Blue Blood by P

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

BLUE BLOOD

by p

barely, she hears a voice inside her head telling her to get back up, and, still muddled, she does her best to follow, but she slips on the blood. The world bends and twists, and just barely, she manages to catch herself on the wall.

The wall is cold, smooth to her touch. It’s almost like marble, but at the same time, profoundly different. She takes a deep breath pushes herself back up. In a single movement, all the blood rushes to her head, and everything is magnified by a thousand degrees. The blood becomes a lake before her, the spotlight an entire sun, but then she blinks her eyes, and everything is gone. She’s on a track. People cheer, faintly, but below that sound there is another, a tapping. The tapping fades into the background. It’s low. She’s running again. The injury on her head is still there, a trail of blue behind her, but she doesn’t care. Elation pours into her as she realizes she is first. The runners are all far behind her, and the crowd’s cheers fill her up with energy. She’s faster than everyone else. For a moment, she is the fastest in the entire universe, faster than a shooting star, faster than light, blowing everybody away, and the finish line is right in front of her, and second by second, she is closer and closer. Blue lights flash on her, her head still muddled, but she’s drunk on the glory, everything swaying and coming in and out of focus. She leaps over the line. Her bubble of elation bursts, and she slows, swinging her head up. The wound in her head has closed, and the haze is stronger than ever. She’s ready to bask in her own brilliance, but nobody else has stopped, and the crowd doesn’t cheer. They’re hushed. She looks behind her, and in the short break she had taken, a runner passes by her. They’re a giant. They cast a shadow on

her.

She’s so small. The crowd bursts into cheer, and it is then she realizes the race is still not over. Right next to her is a water stand, and she lowers her head as she walks toward it. The shame is too much. She takes a cup of water, and she’s just about to down it when she looks again, and she realizes there is no water; the only liquid inside is a blue, dark blood, sloshing around. Her head spins. She lets out a single gasp. She drops the cup, and it cascades to the ground. A beat later, a force slams into her, and then she too hits the ground. Her head erupts with pain. The haze fades away, and when she looks again, she’s no longer on the race track, and instead of ear-shattering cheering and the constant drum of feet on pavement, there is only silence save for a single tapping sound. She’s back in the darkness. A splot of blue blood smiles at her, right below her. She turns her head back. An entire trail of blood, still blue, leads all the way back as far as the light can shine. Dark. It’s so dark. As quickly as she can, she tries to get up. The wound on her head pulses, but now her hips and her bones feel like they’ve been jumbled. They ache. She slips and falls, her hands barely bracing herself from further injury. The tapping grows louder and louder. It reminds her of the nails of a beast, tapping on floor, but at the same time, it sounds exactly like a clock, ticking over and over again, unstoppable, but finally, it cements itself in her mind as the grim reaper, tapping its scythe on the floor, counting down to her death.

She staunches the wound on her head as best as she can with her hand, and she gets up with a single swift movement, and once again, the blood rises into her head, and cheering once again fills her entire world. The haze is once again thicker than fog. Her feet are pounding on pavement, her breath labored. She’s running. She’s last. She needs to escape. There are a million runners on the track, an entire world, and the track seems to span the entire world, but somehow, the crowd’s attention is all towards her. They stare at her, and the chant is still the same, though now it’s filled with desperation. “Run, run, run!” I’m trying, she thinks. Odd plants grow on the stand, ones with hundreds of

“...a million souls flying everywhere, and she hears a tapping. It’s constant, unstoppable.”

leaves and petals that seem to glow by themselves. This is not anything native to Earth, and she tries to avoid their gaze, but their petals swivel to face her wherever she goes, so she closes her eyes and shakes her head, and another blue burst of blood comes out her wound.

The crowd cheers. The blood falls on the ground behind you, a trail of blue. The world steadies and the haze thins even further, she feels like she can really see. She opens her eyes wide, and slowly, the truth of the world reveals itself to her as her memory surfaces, stage by stage, revelation by revelation. The people in the stands are not human. They are ethereal, with blue see-through bodies, their faces a blur. They are not quite there, and as a gust of wind blows, a few are blown away into the night. They scream, but their screams, too, are not real, and those sounds vanish. There is no sky. What she thought at first to be night is really nothing at all, because at the very edge of the sky, she can see the edges of the universe. She sees the truth of everything, too, a million souls flying everywhere, and she hears a tapping. It’s constant, unstoppable. It’s closer than ever. The crowd blends together, each voice the exact same, and together they howl for her. “Run, run, run,” they shout, and the girl tries her best to run, but everything feels so slow. The air feels like it’s trying to suffocate everything, and she realizes she’s not moving at all. She’s stuck: in limbo.

“Run!” She understands everything. She closes her eyes, and she brings her arm to her mouth, and for a single second, the world is quiet. It is the single lull between chants, the single moment where she is in the air, not quite touching the ground. It is the single second where there are no runners around her, no crowd, but at the same time there is no corridor, no darkness, no spotlight. She bites. A fountain of both blood and pain erupts, and now she is in the corridor, where a beast chases after her, where she is still and not running. The tapping is still there, louder than ever. She gets up, and she doesn’t slip this time because now her mind is completely clear. She runs again, forcing herself not to look behind. She swears she can feel the tapping on her head, the grim reaper, the beast, right behind her. The haze is coming back, and a sob wracks her body. Her legs twitch. She almost falls again. She lifts her other arm. It’s shaking. She bites her other arm too, and more blood comes spurting out, and finally, her memory is revealed in full. She pumps her arms as fast as she can, a trail of blue right behind her, and she’s going to fall, because she feels light headed and her body is wrong, and she doesn’t feel right, but she continues to run, fear the only thing propelling her now. The tapping is loud. It’s right next to her ear. She closes her eyes, and she doesn’t quite care anymore. She’s still pumping her arms when the beast opens its mouth, and right before she turns into nothing, she thinks she sees a lake. It’s full of blue, not water, but thick disgusting blood. Blue blood. She submerges into it, and she swears, she is with a million other people, a million other identities, a million other personalities, before her own is stripped away from her, and she becomes not quite anything but just another soul in a sea of blood. An eternity passes. She’s still running. There’s a tapping sound behind her.