That mistake’s name was Mark.
Mark was a pretty cool guy. I went on a few dates with him, hung out at a few parties. He and I drunkenly made out once or twice. We had this unbelievable chemistry between us and I found myself feeling things for him that I’d never felt before.
So, when he invited me over to his dorm to spend the night watching movies and “hanging out,” I knew what he was hoping would happen. I wanted it, too. I was ready, I was prepared.
If nobody’s ever told you and you haven’t experienced it yet, let me just say that your first time having sex isn’t a super magical experience. There was some awkwardness and, fuck, there was pain. It wasn’t too much, but it was bad enough to cause just a little bleeding onto his sheets, which made me feel terribly embarrassed. He didn’t mind, though, and the more we… uh, practiced?…that night, the better it got. Overall, it was the best experience losing my virginity that I could have expected, all things considered.
I’d left early that morning, around five a.m. because I had class at eight and needed to shower and get ready. He had the day off and passed out in his bed as I was getting dressed and heading out the door. I remember now casting a smile back at him and thinking about how happy I was to have experienced this with him.
That was the last time I saw Mark alive.
I saw the ambulances outside his dorm as I walked back from class that afternoon. Word traveled quickly on campus, and Mark’s name was embedded in the gossip. Quite a few students in the dorm had seen the damage to his person as they waited for the cops, so everyone on campus knew what had happened.
Well… no, that’s not quite right. Actually, NOBODY knew what happened. They just knew what the results were.
Mark’s body had been flayed open, the skin on his torso ripped to shreds to expose his chest cavity. I heard from one person that his eyes were still open, his mouth frozen in a mask of horror. I heard from another person that his hands were dug into his own chest, as though trying to hold the little shreds of skin together.
But the strangest thing about all this was the blood… namely that there was none.
Other than the little spot of blood I’d left on the sheets, there was no blood left at the scene or on his body. Or inside it.
As you can imagine, I was called in for questioning after my DNA-soaked bloodstain was discovered, but it became apparent very quickly that I hadn’t done it – couldn’t have done it, in fact. Nobody knew how he had been murdered, how he’d been mauled without shedding any blood, or where the blood had gone in the first place. There was simply no evidence of a violent crime – other than the body, of course.
But I knew. Somehow, deep in the pit of my gut, I knew there was a creature out there who could kill and maim and would greedily drink down all traces of blood.
That weekend, I drove home to see my mother. I’d barged in the front door and to the living room where she was watching some crummy soap opera. She knew when she saw my face that something had happened. In fact, she had to know what it was that was troubling me, but she played coy.
I collapsed at her feet in tears, sobbing out what had happened to Mark. My boyfriend, I’d said – which was kind of maybe true.
She went rigid at that.
“You had sex with him.”
It wasn’t a question; it was a statement.
I looked up at her. Her eyes were grim and dark, bleak in a way that I’d never seen. I nodded and she sighed.
“Alyssa… you must understand. You HAVE to. This is the way of our family. The way it has always been, the way it always will be.”
I shook my head slowly. “I… I don’t understand.”
My mother stood up abruptly and walked to her room. I trailed behind her as she pulled open her nightstand and took out a letter. It was addressed to me.
“Your grandmother can explain it better than I can. She left this note for you. I hope you’ll understand.”
My mother left the room as I stared down at the crumpled envelope, turning a bit yellow with age.
I tore it open, my fingers angry and trembling.
I pulled out the letter.
And I read.
Alyssa,
Your mother requested that I write this letter for you. I agreed because there’s no way she’ll be able to explain things to you. With the way she is… this is the best path.
I’m sure you’re wondering why we’ve never told you before. Why it had to be this way. I do not know much, but I will tell you everything that I have been told.
Many, many years ago, your great great great grandmother made a terrible decision. She was a barren woman, and wanted nothing more than her own child. She prayed to God for a baby. When He did not answer, she prayed to the Devil. And the Devil delivered her a promise – she would bear a child. What she could not have known was that we would be plagued by a curse – a monster – for the rest of her bloodline.
This monster thrives on purity, on its loss. The blood you spill once a month – it is a sign that you are a woman, no longer an innocent child. It craves the blood the way we crave air, life. The white sheets, the stale and lifeless bloodstains – these things hold it at bay, for reasons that I cannot understand.
The only way to quell the curse is to give your purity to another. To destroy your own innocence. To give your body to somebody else. Once done, the monster will take that man or that woman who has stolen the purity it craves. It drinks them down like it drinks corruption. If it cannot be the corruption of your body, it will feast on it.
Oh, Alyssa – we COULDN’T tell you. To tell you would have been a worse burden than to let you live without this dreadful knowledge until the time was right. If you had remained virginal, chaste forever… it would have come for you. You had a great great aunt who made this mistake – who learned of the curse and chose to bear it on her own. She suffered a terrible, awful death at the hands of the beast that stalks us. Do you see?
Now that you have given your purity to another, you are free – the beast need never bother you again. But now you must know – the only children you will ever birth will be girls. And they, too, will fall prey to the same monster that has craved you.
Whatever you choose to do, whatever you tell them, remember – your choices have consequences. Choose wisely, or see their destruction first-hand.
Grandma Little
I am an adult, now. I have a husband of my own, but we have no children. He doesn’t want them, and I don’t, either. I will not bring a child into the world only to put her through what I suffered.
It took me so long to forgive my mother, to forgive my grandmother. If only they’d told me, Mark wouldn’t have died. All these years later, I still believe his death is my fault. It is forever on my hands and on my mind. I would have chosen my own death over his – my first love.
But, of course, that’s why they didn’t tell me. And I find now that I can forgive that – their love for me that let them choose death for someone else.
I’ve wanted to forget this hell, I really have – the curse on my family, and what it might mean. To me, it has already passed. I may still live with its pain, but the creature can never haunt me again, or so I thought.
Until now.
Because this morning, I learned something truly terrible.
Despite the condoms, despite the birth control, despite how minutely careful my husband and I have been…
I’m pregnant.
And I’ve got this awful, terrible feeling that it’s a girl. 