Spooky Challenge 2024 — Day 4
Day four of my challenge and I’m writing late again! Halloween is coming up and I still have no idea what I want to do to celebrate. If you have any ideas, let me know!
Other news, if you missed it, my collection – What Remains When The Stars Burn Out – has been nominated for a Wonderland Award so I’ll be going to Bizarrocon in Oregon to see how the ceremony goes! If you’re attending, come say hi!
Sisters of the Crimson Vine has a Spanish edition, thanks to Dilatando Mentes Press!
Now onwards to the newest story! Today’s prompt:
“One day, Justina’s period starts exactly when it’s supposed to, but blood isn’t the only things she’s menstruating out of her body…” – L Walter
Warning: there are heavy themes of child/partner abuse.
Violence Begets Violence
Justina’s stepfather pulled her roughly into the bathroom, his fingertips leaving dents in her upper arm. He threw her against the bathroom counter, she knew the impact would leave a bruise as pain buzzed through her hip bone.
“You’re a disgusting cow!” he snarled, pointing at the trash bin beside the toilet.
She held her breath, tried to feel nothing at all so the tears wouldn’t come. He grabbed her arm again when she didn’t move fast enough, pulling her beside him, pointing again.
On top of the pile of tissues, q-tips, and empty toothpaste tube, was a pad peeking out from a half unfurled length of toilet paper.
Justina’s stomach dropped.
Her pad. The one she’d tried to carefully wrap in toilet paper just an hour ago.
Its crimson smear stood out brightly in the trash.
“Fucking disgusting,” her stepfather snapped. “You want your stepbrother to see this fucking filth? Pig.”
He struck her across the face and she fell back against the counter. He stomped out of the bathroom, leaving whiskey fumes in his wake. Only when she had shut the door did Justina let the tears flow. Her left cheek hummed with throbbing heat. One she was well familiar with now.
Her mother had married him nine months ago and, ever since they’d returned from the honeymoon, Justina’s life had been a living hell. Her left thigh still hurt from the cigarette burn he’d given her to let her know her shorts had been too short five days ago.
She knelt on the tile, reached into the garbage. I must not have wrapped it tight enough. Her hands shook. I should have hidden it deeper in the garbage.
Something moved. She pulled her hands away with a gasp. Her first thought was a mouse. The house was old, drafty, prone to infestation.
Justina waited. Her heart pounded painfully. She couldn’t leave the pad there. He would hurt her harder or… do something worse. Something she felt he’d been waiting to do for a while, working up the courage for, since she’d caught him in her room holding a pair of underwear he’d taken from her laundry basket.
A mouse was nothing compared to him.
She reached in, pulling the pad out, opened it slowly.
Resting on a large clot was a small translucent slug.
Or, at least, it resembled a slug. About an inch long, it was rather slug-like, slightly opaque like a crystal and the same colouration. Twin stalks bobbled at one end, just underneath were small waving appendages like feelers or a dozen tongues. At the other end was a wicked sharp crimson barb.
The creature paused, its stalks wavering in her direction. Entranced, she lowered a finger towards it.
Without fear, the thing slid up her fingertip to rest on her first knuckle. She couldn’t feel it, it matched her body temperature exactly.
Her mother called that dinner was ready. Her mother’s voice always quavered now, always on the verge of tears.
With her free hand, Justina rolled the pad tighter in toilet paper and shoved it deep within the garbage. She guided the tiny thing into her palm and covered it carefully so she wouldn’t crush it, then she went to dinner.
#
Justina found another before bed. This time, she checked her pad before throwing it away. There was another one, moving through the blood. She added it to the small glass on her bedside table with the first.
Sitting on the side of her bed, listening to her mother beg her stepfather to stop, Justina watched the new creature curl in on itself, seeming to harden just like the first had. It stilled, resembling nothing more than a small chip of quartz except for the tiny crimson talon in the middle.
Maybe it died.
Justina knew it wasn’t true. She wasn’t sure how she knew. When she reached in and pressed a fingertip against one, it still matched her body temperature. It still felt like a part of her.
#
On the third day of her period, Justina had collected a dozen new “gems”. She added each one to the glass beside her bed.
At night, they faintly glowed, like the old stars she’d put on her ceiling as a kid.
#
On the fourth night, she found her stepfather in her room. The tin box with the unicorn painted on top lay on the floor, coins scattered like trash. He held her savings in his hands. All $120 of it, saved carefully from babysitting jobs.
He looked at her, without even the decency to seemed ashamed. “I’m taking this.”
Her face burned. With fear, anxiety, but mostly anger.
Justina cried out, not even able to speak, tears burning, as she clawed at his hand, trying to take back what was hers.
“You bitch!” he yelled as she dug her nails into the back of his hand, drawing blood. “You crazy bitch!”
He grabbed the hair at the back of her head with his free hand, swung her away from him. She slammed against the wall, falling to her hands and knees. He kicked her in the ribs. Hard.
She puked up the toast she’d had for lunch, sinking into the carpet, wailing.
“You’re fucking crazy, just like your fucking mother!” Her stepfather stepped past her, knocking the side table over.
The glass shattered under his foot, the gems crunched.
#
All but three of the gems Justina had created – or had been created within her, if that meant anything different – were broken, dead. Cold to the touch.
The three left were no longer gems. They unfurled, their miniscule bodies swaying from side to side, small crimson stingers raised high.
She offered out her palm to them. Perhaps they would sting her and she would die a painful death for not protecting them. I deserve it. I should have hidden them away, kept them safe.
Instead they slid onto her skin and their stalks turned towards her bedroom door.
It was late, the house was quiet.
Justina took them into the hall and their stalks turned right, towards the door to where her mother and stepfather slept.
She opened the door. Streetlights cast stripes over their bodies through the blinds. Her stepfather lay closest to the door, taking most of the bed, spread like a greedy, fat starfish. Her mom was curled up at the edge, her arms wrapped over her head.
The creatures’ stalks pointed down to her stepfather. Justina knelt by the side of the bed, leveled her hand to its edge.
One of the three creatures slid forward, its tiny appendages probing the sheets, guiding its way up towards his head. It crawled up the side of his neck, over his earlobe, and into his ear. The two in her palm grew still.
Justina stood and backed out of the room, silently closing the door as she went.
#
The paramedics took him away in the morning. He was pale, so so pale, deflated looking. His eyes bulged from his head, his tongue poked between purple lips.
Heart attack, they said.
The fear and pain on his face said otherwise but Justina didn’t care to correct anyone.
In a new glass at the side of her bed were six more gems.
And three weeks later, she was giving one to her friend with the black eye, busted lip, and a boyfriend problem.
x PLM
