The spout of blood obviously takes her offguard; she's turned away from him and her hair is covering most of her face, so all that can be processed from the outside is the way her shoulders draw up and the small, shaky crushed sound of stopped inhalation--things anyone might do; lots of people are unabashedly squeamish around blood. It's Anna's mind where strangenesses flood rather than flicker, images that come too fast to take the real shape of any specific time. These are known patterns; they have happened over and over again.
The leaping flash of sleek bodies in motion.
A thrash--something dying.
Teeth.
Rows on rows of perfect white stone razorblade fanged headstones--
A heartbeat pounding in the mouth
and stopping
hot liquid taste impossible red
sleepy fed hunger
(that yawning emptiness)
teeth--mostly, there are just teeth.
"Pentecostal?" she inquires, a shortened version of any of the quipping she's done so far, only half a joke, but it's mostly just to have something to say and give him something to react to other than removing the sticking towel fibers--she passes him another (clean) hand towel before she does this, for the record, a leftover from days long ago before the anesthesia they don't have--it's terrible and she's not even hungry, she's just lonely, and he smells good and he's vulnerable--
and then it's done and she's swathing his hand in shining white bandages that redden almost instantly, layers and layers of them until the shape of his fingers is almost entirely obscured.
She draws back and rubs at her eyes, swallowing and moving away from him to lean on the counter by the fridge. "You got any left of whatever you were drinking?"