Anything For You
By Allyson Gomez-Martin
“Tell me how it all happened, please?”
“Of course. You know I’d do anything for you. There was this girl in the village. She was the daughter of the baker. She was the most beautiful person that had ever walked the earth. She had fair skin, beautiful chestnut hair, and most beautiful and innocent looking brown eyes. It’s as if they were two marbles crafted with extreme precision. She wore a simple white dress, but somehow she looked like a bride, my bride.
“Each day she would walk through town and buy a single apple from my cart. She would hold ten shillings in one hand, and a hand mirror in the other. It was a beautifully crafted mirror. It was made of pure silver engraved with flora and foliage with a cross in the center. Her hand grasped the handle so delicately that it looked like it could fall out of her hand if a slight breeze came through. Her hands were so dainty and perfect, all I wanted was to interlace my fingers with hers, caressing the back of her hand with my thumb. It sent a shiver through my spine whenever our hands touched when exchanging shillings for an apple.
“These used to be mostly silent transactions until one day she struck up a conversation. My heart was a flutter and I tried to talk as nonchalantly as I could, containing my excitement so as to not scare her off. I can’t quite remember what the conversation was about because I was so lost in her magnificent eyes, but she was upset and sneezing quite profusely. Those sneezes were the cutest noises I had ever heard. And the way her nose scrunched up right before made my insides seemingly melt. I do remember what the last thing she said to me was.
“‘I’ve been out too long; my father will get worried; I should be off. Oh! I haven’t even told you my name, have I? After all the time I’ve been buying apples from your stall – how very rude of me. My name’s Maryam, but you could call me Mary if you’d like. Thank you so much for the apple, have a nice day!’ she said as she smiled and waved while turning back around to head on her way. I replied, ‘Anything for you.’
“Everyday she came by and she told me how her day was going. Getting to hear her sweet voice was the highlight of my day. Each encounter would end with a thank you from her, and me saying, ‘Anything for you.’ But one day she stopped coming.
“An illness had spread around the town, and although I had been fortunate enough to be virtually immune, Maryam wasn’t as lucky. I debated with myself, and decided to start bringing her apples, free of charge. The town was small, so it wasn’t hard to find where she lived. I met her parents who seemed like lovely people, and invited me in to see Maryam each day. They were charmed that a ‘strapping young man’ such as myself would bother to bring their daughter an apple. ‘Anything for her,’ I would reply.
“She was bedridden. Each day I would come by, and her condition only got worse. Her parents tried different kinds of medicines from the local clinic, but none substantially improved her health. Then one day a crazed man came through the town. He looked a mess and had dark reddish-brown stains on his shirt and blood-shot eyes. He had been travelling to different towns and claimed to have cured people. The girl’s parents turned to him because of their desperation. He tried different remedies, and they had cured the girl some, but she was still too sickly to leave the house. He then suggested one last cure.
“‘I have one more thing to try,’ he said to Maryam’s parents. I had overheard him in the living area while tending to Maryam. ‘I could go through the process of blood-letting. I’ll drain the blood from your daughter's wrists to remove the illness from her body. I will collect it in iron buckets, then drink the blood to rid her of any contact with the illness again. I know it sounds strange, but it has worked many a time,’ he explained in a tone that struck me as odd.
“I bid the girl adieu, letting her rest for her treatment the next day. I wished her good luck, and gathered the courage to kiss her hand. My heart felt it was about to burst out of my chest, but she pulled away, worrying that she may be infectious. She was so kind-hearted, I wished to stay by her side for all of eternity. If only.
“I went the next day, although I didn’t expect to see her. I figured she would be sleeping, too tired and needing to recover. I went to the front door as I always did and knocked. When the girl’s parents answered, they were in tears. I stared at them for a moment, then a fear shot through my body. I pushed past them and ran to the open door of Maryam’s bedroom and halted. My eyes widened and started flowing like a waterfall. I started screaming, ‘No, no, no!’ What I saw before me was the lifeless, mangled body of the girl. She was even paler than before, her skin as white as paper, with a distressed look on her face. She was half hanging out of her bed, her hands next to a tipped over iron bucket. On her wrists were slashes where the blood flowed out of her, but around it was a pinkish mark, as if someone had sucked out all her blood. And leading away from the bed where the corpse lay was a trail of blood droplets heading toward the now open window. The white curtains were fluttering from the draft coming in. On the windowsill and curtains I could see the bloody handprints of the crazed man. I looked back to the girl and rushed over. I grabbed her small hands with my own and felt a shiver through my body. However, this wasn’t from excitement, but from the realization that she was ice-cold. She was really gone. Her sweet voice and smiling face were gone.
“I glanced around the room. I saw her white dress folded on her night stand, and on top of it her hand mirror. They were the last remnants of her, so I reached for the precious items. The smell of her dress smelled just like her. The sweet floral scent that drifted from it made it seem like she was still here with me, like we were back at my stall selling her an apple. I realized I couldn’t let these go, I had to have them with me. I hid them behind my back and slipped out, tears still spilling out of my eyes.
“I ventured back to my house then quickly to the small abandoned shed out back. I carefully placed the items on the floor and then ran back to my house for some candles, matches, and a broom. I headed back to the shed and swept around before I set up the shrine. I placed each candle strategically around the dress and the mirror, then lit the match to light each candle as the sun went down. It illuminated an eerie, yet warm glow. The brilliant light off the match seemed so dim on the candle wicks in the small shed.
“I was still sobbing through all of this, although it was a dry sob. I was breathing her name under my breath: ‘Mary… Mary… Mary…’ And all of a sudden a bone-chilling wind came through and extinguished all the candles in a fluid motion, smoke filling the room. A familiar voice then filled the void of silence, the voice of an angel. ‘Yes?’ the voice said, emanating from the small mirror. I grabbed it with little haste, fearing that she may be a figment of my imagination and vanish. But as I looked into the mirror, there she was. The beautiful chestnut hair, and the mystifying eyes staring back at mine. She was so miraculous, even with her snow white skin still remaining.
“She uttered some words with her voice as sweet as honey, ‘Please, do me a favor. I feel weak, all my blood has been drained from me, I need more to run through my veins. Get me some, please?’ I replied as I always did, ‘Anything for you.’
“I set out in a hurry to find an animal to slaughter for blood. There was a sheep nearby, so I found a pointed stick and dealt a fatal blow to the head, just the way my father had showed me when he was around. I hauled the sheep on my shoulders and brought it back to the shed quickly. I stabbed it a couple of times in the torso and blood came spewing out. The girl then said, ‘No, that will never do. The blood of a sheep cannot run through the veins of a girl. I need human blood.’ As I gazed into her glorious black eyes I realized how foolish I was. The blood of a wild animal flowing through her wouldn’t do her justice. I reexamined the situation and thought of the perfect solution, and with that I grabbed my stick and was off. ‘Anything for you.’
“I rushed to my house and crept into the room of my sleeping mother, who still only took up half the bed, even though there isn’t anyone to fill up the rest of it. She looked so peaceful in her nightgown. What an amazing woman she was. I raised my stick and did just as I did to the sheep. I dragged her body out back to the shed and gouged at it for the blood to start flowing. The girl reached through the mirror and her hands seemingly soaked up the blood, until my mother looked just as Maryam had earlier this morning. Some color came back to Mary’s face, but she still seemed unsatisfied. She longed for more blood, and so I followed her commands. Anything for her.
“I repeated the process countless times, sneaking into each house in the village and slaughtering the family it held inside. The smell of blood protruded and the glisten of it in the moonlight seemed almost magical. I went through every person in the village until there was no one but myself and my beloved Maryam in the mirror, but she still craved more blood.
“‘There is no one else but us my darling, I have no more blood to give,’ I told her, only for her to reply, ‘You still have blood in you, do you not?’ It was an idea I hadn’t fathomed. ‘Why yes, there is. I’ll happily give it to you if it shall please you.’ She responded, ‘Yes, that would make me quite happy.’ ‘Anything for you.’
“And so I started doing to myself as I did to my victims. I stabbed my torso and let the blood drain out of me. However I did not strike myself in the head. That’s when you asked me to tell you the story again with my dying breaths. I don’t regret anything. Like I always say, I’ll do anything for you, Maryam…”
“Maryam… that’s such an outdated name. She’s gone. I’m now drenched in blood and revenge. I still do like Mary though, but that isn’t enough; too simple. Ahh, I think I’ll be known as Bloody Mary from now on.”
It’s said that Bloody Mary still haunts the mirror realm to this day. And if you enter a dark room with a mirror and a candle and recite her name three times, she will bewitch you with her beauty and make you perform inconceivable actions.
Winner of the Highpoint Scary Short Story Contest, Halloween 2021!
The Intruder
By Nella Hakobyan
It was a completely normal Saturday night. I was home alone and offered for my friend Elise to come over. She had been distant lately, so this was supposed to help break the ice between us. She’d been out with her new friends, forgetting about me, her one and only true friend. I decided to ignore that for her.
We were finally getting along like the old times, laying on my carpet that blossomed with an innocent shade of white. The wool stitched into it felt exactly like a sheep’s before it was shaved mercilessly by its owners. A vase sat next to the carpet on my desk, a shade with such a bright red I couldn’t bear to look at it for longer than a minute. It sat so close to my pure, white, carpet of safety. It threatened me with its glare every day. It was almost as if the vase inched closer and closer to the edge of my desk. I told myself that I wouldn’t let this vase threaten me and my wonderful Elise. I looked over at her.
The sound of her laughter echoing through my ears brought me a sense of relief. I stared at the perfection laid upon me. Even if I watched her almost every day, it felt like I saw her for the first time. Her silky, smooth, red hair smelled of fresh daisies. A candle couldn’t even make up for her natural scent, which is why I keep a few strands for myself. Her eyes resembled a moonlit sea with a hint of green sprinkled here and there. They glistened excitedly every time she spoke. Her fair skin was like a painting, the brush organizing her freckles with a few flicks of brown paint. To avoid suspicion, I closed off my thoughts of admiration and decided to lean against the wall next to Elise, laying my head on her shoulder. Since I hadn’t slept the previous night when looking through our texts, I must’ve dozed off for an hour or so.
My eyes blinked open wearily as I looked over to Elise. She hadn’t noticed me waking up and rather brought her attention to the texts displayed on her phone. She had been texting her “friends” of course, and I squinted my eyes to interpret the conversation.
Maya: “You’re seriously at her house? Even after the things she’s done?”
Elise: “I feel bad for her. We used to be close friends before it got weird.”
Maya: “Wasn’t she literally stalking you? That’s a crime, you know? You better get out before she steals another lock of hair when you aren’t watching”
Elise: “Maya, stop overreacting, I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
Maya: “You won’t be saying that once I find a flyer of you that says ‘MISSING.’”
Elise: “Whatever, I’ll talk to you later.”
I couldn’t believe what I had just read. My head jerked up from Elise’s shoulder, and I backed away from her. After all I’ve done… this is the treatment I get? I wasn’t stalking her, I was only protecting her from disgusting people like the friends she’s made. I only helped her; how could she not realize that? How dare she spread such far-fetched lies about me? I was the only friend she had, I helped her at her lowest and supported her at her highest. The immediate rage I felt was interrupted by the sound of a vase shattering and a thump.
Without hesitation, my mind jumped to the number one priority I had: protect Elise. I could put everything behind us, but I couldn’t lose her. I grabbed hold of her wrist and dragged her downstairs without looking back. I sprinted to the kitchen in hopes of finding a weapon to defend ourselves with. Rewarded, a kitchen knife laid in the open. I felt it call out to me. Letting go of Elise’s hand, I reached for the handle and placed a firm grip. Soon after, I turned back, already losing sight of Elise. I quickly reached into my pocket for my phone while I still had the chance and dialed 911.
Suddenly, my vision caught the sight of small, subtle, drops of blood on the ground leading back up into my room. Terrified, I inched towards the flight of stairs. Each step generated another horrifying image of what could’ve happened to Elise. The guilt of my anger lingered with me as I dreadfully creaked open the beige door. I trembled at the sight of that color. It flowed so deep into my carpet that I couldn’t even imagine that it used to be white. The source of this color, this red pure hatred, was drained from the lifeless body that I once knew, but now could hardly recognize. I kneeled in front of it, my knee scraping against the broken shards from the vase. I remembered the red vase that sat on my desk. A moment later, police sirens crowded my wave of thoughts.
And I dropped the bloody knife onto the ground.
Runner-up in the Highpoint Scary Short Story Contest, Halloween 2021!