Blood

Chapter One : A Bar Called Clover

Around that time, my sister was almost twelve, so my parents might have thought it was just her menstrual cycle finally coming. Her period. As the years passed slowly, they acted more cold towards her. They realized everything they thought was false, was actually true all along. And so, they didn't see their daughter as human anymore.

I didn't see it at the time because they treated me normally. They treated me better actually, spoiling me much more.

My elder sister acted normal as well. She was always kind to me, cared about me. Even when she and our parents got into so many fights and she spent nights outside often, she didn't change towards me.

I remember one day, she showed me something she could do. Something she hadn't shown to anyone else.

"It's our little secret, ok?"

At the time, I was maybe around five, so she would have been around fourteen. I remember my amazement that day, that memory.

In the dark of our bedroom with only shadows to hide us, she performed a magic show for me—a spell like the fairy godmother in Cinderella.

She held my tiny hands in hers as a gentle light began to bloom in my palms. A soft blue glow, feeling almost cold. The light formed the image of an unraveling flower.

I saw it as magic, a gift, a wish.

But my parents happened to walk in and see. They thought of it as a curse. Before I knew it, my sister was dragged off to somewhere I couldn't see.

I remember the dread that began to hammer in my chest, the first time I thought something was wrong. I mistook it as another small mistake my sister had done, like the usual. After all, that's what my parents always told me when I asked.

I didn't see her for a month. The next time I saw her, it was only for a moment.

I woke up in the middle of the night, and was scared. The moon's light was shining through the window, and I saw her just... standing in the doorway.

But she wasn't the sister I loved.

Her eyes were glowing a blood red, so different from her turquoise-grey eyes. Her dirty blonde hair was messy, some strands stuck to her cheeks. Her arms were scratched and bruised, her legs, too. They were dripping with blood.

She needed blood.

Her eyes were red. Glowing, glowing, red. Like blood—she needed my blood—red. Blood, blood, red—she's going to eat me—

I remember screaming. She just stood there, and kinda jumped a bit when I screamed. Her eyes went back to normal and then she just stared at me blankly, almost in shock.

"Chi?" I remember her whispering. Her eyes kept shifting between red and turquoise in confusion as she looked down at her body, and then at me.

I heard dad's voice roar. I heard my parents furiously running up the stairs, and she must have too.

I remember her eyes that night. The wide, fear-striken eyes the moment she realized that dad was going to kill her right now.

And then she crashed through the window and fell. She must have ran because I didn't see her for another week.

Then she came back completely normal.

It wasn't until after learning of their existence that I realized the truth of that night. The truth of all those nights she went missing and didn't sleep next to me. Those nights when my parents hid her away for days and weeks because she did something wrong, and the nights she disappeared and my parents were so terrified that she escaped.