Jamie

17

The Blood of Thine Enemies
The sun rose and everything fell. Marina woke up as the light from her window hit her face, and immediately regretted it.
“Oh no,” she whispered, staring horrified at her ceiling. She felt, not for the first time, the warmth of blood in the fabric of her pajama shorts. Her own blood. Menstrual blood. It had come in the night.
Did she dare kick off her covers and get out of bed? Should she even attempt to stand at all? She was wholly unprepared, without any protection on, and definitely NOT willing for others in her family to see her in such a compromised state. But, as marvelously tempting as it sounded, she could not just lie in bed for 3-7 days and wait for it to pass. Eventually she would get hungry. And her blog would lose followers if she didn’t update.
Praying desperately to be wrong, that maybe she had only wet the bed a little, Marina crept out from underneath her blankets and stood next to her bed to survey the destruction. And honest to God, it was like a murder scene. Like if a cop saw how much blood was covering her white sheets right then, she would have been accused of stabbing a person and letting them bleed out all over her bed.
Wishing for the thousandth time that she’d never been born with ovaries, Marina delicately removed her sheets from her mattress and tried not to grimace. If her life were a book, the reader would have thrown up by now. She sent a silent, pleading apology up to her reader. This was probably not what they had signed up for. After peering her head out of her bedroom door to make sure the coast was clear, she half-walked, half-waddled to the bathroom down the hall, but it was too late. By now she could feel it dripping down her legs.
Gritting her teeth, Marina slammed the door behind her, threw the sheets on the tiled floor and raided the cupboards. There was not one tampon to be found. She felt like she was in a horror movie; there was certainly enough blood for one. In the midst of her panicked search, she heard a voice outside the door.
“Marina?” A young, male voice tentatively called. “Um. It’s Alex. I’m here to finish the PowerPoint?”
Oh. No. She’d forgotten in her morning nightmare that she was supposed to be finishing her health project with the awkward, scrawny kid who’d been assigned as her partner. And now he was here. And she was covered in menses.
“Alex! Just – hold on a second.” She tried, unsuccessfully, to hide just how distraught she was. By this time, the blood had run all the way down her legs and she was creating reddish footprints on the white tile. Curse this white floor. Curse her white sheets. And curse her mother for buying everything in the most easily tainted color in existence. Her mother, who was ironically African American.
“Hey, Alex?” She tried for nonchalant again. “Why don’t you just wait for me in the kitchen? I’ll be right there, I’m just-" thinkofsomethinglessembarrassing, “putting on makeup.”
Outside the bathroom door, Alex was understandably confused as to why Marina needed to put makeup on to work on a school project, but decided she wasn’t to blame; this project should have been done weeks ago, anyway. It was his own fault for using PowerPoint. PowerPoint is boring. He didn’t question her, only turned to head back down the hall.
Marina sighed in relief as she heard Alex’s retreating footsteps and yanked her shorts down to her ankles. No doubt they were already ruined. She’d just have to rinse off her legs in the shower, get dressed, clean up the mess, and meet Alex in the kitchen. And no one would ever have to know of the unspeakable events that had taken place that day.
Pants at her ankles, she stepped toward the door to lock it, but approximately six things happened before she could:
1. Marina’s foot landed on her crumpled sheets.
2. The sheets, slick with the wretched curse, slid forward underneath said foot and left a streak of bright red on the white tile.
3. Marina fell back, crying out as she did so, and had a moment of clarity in the millisecond before she landed with a thud of her bare butt on the floor in which she prayed for the sweet, sweet release of death.
4. Alex heard the sharp yell of alarm and the following thud and rushed back to the bathroom door.
5. Alex called out, “Marina?” to which he received no reply. This was because Marina was struggling just to breathe, the wind having been knocked out of her. She was currently making desperate sounds to try and communicate to him her okay-ness so that he would NOT open the door, but they sounded more like an elderly woman attempting to play Zumba. These sounds were consequently not interpreted as sounds of okay-ness. All of this happened in just under ten seconds, until –
6. Alex stared at the door handle and slowly turned the knob.