It was blood that changed Carrie Moore's life. Escaping and ozzing, crimson and copper. The blood, the bleeding, cracked her life open like a fragile egg, spilling out a life source more powerful than anyone suspected from the quiet and misfit of a girl.

The first arrival of a menstruation cycle meant that she was blooming into a woman, and it should have been a normal event, for it was as natural as the moon pulling the tides of the ocean. But nothing for Carrie Moore was normal, even though she desperately wished it were, and her very first period was a catalyst for a great power that her mother deemed wicked and sinister. Oh, if Margaret Moore only knew just how wicked and sinister her daughter would be at the side of a handsome boy, crowned in blood and darkness, with fire and brimstone weaved into the lining of his flesh.

Carrie Moore was sixteen, on the edge of seventeen and a junior, when it happened at the end of gym class. The locker room was filled with steam tinted with soap and chlorine from the pool. Carrie had never excelled at sports; she was a bookish girl with a clever yet heavily sheltered mind. On top of sucking at sports—which typically ended with her embarrassing herself in front of her fellow classmates—she hated showering after gym.

Modesty was valued in the Moore household, but in high school, not feeling comfortable dressing down made Carrie a prude. She often waited for the girls' showers to quieten down, when every stream of hot water had stopped. And today was no different.

With the echoes of girlish laughter and gossip flittered from the showers to dress around the corner, Carrie slipped into the showering area, water sleek under her bare feet. She removed her towel and folded it neatly over the half-wall, her eyes flickering around to make sure no one was watching her.

No one was, of course. No one care about Carrie Moore. Carrie Moore was no more than the butt of a joke or a stab of humiliation and mocking, and quickly always became nothing more than an echo, barely an afterthought. The water was hot against her pale skin and glided over her curveless figure and she closed her eyes. Carrie had always been a late bloomer and she still hadn't shaped into the body of a woman yet: An invitation and the vessel of sins, her mother would say. Rounded, soft hips and generous breasts only brought forth sin and damnation, Margaret Moore would utter with venom in her voice. But it was hard for Carrie to see every other girl around her bloom into womanhood, while she stayed shapeless and child-like with all sharp and straight edges and no softness to caress or want. The water drenched her tangles of peach blonde hair into ropes down her back, and when Carrie flashed her eyes open, droplets caught on her eyelashes, she looked down at the water making a bee-line towards the drain.

Redness eclipsed her vision and there was a sharp pain in her abdomen. Her eyes tracked the blood, all the way up her milky thighs to the warm spot between her legs. She reached down with one hand, water still moving over her naked shoulders in sheets. A curdled shriek squeezed passed Carrie's lips as she lifted her hand—blood coated her fingertips like a wet, second skin. And the teenage girl realised she was bleeding and panic tore through her body. She screamed again and again at all the blood on white.

"Help! Help!" Carrie yelled, clutching at her towel she skidded in the crimson-hued shower water, looking for someone to help her. For someone to call the ambulance because she must have been dying. "Please, someone help me!" She was still soaking wet when she around the corner, clocking the group of girls barely dressed in their lacey underwear.

"What the hell?" one of them questioned harshly, pausing from brushing out her damp curls.

"Crazy Carrie," another one muttered with a roll of her eyes.

"I'm bleeding!" Carrie shrieked, lifting her hand to show the pack of girls. "I'm bleeding from down there... and it hurts." There was another curl of abdominal pain and she nearly doubled over, barely keeping her towel clutched to her chest. Carrie reached out, her blood-coated fingers clutching around the closest wrist. That wrist happened to belong to Deliah Snell, the beautiful popular girl that was wanted by all. Deliah had a pretty face that could grace glossy magazines and eyes that often flashed with malice.

"Get off me, freak!" Deliah shouted, ripping her wrist away from Carrie. But there were bloody fingerprints left on the dishwater blonde's wrist.

"Oh, my God! That's period blood!" Christabelle Slater yelled out in disgust. "Carrie got her period!" There was a chorus of laughter as blood leaked down Carrie's legs, warm and thick.

"Just plug it up, freak!" Deliah flicked a tampon at Carrie and it landed at her feet. But Carrie Moore didn't know what a tampon was and certainly didn't know she had just gotten her first period. Margaret Moore had never taken the time to explain menstruation to her only daughter.

"What? Please, I think I'm dying," she pleaded, tears stinging in her eyes and her cheeks felt hot as the pack of teenage girls laughed and threw sanity products at Carrie. The cruel laughter echoed off the tiled walls of the locker room and pain pinched again in Carrie's abdomen, and this time she did double over, her knees striking against the wet floor.

"Plug it up! Plug it up! Plug it up" they chanted as tampons and pads arched through the air, some hitting their mark and some falling to the wet floor to soak up shower water and Carrie's hot blood.

"What's happening?" Mrs Blake, the gym teacher, called out, pushing through the crowd of laughing and chanting girls. Carrie even saw the flash of cameras and phones as she curled herself up into a ball, screaming and crying out for help as her skin burned with the flames of humiliation and fear.

"Carrie got her period and she doesn't know what it is," Deliah wheezed out from laughter.

"The girl belongs in a freak show," Christabelle hissed out.

"That's enough! Finish getting dress and move along," Mrs Blake ordered, before kneeling in front of Carrie, who had started to rock herself, eyes watching the blood—her blood—curl in the water lining the off-white floor tiles. Her heart was shaking, and her blood was boiling inside her veins. "Carrie, you're going to be okay. It's normal." The gym teacher's voice was soft, like she was trying to console a wounded animal.

Carrie shook her head. "No. This can't be normal." A sparking surge of energy teemed through her body, trickling and swerving. The fluorescent light bulb above them blew out with a ghost scream, dimming the locker room.

"It is, honey. Most girls actually get it a lot sooner than sixteen," Mrs Blake said, fixing the towel to cover up more of Carrie's skin. "We bleed the same blood, every month." But it wasn't the same blood, for something else stained Carrie Moore's blood. Something dark and blooming, something wicked was waking.

—

Sunlight was fading from the world when Margaret Moore hung up the phone. It had been a call from the high school, informing her of what had happened with Carrie that day. Margaret pressed her fingers to the cross pendant sitting at the base of her throat, silently praying for strength and guidance.

The Moore house was small and modest, and dated with dull colours and no modern technology save for the wall phone, a record player and a television set. No internet graced the brick house that was home to two women that didn't have the strongest of relationships. Margaret found her daughter in the lounge room, curled up with a novel in her lap and chewing on her lip. Carrie's eyes were rimmed red and swollen eyes from crying, but Margaret didn't notice that.

"You did something dirty today, Carrie," she started, arms crossed over her chest. Margaret Moore was a willowy woman with a cold demeanour. She had sharp and almost beautiful features with long blonde hair also tinted with the fainted of reds that gave the strands a slight rosy hue.

"No, Mama." Carrie closed her book, standing to beg her mother for understanding and comfort. Carrie could still hear the cruel laughter echoing in her eardrums. Mrs Blake had taken her to the office after helping her dress and clean herself up. And the teacher had been kind enough to excuse Carrie from gym for the rest of the week and planned to punish the teenage girls for humiliating a fellow classmate in such a vital and personal moment in a young girl's life.

"The Lord can hear your filthy lies, girl. Bleeding is for the unclean. The damned." Margaret jabbed her index finger at her daughter.

"Mama... Mrs Blake told me about menstruation. That it's completely normal for women," she pleaded, fresh tears brewing and warmth rising across her cheeks. Carrie wanted nothing more than for her mother to just hold her as she tried to forget the humiliation that never seemed to leave her alone. But Margaret Moore was a cold mother, finding more love in the Lord than in her daughter.

"No. It means that sin can penetrate you. Just like it did with me. I should have given you to the Lord when you were a born but I was weak."

Carrie shook her head, trying to keep the tears that wanted to fall down her red cheeks at bay. "It's just my period, I haven't sinned, Mama."

"You're meant for him. The Devil!" There was so much venom and conviction in her words that sliced through Carrie's heart like sharp ice.

"No, please don't say that! I'm good, I swear!" Her bottom lip trembled.

"Damned, you'll be!" Margaret's voice bounced off the faded floral wallpaper.

"Mama!" Carrie moaned, her shoulders caving, wishing for a normal mother. For a mother that didn't think she belonged in hell.

"Dirty, damned girl," she spat out. "Touched by the Devil."

"No! No! No!" Carrie screamed out, running from the lounge room and up the rickety staircase to her bedroom, the only haven the teenage girl had. She slammed her bedroom door closed, locking it as she screamed. With her back pressed against the wood, a surge of energy clawed through her body, igniting her blood and strangling her bones. It was the same feeling from earlier, but now it was hotter, brighter and wanted to be let out.

Carrie's eyes landed on her full-length standing mirror across the neat and muted room and she felt a ripple in her blood. She instinctively raised one hand as a scream erupted from her throat. And to her amazement, the standing mirror lifted off the floorboards and hovered a foot above the floor. But the burning rage in Carrie's soul wasn't done yet, and when Carrie curled her fingers, the mirror shattered. Shards of glass exploded across the room, littering her bedroom in sharp fragments. Tears rolled down her cheeks, dripping off her chin as she stood frozen, staring at the destruction she had created. The energy, the power she had felt rippling in her blood was finally quiet again, but something still crawled in her soul, wanting more.

Touched by the Devil, Margaret Moore had yelled at her daughter. Meant for him. For the Devil. Maybe, just maybe, she wasn't wrong.