THE BLOODY BED  (A short horror story)

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Lilly, and I'll share a little secret. Words cannot make the Evils in the world understandable.  Pain cannot really be shared.

In the summer of 2015, I finally decided to talk to a therapist about my past. I'd hesitated for many years because I didn't want to infect some innocent person's head with my nightmares

 I know that sounds overly dramatic, but consider this: when most people talk about parental abuse, it comes in predictable flavors. There are types and kinds that a therapist has been trained to expect. They are taught that there is no evil in the world, only disturbed individuals and human weakness. Usually, in their work, therapists are presented with familiar, tiny households of Hell, evils that they can steel themselves against as they hold your hand while you forge dangerous waters, seeking peace.

 But sometimes, at deeper depths, the water becomes too strange. As I guess, this story is.

 My little brother and I came home one day from school to find my parents smiling oddly and looking disturbingly excited. In my memories, that moment is etched in high contrast: stark shadows, too bright light, in yellows and reds. We glanced at each other, worried, as they announced that we now had new beds. Hotel cast-offs, they said. Good quality beds. "Come and see!

 My little brother's room was the first we came to in the hallway. Still smiling, they opened the door on a bare mattress. Across its top were many splatters of dried blood. My brother flinched and mentioned the blood, but my parents ignored him, demanding that we all go on to my bedroom to see the other half of the set.

 The door was already open. We walked in. And there it was—my new bed.

 Dark, brownish-red stains of thick, dried blood covered more than 2/3rds of its top surface. I looked at my parents. They were still smiling.

 Dad said, "how do you like your new bed?"

My little brother was horrified, saying that this was wrong.

 My father loomed over him and asked, "do you want to trade beds with your sister?" My brother recoiled. He looked at me, then at my father, squeaked a "no," and fled to his room.

Both my parents looked at me then, smiling. Expectant.

"Somebody died on this bed." I said.

 I did not say more.  I knew my father was deeply involved in organized crime, and I knew but did not want to think about how he might have come into possession of such things.  And my father said to me, in a cold, calm voice, that this bed was a secret.  He told me that these beds were of good quality and nearly new, and there was nothing wrong with them, And my father said that I should be grateful.

He told me that I would sleep on it.  That I would accept it.  And that I would not complain.

 I looked at my mother, and she was still smiling when they left me alone to cover my new bed with clean sheets.

 In the beginning, I slept on the floor.

 After a while, I tried sleeping on the flip side, where there was less blood and an almost clean section.  I did it hesitantly, shamefully, because it seemed like such a ghoulish thing to do.  And I was surprised, in the morning, that a hole to Hell hadn't opened up in my floor, that God had not thrown bolts of lightning at me for my disrespect.  No ghost who howled in my ear as I tried to sleep.  Nothing changed.  I seemed to be the only one who cared

 After that, I did sleep on it.  Fitfully. For years.

 The first few months, I only thought about it when I changed the sheets.  Mom often came into my room to watch.  I guess it was fun for her.

And I became obsessed with filling my room with scented candles, air fresheners, and incense. My therapist asked if there had been a smell. I don't quite remember one, but my fetish for the floral scent makes me think that there might have been something I was trying to ignore.

And mostly, I succeeded, with one small exception.

Shortly after I began sleeping on the bed, I wanted to find a way to make peace with what I had to live with.  I knew that likely the person who had died on my bed had been murdered.  I thought about their family and the rude, unmarked grave that this poor soul had likely been buried in.  And I decided to pray each night in honor of them so they would not be forgotten.

 But to my shame, I quickly found that I could not.  I absolutely could not.  Even the mildest, quietest prayer made it all too horrifically real, and I knew that it would have pushed me over the edge.

I asked God for forgiveness and tried not to think about the blood anymore.

 But the blood refused to be ignored.

In time, it rotted the springs, and the bed began to sag.  Jagged wire ripped through the top of the mattress.

 I covered sagging areas with folded towels, duck taped the sharp daggers of metal, and once every month or so, crept up to my father and asked if I could have a new bed.  The answer was always "no," and the bed continued deteriorating.

 By the time my father died years later, I was mainly sleeping on folded towels and duct tape. And a few months after his death, Mom allowed me to buy myself a new bed with the money I'd saved from my day job. When I wondered what we would do with the old one, she said not to worry; she'd called someone to pick it up. And they came, within an hour, in a truck with a tarp to throw over it. Quick, fast, quiet. And it was over.

 The story of the bed, however, haunted my therapist. She kept bringing it up over the following weeks, seeking something. Maybe just a stronger reaction from me over the bloody bed. But here, decades later, I feel almost nothing.

 I tried to explain. It happened. I endured. And sadly, the dark truth is that you just get used to things, and life goes on. 

 She would look at me without understanding, and after a while, I stopped going to see her

Because, like the remnants of the bloody bed burning on a bonfire someplace years ago, eventually, there's nothing left to say.

April 7, 2018 -- Teresa Challender