Blood & Nothing
3h, 3m, 32s. That is how long I had been on the phone. I hadn’t been on the phone for this long since I don’t know when, a year, maybe many? I had never even met the person on the other end, it was a hope for new.
The note and the photographs I received sent to me the fastest way one can, had come somewhere in the middle of this conversation and I hadn’t heard them arrive. I just saw the notice when the call ended and then I checked. I knew who they were from, but not as well as I wished. One photograph, a note and another photograph – in just that order. The first image, a cropped, close up of this someone I knew, a pretty image really, blown up too much and a weird color from some weird light. The note, asking me to maybe record this feeling they were having that I too have felt too much was almost a dare, so it seemed.
Then the final image, a wrist, their own wrist, bubbling blood in the same direction the vein runs.
I stared at it. I put it away and tried to not think about it. After a few seconds, I looked again, I saw blood drops on the floor under their arm. I noticed the time it had arrived, it was over an hour ago. I sent a note as fast as technology allows, STOP IT. I waited, I waited, I waited. I sent another note. Then another. I called. Then I called again. Then I called again. Then I sat down and tried to not think about it. Then, I got in my car and I drove to where the note, the images, came from. Then I stood in front of the place. Just shy of the dark, no lights on place through a gate and up some stairs. I called, I called, I sent a note, I sent a note. Nothing. I walked in a circle, trying to see in windows. Nothing. I sent a note. I called.
Nothing