Blood Stains

The stain on my ceiling looked like a dead dog. It was an ugly mottled brown, like it had rabies. I felt bad for the poor thing. If I tried hard, I could convince myself that it resembled something different, but tonight I was stuck lying on my back staring at the broken legs, the oddly shaped body, and the head that went the wrong way.

It was almost 2 a.m.; my mother would be asleep and my sister would be pretending to be. Whatever bed my father was lying in, I hoped he was more miserable than me. Sleep evaded me for the past two hours, leaving my legs restless and my mind seeing dead animals.

I resisted the urge escape into my phone. The last thing I wanted to do was mindless scrolling. I thought about texting Joel, but he had work in the morning and he was a deep sleeper. His whole house could be set ablaze, and he wouldn’t have woken up.

My room was stifling, but the air was on full blast. It was the hottest night of the season so far, not like that meant anything in Florida. I kicked off the covers and breathed in deeply, letting out a slow exhale. I closed my eyes. If I kept them closed long enough I would eventually fall asleep. That’s how it worked, wasn’t it?

Just breathe deeply.

Something tapped on my window. It was faint, almost hesitant, and I dismissed it as a night-time bug giving itself a concussion. I was determined to keep my eyes closed. It was a measure of self-worth for me.

The tapping sound came again, this time more desperate, more…deliberate. My eyes flew open. I sat up in bed. My window was on the other side of the room, and the dark figure standing out there raised a hand and tapped again. I fell to the ground as I scrambled for the door. Stupidly, I left my phone on my nightstand.

My hand was on the handle when I heard his voice.

“Eileen!”

I almost fainted with relief.

It was Joel.

After gaining my composure, I stalked to the window and threw open the curtains. He stood there with a hand cupped on the glass, peering in. When the curtains moved he drew back.

I cursed under my breath and pulled open the window. It raised halfway before Joel had to help me.

Once the window was open, I lifted my hands in exasperation. “What the hell, Joel. You scared the crap out of me!”

Joel was a big guy, stocky like a football player, except he hated football. He was the type to marathon The Lord of the Rings during the Super Bowl just to annoy whoever was in the room. Other than that, he was the most considerate, funniest, and nicest man I’d ever known.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said, voice shaky and quiet.

My annoyance evaporated. I’ve never heard him sound like that. The only time that came close had been recently, when his mother had fallen down the stairs. She was still in the hospital, recovering. He’d been a wreck when I met him at the hospital a few days ago. He wouldn’t explain to me what happened, or why his father wasn’t there to sign the paperwork.

I leaned over and turned on a lamp. It bathed Joel in a warm yellow glow, but it only made his skin wan. The dark circles under his eyes stood out starkly against his pale face. Joel rested his hands on the windowsill, like he was relying on it to keep himself upright. It wasn’t doing a great job.

I rested a hand on his cheek. It was wet, and there was dark stubble there, rough under my fingers. “What happened?”

Joel met my gaze. His eyes were a deep steel gray. I’d gotten lost in them plenty of times, but now they seemed dull and closed off, staring through me at something far away.

“I’ve done something,” he whispered.

My brows furrowed, and I stopped focusing solely on his face. He was trembling, arms shaking, and there was something spread across the front of his t-shirt. It was large, and the color was a deep, deep, red.

I could not accept what I saw. I became nauseous.

“Joel…is that­­—is that yours?” I gestured at his stomach.

Joel looked down at his shirt, eyes wide. In a trance, he raised a hand and picked at his shirt like he was touching something dead. Then, a muffled groan escaped his lips, and he yanked the shirt over his head and threw it on the grass. He thrusted his hands into his hair and bent down in a crouch. There he huddled, as if waiting for a storm to come sweep him away.

As soon as he’d taken off his shirt, I went numb. There wasn’t a single wound on his body.

In what felt like a trance of my own, I turned and rummaged through my dresser and pulled out a gray shirt that Joel had left last week. I climbed out the window, then crouched in the muggy air in front of him. His hands were still gripping his hair tightly. I grabbed one of them and forced the shirt into his palm. He grasped it, and­—without looking at me—pulled it over his head. The collar lined up with dark bruises that I hadn’t noticed earlier. I raised a hand to inspect them, but he caught it gently and brought it back down in front of him. He looked at my fingers, at the promise ring he’d put there two years ago when we’d been seniors in high school, and we hadn't know what to make of the world without each other.

“I’m so sorry, Eileen,” he said.

“Whatever happened, we’ll figure it out.”

I'd begun to suspect, though. Even before Joel’s mother supposedly took that tumble down the stairs, I’d suspected. Joel rarely talked about his father, but when he did, it was with shaking hands and a faraway look. It had been like that ever since I’d met him. I only met his father once, and he’d been drunk and angry. Joel had made us leave quickly.

Joel’s mother was a nice lady, timid and quiet, but compassionate, much like her son. She wore a lot of make-up that didn’t blend well with her skin, and now I thought I knew the reason why.

Whatever he’d done to his father, I had to be the rock for Joel now. He’d done the same for me. My father had sported a black eye for about three weeks after Joel had found out that he'd pushed my sister to the ground. Joel was a lot like his mother, but he couldn’t have done what he did tonight without having a bit of his father’s blood tainting his veins. Realizing that was going to break him.

Joel gripped my hand tight and stood up. I climbed to my feet with him.

“You can’t come with me. I just needed to see you before…before things happen. I shouldn’t have come here.”

I lowered my voice. “What you did, it’s no more than that bastard deserved.”

Joel let out a deep breath and pulled me into an embrace. I could feel his heartbeat against my chest, beating fast, but beginning to slow. We stayed like that for an eternity, just clinging to each other and wishing the world would disappear around us. When we broke apart, Joel stood straighter. Still pale, still shaky, but…stronger. He picked up the blood-stained t-shirt.

“I need to get rid of this,” he said.

I nodded. It felt surreal, loving someone so much. I didn’t know what would happen, but I would be in it with him. Because of what happened tonight Joel and his mother could live without fear.

I climbed back into my window, made eye-contact with the dead dog, and grabbed a lighter that I kept stashed in a jewelry box and a bottle of nail polish remover. Back outside, I took the shirt from Joel, poured a fair amount of polish over the fabric, and lit it on fire. The shirt burst into flames, and we both stared at it, transfixed.

“Nobody will miss him,” Joel said. He held my hand. “Not even Mom.”

Joel seemed to be reassuring himself more than me. I was okay with that.

The blood was quickly eaten up. When it got too hot to hold, I dropped it in the bucket beside the water hose. There, the flames roared, smoke billowing into the sky.

Joel would bear this stain on his soul forever, and I would be there to help him cope. Deep down I knew that if he had the opportunity, Joel would not have taken back what he did. The blood on this shirt was nothing compared to the stain that plagued his family for years.

That dog was dead, and I was happy to see it so.