General

The blood left the artery it belonged in surges, beat out by a slowing heart. It had all been so silly, the attempt at a rescue... but if you don't try, then who are you? Where is your hero heart? He could have died safe and warm many years from then, cosy in a bed at the edge of the heather cliffs, yet even in those last moments he was proud to have tried.

General

The blood didn't gush in a constant flow, but in time with the beating of Danny's heart. At first it came thick and strong, flowing through his fingers as they clasped the ripped flesh. He felt the blood move over his hand, the thick fluid no warmer or cooler than his own skin. After a few moments more the blood was still leaving his rapidly paling flesh, but the pulses were slower, weaker.

General

Tina had held her hand to the slash, but no matter the pressure she applied the blood had still gushed between her fingers and oozed under her hand. It had spread into Harry's rain-damp t-shirt, the bright red quickly darkening, taking on a brownish hue. Those moments she spent pleading with him to look at her, to stay with her, feeling the very fluid of his life drain away over her cold hands, she felt nothing at all. Time itself had become irrelevant; the seconds could have been hours, or hours mere seconds. In that suspended moment she was the eye of her own storm; but for that moment of perfect calm and mental clarity, she paid over and over in the years to come. Every quiet moment was spent watching Harry die again, playing the "what if" game until she surrendered her mind to the night.

General

Although the once spreading red stain had become brown and dry, Freya kept it in a small box under her bed. The fires of the crematorium had taken Luke beyond her mortal touch yet the fabric remained, a faded blue shirt of no importance to anyone but her. The day he died, the blood pulsating from his carotid, surging as his heart struggled to save him, she has sat in a pool of his blood that was part congealed and dulled to a reddish-brown before the paramedics arrived. Every one of them was a hero, though to this day Freya can't recall a thing they said to her; only that it was like they were speaking to her from the top of a well, their voices distorted.

General

The blade was sharp enough to cut flesh as if it posed no resistance. At once a fountain of red came from the wound, the ebb and flow in time with a terrified heart, killing the man all the faster. The soldier stood watching as if he could not hear the screams of pain, as if it were a silent theatre production of no importance. He never moved at all until his mark was bled out, his red blood mingled with the gravel and taking on an earthy hue. Then he would make a precise turn and march on, never even a spot of blood on his high polished boots.

General

In the brilliance of the daylight the blood left Tom's artery in violent jets of red. The heart that could take him forty miles on a bicycle was most efficient at emptying his body of fluid. His own hand lay limp by his side, his skin no longer deep brown but grey, fingers sticky with congealing blood.

General

Even in the twilight the gushing blood glinted red under the street-lamps. Though the appearance was halloweenish the smell wasn't and neither was the effect on Autumn. Watching Rainer ebb away, his eyes growing steadily more dull, she felt as if her own guts were torn. Her skin was as pale as his, so much so that when the ambulance arrived the paramedics thought she must be cut also.

Mystery & Detective / Police Procedural

The hook had done more damage than a blade. The sharp steel end had hooked into the man's neck and pulled out his carotid, ripping it in two. His blood had poured as easily as water from a garden hose in a steady but dying rhythm. The once scarlet pool had turned brown on the damp concrete, clotting as if it could still save the man who lay cold within it.

Mystery & Detective / Police Procedural

Blood gushed with sickening determination from Eve's neck, as if her own heart sought to pump it from her body. Her fingers clamped over the wound, two pale starfish growing paler by the second. The scarlet blood lashed over the apartment, painting the scene in which she would be found dead unless she did something very smart very fast...

Dystopian

Emma's blood cut a vivid arc through the frozen air before being magnified ten fold in the snow about her. What had been a blank canvas only moments before became "painted" in a way that would haunt the first responders for years to come. If her body had been staged and the blood were a synthetic imitation her photograph could have been sold in big city galleries. In the sterile high-rise boxes with only devices for company the people's appetite for gore had never been higher. Citizens recoiled from the news, scared they or a loved one could be next; yet at the same time murder had never sold more advertising space, never been so lucrative, and the more grisly the better.