Red Wine Bruises

Tilda Sweetzer-Sturt

I’ve never cared much for red wine, but it’s always served at these things.

I do drink it, though. Everybody does. They swirl it around glasses shaped like swollen raindrops, waft their hands around the rim and mumble about notes of blueberry and pinecone. Perhaps it’s part of the ambience. They aren’t here for the books, really.

She is. Sophia.

She’s sat across from me. She shifts in her seat, one leg crossed over the other, and buttery lamplight slides down the curve of her calf. My eyes linger on her ankle, where the clasp of her shoe fastens. She’s come straight from work. Estate agent, on the high street. Good at her job, but constantly outshone by her co-worker, Dione. She hates Dione.

This week’s book sits on my lap, unopened. It’s old, wrinkled – a library loan – and the woman on the cover looks just like Sophia. Carmilla is her favourite book, she suggested it for this week. I watch her hand tighten around the spine of her own copy as Lisa calls for attention from the room. Her knuckles whiten, and her neck flushes. I want to touch that neck.

Lisa’s voice is grating, but I listen, and I smile. She’s invited us all into her home, after all; I should be polite. Members of the group talk about the book, and I chuckle when Henry makes a joke, nod sagely at Eleanor’s appreciation of metaphor. Occasionally, in a voice that oozes like molasses, Sophia breaks through the babble with a simple, concise point. Around halfway through the evening, she takes her hair down. It hangs at her waist in snaking brushstrokes of blueish black, with a kink where the clip had been.

A little after nine, I collect the glasses. Lisa rambles on as the rest of the group gather their coats, lips and teeth stained a bruised purple by the wine. Sophia stacks the chairs. Tinkling laughter trickles in from the hallway as I stand at the sink and slowly dip each glass into the soapy water. The suds turn a blushed pink.

‘Need any help?’

Sophia stands in the doorway, leaning against the frame. Her smile is tired, makeup smudged.

‘All good,’ I say with a smile.

She steps further into the kitchen, heels clacking on the tile, and yawns. My hands buzz from the heat of the water even as I reach for the tea towel. She sinks into a chair and cradles her head.

‘You alright?’ I ask, after a moment.

‘Yeah, just’ – she closes her eyes – ‘head hurts.’

I crouch beside her. ‘Nauseous?’

She swats at my shoulder. ‘Stop fussing.’

‘Here,’ I say, grabbing a clean glass. ‘Have some water.’

The tip of her finger brushes mine as she takes it from me. I stuff my hands in my pockets.

‘They’re all gone,’ Lisa announces, swishing into the kitchen in a flurry of linen and jingling beads.

‘I best be off too,’ I say.

‘You can let yourself out,’ she replies, assessing the contents of her fridge with a disappointed expression.

Sophia moves to the door, but her step is unsteady. Her paling face is sheened with sweat, and her hands shake slightly as she fumbles with her coat. I shrug my jacket onto my shoulders, watching her sway.

‘Soph?’

She wobbles. I place a hand on her shoulder.

‘I don’t think you should drive,’ I say. ‘Do you want me to take you home?’

Her forehead wrinkles and her nose scrunches, as if confused, but she holds out her car keys for me to take. She makes it down the steps from the front door, but stumbles as she hits the paved walkway. I slip an arm around her waist, her hip warm under my hand, and help her to the car. By the time she’s strapped in, her eyes are glassy and her head heavy. The engine rouses with a drowsy purr, and I pull out onto the road.

I’m continually surprised by how little effort it takes to incapacitate someone. One or two drops of GHB in a glass of wine, for example, and that’s it. Out like a light.

The bedding box was my grandmother’s. Sugared blue, with ornate, curled feet. When emptied, it was just about the right size, if a little cosy. A woman of five foot nothing would have no problem fitting inside.

I weighed the lid down with books, just in case the drugs wore off quicker than I anticipated. I perused the titles as I stacked them, trying to remember which I’d already read. They ended up piled in categories: those I liked, those I didn’t, and those I couldn’t remember. Every now and then, a soft bump or ka-thunk against the walls of the box would remind me of my dwindling time, and so I locked the doors, closed the blinds, and checked on the vials in the fridge.

She’ll be resistant at first. I expect that. Even to me, they don’t look appetising. I did my best to keep them from congealing – refrigeration, sterilised needles, labelled dates of extraction – but they still seemed… sludgy. Dark, thick, unlike the striking, spurting scarlet you see in films. Blood drawn from a deep vein has a slow colour. A reddish, brownish, creeping kind of colour.

She starts crying after a while, then banging on the lid of the box, kicking at the sides, but it’s only when she goes quiet that I look up from my book. She might have hyperventilated, passed out. I’d read her medical history many times, but hadn’t thought to check for phobias. Slowly, I approach the box.

‘Soph?’

No answer. Unsurprising, but not encouraging.

After a few minutes of silence, I remove the books one by one, and curl my fingers under the lip of the lid. When I lift it, her eyes are closed. She’s dishevelled, sweaty, but perfectly still. I reach down to press two fingers to her neck, and the skin rises to meet my touch in a slow, but steady, ba-bum. I remain there for a moment, watching a bead of sweat linger on her clavicle.

Pain flares in my forearm, blunt and hot. I yelp and withdraw my arm, a chunk of my skin coming away between her teeth, and she jams her elbow into my shoulder. I hit the carpet, air whooshing from my chest, and she tries to clamber out of the box, but she’s disorientated, feverish, and she topples. She lands a little to my left and I grab for her, nails catching on her skirt as she scrambles just out of reach. She almost gets to the door, but I grasp her ankle and yank.

The noise she makes is like a trapped animal. Yowling.

I get on top of her and hold her down. She spits at me, writhes under my bodyweight, but I keep her there. She screams and kicks, but I lodge her palms beneath my knees and sit my full weight on her abdomen. I soundproofed the room years ago, using night terrors as the excuse. She can shriek and wail all she likes.

I assess the wound on my arm; the teeth marks make me shiver. I reach down and run my thumb over her lower lip, smearing my own blood across the skin, and then move a strand of hair out of her eyes. She really does look like the girl on the cover. Seeing her there, laying beneath me with my blood on her lips, is almost enough to make me buckle.

‘I knew it,’ I say softly, a little out of breath. ‘I knew you were the right one.’

I pull back her lips with my thumb. Her teeth are neat and white; a little square, but they could work. *

She doesn’t like the teeth filing one bit.

Getting her to stay still is a challenge. Even cable-tied to a kitchen chair, lips pulled back and pinned to her cheeks, she resists as best she can.

Her gums are a little crowded, so I dig out my dad’s old toolbox from the shed. Inelegant, but necessary. The pliers are rusted, stiff with age, but I manage to wrestle out four teeth. It takes more strength than I anticipated – and several attempts – but as each tooth plinks into the bowl, she struggles less. I tilt her head forward to catch the blood and spit in a bucket and pack the gouges as best I can with shreds of cotton wool. I put aside the extracted teeth for cleaning. Little chunks of pinkish flesh still cling to the roots, and the blood starts to crust and brown.

With more space to work with, I use a metal file. The noise is the worst bit. A biting grind that starts off squeaking, and fades to a hiss. She digs her nails into the wooden arms of the chair with such force that they crack and bleed. I get her incisors down to slender points, curved at the tip, and shorten her front teeth. She manages not to faint until I’ve almost finished.

The first time I offer her the blood vials, she vomits. I’m unsurprised by her initial aversion, as alongside the lingering queasiness from the GHB, the cooling of the blood only seems to enhance its corroded smell.

When she sleeps, I clean her wounds. Wash her hair. Change her clothes. But her lips are cracked, her eyes sunken. The pin holes in her lips and chest darken, threatening infection. The woman on the book cover was pale and unblemished, but she is sallow. The next night, she caves.

Crouched in the corner of the room, she watches the window. Pale fingers of dim evening sun slither through the gaps in the blinds and streak the floorboards in gold. She watches them as if she expects them to coil back and strike her.

‘I’ll drink it,’ she says.

She can barely spit the words out, shredded by her dry throat and sharpened teeth.

She meets my eyes. ‘Please.’

Please. It’s so delicious coming from her lips. The base of my stomach tenses, and I smile.

She doesn’t flinch when I approach her this time. She takes my outstretched hand willingly, entwining our fingers. I lead her to the kitchen, alight with spidering tingles, and her hips and hair mist my mind.

The refrigerator light is dying, flickering slightly. My fingertips prickle against the chilled glass as I search for the freshest sample.

She wants to. She asked to. It’s working, and the idea of my blood on her tongue makes me quiver.

Then there’s a hand in my hair, and a pain in my neck; a pressured puncture. A tearing sound, warmth washing down my chest.

She rips away from me, taking with her a mouthful of skin and tendon, and shoves me to the ground. My head cracks against the table edge and I hit the tile, the impact fizzing in my nose. She tears fistfuls of hair from my head, follicles still clinging to patches of scalp, and spits slippery chunks of my own vocal cords in my face. Her shrieks are gargled, blood thick in her throat.

Her thighs clench around my waist and I can smell her hair. Her teeth on my neck, her nails on my cheek, the heat of her body on mine. She claws at me as if she wants me to fight her, but I don’t. I relish it.

I lose feeling quite quickly, left only with a sense of creeping cold. As I lie there, though, I see her do it. I see her lick my blood from her lips, and the faintest flicker of pleasure flares in her eyes. Her body is so starved of water, she returns to my open throat.

The refrigerator whirrs; chilled air slithering from the open door across the blood-pooled floor. I lift a hand and twist my fingers in her hair, cradling her head. Her tongue is hot and her breathing laboured, but she does not push me off, and she does not stop.

Cake

Emma Matthews

She looked him up and down. God, was Colin the Caterpillar down his trousers? They looked tight – but they both knew it was probably Cuthbert.

In the Shadows of 1985

Elisa Perin

Home was a straight, shiny-new, suburban street full of kids, milk-carton homes, precise turf squares.

Naïve days spent playing métiers; make-believing cops-chasing-thieves, bakers, butchers, daddies coming and going with austere briefcases; heedless of apartment-block shadows crossing the street, presaging staggered calls of ‘Souper!’ Rattling bikes ditched on front steps, wheels spinning.

Mid-summer, Simon Côté appeared opposite; cool Levis, brown leather, curly undercut. Older girls flocked. Forbidden to go, I watched their shadows coerced across the blacktop. Out of reach.