Ruby Red Psychosis

***Please note that our March picture prompt will post on Thursday, March 6th instead of the first of the month. So stay tuned!***

I turn off my car and absentmindedly rub the keys between my fingers. I don’t need to drive anymore. It’s about to happen. Too bad I have no earthly idea where I am. The snow is coming down pretty heavily now, and I figure I better let my therapist know that I won’t be making it to our session today. I am about to change, after all. My cell phone is dead though, so I'd pulled over at the first phone booth I saw. They’re few and far between these days, but this particular one is painted red, as if to shout to passersby, “I WORK! USE ME! I’m much safer than talking on your cell phone while you drive!”

            I climb out of the car, shivering a little as I jog towards the phone booth.  It’s too damn cold for anyone to be out here today, including me. A gust of icy wind slithers into my jacket, slipping up the holes around my wrists, down the opening around my neck, through the slits in the fabric that hug my buttons. I shove my hands into my pockets, even though they don’t really offer much warmth. I should have brought some gloves, but I don’t think I even own any. Guys like me don’t need gloves, because guys like me usually stay inside when it’s ten degrees outside.

 My coat flutters around my hips as the wind sneaks through the crack in the door, blowing small flurries of the falling snow into the booth with me, dusting my shoes like powdered sugar. As I grab the phone, someone bangs on the door. It’s a pretty girl with curly brown hair and a smile that matches the color of the phone booth. Her cherry red lips look like something I’d like to taste, but I don’t have time for that right now. I’ve got to get somewhere safe before I change.

Her eyes, which are the color of a dull nickel, slowly rise to meet mine.

“Where the hell did you come from?” I ask.

As I wait for her reply, I blow into my hands and rub them together, hoping that will warm them up a little. She frowns. Without a word, she reaches out and takes both of my hands between her own.

“Why don’t you have on gloves?” she asks me as she slowly starts to massage some warmth into my fingers.

It takes me a second to be able to force my mind to produce words. Her hands feel like the scalding heat of a flame on my near-frozen skin. My muscles are starting to twitch and clench under my skin, and it throws off my concentration. I need to get out of here.

“I… um… I just needed to make a quick call,” I finally manage to choke out. I slowly pull my hands away from hers and shove them back into my jacket pockets. “Didn’t think I’d need them for such a short time.”

“You live around here?” she asks.

I shake my head. “I have no idea where I am, actually. I just started driving, and this is where I ended up.”

She smiles and takes a deep breath. “This is probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, but you look like you could use a hot meal and a nap. I actually followed you here because I saw how you’d been weaving all over the road. I think… I think I can help you.”

Her voice trickles to a whisper and her gaze falls to my chest. She looks… hungry, or something.

“But I don’t even know you,” I say with a smirk. “What if you’re a rapist or a murderer?”

She raises an eyebrow, and looks me up and down. My 6’3 frame next her small one is almost laughable. “Yeah. Like that’s even possible.”

“Ok, ok. How do you know I’M not a rapist or murderer?”

Her red lips curl into a grin. “I can see the best and worst and people. And like I said, I think I can help you.”

There’s something about her—something that’s drawing me to her, something I can’t put my finger on. I figure it can’t hurt to have a pretty girl make me some soup and crash on her couch for the night, so I follow her out into the snow. Everything else can wait.

***

A cloud of dust flies up from the floorboards, as she drops her purse onto the floor of her tiny, old cabin, but the girl walks right through it. It blankets her silhouette like a choking hand, but she doesn’t seem to notice, or care. The cabin is unbearably hot, like the way her hands felt when they melted into my skin earlier. It isn’t pleasant at all. It’s like an electric shock to my system after being in the intense cold outside. The musty smell of the old cabin turns my stomach.

I really shouldn’t have let her bring me here. I’m about to change. I thought I could fight it for another day, but I don’t think I can. I don’t want to hurt her, or anyone for that matter. But the itching inside my bones is starting to get worse

            “Um…miss?” I say.

She snaps a glance over her shoulder. “It’s Jana.”

“Right. Jana. I think you should leave for a little while. I can’t… I can’t be… around people right now.”

I can barely finish the last sentence because my teeth are starting to shift and dance inside my gums, and the pain of my body contracting like a dying spider tears me from the inside out.

“Really…” I try to force the words through my lips. “You need to go. Now.”

The change of cold to hot so quickly has been my undoing. It has never affected me so quickly before. I close my eyes and fall to my knees as agony shoots through every cell in my body.           

Hands—hands as hot as fire—grab my cheeks, and pull me back to my feet.

“Man up, dude. I’m here to help you,” she says, her voice dark and low like it was sipped from a cup of fine espresso and spewed through her lips. How does she know what I am?

“Nobody can help me… This… curse… is permanent. I don’t want to hurt you, just go, ok?”

Her fingernails dig into my cheeks and pop into my skin like needles. I can vaguely feel a warm stream of blood run down my face. That doesn’t help with my problem. It just makes every hair on my body stand on edge. A shudder rips through me and I can’t stop shaking. It’s about to happen, I can feel it bubbling in my veins. This is always the worst part.

            Oh so I’ve always thought.

            Her hand explodes through my chest and wraps tightly around my heart. I fall to the ground again, and this time she lets me. She falls with me, landing on top of my torso as she squeezes her damn furnace fingers around my heart. I can’t even make a sound, a scream, a whine, anything, because her other hand is gripping my mouth like it’s been welded there.

            Fire rips through every pore, every vein, every breath, and I wish I would just die already. It’s not fair that I have to feel this pain.

And then she’s gone. I take a gasping, gulping breath and pull my hand to my chest, which is slick with my blood. But there is no hole, no wound at all. I press my back into the cold hardwood floor, and imagine my skin taking on the shape of the grain, my spine speckled and dotted with knots where limbs used to grow.

One of the boards has a sharp, unsanded corner, and every time I take a breath, it picks at the skin in the curve of my lower back. The slight irritation is the only thing keeping me awake at this point. I want to pass out, but I know I don’t really deserve that peace. I let my hand slide off of my stomach and onto the floor. I don’t even flinch when the blood on it spatters little droplets onto my side.

It suddenly starts to itch inside my heart like it used to inside my bones right before I would change. I lose myself in a coughing fit, and I’m afraid that this will make me explode into million pieces.

I squeeze my eyes shut, and when I open them again, I’m standing in a red phone booth. My coat flutters around my hips as the wind sneaks through the crack in the door, blowing small flurries of the falling snow into the booth with me, dusting my shoes like powdered sugar. As I grab the phone to call a cab since I have no idea how I got here, someone bangs on the door. It’s a pretty girl with curly brown hair and a smile that matches the color of the phone booth. Her cherry red lips look like something I’d like to taste, but I don’t have time for that right now. I’ve got to get somewhere safe before I change.

Photo By: wintersixfour

Story By: Stefanie Marks