BAD BLOOD By Kia Storm

Bad Blood


He had a kind face, and I promised them he could be trusted. I considered myself a good judge of character.

My sisters were sceptical of his quiet ways, so I kept reassuring them. “He is reserved, a loner, and never says a bad word about anyone.”

A few weeks went by, but my older sister, Berry, still didn’t trust him. “I love him!” I would say. “So what if he acts weird? So what if it’s only been three weeks? Looks don’t mean a thing.”

“Well, uh. . .,” my younger sister stuttered. “Sometimes we feel like he has something to hide. He never talks about himself. He’s scrawny, and I saw him wink at Berry.”

Berry laughed and then spoke in that low- guttural voice of hers. “I bet he leads a double life,” she joked. “Or maybe he´s scared you´ll tear him to pieces with those long nails of yours.”

At age twenty-two, Berry still loved to pretend she was a deranged killer covered in blood. She´d wield knives in front of my guests with my sister screaming at them to run for their lives. And my guests would. Once Berry offered an old boyfriend a glass of water. She poured him some from a jug marked “Rat Poison.” He spat real fast and ran for the door. Berry had the nerve to ask why I was always single.

My younger sister giggled. “Or better yet, scared you´ll cut him into tiny bits and feed him to the dog.” She looked up at Berry, who egged her on to continue. She turned to our pet dog, who slept next to the sofa as she teased: “Hear that, Rocco? You could be getting real human bones tonight!”

Rocco lazily woke up, yawned, and then curled into a tighter ball on the floor. Berry looked impressed by my younger sister´s taunts.

“You guys are so silly! I just hate you sometimes!” As usual I would leave them giggling like two naughty mischievous kids in a schoolyard.

The persistent niggling to dump my darling often sent me running passionately into his arms. I would storm out of the house angrily, and I vowed to prove them wrong. I didn’t care what they thought of him or what he looked like. I needed him, and he belonged to me.

One evening I decided to surprise my darling. I was dead excited. In a paper bag I brought him the vanilla fudge ripple ice-cream he preferred. It felt cold against my hip. A bottle of our favourite Shiraz wine made the bag awkward to carry. I found his spare key in a secret mud hole and opened the door.

The room had been tarnished in blood.

Bloody writings on the wall said: “Blood for blood - flesh for flesh.”

My beloved was nowhere to be found.

My crazy sisters were always playing jokes on me, but this time did they go too far? Nervously I ran upstairs with a sinking feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach. My poor sweet beloved. Had they decided to play another silly game?

I sprinted into the bathroom. We locked eyes. My beloved and me. But the body on the floor was Berry´s. My beloved tried to speak, but his mouth encumbered a piece of her flesh. And then I felt it for the second time. That sinking feeling.

I ran for the door. I was trapped inside and my beloved was moving towards me, still chewing Berry’s flesh in his mouth.

Bio:
Kia Storm lives in England, where she occasionally daydreams about sky diving over the Pacific Ocean, climbing Mount Everest and dreads the day when she will have no choice but to grow up, well at least that’s what her friends tell her anyway.

Other work by Kia has appeared in numerous on-line venues including, http://www.downdirtyword.com/authors/kiastorm.html, http://blink-ink.com/content/archives/2009/12/page/2/ and various others. Her short story, ‘Run Coward Run,’ was published in “Twisted Dreams Magazine”, 2010 Issue. The Invisible Alien Watcher has been featured on http://www.microhorror.com/microhorror/author/kia-storm/the-invisible-alien-watcher/