She Who Wept Blood

Caution! This is a short horror’esque story - If this is not your cup of tea, do not continue reading. This is part of my Short Stories and Scenes section on Substack. Not all will be scary stories but if you would prefer to not receive this specific newsletter you can unsubscribe below. Thank you!

This story came to me last year when I was going through an emotionally volatile relationship with an alcoholic and the thought was this: ‘What if an abused woman who killed herself haunted a house and protected the families that lived there from abusive men’. I had abandoned it because of what I was going through at the time but I came across it the other day and decided to finish it.

Supernatural horror is my favorite genre and I have a particular fondness for haunting tales that serve justice. An American Haunting is an excellent example of this specifically if you are looking for a good movie. Diabolical, but great storytelling.

The curtains from the windows were billowing in and out of the warm summer night’s wind. It would almost be picturesque if it weren’t for the destruction that was scattered around it. The lilies that were once in the vase on the table at the end of the hall had fallen and the drip, drip, drip was holding me in a brief moment of escape as the peaceful melody of the crickets and frogs filled the deafening silence. I was standing at the end of the dark hallway that led to our bedroom. This singular moment might have been the clearest my mind had ever been. My face was throbbing where he had struck me, my pale skin split and bruised, and a small trickle of blood was rolling down my face. It was the tear of an abused woman.

He had been drinking again and the house was littered with the carnage of his anger. All the love I had within me had been pulled from my bones and shoved into a grave, my grave. I wanted to die, in fact I meant to. I had been here before, standing at the edge of sanity, searching for a peaceful escape but I could never do it. I could never make it stop. But there comes a time when your soul just can’t take anymore trauma. When you realize the only way out of this is by ending it.

Everything was different now and any memory of good was all but gone. Even if I did leave I would be haunted by these scars, haunted by these memories. No, I didn’t want that life either. Time was shifting and standing still at the same time as I ever so gently cut deeply into my wrists. Drip, drip, drip onto the hard wood floors, it harmonized with the falling water from the vase. Drip, drip, drip as I walked to that table at the end of the hall and placed the straight blade on the destroyed lily carcasses. The warmth trailing down my fingertips creating a dance of blood and water as it mixed with the mess on the table. It was truly lovely in its own morbid way.

I trailed my hands along the walls as I walked, leaving marks of myself that could never be removed. I would haunt this place, I would join the grains of this house. My essence would torture every man who entered here and let his anger destroy others, and my husband would be my first victim. I had already decided that I would be the poltergeist that would give these men a real lesson in the pain that they caused, the pain that they spread to everything they touched. I was dying, the warmth slowly leaving every inch of my body as my blood pooled at my feet. I began feeling lighter and heavier all at once as my very life force began leaving my body.

My mind wanders to the children I had lost, the babies who never made it out of my womb. The babies I buried beneath the roses. It was a blessing to them that they didn’t come into this hell. I kept walking until I came to our bedroom door. I entered and saw him lying there passed out, spread across the length of our King sized bed. Large empty glass bottles scattered across his nightstand. I calmly walked to my side of the bed as I lay down next to him. My blood spilling over and soaking into every inch of fiber. I closed my eyes and peacefully fell asleep, forever. My last thought is that when he wakes he will see what his actions drove me to do, what his anger took from me, and if he does not see he will soon pay for what he has done. There is a vengeance that now lingers in my soul, a pain that can only be healed by delivering justice. I will stop him from hurting anyone ever again. I will stop them all.

When you die, time moves differently and when I awoke on my bed I gazed around at my surroundings and everything was different. I never got to see my husband’s reaction to my lifeless body laying next to him and I knew that there was a new family occupying my house. How much time had passed? I wondered what happened to my husband, but more importantly I wondered why I was awakened now. Maybe my death was the justice I was searching for and my husband was served with what he deserved.

As I lay there pondering my resurrection I heard it. A whisper through the walls, through the wood. The crack of bones and the scream of a woman. The sobs of children. Anger rose from me in a sea of rage and all I could see, feel, hear was blood as I moved without thought through the spaces in between and to the hallway I chose my fate in. The scene before me did nothing to temper my fury. I would choose to be seen only by this man, I would not scar this woman or her children any more than they already had been. They would not know the horrors I would put him through every time his anger lashed.

As I came into his line of sight I could see the fear swirling there just under his skin as I turned myself as grotesque as possible. My eyes went black and my blood was pouring down my arms and from the wounds upon my beaten face. He screamed as I reached out and grabbed his arm and I could feel the delicate bones cracking as I spoke directly into his face "you will not touch them in anger ever again." The air was thick with screaming as I raised him into the air and threw him into a pile of disgust on the floor. My purpose was ignited and he would either submit or I would kill him.

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