I want blood like this.

This bizarre but kinda cool story popped into my head last week, and this picture was what came of it.

So there's some kinda monster/creature that is exploring a cave, and for whatever reason he loses his torch. It's pitch black and feeling around in the dark only gets him more and more lost. The thing is about his species - their blood is phosphorescent, bioluminescent, or whatever the heck I really mean. Basically, it glows like the goop in glowsticks.

The creature realizes that if he keeps blundering around in the dark, he's never going to get out and he'll die - starvation or falling into some terrible abyss, one of the two. So after some hesitation, he breaks off a stalactite and uses the jagged edge to open a gash. The problem is, there needs to be a decent amount of blood on the surface before he can really see anything in the glow. And as the blood congeals and dries, it dulls to black.

So what we have here is a race against time - he needs to be bleeding severely to see, and he needs to see to get out... but too much blood lost and he'll weaken and die anyway. The way it ended in my head, he collapses just as he sees light and is pondering the horrible irony when then light turns out to be the torch of a search party member. And when he's old, he shows his scars to kid-creatures as a lesson not to go cave exploring unprepared and alone.