Blood on the Ground

Red lipstick stains the lip of a glass that’s held in the hand of a girl who’s only pretending to drink alcohol. She was invited to this party by a friend of a friend and it’s really not her scene at all. She never really wears dresses except for at church and she never had one for her school’s prom. She doesn’t like the lights or the music and she would rather be somewhere that’s a little more calm.

Everyone that lives outside of her four walls says that she needs to branch out or she’ll just wither away. They say that life’s like a movie and that hers has been paused and that she needs to hurry up and hit play. But what they don’t understand is there’s a reason for the quietness, in her heart there’s an empty space. There’s a part of her that’s missing, like a runaway child who vanished without a trace.

She doesn’t quite know what it is that is missing, but she’s pretty sure it was stolen. She thinks it was something along the lines of a medal of bravery that was all shiny and golden. The girl faintly remembers a day where someone needed to be saved, and she was scared of the blood on the ground. She was just a little bit too late, so the body was taken away in an ambulance that made too loud of a sound.

Maybe that’s why she doesn’t like the lights of this party that flash like rapid fire just like the sirens do. And maybe that’s why she wanted to leave as soon as she walked through the door of this house that belongs to God knows who. It would make sense, because that type of experience would haunt any normal person for at least several years. And that type of experience could strip away any courage that had been used to fight away even the smallest of fears.

The blood on the ground had come from the head of a man who had fallen off of the roof of his house that was down the street from her own. He had been working on the gutters and the ladder had slipped, and it sent him straight down into the stone. She was walking home from school that day and saw that at the end of her street was a crowd. Ever since then she’s felt claustrophobic in a sea of people, and she’s found that in that sea everything starts to get loud.

She can’t take much more of this blasting beat that shakes the room like a cocktail being made. And she knows her friend is going to wonder where she went and later convince her she should’ve stayed. But that memory of the blood on the ground is starting to make her sick to her stomach and she’s just gotta leave. This is how she lives her life now, loneliness will protect her, at least that’s what she’s made herself believe.

Her courage has been hidden away, like dog’s buried bone, out of sight and out of mind. The blood on the ground is just one of those things she has a hard time leaving behind. So, she escapes from the party and calls for a cab and then waits by the door. The cabbie takes her home, and takes a path that goes down a street that she has walked before.

It’s the street that she walked as a kid when she was coming home that day from school. It’s the street where the blood on the ground turned from a little trickle of red into a pool. She knew that going to that party went against what she had taught herself and wasn’t a wise decision. And now she blamed that friend for making a reality out of what was only a vision.

The blood on the ground was the reason why she stayed at home most of the time and didn’t like to go out. It may seem strange that it’s all because of a death, but that’s what the story’s about. The death of the man who fell from the ladder scarred her for life when she was a kid. She let it get the best of her and let it determine everything she did. She felt guilty about not being being able to save a man who was really already dead. So now her life is being dictated by the blood that came from his head.

The party has been completely forgotten by the girl who is having the worst kind of flashback. It seems like it‘s happening all over again and the girl is on the verge of a panic attack. She takes a deep breath as the cabbie turns onto the street of her apartment complex. She’s wishing right now that she had actually had a drink so that she could feel it’s effects.

She was working so hard to forget the blood on the ground, but tonight has brought it back up once again. She takes one more deep breath as she closes the door to her apartment, the number of which is 100 and 10. The girl will decline the call of her friend in the morning because she really doesn’t want to talk. She takes off her shoes that have been hurting her all night and looks at the time on the clock. It’s 1:27 in the morning, but it feels like time is standing still. She makes her way to the bathroom and avoids looking into the mirror, instead she looks for a sleeping pill. There’s a candle by the window that looks like it’s about to give out. And the girl is wishing that all those years ago she’d taken a different route. The only way she knows how to avoid the world is by going to sleep. And in under 10 minutes she had already succeeded in counting hundreds of sheep.

The blood on the ground was going to cause her a nightmare tonight like it did every night since the man fell. It encased her in fear that really was irrational, but it felt like being in a jail cell. As the drug took over her system she was fighting against being forced to close her eyes. She started to dream of the man on the ladder and how everyone at some point in time dies.

That’s what the girl was really afraid of and why she tried to hide away from the people outside of her four walls. That’s why this girl that this story’s about never answers anyone’s calls. This girl that is haunted by blood on the ground decided that from now on she would try to always stay inside. And it’s all because of the blood on the ground from the man her street that died.