Blood on your hands is an odd
sensation. The color strikes you first -- the coating of red drippings.
Your first instinct is to avoid the splatter but it is unavoidable. Ask
any police detective with a DNA kit. Blood goes where blood wants to
go. Kimball stared at his hands with these thoughts in his head, frozen
by the sight. It occurred to him that this had happened before, in some
freeze-frame memory from the past -- his brother, perhaps, and the
hunting knife accident. The bone coming up through the finger. Then, as
now, things unfolded quick even as time slowed to a crawl. The blood
kept dripping. Now, too, he could smell it. Iron or some metals.
Something in the blood that seemed not quite right. Kimball felt the
blade drop to the ground. His mind was turning black but he heard her
voice cutting through the fog. "My god, Kimball, what ...." before
everything turned to dark.
