Chapter 9: Blood Memory
The silence after the phone call with her mother stretched, thick and heavy. Alex stood by the window, her forehead resting against the cool glass. The warrior princess comics. She could see them now, in her mind’s eye—detailed panels of a woman with a lightning sword, drawn in blue ballpoint on the backs of recycled printer paper. The memory had the texture of truth: the ache in her wrist from drawing for hours, the pride of showing a finished page to her dad.
It was a lie. A beautiful, detailed lie.
“My thumbs never healed from a hammer,” she said, her breath fogging the glass. “They’re calloused from holding a pencil.”
Julen was clearing the coffee table, stacking the yearbook on top of the photo album like he was containing evidence. “We need to eat something. We’re thinking in circles.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You will be. I’m making pasta.” It wasn’t an offer. It was a directive, a piece of normalcy to be assembled step by step. He moved into the kitchenette, the sounds of a pot filling, a cabinet closing, a familiar ritual.
Alex pushed away from the window. A deep, dull ache had begun to settle in her lower back an hour ago, and now it was tightening, a band of low-grade pain. She’d chalked it up to stress. Now, a sharper, clenching sensation bloomed deep in her abdomen, making her suck in a quick breath. It felt like a muscle cramp, but deeper, internal. Unfamiliar.
She ignored it, joining Julen in the kitchen, leaning against the counter. “What’s step two, really? We can’t exactly Google ‘reality rewriting itself around specific person.’”
“We start with what we know,” Julen said, concentrating on chopping an onion. “It’s focused on you. It changes physical records and human memory. It’s… iterative. It didn’t just happen once. The photos, the yearbook, your mom—that was the first wave, establishing the past. The text from Elena…” He glanced at her. “That feels active. Like it’s building out the present.”
Another cramp, sharper this time. Alex’s hand flew to her stomach, pressing hard. A cold sweat prickled on her temples.
“You okay?” Julen asked, pausing.
“Yeah. Just… weird cramp.”
He looked at her for a long moment, his eyes narrowing slightly, then went back to the onion. “Okay. So, we have an active phenomenon. We need to observe its mechanisms. We don’t reply to Elena, but we monitor. We look for other… inconsistencies.”
The pain subsided to a throbbing ache. Alex felt a strange, heavy sensation, a bloated pressure. She shifted her weight, uncomfortable. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“You noticed the edit. You remember me as… before. Are you immune? Or are you just lagging?”
He didn’t answer immediately, the knife hitting the cutting board in a steady rhythm. “I don’t know. But I woke up this morning and…” He set the knife down, flexing his right hand. “My shirt sleeves were tight. On my arms. I thought I’d just slept on them weird, but…”
He pulled at the sleeve of his worn gray tee. The fabric strained over his bicep. It wasn’t dramatic, but it was new. The lean, lanky frame she was used to seemed denser, more defined. He’d been wearing loose jeans all day, standing somewhat awkwardly.
“It’s not just me,” Alex said, the realization a new kind of chill. “It’s affecting you too.”
“Seems like it,” he muttered, a hint of frustration in his voice. He turned to the stove, lighting the gas under the pot. “But differently. It’s not rewriting my history. It’s just… changing my body. Making me…” He trailed off, but the unspoken words hung there. Bigger. More muscular. More like someone you’d be attracted to.
Alex looked away, the thought a messy knot in her already tangled mind. The next cramp hit like a sucker punch, stealing her breath. She gasped, doubling over, her elbows hitting the countertop.
“Alex!”
“It’s… really bad,” she managed through gritted teeth. The pain was a deep, visceral grinding, a fist twisting her insides. It crested, held for a terrifying five seconds, then ebbed, leaving her shaky and nauseated.
Julen was beside her, his hand on her back. “Where does it hurt?”
“My lower stomach. My back. It’s like… internal tearing.” As she spoke, she felt a sudden, alarming wetness between her legs. A warmth. A sense of release.
She knew. The knowledge clicked into place, not from experience, but from a thousand absorbed cultural clues, from the phantom memories of a girlhood that now included health class talks. The cramps. The bloating. The fatigue from the last few days she’d ignored.
“Oh, no,” she whispered, straightening up slowly. “No, no, no.”
“What?” Julen’s face was pale with concern.
“I think… I need to check something.” She walked stiffly to the bathroom, every step a cautious experiment. She closed the door, locked it, and leaned against it, her heart hammering. With trembling hands, she pushed down her sweatpants and underwear.
The fabric was stained. A smudge of bright, rust-red blood.
A wave of dizziness hit her, part shock, part sheer biological reality. This wasn’t an abstract change in a photo album. This was her body, announcing a function she had never possessed, a cycle she had never endured. It was visceral proof that the rewrite was total, cellular, operational.
She cleaned up as best she could, her mind racing. She had nothing in the apartment for this. Why would she? A hysterical laugh bubbled in her throat. Of all the things to be unprepared for.
She opened the bathroom door. Julen was right outside, his expression tense. “Well?”
“I got my period,” she said flatly. The words sounded alien in her mouth.
His eyes widened. “Oh. Shit. Okay. Uh… do we have… stuff?”
“No, Julen. We don’t have ‘stuff.’ I didn’t exactly stock up for the reality-bending menstrual debut.”
“Right. Okay. I’ll go. The corner store.” He was already grabbing his wallet and keys, moving with a frantic purpose. “What kind? Tampons? Pads? What… what size?”
“I don’t know!” she snapped, the fear curdling into anger. “How the hell would I know? Just… get a box of pads. The regular ones. And ibuprofen. A lot of ibuprofen.”
He nodded, a soldier with a mission, and was out the door.
Alone, the pain returned, a deep, relentless ache. She stumbled to the couch and curled onto her side, knees to her chest. The physical misery was a strange anchor. It was happening now. It was undeniable. She pressed her hand hard against the pain, as if she could push it back inside.
Her phone, still on the coffee table, buzzed. Elena again.
You’re being quiet. Everything okay?
Followed by another photo. This one was of the two of them at a fairground, Alex’s hair whipping in the wind, cotton candy in hand, Elena’s arm around her waist. Alex could taste the spun sugar, feel the gust of wind, the solid grip of the girl’s hand on her hip. The memory was a full-sensory assault, sweet and vivid and entirely not hers.
She moaned, but this time it wasn’t just from the cramp. It was from the pleasure-pain of the memory, the warmth of that past affection juxtaposed with the cold horror of its theft. The phantom feel of Elena’s hand on her body somehow, perversely, mingled with the cramping in her belly, creating a confusing feedback loop of sensation.
The key turned in the lock. Julen burst back in, holding a plastic bag. He looked flushed, bigger somehow in the dim lamp light, his shoulders straining the seams of his shirt. He’d grown just during the fifteen-minute errand.
“Got it,” he said, kneeling by the couch. He pulled out the pads, the ibuprofen, and, she saw with a weak surge of gratitude, a cheap heating pad you plugged in.
“You’re a genius,” she whispered.
“Reddit threads,” he said, managing a small smile. He plugged in the heating pad and handed her the pills and a glass of water from the kitchen. “Where… uh, where do you want this?” He held the pad awkwardly.
“Just… here.” She gestured to her lower abdomen.
He placed it gently over her sweatshirt, the warmth an immediate, blessed relief. His hand lingered for a second, the heat of his palm seeping through the fabric alongside the electric warmth. His touch was careful, grounding.
Another cramp seized her, harder than before. She cried out, arching into the pain, and instinctively grabbed his wrist where his hand still rested on her stomach. Her fingers tightened, her nails digging into his skin. The pain was a white-hot wire, pulling taut.
And then, as the cramp peaked, something shifted. The intense, sharp agony melted, transformed. The deep internal pressure didn’t vanish, but it changed character, spreading through her lower body as a wave of startling, unexpected heat. A flush of pleasure, direct and physical, radiating from the epicenter of the pain.
She gasped, her eyes flying open. Julen was staring, frozen, his own breath caught. He felt it too—the change in her muscles, the way her grip on his wrist went from desperate to something else.
“Alex?” His voice was rough.
“It… changed,” she panted, her face flushed. “The pain. It’s not… it’s not just pain.”
She could see the conflict in his eyes—concern, confusion, a dawning, unwanted understanding. His body was changing, too, responding to hers on a level deeper than thought. The evidence was pressed against the denim of his jeans, more pronounced now, undeniable.
He didn’t pull his hand away. The warmth from the pad, from his hand, from her own transformed sensation, created a pool of intimacy in the dark, cluttered room. The chaos of rewritten history, the ghost of Elena, the terror of the unknown—it all receded for a single, breathless moment, replaced by the raw, immediate truth of their altered bodies speaking to each other.
The cramp-turned-pleasure ebbed, leaving her shaky and profoundly confused. She released his wrist. There were faint red crescents where her nails had been.
“Sorry,” she murmured.
“Don’t be.” He sat back on his heels, running a hand through his hair. He looked down at himself, then back at her, a wry, helpless expression on his face. “This is so fucked up.”
“Yeah.” She adjusted the heating pad, the mundane action a attempt to reclaim sanity. “You’re getting bigger.”
“I know.” He said it quietly, almost to himself. He flexed his arm again, watching the muscle shift. There was no fear in his look now, just a kind of stunned acceptance. “I don’t feel different. But I look… I look like I’ve been working out for a year. I like it.” He met her eyes, admitting it. “It feels strong. It feels good.”
Alex understood. Her body, even in its new, painful function, felt alive in a way her old one never had. It was terrifying, but it wasn’t all bad. That was the most confusing part.
She took a deep breath, the scent of the abandoned pasta water filling the air. “We can’t just hide in here.”
“We have to answer Elena,” Julen said, his tone shifting to practical. “Not replying is a data point, but engaging is a bigger one. We need to see how the phenomenon reacts.”
“What do I say?”
“The truth. A version of it. You’re sick. You’re overwhelmed. See how she responds. See if the ‘Elena’ in this reality has expectations that match the memories it’s giving you.”
Alex reached for her phone, the screen glowing with the fairground photo. The girl’s smile was bright, inviting. A lie she could almost feel.
Her thumbs hovered over the keyboard. The cramps were a dull background throb, a reminder of the new rules of her existence. Julen waited, a solid, changed presence beside her, his new strength a silent promise in the lamplight.
She typed, the words feeling like a probe into the heart of the madness.
Hey. Yeah, sorry. Just dealing with some stuff. A lot of pain today, actually. Feeling really off.
She hit send. The message delivered instantly. Three dots appeared. Elena was typing.
The response came back fast.
Oh, babe. Is it that time? I remember yours were always brutal. Do you want me to come over? I could bring you that tea you like and rub your back.
Alex read the message aloud, her voice hollow. Julen’s face tightened.
“It knows,” he said. “The phenomenon. It’s not just building a past. It’s anticipating the present. It’s giving her memories of your cycle, of how to care for you.”
The intimacy of it was chilling. Elena knew about her pain before Alex did.
Another message popped up.
Or we could just stay in bed like we used to. You always said that was the best cure.
Attached was one more photo. A selfie, clearly in a past version of this very apartment. Alex, looking younger, was asleep on a pillow, her face peaceful. Elena was next to her, cheek pressed to Alex’s hair, smiling at the camera. The photo was titled in the chat: The best medicine.
Alex dropped the phone. It clattered on the coffee table next to the heating pad and the unopened box of pads.
“It’s not just building a history,” she said, the full horror dawning. “It’s building a relationship. It’s trying to resume one.” She looked at Julen, her eyes wide in the dim light. “What happens when she shows up at the door?”
Julen stared at the phone, then at his own hands, now broader, stronger. He slowly clenched them into fists.
“Then we find out,” he said, his voice low, “if the changes it’s given me are just for show.”