feet and the insulated walls were lined with shelves. One full side of the room was completely full of glass jars. Some were red, some had separated and others looked like lava lamps. She ran her fingers along each row, a faint smile still on her face. Each shelf housed just shy of two hundred jars and each wall had four shelves. She was excited to start the second wall of shelves with this offering. She placed it in the middle of the second shelf from the top in the back of the cooler. She stepped back, looked at the jar, and took it in.
She blew a kiss before backing out of the cooler. She closed both doors and put away all her bloodletting tools. She stoked the fire again and got out a large bucket. She placed the bucket in the utility tub and once again, turned the hot water knob all the way on. She poured a sizable helping of disinfectant into the bucket before adding the water and stirred it with her hand.
By the time she’d finished mopping and cleaning, the woodstove had died down. She decided she’d sift the ashes for any remnants tomorrow. She made her way back upstairs and locked the basement door before closing it. She made her way to the bathroom, removing the towel from her head as she floated down the hallway. Her hair fell around her face in damp ringlets. She looked into the mirror and practiced smiling and laughing without making a sound. She practiced mouthing the word “hello”, watching her facial muscles. She practiced touching her face while she talked, the way she’d seen the newscaster do so the night before.
She glanced at the clock in the hall. She hadn’t realized how late it had gotten. She turned off the light and made her way back down the hall to her bedroom. She passed the basement door once more, passed the child’s painting. Her painting. Yellow, green, and purple paint mixed with the blood of the first man she murdered. She thought about the first jar she’d ever placed in her grandfather’s secret cooler. The bottom shelf had already been full. Blood for blood, he’d said. Just before she’d run out of red paint.