Chapter 2: The Blood Initiation
The cardboard flap in his hands felt suddenly weightless. Niels stared at the second blue sweater, the tissue paper whispering as it settled. A duplicate. A backup. He was still wearing the first one, its wool a familiar scratch against his skin, a thin membrane between him and the sterile air of the empty room.
The laugh was still catching in his throat when the sound came.
Not a knock. An impact.
The door shuddered in its frame, once, twice, and then burst open with a crack of protesting hinges. It slammed against the wall, the cheap plywood bouncing back.
A girl stood in the doorway, silhouetted by the relentless fluorescent glare of the hall. She was all sharp angles and dark clothing, one hand clutched to her chest, the other dangling at her side, holding the neck of a shattered vodka bottle. The liquid had glugged out, leaving the bottom third jagged and wet. The smell hit him first—sharp alcohol, coppery and thick beneath it.
Her eyes, wide and a startling, pale grey, scanned the room, the boxes, him. They fixed on the sweater.
“Oh, good,” she said, her voice a flat, dry scrape. “We’ve got a nostalgic one.”
Niels couldn’t move. His brain stuttered, trying to process the violation of the open door, the stranger, the weapon in her hand. She took a wobbling step forward, her combat boot scraping on the laminate. She looked at her own clenched hand, then at his chest, as if solving a simple equation.
Before he could speak, she moved. She crossed the three steps between them, closed the gap of his new, empty life. She didn’t ask. She simply raised her injured hand—a deep, ugly gash across the palm, welling blood that dripped onto the floor—and pressed it firmly, deliberately, against the center of the blue wool.
The pressure was warm. Startlingly so. He felt the wet heat seep through the knit, a blooming sensation against his sternum.
She held it there for a three-count, her eyes locked on his, her expression unreadable. Then she pulled away, leaving him anchored to the spot.
On the sweater, just over his heart, was a perfect, crimson handprint. The fingers splayed, the lines of her palm etched in vivid detail. It looked like a cave painting. A claim.
“There,” she said, nodding once. “Now it’s got a story. Better than whatever sentimental bullshit it came with.”
She dropped the broken bottle neck into his open cardboard box. It landed with a thud on the photo of Boomer. She turned and walked back to the doorway, leaning heavily against the jamb, leaving a smudge of blood on the white paint. She fished in the pocket of her ripped jeans with her good hand and pulled out a crumpled packet of cigarettes and a lighter.
“You’re Niels,” she stated, not looking at him as she struggled to get a cigarette to her lips with trembling, blood-slick fingers. “I’m Daria. Your contiguous human experience for the year. Sorry about the door. The lock’s shit. Should have knocked, but…” She gestured vaguely with the cigarette, a drop of blood flying off her fingertip. “Hand was full.”
Niels finally looked down at the ruin of his sweater. His mother’s sweater. The warm thing. The red was soaking in, darkening the blue to a terrible purple. He touched the edge of the print. It was still warm.
“You’re bleeding,” he said. His own voice sounded faint, far away.
“Astute.” She got the cigarette lit, sucked in a deep drag, and exhaled a cloud of smoke into the room. It mixed with the smells of blood and vodka. “Tried to open a window. It was painted shut. Used the bottle. Bottle lost.”
“That’s… not a window-opening tool.”
“It is now.” She glanced at her palm, wiggled her fingers. A fresh trickle ran down her wrist. “Might need a stitch. Or duct tape. Philosophically, they’re the same thing.”
Niels’s body unlocked. The initial shock receded, replaced by a pragmatic buzz that felt eerily like his mother’s voice in his head. Antiseptic. Plasters. The kit was in the car. But the car was four floors down, and this girl was dripping on his floor.
He stepped over to the box she’d contaminated, moving slowly as if she were a wild animal. He rooted past the broken glass and pulled out the thick wool socks. He tossed them to her. “Wrap it. For pressure.”
She caught them against her stomach with her injured hand, leaving a new red mark on the grey cotton. She stared at them, then at him, one eyebrow arched. “You travel with emergency socks?”
“My mom packed them.” He was already moving to the kitchenette, yanking open drawers. Empty. He turned on the tap. A shuddering groan, then a spurt of brownish water that cleared to a weak stream. He grabbed the only clean thing he could see—the hem of his own t-shirt, under the sweater. He tore a strip off, dampened it under the cold water.
“Come here.”
Daria didn’t move. She watched him, smoking, her face pale. “You’re not a medic.”
“No. I’m the guy whose sweater you just defaced. Come here.”
Something in his tone—a fracture of the earlier shell-shock—got through. She pushed off the doorframe, walked over, and held out her hand without a word. The cut was deep, pulsing. A shard of glass glinted near the heel of her palm.
“Don’t be a hero,” she muttered as he took her wrist. Her skin was cold. “Just wrap it. I’ll deal with the rest.”
He used the wet cloth to wipe away the worst of the blood, careful around the glass. She didn’t flinch. Her cigarette burned forgotten between the fingers of her other hand. Up close, she was older than he’d thought, maybe twenty-two. A small silver ring pierced her eyebrow. Her nail polish was chipped black.
“The glass needs to come out,” he said.
“So take it out.”
“I’m not—”
“It’s a piece of glass, Niels. Not a landmine. Pull it.”
His fingers trembled. He thought of the first-aid kit in the trunk, so meticulously packed, so useless. He took a breath, pinched the edge of the shard between his thumb and forefinger, and pulled. It slid out with a sick, wet sound. A fresh bead of blood welled up instantly.
Daria let out a slow sigh. “See? Crisis managed.”
He wrapped the strip of t-shirt around her palm as tightly as he dared, tying it off. It was a clumsy, ugly job. The blood seeped through almost immediately, blooming like a rose through the cheap white cotton.
She examined his work, flexing her fingers. “Functional. Thanks.” She finally seemed to take in the room, the open boxes, the single, pathetic suitcase. “You just got here.”
“Yes.”
“And I ruined your homecoming.”
“You… added to it.”
A ghost of a smile touched her lips. She stubbed the cigarette out on the sole of her boot and flicked the butt into the sink. “I live next door. 429. The universe, in its infinite wisdom, decided we should share a bathroom. A vent, actually. I can probably hear you breathing if I try hard enough.” She looked at the blood on the floor, at the mark on his sweater. “I’ll get you some hydrogen peroxide. For the wool. It’s a protein-based fiber. Cold water and peroxide. Don’t use hot, or you’ll set the stain.”
She turned to leave, then paused, looking at the torn, bloodied socks on the floor. “Tell your mom she has good taste in emergency footwear.”
Then she was gone, pulling the broken door shut behind her. It didn’t catch, swinging open a few inches, leaving a view of the empty, bright hallway.
The silence rushed back in, but it was different now. It was charged. It smelled of smoke and iron. Niels looked down. The handprint on his chest was a dark, damp weight. He touched it again. It felt like a brand.
He walked to the doorway and looked out. Across the hall, a door with a fresh piece of tape over the old nameplate read ‘Daria’ in slanted, black marker. Below it, someone had scratched a tiny, intricate question mark into the paint.
He retreated, closing his door as best he could. The latch didn’t engage. He’d need to fix that. Later.
His eyes fell on the box. On the broken glass lying atop his childhood dog’s smiling face. He picked out the shard carefully, placed it on the counter. He took off the ruined sweater, holding it up in the artificial light. The handprint was stark, a brutal contrast to the careful, even rows of his mother’s knitting.
He didn’t feel like unpacking anymore. He felt like sitting on the floor and not moving for a year.
A faint, rhythmic thumping started through the wall. Music, maybe. Or a headboard. He couldn’t tell.
He balled the sweater up, cold and damp, and shoved it into the empty kitchen bin. Then he stopped, fished it back out. He spread it on the counter, the handprint facing up.
Now it’s got a story.
From the hallway, he heard a door open, footsteps, then the clatter of the vending machine. He stood in the middle of his new life, marked and uncertain, listening to the hum of the machine and the distant, rising sound of the city through the still-painted-shut window.