Ceaseless

Blood

Andrea had simply wanted a glass of water.

What if she didn't succumb to the prickle in the back of her throat that wailed for moisture?

What if she hadn't swung her legs out of bed? Discarding her worn woollen blankets to the side as she clamped her grip onto the icy metal of the bed frame for support. 

The friction of the rust against her soft hand burnt; the jagged edges scraped and tore at her flesh. The darkness had draped itself around the room, blocking her eyes from the damage, but she could feel it. She could feel the tiny dots of blood extend into strings, and begin to run into the cracks of her palms, like streams finally filling after a withering drought. It stung; not too much, yet tears began to well up and gloss the surface of her eyes.

Was it the pain? Or was it the feeling of moisture on her skin? The awareness of the frightening and overfamiliar red that inked and stained her palms?

She scrubbed her eyes fiercely with the back of her hand, determined to restrain them from spilling.

It's just a scratch. Grow up.

Only weak people cry.

Are you weak?

The thirst she had felt previously dissipated; the irrepressible urge to douse her hands in water replaced it, to scrub them so fiercely and vigorously that they gleamed a pristine ebony, that not a single trace of red could make its way to the surface, threatening to slice through the flesh and pour out, painting the world with its bright, frightening scarlet.

In her mind the blood kept pouring. It never paused, never ceased, never clotted and scabbed over. It diverged into rivulets down her arms, extending and spreading like a deadly disease infecting and eroding into her flesh, transforming it from a smooth, unblemished brown, to a red so bright and startling that it glimmered and glowed with an oozing malignancy.

The thought sent dizziness slashing through her body, severing and shifting the fibres of her skin, her bones, mutilating and twisting her organs into unsightly and ugly shapes. She wanted, needed so badly to feel the icy water against her skin, rinsing away the evil that seeped down the drain, making its way to the source.

The urgency grew and swelled within her, sending agony rippling through her spine.

Yet she paused at the head of Marley's bed. Marley came first, no matter how much anguish she was in.

She repositioned her brother's drooping head to the centre of the pillow gingerly, as she did every night, assuring that her bloodied palms didn't touch him, that he wasn't marked with her horrors; Marley was a hopelessly heavy sleeper and relentlessly tossed and turned, often ending up dangerously close to the edge of the low bed, his head on the verge of crashing to the wooden floor. Andrea always foresaw he didn't, though.

For Andrea often stayed awake late into the night. Sometimes all night.

Think about anything. Anything but the spider, the blood, maybe it won't come if you don't.

Other nights, she surrendered to the battle, letting her prickling eyelids fold into each other, letting her mind haul her through the soporific mist that enshrouded her bright, attractive sanctuary, tugging her through where the radiance began to bleed away into an asphyxiating scarlet. Where darkness drowned her, filled her lungs, gushed out from her eyes, her ears, her mouth, every single infinitesimal pore on her body.