Chapter 1: Red Ribbons and Razor Blades
Leah was six the first time she tasted blood.
Not her own, of course. That came later, in moments when the world bent and shattered into jagged pieces too sharp to touch. The first taste was so much simpler. It was the blood of a creature whose name she could not pronounce. A squirrel, small and pitiful, lying broken in the wet grass of the backyard. Its spine was snapped, and the creature twitched like a marionette whose strings had been cut. The faintest whimper escaped its cracked mouth, and its dark eyes, wide and full of fear, fixed on Leah with the kind of pleading no human could ever understand.
She knelt down, her white Sunday dress gathering the dewy grass, the hem dampening with the weight of a hundred seconds that would linger forever in her memory.
"Does it hurt?" she whispered, her voice almost drowned out by the distant hum of her mother's soft laughter coming from inside the house.
The squirrel blinked.
Leah smiled.
It wasn't a kind smile. It wasn't something soft and innocent. It was a smile that came from deep inside her, a strange, sharp thing that seemed to cut through the air and sink its teeth into the silence. A smile that told secrets she couldn't speak aloud. It told the world that she understood something that they didn't. The pain. The fear. The life and death happening in front of her.
Her fingers hovered just above the animal's broken body. The thin line of its fur, matted with blood, trembled under her touch. Leah's breath came in shallow gasps, almost like she was holding herself back. From what, she didn't know. She never knew. There was a hum inside of her, a buzz in her bones that urged her forward. Her fingertips brushed the soft, damp fur, and she felt something stir beneath her skin. It was not a desire to comfort the animal. No. There was no sympathy in her touch.
It was fascination.
The way the squirrel's little chest rose and fell, struggling for air, the way its legs twitched with the last frantic attempts to escape something it couldn't understand. Every movement, every shudder was a note in a song she hadn't learned yet but already knew how to play. She could feel her heart speed up, the rhythm of the squirrel's pulse matching the beat of her own. It wasn't that she enjoyed the creature's suffering. Not exactly. But it was beautiful. There was something beautiful about its helplessness, about its fight, even if it was hopeless.
Her fingers tightened around the edge of a broken garden trowel. It wasn't sharp, not like the knives her mother used to carve meat for dinner, but it would do the job. It was a little thing, cracked and old, but in her hands it was the perfect tool for something far grander than its simple design had ever intended.
Her mother's voice called out from the kitchen, soft and warm like honey in tea. "Leah, darling, dinner's ready."
But Leah didn't answer. Not immediately. She was too lost in the weight of the moment, in the thrill that ran under her skin like electricity. There was no hurry. She didn't want to be rushed. She wanted to understand this. To be a part of it.
The squirrel's eyes blinked again, its once-vibrant brown fur now matted with blood. Its tiny body jerked, one last desperate twitch before it stilled. It had given up.
Leah's breath hitched, a sharp intake of air as she watched the blood seep out from the wound. It pooled beneath her knees, soaking into the fabric of her dress. She didn't move, didn't look away. She didn't need to. She wasn't done yet. The feeling hadn't stopped. The hum inside her. That pull that came from deep in her chest, that part of her that whispered for more.
She didn't know what she was doing. But she couldn't stop herself.
With a steady hand, she pressed the broken trowel into the animal's belly. The blade sank into the soft, yielding flesh, not with force, but with something more like a dance. The pressure of the trowel's edge against the animal's soft insides was like the caress of a lover's fingers, but sharper, colder. The blood came faster now, pooling around her hands, slipping down her arms. Leah didn't flinch.
She wasn't afraid.
The squirrel's blood was warm, thick, and it stained her fingers, her dress, the ground.
And still, she watched.
She watched until the last breath of the creature left its small body, the shallow rise and fall of its chest turning into a long, shuddering exhale. She didn't blink.
When it was over, she stood up slowly, her knees stiff from kneeling, her dress heavy with blood. Her hands were stained. The squirrel's eyes stared back at her, glassy, unblinking, and Leah smiled.
It wasn't a pretty smile. It wasn't innocent.
It was something darker.
She washed her hands in the garden hose, the cold water rushing over her skin, making her fingers tingle and ache. She didn't wash the smile.
Later, that night, as the moon hung low in the sky, Leah lay in her bed, her fingers tracing the dark pattern of the sheets. She could still feel the blood on her skin, the warmth of it. The taste of it, though she didn't know how to explain it. It was like the memory of something sweet, something forbidden. She closed her eyes, and in the darkness, the images came alive.
Bones clicking together. Snapping, breaking. Rivers of red that seemed to stretch forever. A mouth filled with sharp teeth, its growl so deep it vibrated through her chest.
The dream was vivid, too real, but not something she could wake up from. She felt her heartbeat slow, then race, then slow again, the sound of her own blood rushing in her ears. Her fingers dug into the pillow, squeezing, as the visions twisted around her, mixing with the shadows in her room. The scent of death, faint but unmistakable, hung in the air.
She woke up laughing.
The laughter was quiet at first, a soft giggle that bubbled up from somewhere deep inside her, from a place she couldn't reach. But it grew. It spread. The sound echoed in her empty room, a noise too strange to belong to a six-year-old child.
And somewhere, far away, in the dark spaces between thoughts and dreams, something ancient stirred inside her. Something dark. Something wild. Something that did not belong in a world of rules and limits.
It wasn't a demon.
Not a spirit.
It was something simpler. Something primal.
A beast.
And it had her name in its mouth.