My Bloody Valentine

When her blood first comes, staining the cheap underwear and nylon skirt, Shania’s terrified, convinced she has cancer or worse. Mother, drunk and disinterested as always, ignores the tears and fears. Two hours, bottle and a half, into a vodka binge, she’s antiseptic and blurred, zombied to anything but reaching the bottom as quickly as possible.

Kevin takes notice, of course. You’re a woman now, he whispers, breath on her neck, the frightening bulk at his core. He smells metallic, like foil, and Shania recoils. He smiles, canines overly long and bile-colored, winks. Be seeing you, he says.  

It isn’t long before he visits in the night, waiting for Mother to reach the ocean floor, unconscious and drooling on the stained sofa. He whispers shamefully in the darkness, I’ll kill her if you tell. It becomes a sort of comfort in a way, the bulk of him, the contact, until he grows tired of them both and leaves. He’s only the first man to disappoint her. She grows her first rose for him.

She wears red – crimson dress, shoes with killer heels and scarlet soles, nails glossy tomato and hair vivid titian. Her own mother wouldn’t recognize her.

The man has been selected for his ordinariness. He’s neither tall nor short, average looking, earns a median income in middle management for a mid-sized organization. He lives alone, that’s a given, doesn’t seem close to anyone, no friends to speak of, close family dead or emigrated. She has a knack for spotting them, swiping right when she finds them, confident they’ll swipe right too, most men over-estimate their own attractiveness.

She’s doing him a favor really.

Her teenage years are punctuated by promiscuity and violence. It seems there’s no depth Shania won’t mine to find the elixir of love. She’s Eve, falling, falling, falling, giving it all away, only to find it elusive once more as passion transforms to contempt to disgust and she’s cultivating bruises again; her body a hothouse - where spears of self-harm grow alongside burgundy blooms made by this punch or that slap. When she looks in the mirror she sees Mother staring right back – disappointment, despair, wasted and old, old before her time.

It takes an old friend to shift the tides.

One night she wakes and there’s someone in the room with her, she can hear fury, smell alcoholic waves of disgust, desire, dominance. She recognizes the heft of him, the shape of him, when he straddles her, his whispered threats, the thorns he bears pressing into her, skewering her.

The knife she has been using to contour pain onto her skin is close by. She reaches down, slices. It’s sharp, sharp as you like and his fear and pain sound like freedom. She slides from under him and bolts from the room, bolts from her mother, and her reputation, and this squalid, sordid life.

Kevin is her first in so many, many ways.

They meet in an anonymous bar in his anonymous town. He’s already waiting when she arrives, vermillion rose in his fist, bottle of burgundy breathing on the table. He catches his breath as she approaches. She sees the thought bubble rise - she’s breath-taking in the flesh. She thinks this might be easier than anticipated.

She’s a little disappointed; she likes some challenge, some difficulty.

Before long he’s slurring, eyes glazed, only a few drops needed.

As they leave, she is careful to look excited with his arm around her shoulder, she desires him, is reckless, she isn’t propping him up, carrying him out. She’s confident he’ll recall none of this in the morning, he’ll struggle to describe her, will be left with nothing but the regret of what she took from him, no longer a man but not anything else either. She’s sure he’ll learn from this, grow.

Before he wakes, she extinguishes the scarlet woman, disposes of the severed flesh, buy a ticket to the next anonymous town. Her last stop in this one is the tattooist, where she’ll add another red rose to the tally on her back, her garden of bloody valentines.

Maria A. Thomas

Maria Thomas is a middle-aged, apple-shaped mum of two. She has work in EllipsisZine, Funny Pearls, Levatio, Fiery Scribe Review, Paragraph Planet, VirtualZine, Free Flash Fiction, Punk Noir, Roi Faineant Press, Cape Magazine and (upcoming) Punk Monk. Maria won Retreat West’s April 2022 Micro competition. She can be found on Twitter as @AppleWriter.