by Belicia Rhea
(1000 words)
The first time Ariana came to school with a nosebleed, I dug in my backpack for a tissue and offered it to her, trying to be nice. She didn’t take it, just wiped her hand at the running smears of red along her Cupid’s bow. Blood got all over her waist-length braid draping her shoulder like a scarf.
“Ariana, sweetheart, I think you need to see the nurse,” Ms. Chavez said and placed a nurse’s pass halfway over both of our desks. She wanted me to escort Ariana.
“Are you okay?” I asked Ariana as we walked, but Ariana just licked at the blood, now coating her tongue and teeth, then she started to laugh, and mopped up the rest with her braid, the bloody hair a massacre from shoulder to hip. I wondered if she could be a vampire, or something else horrible I’d read about in books.
When we got to the nurse’s office, the nurse shrugged. She said nasal membranes don’t like dry air and it was nothing to worry about.
The whole next week at school, Ariana had nosebleeds. Her nose was chapped, the skin around her nostrils cracking. She hid the bleeds from everyone but me, and whenever Ms. Chavez walked by our desks, Ariana stuck her bloody nose in a textbook, then turned to smile at me, blood dripping onto the pages.
“Want to sit with me at lunch?” she asked, a pool of red collecting on the bottom of page 23. It was strange, but in that moment, I thought maybe she could be my friend. I’d never really had a friend before.
In the cafeteria, I waited for Ariana. She said she had to go to the bathroom, but the bell was about to ring, so I went looking for her. I knocked on the bathroom door.
“Ariana? Are you okay?”
Her normally soft voice turned into a low, gravelly laugh, her footsteps a slow trudge. She took forever to unlock the door.
There was a long silence before she finally emerged from the dark.
“Look what she did!” Ariana held up her wrist, raw with a fresh bite wound. The skin was broken, rivulets of blood leaking from puncture holes. The teeth marks looked small, human.
“Who?” I asked, worried.
Ariana took my hand, spun me, and faced me to the mirror.
“Mary.” She pointed at our reflection.
She started repeating something, but I was getting dizzy, and Ariana’s face looked distorted, her glasses disappeared into sunken eyes as another face took over, and that’s when I saw the girl in the mirror bring her rotting fingers to my forearm. She smiled, teeth yellow, coppery breath emanating from her mouth. I felt Ariana pull my wrist up, and those yellow teeth sunk into my flesh. I screamed in pain as my knees buckled and everything went black.
I woke up in the nurse’s office beside Ariana holding an ice pack to her head. The same wound as Ariana’s adorned my forearm. The nurse had a lot of questions, told us we didn’t have to be scared of a bully.
I didn’t know how to tell her that I thought Ariana did this to me, that she was doing it to herself. That something was wrong with her.
After that, I tried to avoid Ariana. But everywhere I went, she followed. Her long braid slapped against my desk each morning like the crash landing of a seesaw. She tormented me. She found me again at recess and whispered in my ear.
“At lunch, we have to see Mary. She says if we don’t, she’ll kill us.”
“Ariana, leave me alone. I don’t want to play with you anymore!” My throat tightened. I thought I might cry.
Her eyes flashed with anger. Ariana gripped my arm, pulled me to her.
“We will go to the mirror. We will see Mary.” That gravelly voice returned.
I knew I should have gotten a teacher. Told someone. I just didn’t think anyone would believe me.
Somehow, I found myself in front of the bathroom mirror again, shoulder to shoulder with Ariana. I didn’t remember walking in with her, turning off the light, or locking the door. But we must have done those things, because there we were in the dark. She was taller than me, and much bigger, though we were the same age. She frightened me, the way older kids did.
Ariana chanted at the obscure shapes of our reflections.
“Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary!”
My ears felt muffled, like my head went underwater. Then I heard a buzz, an almost whimpering, a shriek, cracking glass. Mary’s necrotic hands reached from the mirror and tried to grab me by the neck. Panicking, I shoved back with all my strength, then Ariana’s head hit the edge of the sink so hard her teeth chipped against the porcelain. I ran out of the bathroom and left her there, with Mary.
Ariana didn’t come to school the next day, and following Ariana’s attack, we had a special assembly about bullying. No one knew who the bully was. The principal spent weeks interviewing everyone, even teachers were being monitored. Students eyed each other suspiciously, but I was the only one who knew. Well, besides Ariana. And Mary.
After a while, we figured Ariana wouldn’t return. A new girl came to sit at Ariana’s desk. During our morning practice drills, new girl turned to me, handed me a tissue, and whispered, “Your nose is bleeding.”
I started giggling. I didn’t know what was so funny. I smeared the blood with my hand. “Hey, do you want to be friends?” I asked her.
She inched back in her chair, tried to turn away. I couldn’t force her to be my friend, but I knew someone who could. I propped open my textbook, put my compact mirror inside. When new girl caught my eye in the mirror, I started whispering… “Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary…”
END
Belicia Rhea was born under a waning crescent moon in the Sonoran Desert. You can find her at beliciarhea.com and read more of her work published in Nightmare Magazine, Bending Genres, and Miracle Monocle, among other places.