The Blood Barn (Book #2 in trilogy)

Chapter 23: Morning Horror

With dead, bloody bodies covered by hay in the barn, the only things Marta and I had to worry about before going to bed were the blood trails, the bloody clothes, and the bloody footwear.

As we walked back to the house from the barn, I not only felt dirty having had sex while covered in blood, I felt different inside after letting out what had built up inside of me. Marta had seen my ugly side, a product of her past haunting me. She didn't run away, she was supportive like I was for her and assured me that everything was going to be okay. The way I saw it, we were meant to be together. She was messed up due to unfortunate circumstances and I was messed up due to my stubbornness to leave a lover behind.

We stripped down to our underwear before entering the house, balling up bloody clothes and taking off footwear that would track blood everywhere inside. I walked in through the front door and headed straight upstairs to the bathtub. Tossing everything in it, I figure it would be the best place for everything until I got the bleach. Marta followed behind me and did the same.

"Now what, baby?" She asked as we stood there practically naked.

I observed her bloody hands and the fingerprints I left on her body and underwear while in the barn. It should have been a huge turnoff, yet I was attracted to her more.

"I have some bleach in the storage building," I informed her. "We can use that on the clothes in the tub, and if anything is permanently stained, we throw it out, burn it, or bury it."

"Okay, baby. And what about the blood on the grass?"

"I don't think using bleach on it would do anything, so we'll leave it for last. I will go to the storage building for bleach and when I come back in, we will just have to shower with the clothes in the tub and then go to bed."

"Okay, baby," Marta nodded as I grabbed my bloody shoes and flashlight, then left the bathroom.

Once I stepped down the porch steps, I put my shoes on and used the flashlight to guide me around the bloody grass. When I got to the building, I removed my shoes and walked inside barefooted to grab the bleach and then returned to the house.

Marta already had the water running in the tub as I walked into the bathroom after locking the front door. I tried not to touch too many things in the house like doorknobs and light switches in case I finger painted everything red.

I set the jug of bleach down on the floor and then got in the tub with Marta. The clothes were pushed to the far end away from the water as we washed the blood off one another. Considering I had never been soaked in blood before, it seemed like the most difficult thing to wash off.

Scrubbing Marta's hands with a brush, I couldn't tell if her fingers were still red from blood, or if I was rubbing them raw. She remained silent as I continued and then we switched. The last thing to do was clean feet, which was quick for me since my feet didn't have a speck of blood on them since I wore shoes. Marta's on the other hand were beet red like she was stomping on tomatoes, or grapes.

She sat on the far edge of the tub as I leaned over and scrubbed them. My towel was wrapped around me since I was finished, but the clothes had yet to be started. The priority was to get her and I presentable for tomorrow since I had to go to work and she had to return to prison at some point. Too many questions would be asked if we had stained hands, and so even though I was thoroughly washing her feet, I knew our hands were the most important since they would be visible.

Lying in bed, Marta snuggled into me as if I was her great protector. In a way she had been mine, coming to my aid when Martin's people had shown up, but it really was a team effort in the end.

Despite having to work in the morning, I knew there was still work to be done around the house and barn. Marta would have to bleach our clothes while I drove into town to clean school floors, and if she was feeling ambitious, perhaps she could get started on the bodies in the barn. I would prefer to do it together since the men were too heavy for her to carry, or even drag by herself, but I knew what her response to that would be.