She was covered in blood again when she woke. She could tell before she even opened her eyes. The crackle. The cold, wet clothing against her skin.
She didn’t wonder whose blood it was anymore.
Didn’t cry or scream or wonder if she was a werewolf or a vampire, or completely mental.
Those emotions had run their course years ago.
She didn’t wonder about when the police would come banging on her door. They never did.
Didn’t ask why no one else seemed to notice it, not anymore.
Because they did notice it, she saw them notice it, before their eyes slid away. Before they talked to her less. Before the awkward silences, the unreturned calls.
Before the landlord stopped asking for the rent.
She didn’t wonder why no one returned her calls to look at properties.
She didn’t ask why there always seemed to be at least one man with a suit standing beneath the window. There were usually two. There would be three today, she guessed. Maybe four.
Years ago, sometimes she would wake and hear voices arguing and yelling outside. The light of cars coming and going down the gravel driveway.
But that was before.
Her eyes wouldn’t open. That would have panicked her… before. Now she just rubbed the crust sealing her eyes shut. It had been a busy night, it seemed.
She didn’t need to wash the blood from her skin to know it would be whole, unblemished. To know that it wasn’t her blood.
But she would shower anyway. She would put on fresh clothes. She would go out, enjoy some time in the woods, and get some eggs, milk…
She didn’t stop at the library anymore, even though they never charged her for the stained books. Never asked about them.
The house would be clean when she got back. The men in suits never spoke of it.
The Eye of God stared at her, painted in blood above the basin, between the two open windows. After all these years, she could smell the fresh scent of clean clothes and the scent of the woods carried in on the breeze over the scent of the blood. She didn’t wonder about God anymore.
She didn’t cry anymore when she thought about what that meant.
It had been bled out of her.
—
Nightmare Fuel, Day 6