Three of Blades

Avery outperforms me at just about everything we do, but it’s most apparent when we paint rocks. Her pudgy hands manage to grip a paintbrush with far more grace than my petite fingers as she details swirly clouds on her whimsical depiction of a sky. My rock bears a haphazard blend of tangerine and magenta, which wouldn’t be my first picks as far as colors go, but Avery hates warm tones, and the color options from my paint kit are rather modest. I let her have all the blue she wants and opt not to tell her it’s my favorite.

“Y’know, my brother told me some rocks have magic crystals in them. You just have to cut them open,” Avery whispers so her mother won’t hear from her office next to the playroom.

“Since when do you listen to what your brother says?” I scoff, fixed on salvaging the mess of fleshy hues on my rock.

“Well,” Avery starts, placing her creation onto the carpet between our paint-speckled, criss-crossed legs. “Might as well see if he’s right.”

Avery stretches her stout form as she strains to retrieve the red scissors from the desk above us. She aligns the tips of the blades with the embellished pebble and confidently raises the scissors as high as her arm can extend, using the other hand to hold the rock steady.

“Hey, are you sure you should—” I begin, far too late. In one fearless maneuver, Avery misses the stone and inflicts a clean slice from one edge of her palm to the other.

The substance that expels from the wound is so jarringly violet it makes me question if all the blood I’ve seen before this moment has been somehow artificial. Avery doesn’t scream or cry; she merely ogles the droplet that has leaked from her gash as it guides the rapidly lengthening trail behind it.

Once the blackberry stream nears her elbow, Avery breaks from her hypnosis. Acting fast, she brazenly runs her tongue up the length of her forearm, leaving nothing but a long, rusty smudge in its place.

Following the lick, Avery’s eyelids flutter, then fall shut. She lets out a gentle moan and the reddened corners of her mouth melt into a grin. With the reopening of her eyes, Avery’s bliss dissipates, having finally acknowledged my mortified reaction.

“Please,” she whispers in a hoarse tone I don’t quite recognize. “Don’t tell.”

“Rock, paper, scissors, shoot!” Avery and I chant in harmony, her fist flattening to an outstretched hand while mine remains balled up.

She blankets my fist with the warmth of her palm, smacking it proudly.

“Ha! Paper beats rock, once again. You’ll catch on eventually,” Avery asserts.

I roll my eyes, fighting to tame the growing sprout of a smirk that was planted the moment her hand touched mine.

I never mind when Avery wins. Typically, it means she’ll bounce up and down and clap her hands together, her pretty bracelets jingling a sweet melody as she celebrates. Avery swears against wearing the same jewelry two days in a row, but her one perpetual accessory is the bracelet I crafted for her, reading “U R MY ROCK” in periwinkle letter beads.

I gifted the bracelet to her last year for her 14th birthday, idealistically hoping she’d get the message and acknowledge the gory anomaly from our last time painting rocks. It has been painfully unspoken since it occurred, not to mention, dismaying enough to become a recurring therapy topic.

“Got any papers?” I ask from the edge of her twin size bed, already grinding the weed I was obligated to withdraw from my personal supply after losing Rock Paper Scissors.

“Yup,” Avery says, smacking her glossed lips together. I imagine they’re sticky, then I force myself to not imagine them at all.

Avery rummages through her unkempt bedside drawer until she eventually comes across a pack of rolling papers, which she promptly offers to me. She then proceeds to pick up a nail file and buff her gnawed stubs that don chipped polish.

A year into the habit of smoking weed, my fingers have mastered the art of sprinkling pale green powder onto a delicate strip of paper and wrapping it to compacted perfection. It smells crisp and earthy, like the overgrown grass of the soccer field at recess where Avery and I used to pluck weeds and construct bouquets until our fingers were stained brown.

I bring the nearly completed joint to my mouth until I can just about taste it, sliding my tongue along the slick edge of the paper to activate its adhesive. Before I can seal it, there is a sudden sting in my lip that seems to develop its own heartbeat. The pulsing turns to numbness as I taste something similar to metal.

Then it starts to get warmer. Smoother. Like sucking buttercream off an iron spoon. I notice that the fine edge of the rolling paper is now lined with a thin stroke of crimson.

“Shit,” I groan as the blood trickles down my chin. I raise my hand to cup my jaw.

Avery looks – or rather, gawks – at me, and I notice her chest rise and fall quicker than it had before. Her gaze is focused a bit below my eyes, and I feel an awful sense of dread that hasn’t choked me like this in years.

“Ave...” I start, apprehensive that she may be too far gone to recognize her own name.

Then, she touches me. It’s a simple swipe of her velvety thumb across my throbbing upper lip, and it’s a tremble that begins at my mouth and ends between my legs. She proceeds to do exactly what I expected, what I both feared and in some sick way lusted for. Avery’s thumb, dripping with the rawest part of me, slips between her own gleaming lips and subsequently emerges clean.

It isn’t like that time with the rocks. Avery doesn’t look at me with worry about what I could be thinking, but instead with enlarged pupils and a boldly primal demeanor.

“It’s like honey,” she barely chokes out. “Can I have more?”

The heat spreading itself through my body replies for my brain, which is currently out of commission.

“Yes, please,” I moan.

It took years of checking out every book on vampires that the university’s library had to offer for me to eventually understand that Avery is far from supernatural. She doesn’t have pale skin, she checks her very existent reflection frequently when reapplying makeup, and summer is her favorite season, so avoiding sunlight is an obvious bust. Yes, she loves the taste of blood, but that doesn’t mean she frolics around sucking it out of strangers— she has me for that.

I swing the door to her dorm room open, accompanied by the usual thud of the knob hitting the drywall.

“Hey babe. Got the latest sample,” I announce in a sing-song voice, tossing a small vial of burgundy liquid onto her twin-size bed. I sloppily remove my shoes, promptly making myself at home.

Avery stands by the window, arms crossed, with her back facing me. This greatly contrasts her typical greeting, which would consist of jumping, squealing, kissing, and – naturally – some biting. Before I get the chance to ask what is wrong, the question is answered for me.

“I’m full,” Avery mumbles.

Something’s off. She’s never full.

“Are you sure?” I ask. “I promise it’s still warm, I only drew it this morning.”

I stretch out my left arm and pull up my sweater’s sleeve to expose a plethora of bruises in varying stages of the healing process. I point to the bandage concealing the freshest injection site. When Avery finally turns to confront me, I note the redness of her nose and slight puffiness beneath her eyes. I am able to put the pieces together just as the wretched words leave her mouth.

“It’s someone else.”

I desperately dodge her eyes. It’s impossible to be resentful when they gloss over and plead for mercy.

“Who?”

“You know Jake from my painting class?”

I nod.

Avery gulps hard and continues, “We were staying after class and he accidentally cut himself on the paper slicer. I tried so hard to control it, baby, but I just–”

“God,” I interrupt. “He’s in you now.”

As the nausea creeps in, I cave and take a look at her. As I suspected, her lip is forcibly quivering and a single tear falls down her cheek, practically staged on cue. For the first time ever, I think she looks pathetic.

Swallowing the burning vomit that is attempting to climb its way up my throat, I ask, “Did you still want that haircut, or what?”

The clipping of shears reverberating through Avery’s dorm bathroom reminds me of the first time we did this. We had decided to play hairdresser at her old house, where chunks of dirty-blonde hair scattered across a floor that was so cold, she would insist on intertwining her frigid feet with mine as I trimmed and sculpted. There was a particular method to shaping her bangs just right, and that was a challenge I adored taking on, for it gave me an excuse to study her face at a closer distance than what was socially acceptable. With each calculated snip, I would eye the journeys her tufts of blonde would take as they drifted slowly like snowflakes and melted on her sun-kissed cheeks.

It’s different now. Her hair is chemically processed to a shade of murky coffee left out to rot for weeks. I hack at her bangs, earnestly hoping they will wind up asymmetrical. Her eyes are all goopy and her lip is still quivering and it’s the farthest thing from endearing. With one brash chop near her jawline, there is a piercing yelp.

“Agh! What the fuck, man?!” Avery screeches, immediately grasping at her left ear. When she checks her palm, it is defiled with a cardinal smear.

She stares at me with eyebrows deeply furrowed, asking something with her silence that words could not emulate. Rather than responding, I silently inch closer, combing her disheveled locks back to reveal the injured ear. The nick is small and located right between her lobe and helix. The stark red fluid oozes out like molasses, and something unknown controls my next move.

“I just want to try something,” I breathe into her ear, bringing about a visible shiver.

I engulf the wound in my mouth, and immediately, I taste the same strange tinniness; it starts at the tip of my tongue and expands outward, growing hot and tart as I start to perceive every complex flavor it has to offer.

Then I feel Avery everywhere. Her lifeline is stuck to the roof of my mouth and it fills my molars like candy. While I do savor the small taste of her sweetness, I can’t deny that I want more.

Before logic can advise me against it, my teeth are perforating her neck, and any noises that may be coming from her are diluted through the ringing in my ears. The reasoning behind my decision is blurred, and I can’t get myself to come up for air long enough to figure it out.

I’m not sure how long I kept drinking, but I do know that when I stopped, Avery didn’t move– no matter how hard I shook her. Her complexion had lightened drastically, and her eyes were somewhere far-off and unattainable. She was perfectly still, settled in my arms with no option of escape, and to me, nothing could be more romantic.