Blood on the pages
594 Words
The boy’s words—She’s inside you already—echoed like a siren through Lena’s mind.
Every breath felt foreign, every blink delayed. She couldn’t stop noticing her own body: the weight of her limbs, the pulse thudding in her wrists, the subtle drag of her tongue against her teeth. Things she’d never paid attention to now felt wrong, like she was inhabiting borrowed skin.
Paranoia wrapped around her like barbed wire. She thought every laugh from the hallway was a sneer or every creak of the dorm walls was a footstep. Her heart jumped at the sound of her own phone vibrating.
She couldn’t tell where her fear ended and where she—whatever she was—began.
By midnight, Lena was sitting cross-legged on the floor, the diary open in front of her like a loaded weapon. She had tried ignoring it, shoving it back in the drawer, piling things on top of it like before. But ignoring it felt worse. It was like pretending not to notice a knife hovering an inch from your throat.
Her hand trembled as she picked up a pen.
Her breath was shallow. The pages stared back at her, patient.
Her voice cracked in the empty room. “What do you want from me?”
The pen touched the page. Her handwriting scrawled across the cream-colored paper in jerky strokes.
The silence pressed in.
She needed an answer
Her grip tightened. The pen slipped.
The sharp tip poked her finger deeply.
Lena hissed. A bead of blood welled, dark and startling against her pale skin. She watched it swell, then drip onto the diary’s waiting page.
The moment it touched the paper, she expected it to smear, to soak in.
It didn’t.
The blood sat on the surface, gleaming. Then, as though inhaled, it vanished.
The page remained blank for a breathless moment.
Then the words began to bloom.
Not black ink this time. Not even the brown-red stains it sometimes scrawled with.
This was vivid. Wet and Crimson.
"Now we are bound".
The words gleamed like an open wound.
Lena’s breath hitched.
Her skin went cold, not just on the outside but deep into the marrow, a frost settling into her bones.
Something final had happened. A door had closed. She could feel it.
The diary wasn’t just in her room anymore.
It was in her.
The rest of the night was a blur of dread. She kept the lights on. She couldn’t risk the dark.
When exhaustion dragged her into the bathroom to brush her teeth, her hands were still trembling.
She avoided the mirror. The thought of looking at her own face felt unbearable. What if she saw something she couldn’t unsee?
But movement caught her eye anyway.
Her gaze flicked up.
Her reflection stared back, her same pale face, tired eyes, hollow cheeks.
She exhaled shakily and looked down at the sink. Foam gathered at the corner of her mouth.
When she looked up again, her blood ran cold.
Her reflection had blinked—late.
Half a second too late.
She froze, toothbrush hanging limp from her mouth.
Her pulse hammered.
Slowly, mechanically, she blinked again.
Her reflection followed, but the delay was unmistakable.
Her knees nearly gave out.
The toothbrush clattered into the sink.
Her reflection was smiling.
Not her. It.
The corners of its mouth curled upward, slow, deliberate, almost… possessive.
Her stomach lurched.
The smile widened, a predator’s grin stretching across her own face.
Then the reflection’s lips moved.
It was soundless but it mouthed a single word.
"Mine".
- Writer
