I knew it was too early from the moment that I woke up. My phone lay dark and silent on the nightstand beside me, the alarm clock still set. The first strands of dawn had begun to trickle ghostly tendrils through my bedroom shutters. Instinct told me to roll over, stuff my pillow over my face, and enjoy whatever bonus time I found myself with in bed.
But the overhead fan was giving me the chills and I noticed that I’d kicked my sheets to the foot of the mattress. No wonder I’d woken up. I shivered and sat up to grab the top edge of my duvet cover. Dark spots on the fitted white sheet underneath caught my eye. I leaned closer and rubbed my fingers into one of the stains. It smeared.
Outside my window, birds were beginning to chirp. As I adjusted to the light, I saw that the blotches were a deep, rusty red. I sucked in a breath. My cycle must have started during the night. I hadn’t been prepared. “Dammit.” I crawled off the mattress, clutching the oversized T-shirt I’d worn to bed to my legs.
But when I examined myself, I nearly screamed. Blood coated my hands. Smudged red fingerprints stained my shirt. I swallowed hard. It was so much. I patted my torso, my arms, my legs. I had to be injured somewhere. Nothing was hurting right away, though. Was I in shock? I rushed to the bathroom and locked the door tight. Breathe, I commanded. I stared into the mirror and saw that red flecked my cheeks and forehead. The whites of my eyes created empty saucers in my skull.
I stripped my T-shirt off and kicked it to the floor. Still no signs of a wound, though many parts of my body were coated in blood. I turned on the showerhead and jumped in without waiting for the water to warm. The cold was an electric jolt to my system. I scrubbed my arms. Russet-tinged water streamed onto the white porcelain and swirled around the drain. Steam billowed up toward the ceiling’s air vent. I scrubbed until there was nothing left to scrub and my skin was pink with scratches, but otherwise, there wasn’t a mark on me. When the water began to scald me, turning my flesh from pink to angry red, I turned the knob and the cascade died. Soaking wet, I dried myself in a towel and changed into a clean pair of sweatpants, a sweatshirt, and my old pair of sheepskin boots. I dropped the bloody shirt into the back corner of my closet and pulled the comforter over my sheets.
On the white paint of my bedroom door, I saw remnants of a red handprint. How did the blood get there if … if …
My heart thudded. I slipped out of my bedroom, careful not to make a sound, and padded down the hallway. A single droplet dotted the hardwood at the top of the stairs. My throat closed up. Gingerly, I lowered myself onto the next stair and then the next. Fear bloomed in my gut as I approached the landing, terrified of what I might find downstairs.
But as I entered the living room, then the dining room, then the kitchen, I found nothing out of place except that the back door was slightly ajar. On the bronze knob, there was another bloody imprint, barely visible. I wrapped my hand over it and twisted.
The morning in front of me felt dreamlike, the air cool, but swampy. Glancing once more over my shoulder toward the still-sleeping house, I ventured onto the dewy grass. My family’s backyard wasn’t fenced. Our home backed up to the greenbelt, a few miles’ worth of untouched foliage with crisscrossing paths for runners and hikers.
My sheepskin boots swished through the wet blades. At the end of our property line, I let my fingers brush against the thick leaves of my mother’s elephant ear plants. I’d helped her transfer them from the pots to the soil the first summer that we moved here. A few of them looked as though they’d been trampled. I frowned and bent closer to the ground. A patch of grass nearby was stained red.
Several feet after, I could see another streak of red and a curved path where the grass had been crushed, as though something heavy had been dragged across it.
The hour was still early. Fog hovered low to the earth. I followed the path of the red streak and the urge to run began to chew at my legs. The only problem was I couldn’t decide which way.
Morbid curiosity drew me farther. I ducked under a low-hanging tree, crossing into the greenbelt’s thicker foliage. I had to look more carefully for the signs of red now, for where the dirt and the leaves were smashed down together. I stumbled over roots and tangled vines until a small clearing opened up. There, I found a mound of freshly turned dirt. The smell of damp mud filled my nostrils. I stared at the embankment where the trampled path clearly ended.
I recognized the size and shape of the pile of dirt at once. It was a grave. Trembling, I squatted beside it and brushed the raised crest away until the ground was even. A bird took flight from a branch overhead and I nearly choked on a scream that didn’t come out. It’s only a bird, I told myself.