Let me start by saying I’m fond of gore and horror. It’s because I grew up in rural Eastern Europe and making sure your kids don’t see gore in movies was not something people were aware of. I saw alien as a little kid and it messed with my head but not as much as animals being drained of blood or slaughtered on the streets of my small rural town. It’s how people are in the country side but I was always sensitive to it and it affected me a lot so now I have a complex bond with horror movies and excessive gore.

But this one day felt surreal and had I not seen so much gore and blood at that early age, my brain would have probably blocked the memory, but it didn’t and I still remember it so vividly with morbid curiosity.

Born in the 90s in rural Bulgaria there wasn’t much to do but okay with plants, bugs, dirt and hide in the little forest behind me building block. I was told never to go far into the forest though, I must have been 6 or so and my parents had no time or energy to look for me in a forest.

I wasn’t planning to go far into it, had lived there for years and often went into the first but never felt compelled to go explore further in. But this time the stray dog living in the area had given birth and she had her puppies in there hidden from the traffic and the people and my friends and I just had to meet the little babies. We could hear them in there and we had even brought some food from home to feed them.

They must have been very loud though as it seemed we can never reach their puppy cries even as we kept going further that further in the little forest now reaching parts of it we never went to before, trees getting closer to each other blocking light and paths getting narrow or ending altogether. Seemed we got lost until we saw what looked like an area with no trees at all, like a little circle of land cleared of branches and trunks.

More than that, we noticed bright yellow flowers on little hills only noticeable in that little part of the forest.

That was odd enough to draw our attention and next thing we knew we were at the edge of that circled by trees but treeless piece of land with yellow flowers blossoming on little hills.

First the smell of rotting flesh hit, then the sign of the little hills emerging from a lake of thick red liquid. I could have sword we were at the shore of a lake of blood, rotten, vile and very fucking real.

My brain glitched for a second trying to make sense of it before fight or flight kicked in and I ran as fast as I could too terrified to even scream or see if my friends were with me.

Next thing I knew I was at home screaming at my mom about the blood hoping she will have a logical explanation for it. A lake of blood, how could this possibly be explained, but she’s my mom and I believe she knows all. And it was warm comfort when she said, she believes me and it’s nothing to be concerned about as there is a slaughterhouse nearby the words and they must be draining the blood there, so it’s not scary but I also shouldn’t have been there in the first place to see it.

I felt comforted and sheltered, it was just a dumping ground for store bough meat, it’s not q lake of blood, not in that way. It made sense. It was not as scary as it seems.

It made so much sense in fact I calmly explained to my friends what it was and the ones who were not there that night I offered to guide there and show and explain it’s nothing to be scared of.

We did decide to go but strangely never found it again. No lake; no flowers. I’ve been to that forest many time since, never found it again. It’s not a big forest, there wasn’t enough time for them to completely clear it and yet it somehow never was there.

I went to my mom and told her I tried to explain to my friends and calm them like she has explained to me but never managed to find the place. But I reassured her I’m not afraid and the slaughterhouse dumping ground is nothing that I will keep me up at night.

What did keep me up at night however was my mom’s response “What slaughterhouse? What are you talking about? There is no slaughterhouse nearby”.

She had no recollection of our conversation and there was no evidence of that blood lake ever being there. But i remember and I know it was real because I took one of those yellow flowers home.