In the Month of May

"Don't worry, it's just a nosebleed. No big deal."

I would always worry, no matter what you said, but I would pretend, and nod, and flash a small smile, handing you the tissues you were asking for as you pressed your fingers to the bridge of your bleeding nose and stared at the ceiling.
I would always worry until you flashed that inevitable smile.

I would sit beside you then, the box in my hands, between my knees, as I stared at you, watching how you took something so bloody and disgusting with such ease and composure. I had never gotten nosebleeds, ever, and in the end, I wouldn't even begin to experience them.

One day, I asked you why they happen. You shrugged, with the tissue pressed to your nostrils, and said they just do. I asked why they never happen to me. You turned your head, chancing bringing your eyes from the ceiling to look at me, and smiled, and said that I was simply lucky like that.

In the end I figured out that they were from your allergies, but I never told you that. I simply held the tissues and watched in awe such as a small child would as you took care of yourself, simply dusting off the sight of blood and my wide wandering eyes.

As the years went on, they got more frequent, and worse, lasting longer and longer. But you would still simply just shrug that shrug of yours, where your shoulders move in a smooth, slow circle, and hold out your hand for the tissues in my own.

If it's relevant, I believe that you thought I was naive, but the truth is, I knew everything. I knew what you did to those people you met on those so-called 'business meetings.' I knew that those bloodstains weren't always from those ever-so-frequent nosebleeds of yours. I knew that those headlines of murders, brutal disgusting murders, that flashed across news screens and gave you that slightest hint of a smile resembling just the smallest bit of satisfaction and pride had more to do with you and your 'profession' than you cared to let on.

I walked in on that night, late and tired, to silence.
I waited by the front door for anything, any sound that could echo through the walls.
As I stood still, a faint sputtering and coughing reached my ears.

I walked cautiously up the stairs, letting the cold iron railing slide along my palm. The sputtering and coughing grew louder, more panicked, as I grew nearer to our bedroom. I stood outside the door, ear against the smooth painted wood, as I listened to heaving breaths slip in and out of your lungs.

My first instinct is to run inside, sit you up, help you clear your drowning lungs, but then I remember that smug smirk across your lips as the photos of that man dangling from the ceiling of the abandoned hotel room, blood dripping from his lips and fingertips, flashed across the television screen. I remember how you took those nosebleeds with such stride, never even flinching at the sight of the blood. I remember those blood stains, that melancholy grin as you said you just had a surprise nosebleed at work. I remember the late night phone calls, the gleaming knives, the heaving chest, flared nostrils, those burning angry eyes, belonging to a stranger, not the person I had lived with and loved for the past four years.

I remember all of this, and I walk away. I walk away, slowly, calmly, without the slightest hint of a rush in my footsteps.
I take the tissue box in my hands, a smirk growing upon my own lips.

I nudge open the door to find you lying in our bed, mouth gaping, eyes wide, sputtering heaving coughing choking on the blood streaming from your nostrils. I smile at your wild eyes, and place the tissues on the nightstand.

As I close the door on your noise and drowning, I smile to myself.

It is just a nosebleed, after all.
It's no big deal.