Free The Book of Apex: Volume 1 of Apex Magazine by Jason Sizemore

Isabella into the kitchen.
The stench of the laboratory was beginning to make my head spin. I heard
Isabella returning the chair to its rightful position by the door. I felt like
I couldn’t breathe, like I needed to get some air. I couldn’t understand what
she’d done.
    It was only then, as I stood in
the kitchen rubbing my face in my hands, that I realized I’d brought the sachet
of blood along with me. It felt cold and damp against the warmth of my palm,
the plasma inside it sloshing around like putrefying jelly. My stomach heaved.
My mind went blank. Isabella was calling my name from the doorway. Something
inside me snapped.
    I reached out for one of the
kitchen knives from the block upon the windowsill and pressed its serrated edge
against the bag of blood in my fist. At first the plastic gave a little under
the pressure, but then it burst with an expressive pop and showered the worktop
with little red droplets, a patter of crimson rain. The smell of iron replaced
the odor of bleach, and I almost retched as I drained the fluid away down the
kitchen sink, watched it swirl and gurgle as it was swallowed by the hungry maw
of the drain. Isabella stood expressionless throughout.
    Now, when I look back on those
moments with the clarity of hindsight, I can’t help thinking that a small part
of me was also washed away down that hole in the sink, that this one simple act
has come to define me, to set out who I am. It is as if, by committing this
transgression, this spurious rejection of my own bodily fluid, I displayed my
frailties to the world and embarked on a course from which there would be no
return, stumbling down one route without properly considering another.
    I had turned to Isabella,
angry, emotional and unsure of myself, the hairs on the back of my arms matted
with speckles of my own blood. I didn’t know what to say, or how to give voice
to my feelings of violation. I didn’t know how to tell her I still loved her,
still wanted and needed her, still clamored to hold her and tell her everything
was going to be okay. I simply stared at her, my hands covered in blood.
    She hung her head, refusing to
look up, as if she couldn’t bear to meet my eyes. As if she were judging me,
like I’d let her down in some way. As if everything was my fault, that I’d
failed some obscure test she’d prepared for me. As if something had broken
between us that could never be repaired.
    She uttered only one further
word, which seemed to stick in her throat as she spoke it: “Go.”
    It was terrifyingly firm and
hollow.
    I could do or say nothing more.
I left.
     
    It took me a further two days
to pick up the telephone.
    “Hi. Isabella? It’s me.” I
offered hesitantly to the receiver. I could hear her breathing softly in the
background and thought of her as she had been when we had lain together in bed,
listening quietly to the cars rolling by in the street below.
    “Isabella? Hello?”
    I was met with only the
bubbling sound of static as she returned her handset to the cradle.
    A week later, as I lay half
asleep on the sofa, a bottle of cheap Italian wine drained and empty by my
feet, I thought I heard the sound of someone rapping on my door. I hesitated,
and by the time I made my way along the hall and pulled drunkenly at the latch,
they had gone. A gust of frigid air swirled in and hit me like a wall; I felt
dizzy and inebriated and returned myself to my makeshift bed.
     
    The next morning I convinced
myself it had been her. I resolved to lay my hands on the Fiesta and drive
round that afternoon, to apologize for my reaction and explain that I had
misunderstood her intentions; that I had failed to appreciate the implied
intimacy and trust in her gesture. I still felt uncomfortable, violated, even,
but felt also that I’d come to an understanding
of Isabella and her emotional needs. Blood was her liv elihood, her life .
By rejecting her gift of blood I was, in essence, rejecting her ,
rejecting everything she stood for.