Blood, Sweat, and Tears

I recently created this story for my creative writing lcass. Thee assignment was to create a story with a moral. I hope you enjoy.

Blood, sweat, and tears

By Dustin Anderson

                Debra looked at herself in the mirror as the cases from her long day swam through her thoughts. She had pulled another 15 hours work day, and didn’t think her brain could take anymore. Working as a state appointed attorney was supposed to be some sort of patriotic duty, but now it just seemed like she was going to become a martyr for the people she was defending. Martyrdom actually might be the only way that she could win a case for some of the people, since none of them are getting her full, undivided attention. Out of her fifteen hour day she was handed 17 cases to work, she touched base with all of the potential clients, and asked for a plea deal for all but three of them. These three seemed, to her, to be the least guilty. Out of those three, two of them were trial by jury and had a substantial amount of evidence brought against them at the last minute. She fought the evidence as not being registered before the trial, but it won’t make the jury forget about what they saw. She now had to go through the process of getting the case thrown out. The last one was just a kid who was hauled in for being an accomplice to a robbery. She actually got the kid off due to a lack of evidence but it still didn’t stop her from thinking of all the people who had to do some jail time, just because she didn’t have time to fight their cases.

                She stared at the water in her sink as it swirled down the drain, lost in her thoughts and regret, until she suddenly saw something red go down the drain with the water. She blinked and looked harder at the sink for a couple of minutes, but didn’t see anything. She must have imagined it, this lack of sleep was probably getting to her. She looked back up at the mirror and saw her bloodshot eyes staring back at her. These eyes were so easily tricked after a long day in the court room. As she was gauging her eyes she saw a red drop fly down into the sink, through the mirror. She looked at the sink again as she saw the running water wash it away. She looked up and saw a dark red puddle formed on the roof of her tiny bathroom. The puddle was small and only formed above the sink, it looked like blood. She slammed her back against the wall, scared of the recent discovery. The drip was slow, menacingly slow, as it seeped through the popcorn ceiling, trickled to the middle of the puddle, and the drop finally grew large enough for gravity to take hold and bring it down to the sink. She sat on the floor of her bathroom for some time, watching the slow drip continue, as her mind raced for a conclusion to its origin. Too scared to actually look into it, and too tired to think about it anymore she left it. She said to herself, “It’s probably an animal or something, I’ll call someone to look at it while I’m at work tomorrow.” She walked to her bed from the joined bathroom and fell like a brick from a high rise onto the soft mattress. It didn’t take her long to pass out, even though she was still rattled from the blood in her ceiling, her need to sleep was greater than her fear.

                She feel unconscious and dreamed of court cases. The people who she had represented, the people who she had failed to defend properly, flooded her mind. She was caught in a dark room with nothing but their faces to keep her company. The faces surrounded her and eventually rose above her. The faces looked down on her in judgement and began to cry. The tear drops fell on her, all around her, they soaked her from head to toe. She began to cry in the dream as she looked at her tear soaked body. In a flash those tears turned to blood, and she woke up in a start. Her face was buried in a pillow and looked at her clock. Two hours had passed since she fell asleep, she buried her head in her pillow to try and scream out her frustration from being woken up by a stupid dream, but was startled by something dropping on her head. She felt through her frizzy, auburn hair to find a wet spot. She looked at her hand to see blood covering it. She recoiled from the sight, and stood up out of her bed. She wasn’t bleeding, there was no pain to speak of, there was just a dark, red spot on her head.  As she looked at the blood on her hand she saw a drop of blood hit the spot where her head was. She looked up to find another pool of blood on her ceiling. She stepped back and began to grow curious. She went back to the spot from before. There was still a puddle of blood dripping into her sink. She began to get scared when all of a sudden she felt her phone vibrate. The sudden vibration caused her to jump against the wall, but she soon steeled herself and looked at her phone. A text message from an unknown source. She looked at the message. It told her to “look in the roof.” Another text followed it “Push the ceiling tile up and look in your roof.” Nervously she adhered to the demands of this stranger. She didn’t know why she did what it told her to. Maybe it was out of fear of some sort of repercussion. Maybe it was out of curiosity. She didn’t know but she did it anyways, in spite of herself.

                She stood on a small stool and looked in the roof. It was too dark for her to see anything but she smelled something that almost made her fall off the stool. Instead of falling she got off the stool and threw-up in her sink. She then gathered herself again, turned the light on from her cell phone, and went back into the roof. Her head poked up and she pointed the light from her phone in the direction of the blood puddle. She found a dead animal, the initial shock was lessened as her imagination built it up to be much worse. She recognized the animal somewhat, it wasn’t a rat, it almost looked like a ferret or a  weasel. She was very confused until the light from her phone caused something on the dead animal to shine. Her curiosity got the better of her again as she reached for the shiny object. She pulled it off the rodent and saw that it was a necklace with a cross pendant. She felt her phone vibrate again and this time the sudden shock did cause her to fall from the stool. She fell hard on to her back side, but the pain wasn’t enough to make her forget about the message alert she just received. She looked at it and it said “go to the other spot.” This time she gained the confidence to respond.

“No” she sent it and waited for a few minutes with no response.

“I refuse.” Another couple of minutes with no response.

“I’m calling the police.” She went to the dialing potion of her phone and suddenly got a vibration.

She read the response and turned white, “you’ll be dead before you can finish dialing.”

She looked around in a panic and yelled “show yourself!” she felt a vibration in response “go to the second spot. NOW!”

She quickly ran to her bed, which now had a puddle of blood covering the sheets, she threw the ceiling tile back and shined her phone light towards the puddle in the ceiling to find another dead weasel. The weasel had a picture attached to it, which she tore off in a rush. It was a picture of two young Hispanic boys. She recognized them, almost like she had seen them on a train or on the sidewalk in passing. This feeling was short lived as she felt a sharp, hot pain go through her stomach. She remained standing for a little while until she coughed up blood. She fell back against her bed with the picture in hand, and saw a large knife sticking out of her stomach. She began to scream but was quickly stopped by a leather-gloved hand covering her mouth. The man stared at her, and put his index finger against his lips to signify for her to be quiet. She did not comply as the pain was too great for her to remain calm. The man then grabbed a roll of duct tape from his pocket and secured a strip over her mouth. The woman began to grow hazy from the pain and stopped screaming. She noticed this man, clad entirely in black, as a slightly older version of one of the boys from the picture. He went to her hand and snatched the picture from it. He held it in front of her face and she was barely able to make out what he was saying through the throbbing in her ears.

“You remember this man,” he said pointing to the man who obviously wasn’t him “Alejandro González. Do you remember him?” She faintly shook her head from side to side. “Didn’t think so. Two years ago he went to trial for manslaughter. You told him to plea. He was sentenced to 25 years in jail for a crime he didn’t commit.” She mumbled something through the tape that almost resembled an apology. “I don’t care what you have to say, I just thought you should know the reason you are dying.” She felt a quick pain in her stomach followed by a slash across her throat as darkness consumed her vision.

The man wiped his knife on her bed and left her house. He walked down her street to get to the car he parked a mile away but he lost the feeling to his legs and kneeled down. Tears covered his vision as he cried on an empty street in the sleepy neighborhood. He looked towards the sky for forgiveness as continued to cry on the abandoned sidewalk.