Bloodstained

I walked through the front door and locked it behind me, wishing I hadn’t missed the opportunity to slam it.  I usually slam it.  There’s no one home and no one sleeping.  Just me here now.  And our mutual friend, of course.

The air was thick in the house, as it always is.  Taking a breath to calm myself, I sidestepped the bucket and rag that were placed next to the door.  I couldn’t let down my guard.  Not here.  Death was still watching.

I stripped off the GI shirt I was wearing and threw it to the floor where it belonged, knowing Gabriel would see it there in a few hours.  I brushed my undershirt to ensure that any last fragments of conformity were off my body.  If it were up to me, I’d say to hell with it and burn the damn uniform with my name on it.  They don’t own me like they own him.

(Actually, if it were up to me, I’d use a gallon or so of kerosene and burn this whole damn house to the ground.  But I can’t.  Not yet.  Death needs somewhere to live.)

As per my tradition, I walked into the hallway bathroom and turned on the light.  I was greeted, as I am every day, by my reflection in the full length mirror.  I approached it and looked at myself.  I looked like a soldier.  Like they wanted me to look. 

But I am something far worse than a soldier.

My eyes were brown today.  Deep chocolate brown.  They were older too.  Well, older than seventeen.  Yesterday they’d been almost blue.  I hated it when they were blue.  Made me look innocent.  Dark eyes suited me.  I am not innocent.

I glowered at myself.  I hated my reflection.  I wanted to smash the mirror into a thousand pieces.  And if you knew who I was, or if I told you who I was, you’d want to smash the mirror even more than I do.  Because it would terrify you.  It should terrify you.

Instead, I turned around and headed towards the front door again for the last part of my daily ritual.  My face set with a scowl, I bent down and picked up the bucket and rag that I always keep on the floor mat.  With that I opened the door and headed for the shed, brushing past Death on my way out.

 

I have, over the past few months, come to the realization that I may quite possibly be insane.  I don’t know if this realization makes me sane or all the more insane.  It’s quite an ambiguous line of thinking.  But I thought it only fair to warn you, seeing as I’ve been rude and not told you who I am.  So this is me warning you.  Leave now, if you so desire, before I let the demons loose.

 

I opened the doors to the shed and glanced over my shoulder, just to be sure that Death was still beside me.  The shed is where he used to live, until Mom felt inclined to invite him into the house. 

The shed itself wasn’t overly cluttered.  Around the outside, there was junk that Mom and Dad collected from when the world was a better place.  An old rusty bicycle, a rake, a three-legged stool, that kind of stuff.  All the sentimental s**t that lost its value when everybody died.  I think that’s why Death came here in the first place. Sentiment.  Consolation.  Regret.

Ironic, really.  Death has more of a heart than I do.

I knelt on the cement floor in the center of the shed.  It was pristine.  Not a speck of dust or grime or anything.  Just perfect, hard, gray cement.  I set the bucket next to me and dunked the rag in the water.  I’d added bleach to the water.  Bleach is supposed to clean blood. 

The rag was stained a pinkish color despite the bleach that I soaked it with every day.  Perhaps it was because I added water.  Or maybe I was just crazy.  That is, at this point in my misery, a distinct possibility.  Nonetheless, I dunked the pinkish rag into the bleach and went about scrubbing the clean floor.

I felt Death’s gaze on me as I scrubbed.  He always watched me.  There’s a part of me that thinks that this amuses him.  That maybe he thinks this is my way of being sentimental. Of showing grief and of coping with all that he’s taken from me.  He watches me every day scrub the imaginary blood from the floor of the shed until my hands are raw from the bleach.  We both know the floor is clean and has been clean for nearly six months.  But I still scrub it clean every day.  It looks like insanity.  He calls its sentiment. 

He’s wrong, you know.  It’s not sentiment.  Not coping.  This is my way of staying angry at him.  At getting back at him. See, coping would imply a sense of helplessness.  Revenge implies an irreconcilable sense of hatred.

Author's Note

Honest feedback appreciated.