Marked by blood

Honestly speaking, I still don't know how I got into this situation. But I think it would be best if I started from the moment my life started spiraling into hell. I remember waking up. Except I didn't wake up in my bed. Even before my eyes were open, I already knew I was f****d up. Because I was standing in the middle of the road in nothing but my pajamas. The moment I realized where I was, a burning embarrassment spread through me. I quickly looked around, hoping nobody had noticed me. Then I noticed the sun. And I knew I was even more f****d up. I was already late for work. Luckily, I wasn't too far from the restaurant where I worked, so I ran as fast as I could, hoping I could get home, get dressed, and make it back to work before my boss noticed I wasn't there. Here's the thing. I hate running. I don't like running. But I had to. Otherwise, I would lose my job. And, unluckily for me, the moment I reached the restaurant, I spotted my boss. My heart nearly stopped. "Ma, I can explain." I hurried to speak, but she just raised her hand. "I don't want to hear it." "Ma, please—" "No, Elena." She looked at me with an expression that told me there was absolutely no point in arguing. "Run on home." I stared at her. "What?" "Go home." I wasn't shocked that she was firing me. Honestly, I probably deserved it. I was more shocked that she expected me to just run home. "Ma, please. Something came up." She raised her hand again. "Don't give me that, Elena. I don't think there's any other excuse you can give me." She sighed. "The last time, your car broke down. Before that, your grandma died. You slept through work, walked in late, and had a lot of excuses." I lowered my head. "This was your last chance, and you botched it." "Please—" "No." She shook her head. "You're disturbing my business. Leave." At that point, I knew I didn't have another chance. So I could only scurry away, my face burning with shame. Honestly speaking, I had no intention of being late to work. Just like I had no intention of standing in the middle of the road in my pajamas. I was fifteen when it started. The sleepwalking. I would always wake up in random places, nowhere I could remember ever getting to. Of course, I also had dreams. Dreams that I couldn't remember every time I woke up. I always had the feeling that those dreams and my sleepwalking were somehow connected. But without knowing what I was dreaming about, there was no way for me to guess what I was looking for whenever I sleepwalked. One day, I went to meet a fortune teller who told me she could read my fate and all those things. So when I gave her my hand to read my fate, she just looked at me and said, "All I see is blood." Yeah. How couldn't she see blood? She had just seen me buying a pad, so it was obvious I was on my menstrual period. That was the point I knew fortune tellers were scammers. Anyway, after leaving the fortune teller, I went back to my apartment, which I shared with this weird goth girl who was part of a band named Liv. Yeah. Liv. I met Liv through an advertisement that was posted beside our house a few weeks after my mother's death. At that point, I didn't really have any reason to keep staying in that house, so I decided to sell it and return to Los Angeles. Bullshit. Living with Liv wasn't really a big deal. There wasn't much of an issue because she didn't put many rules around the apartment. We didn't own any pets, mostly because we couldn't afford any, and we couldn't even take care of them properly if we did. Liv and I got along pretty well, but we hardly talked. My social life was boring too. My mother and I had always moved around. We hardly stayed in one place, always moving from city to city. Because of that, I never really had any opportunity to make friends. And over time, it wore on me. Every time we moved to a new location, I didn't even bother trying to socialize or get to know anybody there. Why would I? In a short while, we'd move again, and eventually, I would forget about them. Then my mother died. And a lot of things changed. Before she died, I always asked her about my dad. But she refused to answer. She always told me that my father was a madman and that I could never return to him. She told me I should never ask about him. She didn't even let me know anything about him apart from his name and surname, which she allowed me to keep as my last name. Monet. His name was Zach Monet. Well, now I was twenty-three. I had just gotten fired from my job, I was staying with my roommate, and I had absolutely no clue what to do next. Shortly after I got back, Liv told me she had a gig that night and was planning to leave. "You can go," I told her. She nodded. Then she looked at me. "Did you have a dream about the..." She stopped. I looked at her. "About the what?" She hesitated. "About..." She didn't finish. And for some reason, I found myself waiting for her to continue.