PROSE A girl runs as fast as she can along a track. The sky is pure black without any sign of the moon, the stars snuffed out. A blue light rises from the ground. It’s her only light source. Everything is eerie, and the shadows are not quite right. They twist and turn, and if the girl did not have a haze covering her entire brain, she would have noticed the shadows were all staring at her, twisting around trees and stones to have a better look. The air is supposed to be crisp and cool, but an odd staleness cuts into it, ruining it. Each of her breaths is labored. Fear propels her legs to keep moving. Sweat drips down her head, some of it from the exercise, some from fear, and she cannot quite remember why she could possibly be afraid. She collides with a wall, falls, but she doesn’t feel anything. She can’t think properly, because something’s in her head. A haze, over her mind. She still hasn’t realized what’s happened until a second later, when she puts her hand to her forehead and finds it come away covered in a sticky, blue blood. Blue? She groans. She tilts her head up, fully expecting to see a wall. But no, she’s not on the track anymore. Nothing but black surrounds her, and she sits on a cold, hard floor. She’s hit by the air. It’s far more humid, far darker, and she struggles to breathe, struggles to take it in. The only source of light is a faint blue spotlight illuminating only herself and the short patch of ground below her. She moves her hand a single inch out the spotlight, and the spotlight grows, encompassing her fully. She moves it further away, and the spotlight moves along with her. The light reveals the blue blood below herself, a single splotch. Everything waves, everything is muddled. Just
27|The penchant||NOV 2021
BLUE BLOOD
by p
