Bloodthirst

I dreaded opening the package that had just been delivered to my door by a special courier. It was the third this week and the tenth this month alone. It was only the fourteenth of the month, too, so I just knew there was more to come or something terrible would happen soon, one way or another.

Each package had something horrendous inside. Each one contained a blood-soaked item. What was even more macabre was that each item came with a Polaroid of me wearing the item at some point in my life.

The first item was a blood-soaked baby’s bib, along with a picture of me at about one year of age with a Binky in my mouth. The bib looked just as it did in the picture, minus the blood.

The second item that came in the mail was a blood-soaked T-shirt, along with a Polaroid of me wearing it at a party in the first grade. I remembered the T-shirt well. It had been my favorite shirt that year. Of course, it didn’t have blood or any type of stains on it back then.

The rest of the boxes were more of the same. So by the time I received the ninth box and the blood-soaked swimsuit I had worn on vacation two years ago, along with the Polaroid of me in the suit, I was inundated with all the gore; I thought nothing would bother me again.

But I was wrong. This last box, the tenth box, shook me to my core. As I opened it just now, all that was inside was two Polaroids—one of me sitting at my kitchen table and the other of some blood-soaked women standing at my door. As I stared at the box with trepidation, the doorbell rang.

Jumping in fear, I stared at the door as if it were some evil, vile entity. I imagined I heard a giggling start-up. Then I heard Lyle, my bellman, holler through the door, “Ms. Lisa! Your grocery order has arrived!”

Hurrying to the door, I allowed him in with the two paper bags of groceries I had ordered. I was glad for the distraction. He let himself out as I started putting the groceries away.

Lyle was a great person who took his job seriously. I knew no one was getting by him on his watch, and I knew his shift would end in two hours.

Suddenly, the doorbell rang again. Thinking it was Lyle with some item that he forgot to leave, I hurried to the door and flung it open. Outside my door stood a group of women covered in what appeared to be blood. I thought I recognized Inez from 2C and Rachel from 12A, but I could not be sure with all the red. It mattered, not really. The group of women flooded into my house and swarmed me, taking me to the ground. They were tittering and chanting, “Shelly, Come out on play!”

And that’s the last thing I remember before waking up in this line in front of this gate, waiting to talk to you.