Building 25 “Acid in My Veins”

“There was more blood in my room when I woke up this morning, and though I have tried really hard to clean it up, I can't find anything that works. I thought that maybe some of the normal recipes would do the trick, but instead they only seemed to spread it.

To multiply it.

I am exhausted, as it has been days like this, with sleepless nights ending up being the norm. Even as I write this I have my eyes closed, just so that I can gives my eyes some extra time to rest. It is something I have gotten good at over the years; typing with my eyes closed. I picked it up during college, and never lost the ability.

I suppose that it is something unusual, and it probably could have been a big indication to me that there was something wrong, but when you work as much as I do, you really don't get a chance to look at yourself.

The blood has spread onto the bed sheets, and it leaves me feeling repulsed. I don't think it's real, the blood I mean. If it was then it wouldn't stay that color, that fresh scarlet color that you get from a fresh wound.

The other night I was looking over my room while reading, focusing on the largest pool of blood, resting right by my closet door. I turned off the lights, leaving the only illumination being the cold, empty light coming in from the street.

I suppose I have always been a very scared person.

I don't think that it has anything to do with the pool in my room, though maybe it does.

Some years ago they replaced all the street lights by me with LED ones. They are efficient, but the light they give off is unnatural feeling, and I can recall distinctly from my childhood that I avoided the streetlamps at night. I didn't avoid them before that, but there was something off about the feeling of the new lights that kept me away, a habit I never much lost.

At night, I sometimes left a light on just so that I wouldn't need to have my room bathed in the light from outside. For a short period of time I would use a night light like when I was a kid, but that just left me feeling a bit messy.

When I was younger, I had an incredible fear of the dark. When I told my parents, they plugged in a night light, but that didn't seem to fix anything. I say that I was afraid of the dark, but really I was afraid of something that felt like the dark.

All the night light did was make my night terrors have color, instead of the dull, muted colors of the LED streetlamps.

I am looking for an excuse to not have to talk about what I saw, or maybe I am simply trying to convince myself that there is something wrong with me, that my long history of fears and panic attacks has been manifesting in hallucinations. I think that is what I am doing now, but I don't think I can dismiss this so easily, so completely. What I see in the dark is too real to be just a dream or just a nightmare.

The other night I was looking over my room while reading, then turned off the light. In the dull illumination coming through the blinds, I could clearly make out the thick pool of blood by my closet door. I tried to block it out, to fight for my return to sanity, but every time that I would close my eyes, I would open them to the same sight. The same pool of blood.

Eventually I began to fall asleep, certain that my nightmares would soon wake me up again, and I would spend yet another night battling for sleep.

I closed my eyes, and I waited for sleep to come.

Then I heard my closet opening.

My eyes snapped open as I looked over to my closet door, hoping against hope that I was just hearing things. But when I looked, it was clear that the door was open, the thick pool of crimson extending back and into the closet smeared along the ground. I tried to scream, and I think I did but I couldn't hear it.

Sometimes you see things that horrify you so much that it blocks out everything else. And that, I think, is why I couldn't hear my screaming, even as my throat became raw and my eyes began to water.

Out from the blackness came the thing from my nightmares, a being bathed in blood with red eyes and red lips. She was here for me and me alone, and I knew that she thought I was special in some terrible, awful way. She was muttering to herself, and yet I could hear her clear as day, even as all other sound was muted.

“Just a few more, that is all...Just a bit more blood...A bit more red...Blood, and sacrifice...That is the gospel...”

I launched myself from my bed and ran towards the hallway, the thing in red rising from the pool of blood and making its way towards me.

I ran as fast as I could, launching myself over the railing of the stairs on my way to the door. I ran into the edge of an end table, knocking the wind out of me as I could feel the panic rising. I wanted to push on, to seek out the door handle and head outside, but there was something holding me back.

My body was holding me back.

I tried to breathe, then I tried again, my fear of the thing that I could hear rushing down the hall, wet feet slapping against the hardwood floor, overwhelmed by the need to breathe.

It was agonizing, laying sprawled on the floor, knowing that I needed to get to the door, that I simply had to get to the door if I wanted to live.

A long, desperate breath cut through the clouding of my vision, as I quickly rose to my feet and ran to the door.

I swung it open, only to scream with a power and primal force that overwhelmed everything else. Outside my door were hundreds of figures, all coated in blood, but not really coated.

They were blood.

Everything was blood, from the stars to the moon to the sky. The blades of grass would congeal and squash underfoot if I stepped outside, and even if I did there was no where to go.

She was behind me, and she ran her hand along my cheek, beckoning me to turn around. When I did, I looked into her eyes, which were the most beautiful shade of scarlet. Her lips were like rubies.

When she took my blood, it felt like a relief. Like an exhale...

Sometimes I think she is a woman, and sometimes I think it has no gender at all, like the red had stolen it from her and left her as something else. But that isn't how things work though, no matter what anyone will tell you.

Something doesn't simply stop being something just because it becomes something else. It simply becomes a combination of the past and present, a vision walking into the future under the illusion of change; or maybe it is the illusion of choice.

My room is covered in blood.

There is acid in my veins.”

In all my years of life, I don't think I have ever found a pain that I couldn't handle. Tracy was hard, but I managed to climb out of it with help.

I say this, knowing that it isn't probably true. Everyone has their breaking point, and I think I simply haven't found mine.

There has been a persistent ringing in my ears the last few days, and though I went to my doctor they couldn't find anything wrong. They gave me some drops, but it didn't seem to do much of anything.

Yesterday I thought that the ringing had stopped, and in large part it had.

When I wake up in the morning I can hear the ringing in my ears, but it subsides once I eat or drink.

But it isn't a ringing anymore.

It is more like whispering or a murmur.

A calling.