Chapter 3: Blood Rituals

After Aubrey went back to the bedroom, I grabbed my phone right away.

I was shaking so hard it took two tries to unlock the screen. The living room was silent except for the distant rumble of the neighbor’s washing machine and the hum of the fridge. My reflection in the black TV screen looked pale and freaked out.

"Who the hell are you?"

"You really do know my girlfriend, don’t you? Is this some kind of sick joke?"

On my phone, it just said: "Typing…"

The three dots blinked at me for what felt like forever. I sat on the couch, clutching my phone, heart pounding.

Finally, a message came through.

"Should I call you an idiot? Haven’t you noticed anything strange about your girlfriend? Did you know she takes blood baths every so often?"

My heart skipped a beat.

He was right again.

I could almost hear the splashing water, the metallic tang of blood, echoing in my memory. Ever since I met Aubrey, she’s had this habit of bathing in blood once a week. Every weekend, she goes to the butcher or the local meat market to buy fresh chicken, duck, or pig blood, hauls it home, pours it into the tub, and just soaks in it, totally still.

The first time I saw her do it, I thought I’d walked onto the set of a low-budget horror flick—Carrie, minus the prom dress.

I’d walked in, expecting steam and bath bombs, but the tub looked like a murder scene. The bathroom reeked of iron, and she just lay there, eyes closed, skin pale against the red water. My first instinct was to grab my phone and call 911.

But she just rolled her eyes and told me I was overreacting.

"It’s a beauty remedy I heard about. Bathing in fresh blood makes your skin softer and fairer—good for your complexion."

She said it like it was totally normal, like using avocado face masks or sugar scrubs. Her casualness about it made it almost more disturbing.

She’s so obsessed with it, it’s honestly kind of terrifying.

She would plan her weekends around her "spa ritual," rearranging brunch with friends or skipping our hiking plans just to fit it in. She’d even joke about it sometimes, but there was an edge to her voice, like she was daring me to push back.

Two years ago, we got stuck in a snowstorm. She couldn’t get any fresh blood for her bath. In the end, she used a knife to cut both our wrists, squeezed out some blood, and smeared it on herself.

The bathroom tiles were freezing, the snow outside swirling against the window, and my blood felt hot and wrong as it smeared across her skin.

I couldn’t believe it, but she had her own explanation:

"You have to keep it up. If I skip even once, all my effort is wasted. How else am I supposed to stay beautiful?"

She looked right at me, voice soft but deadly serious. It was the only time I’d ever seen her look… desperate. Like she was afraid of something bigger than vanity.

Her beauty routine sounded insane and creepy, but after dating her for so long, nothing else seemed off about her.

She was loving, attentive, always knew when I needed a hug or a grilled cheese after a bad day. We had inside jokes, little rituals, movie nights. Everything else about her was just so… normal.

And our relationship was great, so in the end, I just gritted my teeth and put up with her bizarre habit.

Love makes you do weird things, I guess. I always figured every couple had their weird, unspoken rules. Ours just happened to be… bloodier.

So all these years, Aubrey has kept this secret locked up tight. She’s never taken long work trips, and forget about traveling with me for more than a couple days.

Family reunions? Nope. Girls’ trips to Miami? She’d bail last minute. It always bugged me, but I figured everyone has their boundaries. Now, I wondered if the reason was a whole lot darker.

So I’m sure she never told anyone else.

She’d sworn me to secrecy, made me pinky-promise like we were kids again. I never breathed a word, not even to my mom.

How did the admin know? That’s what really got me.

It felt like he was inside my head. I started to sweat, glancing around the room as if cameras might be hidden in the air vents.

He seemed to know what I was thinking.

"If you don’t believe me, why not make a bet and try it out?"

I kept telling myself it was probably a prank—maybe a relative who knew Aubrey’s secret, teaming up with her to mess with me.

The idea sounded less and less convincing the longer I stared at the screen. My trembling hands still typed three words:

"How do I try?"