He had been bleeding for ten days.
“Cuts don’t seal,” said the doctor to the military man. “But the blood never stops. Ought to be dead by now.”
“And the blood?” asked the military man.
“O-negative. Universal. Completely normal.”
“Clean?”
“As a whistle.”
The military man nodded. “Well, pack him up. We’ll take him.”
The bleeding man had no name. At least, they didn’t know his name. He’d been found outside a concert venue laid out in a pool of his own blood. Head split wide open. The couple that found him were sure he was dead. They had even debated passing by. They had dinner plans.
But he twitched. Spasmed. Coughed a little.
Then the EMTs arrived and they thought he was dead. They got him to the hospital where they were sure he was going to die any minute.
Just wait.
He’ll be dead any second.
They couldn’t close the wound in his head. Bandages soaked through. Sutures were slowly loosened by the pressure of that ceaseless blood.
Endlessly, he leaked. But he never died. And he never woke up.
The military man had a name. It was Johansen. He was an administrative sort of military man. Made things happen. Filled out a lot of paperwork. Solved problems.
And there was a problem in the north. The years long war had drained all three sides. But unlike the unnamed man, they had their limits and their limits were fast approaching.
Medical supplies for the front line were becoming a problem. New legislation let regular citizens put limits on how their blood donations were used, and the war was not popular. Not on any of the three sides. Some shortages you could buy your way out of. Or at least borrow your way through. But not blood.
The field medic was dubious. “We’re taking blood from this guy? He looks 95% dead already. And he’s got a head wound.”
“He’s good for it,” said Johansen.
The medic didn’t like it – didn’t like most of what his world had become – but did it anyway. He put a needle to the unnamed man’s arm and tapped him like a maple tree.
This went on for three months. The man received fluids. He was tube fed whatever his body could handle. And in return he produced blood.
Blood.
Blood.
Blood.
The war was the war. It never improved. All sides lost and lost and lost some more. But it never ended.
After three months, another military man arrived. A more important sort. More medals. Bigger shoulder pads.
“Tell me about the blood supply man?”
“It’s pretty simple,” said the medic. “He bleeds, but never runs out. So we’ve tapped him. He’s keeping our banged up boys alive out there.”
The military man nodded. “We need to borrow him. Things are getting hairy out west.”
The medic hadn’t liked the idea of draining the unconscious man of his blood (even if the supply was seemingly endless). But now he didn’t like the idea of letting the man go. Still, orders were orders. He never considered saying anything other than “Yes sir.”
This new military man was named Olsen. And he wasn’t lying about how bad things were in the west, but he wasn’t being fully truthful either. What was happening in the west wasn’t technically a part of the ongoing war. It wasn’t the sort of operation the military was ever going to openly acknowledge, not unless Congress forced them to.
They brought the unconscious Man to an empty warehouse. It was night. Olsen had three armed guards and one nurse tasked with cleaning the unconscious man’s head wound and making sure his feeding tube didn’t get infected.
Inside the warehouse were two men and three women, all dressed in black. They stood in a neat line, arms crossed, faces impassive.
“Here he is,” said Olsen. “Unlimited blood. Just keep him fed and keep his wound sterile. You’ll never go hungry again.”
One of the women stepped forward. She examined the unconscious man with visual disgust.
“Do you know how he came to be like this?” she asked.
Olsen shook his head. “No medical explanation. And it’s not like we can ask him. But I assure you, he’s endless. They’ve been bleeding him for over three months now. Never stops. Never slows down. Take as much as you need. More keeps coming.”
The woman nodded, though her face continued to reflect her open distaste. “We don’t like this,” she said.
“How do you think we feel?” replied Olsen.
The woman laughed. “War.”
“It’s a bitch, isn’t it?”
There was no paperwork. Nothing to sign. No handshakes, either. The people dressed in black bundled up the unconscious man and took their leave.
Olsen felt a pang of guilt. Not for the man, of course. But for the boys and girls back on the front line. Hopefully, they’d make due. Hopefully, it would all be over soon enough.
The woman in black’s name was Gaul. She was centuries old, and that was as precise as she was willing to be on the subject. She and her associates took the unconscious man south, then west, before ultimately arriving at a mansion in the desert.
A man with a smooth, young face and old, tired eyes greeted Gaul at the door.
“And?”
Gaul motioned toward the unconscious man being carried into the house. “This is our payment.”
“One man?”
Gaul rolled her eyes. “You’ve really lost your touch, haven’t you? Look again.”
The man with old eyes bent closer to the unconscious man. Sniffed him. Put a finger to his neck.
“Ah. I see. Well, here’s hoping he tastes better than he looks.”
The unconscious man stayed in that house for many years. His body aged, though his head wound never closed and his veins never ran dry.
His neck was covered in a plaster cast. Too many had been tempted to go straight to the source. Such was their nature. But it was already proven that holes and punctures would never heal, and there was no good reason to waste even a drop of his blood.
In that house they set the unconscious man up in a room on the third floor. Everyday he was attended by someone who cleaned his body, kept his wound free from infection, and made sure he was fed. At times they would try to experiment with his food. More fat. More acid. Different vitamin combinations. Not for his health, of course, but for his flavor.
The effort was hardly worth it. He generally always tasted the same.
After a time he became no more than an appliance to them. Like a coffee maker. And like even the most expensive coffee maker, they let him fall into disrepair. He became dirty. His wound oozed something other than blood.
The one with tired eyes would yell, “Who’s responsible for the blood man?” They would take better care of him. Get his infections in order. But only for a little while. Soon enough they went back to not really bothering.
One day a man arrived at the house. This was a wealthy man representing even wealthier men and women.
“We want to buy your blood man,” he said.
Secretly, the people in the house had grown tired of the taste of the blood man’s blood. Too much of the same thing was not in their nature. But still they drove a hard bargain.
“I can’t imagine he’s more valuable to you than he is to us,” said the man with tired eyes.
“Value is irrelevant,” said the wealthy man. “When we want something, we get it. And we want him.”
The price was obscene, and yet the people in the mansion, who had grown tired of the unconscious man’s blood, felt as though they had made a regretful decision almost as soon as the body was dragged out the front door.
Wealthy people, given enough wealth and enough time, will inevitably grow weary of human limitations. They will yearn for new planets, new horizons, and new realities. Or they will become obsessed with cultures and traditions once thought inaccessible or simply imaginary.
They will not stand the world as it is. Everything becomes too small for their ambition. When anything can be bought, nothing has value.
And so the wealthy man and his wealthy friends were of a group that was interested in a specific world beyond our own. A world of magic and power and unspeakable evil.
They sought to make a covenant with a particular demon, one who had not appeared in the land of the living for a very, very long time. It was said that the payment for an audience was blood. More blood than seemed fathomable in those days of long wars and declining population.
They had constructed for themselves a pit ringed with stadium seating. No one could see the bottom of the pit, though they were told it was carved with runes and symbols of an ancient manner. Blood needed to fill the pit. Cover every symbol. Enough blood and the demon would hear them. But it had been hard to find that many sacrifices. It was, after all, a very big pit.
They strung the unconscious man up above the center of the pit. Twenty feet off the ground and who knew how many feet above the bottom of the pit.
The head wound was only a trickle, so they slit his throat.
“He bleeds without death,” one had argued. “There is no need to be cautious.”
And yes, he did not die. The blood gushed in a satisfying stream, never breaking, never stalling. The sound of the splashing in the grand hollow of the pit reminded some of the gentle lull of a distant waterfall.
But one man makes only so much blood. And the pit was vast. Those in the audience were dismayed at how little even a day’s worth of bleeding had filled the pit.
And so the viewing became an occasional check-in. The unconscious man was fed the necessary slurry of nutrients, but no more care was given. Day in and day out, night and day, on and on, he bled into the pit.
After a week, it seemed as though the blood was finally beginning to rise up the sides of the pit.
“It looks a little higher today, doesn’t it?” one said.
The leaders of the sect stood at the edge of the pit and huddled nervously.
“How much longer?”
“How much is enough?”
“What if He rejects the offering?”
“Something wrong with the blood, you think?”
“They say He is not easily impressed. Perhaps using the blood of only one man…”
They looked up. The unconscious man dangled above, connected to the black pool below by a flickering line of flowing blood.
The demon never came. There was an expose about one of the leaders of the sect. Two journalists had embedded themselves successfully. They had eyewitness reports of what the sect was doing. About the sacrifices. The beliefs. The bleeding man.
Of course, the journalists were funded by a different group of wealthy elites. A group that had come to feel excluded, and worried about their place. They clung too tightly to other spirits and unseeable demons. They were jealous.
The reasons didn’t really matter. The sect scattered. The pit was drained. The unconscious man was sold to a curiosities dealer for less than 1% of what he had cost the last time he had been sold as property.
The curiosities dealer had a case built. Clear glass, double strong. The unconscious man was propped in the case at a slight angle, so his head and neck would lay across a clear shelf. The blood flowed across this landing and down a complex spiral luge that wrapped around the man’s body. It was beautiful in its way.
The curiosities dealer built a museum around the unconscious man in his glass case. And of course the bleeding man was the highlight. They sold souvenir vials of his blood. Kids could put in a coin and watch food go into his feeding tube.
“Why doesn’t he wake up?” kids would ask.
“No one knows.”
“How can he bleed so much?”
“I guess he’s not quite human.”
“Is he ever gonna die?”
“Everybody dies.”
One day, the man woke up. He could not move his limbs. They were trapped in the contours of the double strong glass. He saw his own blood spilling, sliding, and spiraling away. His vocal chords had been cut, though, back when they’d slit his throat. So he couldn’t scream. Couldn’t make a sound at all.
“His eyes!” said a little girl. “His eyes are open!”
The people oooh’d and awww’d.
The now-conscious man could not move and he could not speak. His eyes and lips fluttered, open to interpretation.
“He likes it,” said a mother to her daughter, pointing at the coin-operated feeding machine. “Feed him some more.”
The kids pressed up to the coin slot and one-by-one dropped their coins. The man could feel the sludge of food flowing directly into his guts. The children cheered and the parents took pictures.
The man never slept again. Never fell back into unconsciousness. There in that museum he spent his remaining days watching children watching him bleed, and bleed, and bleed.
Except eventually they stopped watching. And that was somehow worse. Because he never stopped bleeding, and now he was bleeding alone. At least before someone saw all the blood coming out of him. Even if one person could see it, that would be enough.
Sometime later they burned down the museum. For insurance money. The insurance company folded before the claim paid out, though. No money. No one came out on top. All that remained was a smoldering ruin and memories of blood.
blood.
and blood.
and blood.
Image credit: Alex Shuper
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