Mark My Words

Chapter Twenty-Two

Blood.

Blood.

Blood.

It was the first thing on Jack's mind when he woke up. The first thing he smelled. The first thing he felt. The first thing he saw.

It was even the first thing he tasted.

And it was after Jack awoke from the unnatural sleep he'd been in that he realized how much of it there was.

At first, he was too out of it too notice. His mind was still groggy and slow, and his eyes, while they could see, were having trouble focusing. If it hadn't been for the stickiness of his fingers, he probably would've stayed in that state for a lot longer.

Confused by the sensation on his hands, Jack tried his best to shake himself out of his daze and brought his hand into view. It took a couple of moments for him to fully process what he was looking at, because after all, it's not every day you see your hand coated in such a grim substance. But eventually, it was the crimson colour and metallic scent in the air that finally fired the connection in his foggy mind.

His hand was covered in blood.

Alarmed, Jack quickly moved his other hand in front of him to inspect it. Sure enough, it was painted red with the revolting liquid, every single inch of his skin stained and tainted by it. There was so much of it dripping off of his arm that it was as if he'd dipped the entire limb into a bucket of the stuff, leaving a sickeningly thick film on it afterwards.

Panicking even more at this point, Jack started to check the rest of his body for any stains of blood. Much to his dismay and utter terror, he found that there wasn't a part of him that was free of the liquid. His clothes were dyed from the dark colour, his hair partially red in some places, contrasting with the green and making a rather sickening collage of Christmas-themed colours. A metallic taste tainted his tongue, and though he normally didn't despise the taste, the current circumstance made Jack want to wash his mouth out with soap. There was even some still flowing out from inside of him, pouring out from the open but small wound on his face and limbs.

And not only was the blood on him, but around him as well. Jack was currently seated in a pool of the fluid, parts of his body submerged in a literal bloodbath. The sea of red stretched out a good metre or so around him in every direction, placing him directly in the middle and providing him with nowhere that he could direct his attention to in order to distract himself.

Like any normal person would, all of these factors combined made Jack start to go into shock. His already dazed and hazy mind almost completely shut down, putting the rest of his body into panic mode. He felt his heart nearly stop before beginning to thunder in his chest, he felt his lungs start to contract and expand far too quickly to be healthy, he felt his stomach churn with an icy feeling of dread, and could feel his skin itch and crawl at the knowledge that every inch of it was painted red. He was in such a horrified state that he couldn't even get his body to move in order to get out of the situation, trapping him on the floor and allowing the blood to continue to soak through his already sopping clothes.

What the hell happened here? To him?

Taking a slow and shaky breath in, Jack made an effort to calm himself down. Maybe then he'd be able to make some sense of this.

He finally gained enough control over his petrified body to pull himself off the ground, though it was still a bit hard to do when his hands refused to stop trembling, and when he involuntarily recoiled every time his arms sloshed through the blood. After a bit of struggle, the action brought Jack back to his feet and enabled him to get a view of the graphic scene around him, his enhanced perception both a good thing and a bad thing. He was now able to get a proper view of the room he'd woken up in, the full extent of it revealed, but this also revealed even more blood.