BEGIN.
" BLOOD CALLS FOR BLOOD "
JUST A GIRL, that's what she thinks about as she meticulously spoons out the plums in her pudding. Her father had done the same after she walked downstairs when she wasn't supposed to. Except instead of plum, it was a man's eyes. Alessandra, under no real supervision — all the maids keep their heads ducked down to avoid the gaze of a child who could quickly grow into their next tormentor — takes the spoon and presses the cool metal against her left eye. If her mother were here she'd scold her for playing with the cutlery. She'd ask for the whereabouts of her manners like they were some friend down the block. Maybe the man who lost his eyes lacked manners, too. Just a girl. He was just a man. Why did her mother state the obvious?
Alessandra is a comfortable seven, a straight line and a sharp diagonal downward, clean and simple, just the way she likes it. So, by observation, she is a girl. Perhaps not a normal girl. Height wise, she measures below average — three foot nine inches and three quarters — a whole two and a fourth inches shorter than what is expected of her peers. The doctors had done a check-up on her bones to find no abnormalities. She drinks two glasses of milk a day just in case, one with breakfast and one before bed. Weighing in at a healthy forty-nine pounds, she is light enough for her father to throw her into her mother's favorite china cabinet with little effort. It only happened once though, for her father is a frugal man. Walls, however, cost less. She particularly enjoys the hug of the one on the second floor, painted red and warm as the heater was situated against it. An old burn at her hip aches at the memory. Is it because of the pain? Or does her skin crave warmth?
Still, she is perplexed. Movements heavy, she massages her brow bone as she presses the spoon against the crown of her eyeball, moving it back and forth with the lull of her thoughts' tide. When she had seen that man's eyeballs rolling on the floor like marbles her stomach had lurched as her heart slammed on the brakes. There had always been whispers of her father being a bad man as she hid behind curtains, waiting for her numerous nannies to capture her for nap time. Now, the evidence laid before her, looking up at her through still and ballooned blue irises. For a moment, she reached out to pick one up but was yanked back by the lace of her white collar. A cool, viscous liquid stained the back of her neck as those fingers dragged her back hard enough that her buttoned shirt rammed against her larynx. Briefly, her vision became blotted by black and her lungs burned so searingly brilliant she almost thought a fire had ignited within her body.
On a regular basis, Alessandra and her father would never surpass an exchange of more than four words a day. She would greet, "Good morning, father." And he would nod with a "daughter," as acknowledgment before exiting their hallowed hollow halls. Nothing more than a shadow of him existed in her life, just a brush of wind that you think might be the touch of ghost or the coat on the chair that in your peripheral, your sleep-riddled mind conjures as man lurking in the dark. A swell of excitement had echoed through the concert halls of her loneliness. Even if it was violent, her father paid her even a sliver of mind.
The sweet lack of air began to make a noise, puncturing the peace that had perfumed her so silly. Alessandra gagged on the force of her father's rage, on the longing for his love, and well, her favorite blouse. Without thinking, she grabbed onto her father's arm, the bare skin; he'd rolled up his sleeves for this dirty work. The dragging froze. Her nails burrowed themselves into the bronze flesh and drew forth beads of crimson. A pretty new necklace her father made just for her. Her father became a guillotine, standing there unmoving, holding onto the flailing fish of a girl at the noose.
Then he let her go. Like she was a wooden soldier on the frontlines in Vietnam, she fell to her knees with shuddering gasps that tickled the raw, strained flesh of her throat. Eyes flickering, focusing like a newborn camera, she met the stare of one of the eyes. Stranded, a shipwreck in the ocean of the living room's marble floors. Crawling on her elbows, she wrapped her fingers around it. It was squishy yet solid, more circular than she had expected from a human. With her other hand, she grabbed its foil.
She turned her head to see the man who owned those eyes — had owned them, she supposed —, bloody sockets having nowhere to look but everywhere at once. The screams that had drawn her downstairs had long petered out into the gurgling whines of a kicked animal. Alessandra tilted her head downwards to see the eyeballs. She imagined the man still looking at her through them. Tragically, she lost them after she vomited.
The spoon is pinching the pliant skin of her eyelid. Her father had not held back. The bones of her left hand remain wrapped together solely by plaster and bandages. This had been the second time her mother had walked in on one of their conversations. Maybe she was jealous because she ended it by taking Alessandra in her arms, yelling that confusing phrase. Just a girl. She had taken her to the hospital instead of letting the family doctor take care of it. Not that Alessandra had complained. She wasn't to be let out of the house under any circumstances. Even her ballet instructor taught her in the forsaken walls of their home.
Her mother broke the china cabinet that time.
Alessandra puts the spoon down, picks up the knife. In the reflection she can see her own depths swallowing up light, warning her of invisible toxins in her DNA. With unsteady hands, she drives the knife into the dining table. Several maids jump back, while the others remain petrified like sculptures in a museum. "Compliments to the chef." She stands and brushes her hands off on her skirt. The pudding remains uneaten.
As she begins her walk to her bedroom for the evening, she resolves that any mirror in the house has to be destroyed.
• • •
The clock hand is on the nine when her mother bursts into her room, boots tracking mud all over the floor and hair flat and damp from the rain. Water drips off of her, some drops even crystallizing on the tips of her eyelashes. Alessandra had been curled up next to her window before this, watching the raindrops race down the pane, each fighting for the prize only to be cut short at the finish line; their death had been predetermined as soon as they fell from the clouds. The thunder had been a comfort, covering up the usual aching, bleeding silence with a band-aid, like it was just a child learning how to bike without training wheels. Her mother interrupted what had been the beginning of a conversation between her and the voice that followed the lightning. She had begun to tap out the few things she knew in morse code on the pane.
"Get up." Hands anchor themselves into her shoulders and fish her away from her post. "We have to go."
Alessandra blinks, pulled into the gilded embrace of her mother. "I don't want to go out in the rain."
Where placating words would normally be spoken, she is taken roughly by the forearm until it burns like a brand. She is hurried out of her bedroom. Bare feet sliding against the lifeless ground, she winces and begins to resist. "Let me go! I don't want to leave."
The same hands that had once rocked her to sleep slam her into the wall, an old friend, one who begs for her to stay. At the point of her fingertips, a prick of heat begins to fester. The rest of her limbs begin to tingle as if tiny bombs were detonating inside her cells. Her mother holds her there, cuffing her wrists with her hands, wound tight around them like they were hanging off a cliff edge.
There is something gentle about those hands, smooth and silky soft, warmth melting like honey underneath a butterfly flutter of a touch. Nothing ever painted itself angry or sad into the flesh. Just a sacred, precious brown. The pads of their fingers sail across her face every time a tear unchained itself, salt purifying the rings that played like a record, as they eddy and curve into a shape gifted to only one. Lines in that palm read biblical testaments to presents that exist in the past and only seen in the future. Hands that now mark her black and blue. Black for the sin eating up space like a black hole. Blue for the grief of the sky with too many brushstrokes.
"Listen to me." If voices were piano keys, her mother's would be the union of the last and first ones. "We are not safe here."
Alessandra ponders what "safe" means outside of its definition when it goes for a stroll in the real world. She stares into the fathom of her mother's eyes, bears witness to the stories the pupils keep bound together in variations of brown. First, the burn of an eager tongue after a sip of coffee too soon. Second, the sturdy bark of an oak tree, holding its own against time. Third, mud beneath shoeless feet, toes wiggling into the wet earth, washing the skin with the fruit of the mother's womb. Safe is there, situated at a coffee shop at the end of the world, where your own conception greets itself on the roots of the oak tree that started it all. She decides she can trust the eyes, now that the hands have betrayed her.
Her mother must take her lack of protest as surrender, because she loosens her grip until she's enveloped her own hand in Alessandra's. Their pace quickens as they weave through the hallways that entomb their lives. It is at the staircase that the two begin to hear the howls and the screams that follow them. The shrieks are human, rushing with warmth and blood and so poignant with the sentience of fear. They shatter like glass, sharp while also fragile, always on the verge of breaking. The ghostly music that only a feral animal can sing chases them from behind.
Again, her mother pins her to the wall, damp arm barring her from movement. She opens her mouth, about to ask if she can go back to her room and change, she'd need shoes and clothes that were warmer than her spectral nightdress. When she looks up to question her mother, she slams her mouth shut. A finger is pressed against the taller's lips, pressed thin, bright red against how snow white her face has paled. "They're here," she breathes out. "We have to be quick and quiet."
In their home, that's all Alessandra has been.
Her mother peeks around the corner thean gulps. Seconds pass by them, waving goodbye with frowns. "Now."
They take the steps two at a time, an impressive feat for Alessandra's short legs. Both are light on their feet, years of ballet keeping them on the tips of their toes. Every movement is as light as a feather while carrying the weight of worlds. The very air is taut with the tension of the tightening of a guillotine's rope before the blade falls. Even their soft sighs of inhaling and exhaling sound deafening in the silence that they create. All stills when they reach the bottom of the stairs and for a moment, peace has warmed the foreboding iciness of fear that she does not understand.
Her mother tugs on her nightdress to move her towards the door, but her attention has been drawn elsewhere. Two glowing crimson orbs glare at her from the shadows, tucked behind the staircase. It is almost magical, the way they cast a spell-binding cascade of pale light across the wood floor. Alessandra stumbles towards the floating orbs, entranced, fighting against the monumental pull of her mother's sacred hands. Too late, she realizes they belong to a skull, one with matted red fur and ears pricked in interest. Too late, she notices the lethal canines that protrude from a maw left ajar, more red dripping from its mouth to the floor. She is too busy toying with the idea of trading those iridescent eyes for her own bland brown pair. Too busy considering that maybe with eyes like those her father would notice her more.
In the corner of her eye, she fails to notice that from the doorway of the kitchen light spills out into the corridor, revealing a pair of torn apart legs; they look as if they had been sent through the meat grinder. Crowning the top of the grotesque limbs lays the ratty cloth of one of the maids' skirts. Blood pools around them, illuminated by the sterile white light to appear as a shade that would be sorted into a box of crayons.
In mere moments, while she was distracted, the body that protects the treasure of those glowing orbs leaps forward, the sinews of distorted human muscle stretching towards her as the legs of this being extends from the bony, angled hind-legs, light on calloused toes, to a straight line in flight. There are no thoughts to process in these moments, just sweat beaded on the crown of her forehead and a heart paused in shock, breath caught in her lungs. Her eyes flush shut and as its feet hit the ground there should've been pain.
Instead, she hears the screech of her mother, cleaving through the air like an arrow. It sounds animalistic enough that it is hard to distinguish between the two creatures. When she opens her eyes, her mother grapples with the beast, bits of neon lights sparking from her fingers, sending it back as the bright color makes it wince in pain. Her mother whips around, hair falling out of place from her ponytail, redness encircling her pupils as tears begin to roll down her pale cheeks. Alessandra watches as her mouth forms the word run. Those same lips kissed her forehead goodnight and said "I love you" like it was something to be shouted not whispered. Then her neck is clamped between the jaw of the hybrid man-wolf and the bones snap in descending order like a chord of musical notes as its jaw crunches down.
Her mother's stare is blank, milky and cold. Death is often so. Nothing more than the whiteness of the void.
Alessandra thinks she understands why her father never loved her. To love is to lose. And to lose is to die.
The red orbs meet her unwavering, wide-eyed glare— there is hunger in those eyes: not the kind that feeds, but the kind that takes. Her blood heats up with the awareness that if she does not flee, she will be at the bottom of that thing's stomach. There is no chance she will be fast enough to outrun its deadly teeth.
She thinks back to her dinner earlier night, the way she had pressed the cool cutlery into her skin to feel alive. The dining room is to her right, she just has to make it there and hope the table has already been reset for breakfast.
Alessandra turns on her heel and runs with all the energy she can muster, her heart stuttering along and her mind hanging on by a thread. She can only rely on her instincts only as she moves to get out of her own home alive. As she moves, she sees the creature toss her mother's corpse to the side. In the clockwork of her body, a few cogs stop, rust, and fall out of place.
When she enters the dining room, panting and light-headed, she climbs onto the table. The wolf-like creature pounding behind her is just a few feet away from her, looming in the doorway. It makes for another leap and Alessandra's hand wraps around something sturdy and smooth; she drives a butter knife into its skull. For a moment, it lurches forward, and Alessandra falls onto the table-top, her heart stuttering. Hot, viscous drool drips onto her forehead. Then the thing freezes, jerks like a marionette being pulled by its master, and falls on all fours. With one final whine, all life drains from its grotesque limbs.
Alessandra does not look at its eyes, too afraid she'd find herself reflected in them.
More howls shake her house. The night is far from over.
With a heave, she pushes the corpse of the creature off her bare legs. She wipes the knife off on her skirt and drops to the ground. She winces as she begins to walk, in the mad dash to get away, a fork had embedded itself in her calf. Bending down, she yanks the thing out and falls to the ground with a yelp as her vision tunnels itself black.
The pain is more than she can handle.
Her name is Alessandra. She is seven years old. Her favorite color is purple because it is the rarest in nature. Her mother says anything can be healed with enough strength.
When she looks down to assess the damage done in her leg, she finds her plush skin stitching itself back together.
The howls sound closer and the wine glasses begin to shiver in anticipation. She remembers when they were full of rich reds and vivid violets, the laughter that parted lips after a sip from those glasses. She remembers how easy they shatter against skin, how easily the flute can be lethal. This was once her home.
Alessandra knows that if she were any other seven-year-old girl she'd stay on the ground, waiting for help that was never going to come. Instead, she gets up on her legs and finally listens to her mother.
She runs.
EDITED & BETA-READ
6–14–19
thank you wrathguks <3