It started out as a warm summer night. My friend and I walked down to the store last night, the only place you could really go in our community out in the woods. I had worn a pair of shoes that day that I had never worn before, a pair that I bought at Goodwill... I learned why they had been donated that night, after they started to cut into the backs of my ankles hard enough to almost make me bleed only halfway through our long walk. I opted, instead of letting my shoes keep sawing away at my achilles tendon, to take them off and go barefoot instead. I shined my weak keychain light at the ground to make sure I didn't step on any sticks or glass, and as we walked, my friend and I chatted about whatever crossed our minds... I kept getting distracted and stopping to grind my feet on the asphalt, however.
"What are you doing," he asked.
I looked at the road as I replied: "There's sticky stuff all over the ground." I stopped and lifted up my foot, picking a few pods from the trees above off my sole. It looked like I was bleeding where I had stepped on the pods, and I had to rub my road-worn feet on the pavement to make sure I hadn't cut myself. We continued, up the road for a good ten minutes. I stopped caring about the sap stuck to my feet. I had stepped on all kinds of things out here; slugs, those helicopter seeds from maples – which, by the way, have fine hairs on them that stick into you like dozens of splinters when they're fresh and green – and even things like nettles and thistles.
As long as it wasn't hurting my feet, I honestly didn't care.
We made it down to the trail that led through the woods from the road above to my street down the hill. We had to walk slowly, as the gravel actually did hurt my feet, and I kept my mediocre flashlight lit to watch for the banana slugs that often crossed this trail at night. We saw no slugs at all on the short walk down, which I thought was kind of odd... I was used to having to avoid at least five or six of the big, finger-sized ones. It took maybe a minute and a half to get down to my street, and by that time, I had scrubbed most of the seed pods and small rocks off my feet in the grass by the trailside. My friend and I walked up the steep walkway, giving me more surface to try and clean my still incredibly sticky soles. My friend took off his shoes and left them on the walkway as we approached the porch.
When we made it to my door and entered my house, my parents were sitting on the couch. My mother held a paper towel soaked in red, and my father held my struggling cat. The cat looked frustrated and annoyed, but not distressed, and I asked what had happened... "Shadow got in a fight or something." My mother dipped the paper towel in a glass of water and finished rubbing the blood out of his black fur. She ran her fingers through his coat, brushing aside his fur, looking for a wound... "I can't find where he got hurt, though..." She suddenly stopped rubbing my exasperated pet when my dad asked me: "What the hell happened to your feet?"
I looked down. My eyes widened and my friend stepped back in shock when we saw the red, sticky footprints leading from the door to where I stood. My feet were smeared in rusty, greyish, crusty red... something. It couldn't have been blood, but it definitely looked like it, like I had perhaps cut myself on something after all and just not felt it. My friend had not left any tracks like I did, as he had left his shoes outside, but we seemed to notice something else at the exact same time. He, having darker skin than me, looked relatively clean. I, however, with the skin of a girl who never leaves her house during the day, was visibly covered in the tiny spray of red that looked like I had chickenpox or had been standing too close to a point-blank shooting. My friend grabbed paper towels from the kitchen to my left and set them down so I could step onto them. Using this barrier to minimize the mess I was making, I walked to the kitchen and hopped up on the counter, sitting with my feet in the sink and dish soap to my left. I started scrubbing away at my feet, slowly removing the thick red gunk, and eventually I exposed the soft, unstained and completely undamaged pale skin underneath. I had not a single scratch on my feet. It wasn't my blood. As I finished with my feet, my friend and I wiped down our bodies, successfully removing the substance that had somehow settled on our skin. My hair was kind of a mess as well, but through some combing of my wet fingers, I got most of the sticky out.
Out of curiosity, I sniffed the paper towel caked with the substance. "It smells like blood," I said. "But it can't be. I don't have any cuts on my feet." My dad released Shadow, who jumped out of his lap and proceeded to start licking himself immediately upon settling down on the other side of the room.
"Well, he's not hurt either..." my dad began.
I added, "The ground was really sticky and covered in little pods from the trees on the walk home. He probably just got some of the weird, gross blood-sap on him while he was outside, it's all over the place."
My family and I just shrugged it off. When my friend walked home and I went to bed, I figured it was just some odd bloom from the trees similar to when they start shedding clouds of pollen from their little cones at the slightest inkling of a touch.
I got a text from my friend this morning. "look outside" was what he sent me. I unearthed myself from my fluffy covers, still feeling slightly sticky from the night before, and I looked out the window...
It dripped from the trees. It ran down the bark. It made the roof of the house across the creek almost shine red. Little grayish-amber sprays had dried on my window, stuck to my screen, and I went to the sliding glass door from my bedroom to the back porch only to find that the entire porch was completely covered. It looked like someone had pierced a vein in the high throat of every towering cedar tree that surrounded my house, like they had gushed a mixture of sap and blood from their tops that sloppily covered every branch and that sap dripped down their sagging, heavy fronds like blood running down the fingers of someone stumbling to find help before they exsanguinate. Even smaller trees, from the younger pines and maples to the bonsai in the backyard seemed to be bleeding. I would have been disgusted if it weren't so surreal.
The part that made me especially concerned, though, was the dusting of tiny white chunks. It wasn't as noticeable on the ground, but on my porch, I could see them clearly. I opened my door, dipped my finger in the sticky, translucent film and pulled out a few of the white chips. I examined them, trying to figure out what they were...
I had seen them before. In fact, there was a small spot on my dresser that had a dust pile of them. The pile sat under the flaking, dusty deer skull I had left out in the sun too long after I bleached it.
They were tiny chunks of bone.
Apparently, security is warning people to stay off the roads. They sent out an email this morning to everyone in the little housing community I live in, telling us to stay indoors and avoid driving, as the roads are in poor condition. I haven't bothered checking the news in town yet, but a few of my friends are saying they don't see anything out of the ordinary... I don't know if the buses are going to be running today, so I have no choice but to sit here, indoors, in my room and enjoy the comforts the internet has to offer. It's supposed to rain tomorrow. so hopefully that will wash away whatever the hell is covering us all. I hope it does, because while I know it can't be blood, it really does smell like it. It's so strong I can taste the metal in my mouth, no matter how much incense or essential oil I burn to mask it. The cats refuse to go outside. I can see candles burning in my neighbors' houses, probably for the same reason as my incense sticks.
I don't think I've ever wanted rain so badly.