You've Lost a Lot of Blood

by Eric LaRocca

Each precious thing I’ve ever shown him is a holy relic from the night we both perished—the night when I combed him from my hair and watered the moon with his blood.

I killed him because to let him live, to let him exist would have been an insult. It’s not that I didn’t love him. I certainly would never want you thinking that.

I didn’t kill him because I found his conversation trite or his knowledge of musical theatre to be abysmal at best.

Yes, he often referred to me as “precious,” as if I was marked “Fragile, handle with care.” You’d think a young man qualified for even the most menial office job would understand I was the furthest thing from a delicate heirloom—that I was a vile thing, obscene, and unspeakable.

I had thought of ending things for a while. I suppose we all do in some way even if we’re content, dangerously happy with the body we’re sleeping next to, with the body we use for sex, for companionship, for love. Little insects—barbed and dangerous with their glittering exoskeletons and their sharp pincers—circle inside my head and whisper indecencies to me. For once, I’d like to see myself outside of myself. If that even makes sense. I’d like to crawl outside of my head and look back at the horrible thing I’ve become, the soulless spirit residing inside my shell.

Being in love with him was very much like executing a game with a mechanical chess-playing machine, I imagine. I knew in my heart that I would always win, that I would never compromise, that I would never let him deep enough inside me to latch on and secure himself as if it were a new home.

I knew I never wanted to be his home. No matter how much he begged, no matter how much he pleaded—I’d sooner swallow wet concrete than let him call me his or dare to call him mine.

I killed him because if I didn’t, something might have tethered us together and that would have been a suffering far too unimaginable for me to even consider.

I simply say that because there are moments shared between two people when you realize you’re in the room with the wrong person, you’re sharing a toothbrush with the wrong mouth, you’re sharing a pair of loafers with the wrong feet. There was something distinctly peculiar about the two of us together and I had known it from the moment I had first met him, when he had begged for my attention at the small café where I ordered my coffee every morning.

MARTYR: What a stupid thing to say. It’s just an expression. For Christ’s sake, the things he says—the delight he finds in the absurd, the ironic—that’s not the reason why I’m going to kill him. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever really thought about the reason why I’ve so desperately wanted to hurt him, to watch him suffer. If our brains really are flypaper, then Ambrose would be the biggest horsefly you could imagine—buzzing through the corridors of my mind and building a small nest there.

AMBROSE: Why were you looking there? MARTYR: Because I like to think about things that upset me.

MARTYR: It isn’t my story. It’s some poor, pathetic woman on the internet. It belongs to her. AMBROSE: Stories don’t belong to people. MARTYR: If they’re published, they do. The certain arrangement of words written down—if I were to publish them, they’d belong to me. If anybody dared to take them from me, recycle them, and reuse them as their own, that’s plagiarism.

But I’d unsettle you even more if I chose not to share with you the disturbing story I know. Your mind would invent something even more grotesque, more upsetting than my words could ever conjure.

AMBROSE: But there’s something to be said about being far more afraid of what we don’t see. It’s the same reason some people don’t like to swim in the ocean. If we see something truly horrible, immediately we can assess it and recognize its flaws. But to be sidelined by something from beneath the water, to become prey to some ancient deity circling the black depths is something far more serious. Your mind can invent something truly horrible when the monster is kept out of sight. Think of the opening scene in Jaws.

MARTYR: I like to see the monster. I like to know exactly what I’m dealing with. There’s nothing unsettling about not seeing the creature. It’s annoying. Besides, most of the time it’s done because they can’t afford to show the monster.

Iris’ eyes narrow at Tamsen with intent. “You should be,” she says to her. “This is going to change your life.”

“Verisimilitude,” the boy says, as they filter inside the house. “The appearance of being true or real.”

On the screen, an electronic scan of a page filled with chicken-scratch notes stares back at her. The text: “Filled with the capriciousness of his preferred youthful prey, only unspoiled innocence can destroy Him.” Beside the text, a drawing of the same wire-veined winged statue guarding the attic door. A single word beneath the illustration—“Engineer.”

I think there’s a small, quiet part of you that enjoys the misery I carefully feed you each day— as if it were the very thing keeping you alive.

“It’s my turn.” “For what–?” “To leave you.” Tamsen crumples as if his words had pierced through her.

AMBROSE: Why does every scary story involve a basement? It’s insulting.

There’s a huge difference between something meant to disturb and unnerve as opposed to something that’s intended to scare you.

Something that’s scary is intended to cause fear, to frighten you. However, something that’s disturbing is intended to cause anxiety and be worrying.

AMBROSE: It’s a terrible story. There’s no point to it other than to disturb the listener. MARTYR: Sometimes that is the point.

MARTYR: I take from things all around me all the time. I take and I take and I take. I never seem to give. I’m just not that way. Ambrose is, however. He’s a giver. Always has been. Always will be.

I often think of the first creature to be given skin and what it must have felt like for them— to be covered, to be protected, to feel safe.

“You’ll find him,” the Sergeant says, her eyes narrowing at Tamsen and her voice hardening. “We’re stuck here until he sets us free.”

She shuts the door, disappearing, and doesn’t seem to notice the wire slithering beneath the skin of her brother’s shoulder.

“It’s going to start all over again,” a voice whispers to her. The line goes quiet. Tamsen holds the phone closer. A livid screech. Metal against metal. Tamsen jumps. She hangs up the phone.

“The program is locked so the user can only access the system once. But, theoretically, they could manipulate the code break and use it to play the game again. It would be like creating a new gaming account. A new version of themselves.”

“I—can read to you–? If you want.” “You don’t want to,” Presley says. Tamsen shrinks, hurt. He’s right. “I wouldn’t offer if I didn’t–” But she knows he’s not convinced. She watches him as he rolls over on his side, facing away from the light.

Tamsen shakes her head. “I don’t know. It’s like he’s—changing. Except he still hates me.”

“I blame him for what happened to our parents,” she says quietly. “I can’t look at him without being reminded of it. I thought of all the different ways I could leave him. Like he was a dog. Couple months ago. I took him to help me do some laundry. Gave him a dollar to go to the vending machine. And when he wasn’t looking—I got back in my car. Drove away.” She covers her mouth at the memory.

The best games are like viruses you can’t cure. They change us. Stay with us long after we’ve finished playing. You’ve Lost a Lot of Blood will be an experience like no other.”

Zimpago stirs in his seat, adjusting his ascot. “If we want virtual reality to be as life-like as possible, do we receive second chances in life? I appreciate the dedication of my fans. But this project was made so that my creation could touch as many people as possible. It’s my gift to the world.”

“Challis Family blame daughter’s unexpected death on violent video games.”

The article reads: “She wasn’t my daughter anymore,” Laura Challis, Dani’s mother, told sources. “The games had changed her.” Her daughter, an avid game enthusiast, had won an exclusive all-access pass to new gaming technology at Mr. Zimpago’s private estate the month prior to her death. Tamsen’s eyes widen further as she reads. Reaches for the mouse. Clicks “Print.”

I killed him because he shared with me something so abhorrent that my ear could scarcely credit his words.

I felt as if I had been polluted—as if my body no longer belonged to me, as if there were a giant black tapeworm coiling itself inside me and growing more and more every time I thought of him and his penchant for marking their poor, defenseless bodies with himself—the pleasure he took from wiping himself on their bald heads. So, I decided to kill him.

Am I no better than him? Does morality serve a purpose here, and if so, who comes out on top? Or are we both monsters that deserve no sympathy?

“We’re leaving,” Tamsen says, zipping his suitcase shut. “We can’t,” Presley says.

If she had stayed, she might have seen Presley twitch, a long thin shape stirring beneath his skin and coiling around his throat. She might have seen her brother wince in agony, metal spikes bursting across his face and braiding his head with thick cables of wires. Even worse, she might have seen him lift his head, revealing a sinewy vent of tissue fixed at the center of his throat. The flesh around the device—burned red as if cauterized. Instead, Tamsen sees none of that.

She doesn’t seem to notice the sweatshirt she’s left dangling in the bedroom closet.

She hears the chirp of metal dragging against metal. The sound—coming from upstairs. She recoils, paling.

She widens her blackened jaw, releasing a guttural growl from her wire-clogged throat. Charging at Tamsen, she grabs her by the throat and squeezes. Then, pins her against the wall as she squirms helplessly. “The game’s not finished,”

A giant centipede—an engine—slithers out from the drooling hole in the imposter’s head.

“Please. Don’t,” Nadia begs, squirming as her body dangles there. “I was only doing what I was told.”

“He was supposed to set us free. And you ruined it, cunt.”

Bodies are not made of honeycomb. They’re not made of wax. Ever since the invention of skin, the human body has been a vessel of mystery—a purposeless shadow of oneself, something to be revered for its complexity but also never understood. And perhaps that’s the point. Maybe we’re not supposed to understand our purpose here. But if that’s the case, what’s the point in carrying on like this? Carrying on like a puppet of some ancient deity with pubic hair as thick as fishermen’s ropes. There’s no point to any of this.

Humans and bugs aren’t as far removed as one might imagine. And maybe that’s intentional. Maybe they’re a way for us to see ourselves outside of ourselves—a way to understand our cruelty, our sadistic behavior, our manipulation.