Excerpt: Blood Ritual

from my novel in progress: Call My Mommy

Barbro (aka Moa)

Apr 05, 2026

Note: This chapter takes place right after Mud.

We’re sitting on the floor. Wine drunk and lips stained red, Sam turns to face me.

“I want to bleed for you.”

“How romantic, “ I scoff into my glass.

“No,” he looks at me with serious intent, “I mean it. Literally. I want you to make me bleed. Carve yourself into my meat.”

“Like I’ve carved myself into your soul,” I say absently.

He sighs frustratedly and gets up. I don’t expect him to return with a pocket knife.

“Why do you have a pocket knife?” I ask.

“For you to cut me with,” he replies.

He kneels down next to me.

“I want you to mark me. I want you to leave a scar in me that will never fade.”

“Branding you like cattle,” I’m still not fully engaged with the reality of his request.

Sam smiles, “forever yours.”

I finish my wine and put the glass down on the coffee table.

“Alright,” I say, “hand me the knife.”

He does.

“Take your pants off,” I say, as I open the knife.

He does.

“Sit down on the coffee table.”

He does. It’s wooden, sturdy, holds his weight. He’s giddy and excited as I kneel in front of him and lift one of his legs over my shoulder so that his thigh is right next to my face. I hold his leg in place with one arm and hold the knife in the other hand. I lift the knife and draw one quick, sharp swipe, pressing down as hard as I can. Sam moans. I smile up at him. The wound shines white for a moment before red starts slowly leaking out. The skin splits open like a seam being torn, and blood begins to pool. I touch my finger to the blood. This is trust. This is devotion. This is power. I feel myself getting higher than any drugs could ever get me. This, this is the greatest feeling a human can achieve. I bring my lips to the wound and kiss it. Then I suck a little — Sam moans again, lifting a hand to his mouth — and I swallow his blood.

What a metaphor, I think. Me, as a vampire, draining him.

Then I pull out and look up at him, my cheeks smeared with blood. He cups my face and smiles down at me that way that men do when you’re done giving them a blowjob. And then he leans down for that post-blowjob kiss of gratitude.

“Thank you,” he whispers between kisses. I’m sure he can taste his own blood on my tongue.

“You’re disturbed,” I whisper back.

“Yes, yes I am,” then he pulls back and holds my face in his hands, looking me deep in the eyes, “but you like me.”

I don’t know if I do. I do like the way he makes me feel. The way he gets me high. This one man is worth a thousand teenage boys. Like god answered the pit inside me with angel that can fit perfectly.

I deflect, “What if it gets infected?”

“Then let it. Let it consume me. If it’s rot you left in me, I want it to devour me.”

Sam’s still in his underwear when Lucas shows up. Sam looks good in only underwear, with that fit teen body of his. Adult teen body of his. His scar, with a dark red parameter of crust and a bright red echo blending into his pink skin, is leaking on his lower thigh. Lucas spots this immediately, before he’s even got his shoes off. What a good friend.

“Jesus Christ, Sam, your thigh,” he exclaims, rushing his shoes off and into the room. There are small, undramatic blood stains everywhere.

Sam is sitting on the couch, feet up on the coffee table, legs crossed. I’m lying on the armchair next to him, slumped against the armrest with my legs over the other. I’m scrolling my phone. I don’t look up.

“What happened?” Lucas asks, arriving at the foot of the sofa.

Sam just throws Lucas a glowing smile.

“She marked me.”

“She what?” He turns to me, “oh, you bitch!”

Sam grabs Lucas’ arm.

“No, no. I asked her to.”

Lucas looks back at Sam, with a kind of forlorn despair on his face.

“You.. you asked her to?”

“Yeah,” Sam says, calmly pleased.

“You asked her to… cut you? On your thigh?”

“Yeah,” Sam says again, with a contentment that almost aggressively contrasts the defeat and loss in Lucas’ voice.

Lucas pauses for a second, silent.

Then he says, “Why?”

The expression he’s wearing, I can tell he knew it was a hopeless question the moment he asked it. Sam has no answer for him, none that would make sense to Lucas.

“I’m hers,” Sam says simply. Happy.

Lucas sighs. I can see the shift in him. The acceptance phase of grief. The acceptance phase of grief, often misunderstood, does not mean joy. It simply means, living with this new reality as it’s come to be. Surrender, is a better way to put it. Sam surrenders to me, willingly, eager, with joy and expectation. But Lucas, Lucas surrenders here in a different way. Defeat. Waving the white flag. His friend is gone and he can follow him there or he can lose him.

So he follows Sam. Lives with reality as it’s come to be.

“Why isn’t it bandaged?” Lucas asks, simply, with the tone of a frustrated nurse.

“It’s not a wound, it’s a mark,” Sam says dreamily.

“Come on, man. Even tattoos get covered when their fresh. What if it gets infected? It’s pretty gnarly — what if you need stitches?”

“I don’t want stitches. I want it to scar.”

“Will you at least let me bandage it up? Please?”

“Oh, let him do it, so he’ll shut up about it,” I comment, still only paying half-attention.

Sam looks to me. Lucas does, too. Lucas is wearing a look of mild surprise, of almost thank you. As if he’s shocked I don’t want Sam to lose his life to some blood infection he got from a wound I gave him. I don’t want this to become a bigger hassle than it needs to be. If he’d just treat it properly, it would heal, it would scar, and it would be there. Forever. I’m not heartless, I’m not sociopathic, I don’t want suffering for no reason. I don’t want harm to Sam.

Not anymore.

That’s over now. Behind me.

“Alright,” Sam says, and Lucas rushes to Sam’s bathroom. He returns with a first aid kid in a big red cloth bag. He places it on the coffee table and gets on his knees. Sam lifts one of his legs — Lucas crawls under it — then places it back down on the table, so Lucas is between his legs. Now I’m watching.

This image, I think to myself, looks almost as if Lucas were about to give Sam a blow job. Yet something much sadder is happening. He’s trying to take care of his friend. His friend who’s chosen self-destruction.

Lucas rips some gauze, dabs the wound, and throws the scrap on the table. He sprays the wound with disinfectant. Sam flinches. Lucas mutters “pussy” playfully under his breath. He takes a square of gauze and places it against Sam’s wound, holding it in place with one hand while he picks up a roll of bandage with the other. Then he wraps it around Sam’s thigh. I watch the roll move — up, left, down, right, up, left, down, right — growing smaller every round. Then Lucas pins the end in place.

Then he does something sad. Real sad. Real desperate and pathetic. He leans in, and gives the bandage a little kiss, right at the spot of the wound.

“Gay, dude,” Sam says jokingly.

Lucas shrugs, “a kiss to make the boo boo better.”

“Well aren’t you a good friend?” I say. Lucas looks back at me, tiredly. I expected more of a glare. I shrug.

“Genuinely,” I feel suddenly sheepish, and add, “he asked me to.”

Lucas, crouched between Sam’s legs, has one hand resting on the couch, the other on Sam’s leg. He looks down.

“That doesn’t make it okay,” he says, quietly, to the ground.

Sam, like he can’t hear him, is smiling that annoyingly self-satisfied way he always does after he gets what he wants. Like a child with cake frosting around his mouth. Lucas stays there, on the ground, between Sam’s legs, for a few seconds longer. Then he pushes himself up, straightens his hoodie, packs up the first aid kid, and brings it back to the bathroom.

“You wanna stay for the night?” Sam calls out after him.

“Sure,” Lucas says quietly, walking back to us.

He sits down next to Sam, so Sam’s between the two of us. Sam, relaxed, bandaged leg propped up against the coffee table, the other tucked under it. He looks between us, beaming.

“I feel good,” he says, “safe.”

Safe. That’s a rarity for an abused kid. Safe domesticity is the pipe dream of every kid who grows up knowing fear as a synonym for home. That’s what he’s trying to create with us, here. Domesticity he can relax in. Domesticity he doesn’t have to fear. Domesticity, simple, plain, and unspectacular. My bones ache, because I realise I want it, too.

Except, I want to know what it feels like to be safe in the world. I want to exist without my body being sexualised all the time. I want to know what it’s like to grow up without boys being taught that our bodies are their playthings. I want to know what it’s like to exist, to have a body, and not live in fear because of it. That’s what I gave these two boys a taste of, two years ago, I suppose. Though I guess Sam already knew.

What it’s like to live as a body in constant danger of being touched.

Sam rests his head on Lucas’ shoulder. Lucas, staring forward, lifts a hand to pet him, and sighs. I go back to scrolling my phone. Not trying to manipulate, exploit, or mess up. Just letting them exist like that. Letting me exist. Letting the three of us, exist, domestic, uncomplicated, safe.