Blood of Eden
CHAPTER THREE
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I feel something brush my left shoulder. Fear strikes me with rage and I jump instantaneously, knocking over my chair to flee their grasp, and turn to see who or what was there. I am blinded by the severity of the brightness of the overhead lights immediately, and I almost fall backwards, but grab the table’s edge and manage to keep from doing so. The chair crashes to the floor and is strangely quiet and echoed.
My head is attacked with massive pain because of the light and I immediately want to shut my eyes to block it out. But I don’t for want of knowing who or what had touched me. My first thought was of the vampire. But the image I see sharpens instantly, proving the thought wrong.
Of course they are taller than me, but the long brown hair, thought now messy, the female body and the face features tell me it’s Jamie, the beautiful sister who is not really my sister.
I scared her, obviously. She jumped back when I did. I feel her concern…
Is this a lie, too? I try to shut my eyes and block it out. It only becomes stronger and I can feel her want to step closer to comfort me since she knows something is bothering me. I feel her hesitance and open my eyes as she says my name. Yet there is also her anger towards me, which is still present and strong, never having left since meeting Octavius. She really hates me.
Her voice is faint as the chair’s crashing had been.
I am breathing hard and my heart hurts. I press my bloody left hand upon my breastbone and try to speak. That hurts, too, but I manage with a hoarse voice. “Fine.”
Then I realize she is looking at the blood upon my hand. Her eyes grow wide and dart to my neck to see for bite marks on either side. She only comes across my bite scar, the one from nothing but a vision.
Her dark brown eyes meet mine questioningly. There is fear instead of worry in her voice. “What happened?”
Her voice is louder now; it’s clearer. But she sounds kind of detached, like she doesn’t want to be near me anymore.
I doubt she can take much more of these strange on-goings. But it’s not my fault and she knows it—or she should know it by now.
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The thought of Octavius floods over me and I open my mouth to speak.
“What’s going on?” a voice says. It’s John’s voice.
I shut my mouth quickly as my eyes dart to the doorway next to the tall black refrigerator by the kitchen doorway.
He is standing there with half-open eyes and for the first time, he seems his age rather than ten years younger. He looks very tire, as if he hasn’t slept in a week. For the past few weeks or so, every since earlier this summer, he hasn’t slept all that well any night—at least, not since everyone turned up dead that I had said was dead from my vision, which I had seen from Michael. The light is rather bright and he’s just standing there with his eyes half-closed and his arms folded across his smooth, bare, muscled chest. He has a frown upon his worn face and he looks as if he could fall asleep right where he stands.
I notice his feet are bare and pale, which deeply contrast with his tanned skin. He is wearing a pair of loose black Lenin pants and he simply waits for one of us to answer, obviously not realizing that I’m trying to let him not see the blood.
“I heard someone crying,” he says, still looking over the both of us and expecting one of us to answer. He already knows who was crying, though.
Jamie sighs and tells him as she looks away from me and lets her eyes rest upon her father, “Marie’s bleeding and was crying.”
His attention lands upon me and he becomes wide-awake upon those words. He quickly crosses the room to me and I half-start to turn away and stare upon the wooden floor. I don’t want to look at him anymore. I see him reach to examine my head out of the corner of my eye. His fingers just barely touch my hair around the wound and the heightened sensitivity to even such a light and gentle touch sends me pulling away in pain as my eyes begin to water.
“Ow,” I saw as I close my eyes tightly even thought the pain is already numb again.
“How’d you do that?” he says quietly as he still looks over the wound but now doing so without trying to touch.
“I was sleep-walking and I guess I slipped and fell,” I reply to him. Easy enough. I really did sleepwalk. Otherwise I would never have been in the bathroom in the first place. Then I lie, “My head hit the mirror and broke it.”
John shakes his head as he inhales deeply and exhales exaggeratedly. “Jamie, you know what to get.”
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Jamie rolls her eyes and lets her head fall back as far as it can go so that she is looking up. Her shoulders drop simultaneously with her head lolling back as she groans in annoyance. She straightens back up, shaking her head, and gives me a ‘you-butt-hole’ look. “Ok, Daddy,” she sighs.
“How long have you been crying?” John asks me as he stand the chair up that I had knocked over a while ago. He pushes it behind me as it makes the annoying screech across the floor. “Here. Sit down.”
“Not long,” I admit. But I don’t mention that I’ve been in this kitchen for a few hours just remembering things that happened over the summer.
“Ok. Let me rephrase. How long have you been up?”
Jack pot. He knows I am playing the old gotta’-say-the-exact-words routine. I watch him as he takes another chair and sets it backwards before me. He straddles the chair, and he rests his arms upon the smooth oak curves along the top edge. John simply stares me down as I do not reply. I lean forward and put my elbows upon my knees and I clasp my hands and stare at them, not blinking or even saying anything for a few minutes.
“How long?”
“Since three o’clock,” I say, deciding to be honest.
“Marie…Why didn’t you wake us up? So you’ve been sitting here and bleeding for three hours?”
I force a fake smile and shrug. My fake smile falls with my shoulders. “Didn’t need to wake you up. I just needed a little time to think.”
About”
I look up into his concerned eyes and see the genuine love and care any father should possess. I don’t want to feel that emotion. I close my eyes and I begin to cry again as Octavius comes to mind. I stop quickly as I started and cover my eyes to wipe the tears away. “Nothing I want to think about now,” I manage to say.
“Octavius?”
I shudder at the very name and don’t answer.
“Yeah. I kind of noticed you seemed a little sullen when we were leaving,” he says thoughtfully.
I shake my head and tell him, “Dad, it’s got nothing to do with us leaving or anything.” I wait for him to reply and even expect him to. He doesn’t, so I continue. “He isn’t who or what I thought.”
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John’s visage clouds over with curiosity. “But he’s a good kid. He helps your uncle a lot, and he hasn’t started any trouble with anyone or anything.”
“Dad, you don’t really know him,” I argue weakly.
Jamie returns and drops the antiseptic and a clean white towel on the table next to John. She is swearing under her breath so quietly that John can’t hear her. But she knows that I can hear her well. “I’m going back to bed,” she says. “So good-night, Dad. Good-night Marie.” She quietly adds, “Freak.” But John hears her.
“Don’t call your sister that—“
She interrupts as she squints her eyes into a glare at me. “Why? First off, she’s not really my sister. Second, she is a freak. Third, I don’t like her and she’s a paranoid schizo with weird things that happen to her…and,” she thinks a moment, “she tried to kill me.”
It brings up the memory of when she took the phone from me and I bit her when I tried to tear her throat open. It feels as if the life has been drained from me as I look at Dad and then back to her. We’d never told John exactly what had happened. Then again, not even Jamie knows the exact story on that one.
“Now that you’re finished interrupting me,” John says as he stares her in the eye, “First, she is your sister. Second, she is not a freak. She has problems that she’s dealing with…and maybe weird things do happen around her. But hey, didn’t she know when and where…they were killed?” He seemed to have to choke back his own emotions at that quick pause. “Third, I don’t give a shit if you don’t like her. You don’t have to. You’re sisters, so of course you’d probably try to kill each other. Didn’t she have a reason? I doubt she’d simply attack you for no reason—“
“Ow,” I saw, interrupting as he wipes the antiseptic from the wound gently. It hurts still.
“Sorry,” he says as he smiles. “You lost a lot of blood for such a small wound.”
“Three hours, Dad,” I remind him.
“Right.” He turns back to Jamie just as she reaches the doorway and tells her, “You don’t need to go to bed now, Jamie. Thirty minutes is all you’d get, so you might as well stay up.”
She places her hand on the doorframe and turns her head back. She looks at me and then to John and says, “Fine. Maybe I shouldn’t have gotten up in the first place.” She looks at me and sneers. I hear her added thought. “Hope you got a concussion.” She only thought it, but I’d heard it clearly.
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I jerk my head her way in shock. Since when have I begun to be able to hear her thoughts? I thought I could only hear what Octavius let me hear from him—I mean—what he made me think I could hear…no. I couldn’t have heard that.
Nonetheless, Jamie frowns as if she knows I heard her and that that was why I jerked my head in her direction.
“Jamie,” John says, “Go clean up whatever mess is in the bathroom. I knew I’d heard something break earlier.”
“But it’s her mess!” Jamie whines. “She should have to clean it up!”
I push John’s hand away, deciding I’ve had enough. He doesn’t get to say anything to her or to me. “I’ll clean it up,” I say. “Besides, I wouldn’t want her to feel like a maid and ruin her perfect little life.”
As I pass Jamie, I have the strange feeling she wants to trip me. “Don’t even think about it,” I tell her. She looks a bit startled and I look down and see her move her foot back out of my pat. I pass her by and she whispers, “Freak.”
“Whatever.”
“Jamie, you go help her,” John says firmly.
“But—“
“Not another word. Just do it.”
I can’t help but smile. It’s funny. She didn’t get her way.
Upon going through the now well-lit hallway, I grow a little dizzy and slow down for a moment as I lean against the paneled wall with its cold wood-grain texture. Jamie suddenly pushes me from behind and I nearly fall flat on my face.
“Hurry up,” she says.
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“You might want to be careful, Jamie” I spit angrily.
“And why is that?” she says, again pushing me. “Gonna’ bite me again Freak?”
“Jamie, what is your problem? What did I do to you that makes you so made at me?” I am standing right in front of her and am trying to keep myself from punching her pretty little face. She’s pretty good at getting under my skin. She loves to because usually either someone stops me or I turn away on my own. Otherwise I would’ve already hurt her badly by now.
She glares at me without answering.
My eyes squint as I somehow look down my nose at her and I give her an oh-so-that’s-why expression and say, “Yeah—I know exactly what most of your problem is. It’s him and me, right?”
She doesn’t reply but there is a slight twitch in her expression.
Bingo.
So I nod my head, “Ok. You know what? You can have the lying bastard. Bt you know what? It won’t take away the fact that he can get inside my head and convince me of all kids of shit! You can have every freaking thing! I just wish I could give it to you but I don’t know how!”
She looks a little confused and starts to say my name. “Marie—“
“No,” I sharply interrupt. “He’s a liar, and who gives a crap about how he looks or acts? All of you are liars and everything I’ve ever known is a lie…I don’t want to hear it anymore! So just leave me the hell alone and stop—with everything.”
She has little time to say anything before I speak again, and she starts to say my name again, though quieter. Again I break her off in the middle of the word and this time, this time I am calmer and quite weak in tone, as if defeated and hopeless. “That’s all I want is for everything to stop…it’s all I want. I don’t want to dream, I don’t want to see, and I don’t want you constantly on my back. I don’t want counseling…Jamie; you have no idea what it’s like. But right, whatever you say. I’m a psycho-schizo-sociopath and whatever else you might want to call me. I don’t need you to help me with cleaning up the mess. You can go if you want, and tell Dad I didn’t want you around me.”
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I turn from her, leaving her to stare blankly after me, rooted to the very spot she’s been standing since I turned on her when she’d shoved me. Her eyes follow me. I can feel it. But one good thing is coming along through all this: I’m not feeling any emotions or hearing any thoughts that might be radiating from her. All I can feel is her ever-piercing brown eyes in the dark of the hall. Every thing is normal…
Normal…I wish I knew what it was like.
As I reach the bathroom doorway and begin to turn, my head seems to begin to spin again and I clasp for a hold on the hardwood doorframe. It passes after a moment after I switch on the light, which removes the shadowy veil swallowing and hiding the remnants of the shattered mirror and bright blood splatters and smears and pool.
Shattered reflections, I think in an aura of thoughtfulness. Hmm. Good song title. I then shake my head very slightly as I kneel, pulling the tiny plastic blue trash can closer to me with my right hnad and trying to be careful to not step on the slivers of glass.
There isn’t very much glass on the floor or sink or anything. It’s only the bits and fragments that fell after the mirror had suddenly cracked and broken.
I again recall the manner it had done so, and how the blood had bled from the glass wounds, which beheld distorted, scattered reflections…so creepy. I don’t want to think about it. I can already feel the lump in my throat.
I pick up the few larger slivers and trash them and then stop and lean over the sink to reach for the mirror’s dull bronze frame. It takes only a moment to lift it off the nail in the wall. The back piece is a think, lightweight wood and it’s texture feels like the wood-paneled walls in the hallway feel, though it’s much lighter in color and unstained. As I take it down, a couple more pieces fall to the floor and break. Oops.
A minute later when I’ve emptied some of the glass off the frame and into the trashcan, I see Jamie walk up behind me. I look up at her and see that she’s got a broom and dustpan. She shrugs at me.
Neither of us say a word, which leaves an almost echoed silence, save for the light sounds of sweeping and the gritty sound of glass scraping against the floor and softly clattering against each other.
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After all of the smaller pieces of glass are cleaned up, Jamie retrieves a large trash bag for the fame and the bloody fragments still clinging to it, and the glass and bad in the small trashcan. She leaves with the broom and dustpan and the tied up white bag and I reach to the simple-looking towel shelf over the back of the white toilet for a neatly folded, dark-blue rag. It matches the hand towel I earlier used. It’s not a rough, though for the fact of having been used so many times. The edges are slightly frayed, and I unfold it and turn to wet it and ring it out.
I look up at the wall where the mirror had hung, when a strange, distant thought comes into my mind, from where, I have no clue. It’s a sort of wordless thought, like a blurred image and unclear emotion, almost as if a faint memory of something. But it seems foreign, as if not of my mind—or at least, not of my memories. The blood that had trickled down the wall from the mirror was what had sent the entity of the memory.
I find myself fading, detaching slightly like I’ve closed my eyes to dream and I feel as if I’m drifting away to watch from another’s mind.
The water is still running and I begin to lose the complete consciousness of the continuous sound as I stare ever still upon the blood-ridden bare wall…
Voices, very far away and almost blending with the silence and running water…I feel a tingling sensation ripple through me, almost unnoticeably, but still, it had.
A child screams a mournful, frightened cry and as it is also faint, I no longer see the wall before the sink or me. The faded, obscured, blurry pictures I see bring the feeling of tears and of violent, helpless crying. But yet my body and especially my face are calm and unwaveringly expressionless and motionless. It’s almost as if it’s me crying, but it’s not, almost as if I’m using my voice—but I’m not. My own voice is frozen to silence.
An unclear face comes and fades quickly and there is fire, but the fire doesn’t burn. The fire seems almost part of me, of my very soul and being…then a cold encompasses me and my mind’s images seem to refer to soldiers, foreign men of war in armor with cruelty. The cold in them is what is strongest and draws fear from me and from the entities around me. There is a will to flee and a woman’s cry to run…
Blood…everywhere, even my hands. Of all this, the hands covered in blood are the clearest, though still unsure an image. Then everything begins to fade and I have a waking feeling. This time it feels more mature, as if older, as if no longer hovering in the memory, but now facing a reality…
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The reality seems so distant and strange to me, yet as I see, it has a fateful ringing tone of finality and grievous familiarity, and this other view brings the familiarity to integrate into my mind.
Curiosity comes from me, not the other view, and I begin to wonder. But as soon as the curiosity rises, everything is gone and my energy seems to drain enormously with it. Air rushes into my lungs and I snap back into reality.
Suddenly I see the wall with the blood again, and I instantly feel a very sharp bite running all over the skin of my hands, which signals my reflex of dropping the rag and snatching my hands back in pain.
My hands are very red, the color of a severe rash, and continue to burn. I realize I had turned only the hot water faucet on and had held my hands under it to wet the rag. I’d never realized when it got hot after a couple of minutes.
How long did I hold them there?
I quickly turn on the cold water and turn off the hot. My hands feel sort of numb with pain but the cool soothes the now-sensitive nerves.
It takes perhaps twenty minutes to clean the rest of the blood, mainly because I work slowly because of my hands. I mostly concentrate on trying to remember or understand what I saw clearly. But everything had been so blurred. It takes my mind completely off of Michael and I even forget of him and the betrayal he bestowed upon me. I don’t even think of why I’m cleaning up blood or of the glass because I’m so intent in wonder. It was strangely, hauntingly, fascinating.
I don’t understand this. What was supposed to have happened? Or what has just happened? Was it real?
So strange…
Blood of Eden Chapters
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