Blood

There is something odd in the way Lorna’s looking at me.

I think it’s fear.

Which is what I wanted—want—isn’t it? I wanted—no, I want—her to be afraid of me, to stay away. I’m not safe.

But the way she’s looking at me now from the passenger seat of whoever’s truck I’ve been driving…it hurts. I don’t want this.

A line of that Rolling Stones song surfaces among all the other thoughts in my mind, but even that isn’t enough to take my mind away from Lorna Owens’ beautiful brown eyes, full of fear or something of the like. Maybe even hate.

“Uh, thank you,” I say as I kill the engine and hold out the keys to her.

She shrugs, taking the keys, and making to open her door. “Don’t worry about it.”

I open my own door and make to step out into the snow, but Lorna clutches at my arm, forcing me to turn.

“It’s not fair of you to be mad at me,” she says.

“I’m sorry?”

I can feel her fingernails through my sleeve, digging at my skin.

“Yeah, I fucking kissed Hannagan! And do you know why I did that?”

Oh.

“Lorna—”

“Because you were getting the living shit beat out of you! You weren’t even fighting back!”

“Lorna, I’m n—”

She continues on, oblivious, her freckled face red with either anger or embarrassment.

“So what was I supposed to do? Let Jamie fucking Hannagan rearrange your face a little more?”

I pull my arm away from her claw-like grasp. “Lorna!”

“What?” she yells back.

“I’m not angry with you.”

Her eyes widen. “What?” she says, repeating herself in a much softer tone.

“Why would I be mad?” I ask.

Because she’s a whore, just like all the human girls, says that nasty voice.

Shut up.

“I dunno, your eyes?” she says.

It takes an effort not to curse. “That’s just how they look.”

Lorna frowns. “I didn’t mean it like that. Just…at the pub, you looked like you wanted to kill me.”

“Spirits,” I mutter.

Because I did, I had wanted to kill her.

I don’t know which of Hannagan’s punches broke my lip, but between the rich blood and the pain I almost lost it. And I think that Lorna kissing Hannagan is what kept me sane. I mean it hurt like hell, which I think is exactly what kept me in my mind.

Lorna doesn’t say anything, and that hurts, too.

I suppose I’m having a fairly painful day.

“Uh, I suppose you don’t want to stay for a little while,” I say, stepping out of the truck and hanging onto the door, pondering if I should close it or not.

She bites her lip, looking up at the roof of the cab. I’d expected her to get out, since I figure the truck can’t drive itself.

“Can I?”

I laugh slightly. “You want to?”

She smiles, somewhere between a true grin and a smirk. “Yeah.”

I glance up at the sky. A snowflake lands on my forehead. The snow has thinned out to next to nothing, but there’s not a single star in the sky, not that there normally is on Faer.

The blood on my face is starting to bother me, like half empty pints.

Lorna’s door slams shut, startling my gaze downwards.

“So where’re we going?” Lorna asks from the other side of the blue truck,

I slam the driver’s side door and walk towards the house where the porch light is on, as it always is.

“Uh, just the porch, if that’s alright.”

I’ve just remembered the jar of hooch under the bench on the porch.

“Sure,” she says.

I watch her walking towards my home without meaning to. It actually makes me feel a little perverted…

“You’re sure you aren’t mad?” Lorna asks as we both sit down, her with her car keys and me with my jar.

I lift the jar to my lips and feel a slight burn as it passes down my throat. “Not in the way you mean.”

Lorna smiles, laughing slightly and pulling a cigarette from her pocket. There’s something elegant to it, grace obtained from years of repetition.

“How long have you smoked?” I ask.

“Shit,” she mutters, flicking a silver lighter and then lighting the end of the cigarette. She pulls it away from her face, breathing out a cloud of vile smoke. “Four years, maybe.”

She takes another puff and then stares at the jar in my hand. “What about you? When’d you start drinking?”

“Oh, fuck. I was little. Five? Maybe a tad bit older. I’m not quite sure. Like, I wasn’t drinking, I didn’t start really drinking until I was around ten.”

She makes a face that I’m not quite sure the meaning of. I think she’s either impressed or disgusted.

“That’s like Sean drinking,” she mutters.

Disgusted, I decide.

“He’s…six?”

She smiles. “Yeah.”

A memory of Justin and a couple of his friends, including George in the kitchen, drinking and making fun of every girl that had ever scorned one of them, especially Lorna, fills my mind. It still gives me a bit of a funny feeling, thinking back on it, since George had mocked her with the least mercy of them all.

“You’re close to him,” I say, unsure of what else to say.

“Yeah. Sean and Reid, both.”

I nod. “Your cousins, too?”

She shrugs, which I figure means ‘yes’.

“Yeah. I mean, Fletch is a pisser, and Mattie’s naïve, but they’re decent enough,” she shrugs. “What about you and Justin? It’s hard to tell.”

I feel myself smirk and blame the liquor. “Have you been paying attention, then?” I shake my head. “No, sorry. I suppose we’re close enough.”

I focus on Lorna’s eyes, and she stares back at me.

“He’s not as bad a guy as you think.”

“Tsk.”

“I mean it. He just…” I trail off, unsure what I should say.

But Lorna rolls her eyes. “Yeah, well. You’re his brother, not a girl for fucking.”

I stare at her, almost surprised by how bitter she sounds.

“You’re a hell of a lot more than a one-off, Lorna,” I say and chase it away with more of the white whiskey, which just further muddles my mind.

She smirks. “So you are a boy.”

I make a face. “As opposed to…?”

“’Dunno, a eunuch?” she says with a shrug.

I look around, kicking my legs against the side of the porch. I think that boys without balls are still boys, but I don’t really feel like saying it. Might be a tad bit crude.

“Fuck, it’s cold,” Lorna mutters.

“This would warm you up,” I say, lifting the half full jar a little.

She reaches for it, but I pull it from her reach, which makes her scowl at me.

“It’s strong,” I say, holding it out to her again.

She shrugs and throws her burnt down cigarette into the snow before taking the jar from my hand.

“Jesus!” she says, spitting out the little bit she had taken. “What is this shit? Here, take it back.”

I laugh as I take the jar back from her, which earns me a look of scorn, slightly lost through her coughing.

“Sorry,” I say.

“Bastard.”

I laugh again, and Lorna stops coughing to watch me.

“You idolize your brother,” she says.

I stop laughing and tilt my head. “What would make you say that?”

She shrugs, “Dunno.”

“I don’t.”

“Are you sure?”

“Uh, yeah,” I say with a frown. “I wouldn’t think you ever idolized any of your brothers.”

I meant it a little cruelly, or not ‘cruelly’ exactly, more like I meant for it to make her realise how absurd it is for her to ask if I idolize my brother, especially out of nowhere.

“No. But I wanted to be like them, when I was little. Reid, and even George.”

“In what way?” I ask.

I take another drag from the jar, fully aware the Lorna’s lips had been where mine are now not but a moment ago.

Her cheeks burn red and she looks at me almost timidly. “I wanted to be a boy.”

“Huh,” I say, taken slightly aback. That’s not exactly what I’d expected.

She laughs. “It was just because they got to do different things. They weren’t expected to knit and all of that stupid shit. Boys will be boys, my Gram used to say when George and Reid came in covered in mud, but when I did the same, she’d act as though I’d announced I was pregnant, or summat, even when I was young. I don’t want to be a boy now.”

“Good to know,” I mutter.

“What was that?” Lorna asks.

“Nothing…I was just thinking something crude.”

“Oh?” she says, sounding intrigued.

I laugh a little. “I mean, I always figured you had more balls than anyone else on the island,” I stop to drink form my jar, “I just never realised you actually wanted them.”

She laughs, and I wonder how anyone could laugh after kissing Jamie Hannagan.

Stop it, Mallory, I think.

“You’re a liar.”

“I’m sorry?” I ask.

“Well, you claim to be bad at talking, but this is like as not the best, uh, conversation I’ll ever have.”

It takes an effort to keep from laughing.

I realise that Lorna’s staring at me in a different way. She’s not meeting my eyes, but it’s still my face, I think, that she’s staring at.

“Mal,” she asks, sitting up a little straighter.

“Yeah?”

But she doesn’t say anything. She leans closer to me, stopping a couple inches away from my face, scanning my face for something.

Holy sh—

And she kisses me with lips that taste like cigarettes and liquor.

But—What the fuck do I do?

I mean, I know what to do…

But I can’t. This is stupid.

This isn’t stupid, I think, for possibly the first time.

Lorna pulls away, looking disappointed, likely because I hadn’t kissed her back.

Hell, she didn’t even look disappointed after kissing Hannagan.

Hannagan kissed her back you ruddy moron.

Her cheeks flush red and she looks away.

Great, now I’ve hurt her, too.

Fuck it all, I think.

“Lorna,” I say, causing her to look back at me.

She opens her mouth to say something, maybe an apology, maybe an insult, but I kiss her before she can, and fuck it feels good.

Despite the fact that her lips and her mouth and her tongue are tainted with cigarette smoke and spite, it’s a sweet kiss all the same.

We break apart, but this time she’s smiling and cupping my cheek with her right hand.

“You’re so weird,” she mutters, laughing.

“I suppose I am,” I say.

She shivers, pulling her hand away, her eyes as well.

“It’s so fucking cold,” she murmurs, looking out into the dark.

I take her hand in my own, which makes her look at me. I think I’m smirking. It’s a weird feeling, since I’m not entirely used to it.

I lean towards her, pressing my lips into her hair. “You know, there’s something else I could give you for that.”

Lorna smiles, almost incredulous. “Mallory Fionn!” she says, somewhere between laughing and scolding.

“Is that a no?”

She looks away, towards the road. I wonder what she’s thinking.

What am I thinking?

When she turns back to me, she kisses me again, brushing her fingers between my legs, as though to make sure I really want her.

It takes a lot out of me not to make some kind of weird noise as she does.

I jump at the sound of my name, biting Lorna’s lip.

For an instant, I can taste her blood on the tip of my tongue.

But then she’s pulled away, and I’m looking towards the house.

My father’s opened the front door, and is there, leaning against the wooden frame.

“Hello, Lorna,” he says.

Lorna’s face has gone scarlet, which I’m starting to think is how the drink shows on her.

It’s amazing I can think at all.

“Uh, hi,” she says, covering her bottom lip with her hand.

“What are you doing, Tim?” I ask, trying to clear my mind, but Spirits, the blood.

My father tilts his head when he looks at me, likely trying to figure out why I’m covered in blood. He may also be wondering whose it is. “Mallory, what did you do to your face?”

“I should go,” Lorna mutters.

“I didn’t mean—” my father starts.

Lorna shakes her head, “My idiot cousin’s likely been by, my family might be worried,” she sounds bitter.

The door slams shut, my father disappeared behind it. I guess he’s decided he has better things to worry about than his blood-splattered son and…well, whatever Lorna is to me.

“So, you’re leaving, then?” I say, looking out at the blue truck, now dusted with snow.

“You want me to?” Lorna replies, almost angrily.

I don’t want to make her angry, but, the blood. I can’t. I can almost feel myself slipping.

Human blood isn’t like my own. When I have a small amount of my own blood, I can fight whatever urge I may have. Hell, sometimes I don’t even want more. But human blood…

I can’t hurt her.

“My…head hurts,” I say, still looking away.

Lorna’s fingers grip my chin then pull, forcing me to look at her.

There’s a smear of blood right where her lips meet.

“You know, they’re right.”

She sounds even angrier than she did before.

I don’t respond, partially because I don’t know who ‘they’ are and mostly because I don’t think I could string together a sentence.

“You really are a fucking bastard,” she says, letting go of my chin. She pushes herself down off the porch before marching away towards her truck.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I wonder if she can drive alright. Then the rest of me is just working to fight this terrible want for blood.

It’s worse than a week without liquor.

After what feels like hours of thinking, but what may have been five minutes at the absolute most, I bite my right ring finger hard enough that it bleeds.

Through the waning of my bloodthirst, I start to feel absolutely disgusted. How can one person be as retched as I am?

And then I let myself think something I don’t think as often as I deserve:

I hate myself.