"I thought so," Ben explained. "She was fifty yards out. Slapping at the water. Screaming bloody murder. It was—"
"The worst thing you’ve ever heard," Miranda finished. And in their ears they all heard the scream he’d heard that day.
"I only paused to take off my shoes. Then I dove in."
"You were always a good swimmer."
"I got there in seconds, really. The adrenaline, you know?"
"But she wasn’t there."
"No. She was further out than I thought. A hundred maybe. I had only gone half the distance. When I looked her head went under, it—"
"It scared you worse than when you where six and you got lost at the mall."
"But then I realized it was all wrong. The lake. The girl. Everything."
"Why?" Miranda asked, and Ben couldn’t tell if it was because she honestly couldn’t read him or that she thought he had to be the one to say it.
"How could she scream aloud if she was drowning?" he asked. "How could she splash for her very life and not make the water so much as ripple? I knew it then. I felt him. I didn’t know what he was, of course, but I felt him there. Somewhere."
"Yes," Miranda said, and from all corners of the room the bar flies were thinking about their own first encounters. Images flew into Ben’s mind, each with the same man in the same clothes, but in different places and times. In all of them the thick stench of jungle accosted his nose.
"I tried to go back. The girl wasn’t real. She was a mirage or a ghost. Something put there only to lure me. But then..."
"He rose from the water!" Miranda gasped. She was feeling the power of the moment. She was loving the memory of her own encounter.
"He stood on the surface of the water like some kind of god," Ben said. "And he told me I had been chosen. Not as prey, but as kin."
"Your spirit was pure."
"My spirit was pure, he said. I didn’t know what that meant, but it sounded so good. I was so proud to be worthy."
"Then he offered you a choice," Miranda continued.
"A choice to forget or to remember. I chose to remember ... and who wouldn’t? I’m only human," Ben admitted. "I couldn’t stand the thought of having part of my life removed. But to remember meant he would bite me. One bite."
"One bite," the entire room said. Ben thought he may have heard even the Jedi’s rocky snarl whisper it too.
"A bite that would dirty you," Miranda said.
"Infect you," added the man by the TV.
"Change you," a woman at a table by the door finished.
"Yes," Ben agreed. "But only a partial change. One bite would only change me a little."
"One bite," the room whispered again.
"And then he bit," Miranda said.
"Yes," Ben said. His eyes were still staring into the last three inches of dark beer, and he began to feel the memory of the twin fangs puncture his neck. "He lifted me from the water and bit down."
Then the memory exploded, flooding through them all, and their individual memories flooded back and shot from person to person in a whirlwind of chaotic bliss. Each one was laced with ice and pain and wonderful, giving love as their blood flowed out and into their captor.
In a single motion, they all reached slowly to their necks and rubbed at the red punctures still fresh on their skins.
Ben shook his vision and went on, though his hand remained at his neck, the fingernails digging and scratching there until fresh blood finally began to weep from the wound. "Then he took me, floating across the black lake like a ... lost balloon. That’s how I felt. So lost. So helpless."
"He returned you to the dock," Miranda said.
"Yeah. And on the way he whispered in my ear. He told me if I wanted more, if I wanted the second and then the third bite that would complete the transformation, I could have it any time I wanted."
"You need only ask," Miranda said. "Say his name. That’s all."
"And then he’d come," Ben finished. "I’d find him waiting for me that night. When the sun had gone down."
"And his name," said an old woman by the door, "was one he chose when he had been changed."
"Way back in 1914," the man by the TV picked up.
"In The Great War," the old woman. "The ‘War to End All Wars,’ they called it."
"And his choice, Miranda said, "had been his rank."
"The same as a little bar somewhere in some city where other people who had been bitten sometimes went," Ben finished. "A bar I’d probably find if I really wanted to."
And though they were all thinking it, nobody said the name aloud. They didn’t dare. Ben felt the sudden hatred of the word. Felt the cruel taunt of it brandished above the door they walked through each day and in the hundred décor items surrounding them. He felt the disgust each bar fly felt in loving the sound of it in their minds. He even felt, from deep inside the distant psyche of the Jedi, the siren-like song that Bessie, the thousand pound bomb, might actually be singing. It was the name, of course. His name. All they needed to end their torture. All they needed to end their lives.
Ben inhaled deeply and shook his head once more, trying to rid the world of evil and falling eons short. He looked up from his warming, thickening beer to finish his story, though he already understood the details were irrelevant. All their stories were essentially the same, which is why they found such easy kinship.
"He dropped me on the dock," he said. "Hard, like I was some kind of discarded bag of meat, which is pretty close to the truth I guess. Landed on my hip. The damned thing’s been killing me ever since. I swear when I see him again..." But the emptiness of the threat was so laughable that none of the bar flies bothered to smile.
"The pain of it brought me back, though," Ben continued. "I hadn’t even realized I had been dreaming, you know? Such a ridiculous dream. It was so real. Almost like there really had been a screaming girl and a man who rose out of the water."
"But that was all a dream," Miranda said. "It had to be."
"Had to be," Ben agreed. "But I turned to see him anyway, to ... authenticate it somehow."
"But he was gone," Miranda whispered. Her voice was eerily like the Jedi’s now, filled with effort and pain.
"He was gone," Ben confirmed.
And then silence, real silence, dripped and then flowed through the bar. Nobody spoke. Nobody shifted. Nobody breathed, even. They spent the rest of the day like this, just waiting for the sun to retire and for another day to begin.
Shortly after the sun did finally go down, one subtle sound finally leaked across the sullen bar. A sound which no one acknowledged but they all heard and felt with perfect, kindred harmony. It was the soft whine of the Jedi as he cried salty tears into his pungent drink.
Keith Edwin Fritz entered this world on Halloween. The year, 1974, was the same as when Stephen Edwin King published his first novel. Keith prefers to think neither the date nor their middle names were a coincidence.
Today he teaches 7th Grade Language Arts and writes Thrillers, Dark Fantasy, Science Fiction, Horror, and sometimes Y.A. Fiction all to his heart's content during his "spare time". The best of these moments are nearly always by moonlight. The worst of them are also by moonlight.
As 'K. Edwin Fritz', he has self-published three books and been published on Drabblecast.org, in "Spaceports & Spidersilk" magazine, and in "Ascent Magazine".
Keith lives with his wife, Corina, in Hillsborough, NJ.
(Back to Table of Contents)
The Mood Donation Center
by Alex Bottle; published March 25, 2014
The tall, portly gentleman breezed into Sami’s clinic just as he always did at donation time. No one breezed out again afterwards, not even him, and she felt every note of his whistled "New York, New York" breach her professional facade. She forced out her nurse technician smile and scanned his proffered wrist ID. She never relished observing her handiwork’s effect on the other donors, but she always said it was worse with friends.
"England expects
."
As usual, she didn’t get Cecil’s reference. "Not England," she pointed out. "Minister Vozd."
"Please refrain from mentioning her." Cecil pulled an amateur dramatic grimace. "But from your tone, my dear, I’d say that holiday hasn’t done you much good."
"The pyramids were just amazing." Sami allowed a grin to peep through at the memory. "I found the walking hard, though."
"Of course," he said quietly. "You look a little thin, if I may say so. Any word on whether you’ll get the treatment?"
Sami shrugged. "I don’t know yet." It was out of her control. No point dwelling on it. She switched to her professional voice. "How is your mood today?"
"I’m just grand, though I can’t say I’m glad to be here. Not your fault, I know."
It still felt like it was. Now she had bad news for him. "Cecil, I’m afraid you’re due for your extended donation. Were you aware of that?"
"Extended?" Cecil sat up. "I can’t be due yet. I can’t be. But I haven’t received any notification. I’m sure I’ve only donated three times this year. Sami, I can’t be."
She didn’t want to meet his grey-blue eyes. "I’m sorry, Cecil. Under the new guidelines, every fourth is an extended."
"Oh God." He blew out his cheeks.
"I’ll give you extra neocoke afterwards to take the edge off it."
He held up a palm. "No, thank you. Well, once more unto the breach, I suppose."
"To the what?"
"Sometimes I forget how young you are," Cecil said with a sigh, "and how little your generation reads."
She fixed the donation apparatus around Cecil’s scalp and tested the connections before setting the timer to extract the higher harvest. "I’m sorry you get so low afterwards, if it’s any consolation."
"You’re very sweet, Sami."
"So, have you chosen your visualization routine?"
"Scarborough beach. It’s not Giza, but the fish and chips are better."
She strapped his head against the bed extension and applied the muscle relaxant gel to his forehead. Poor old Cecil, she thought, always tries to make me laugh. As she monitored the flow from her screen in the next ten minutes, she tried to drive from her mind the image of Minister Vozd’s podgy, grasping fingers and the sound of her whining about healthcare reform opponents.
"How much longer?"
Her insides kicked. She could already hear that telltale change in his voice. "Ten more minutes. Try to continue your visualization."
Why was this necessary? Particularly during a friend’s donation, she often went over it in her mind. After the obesity epidemic had come the "fifth horseman" — depression — just when the neurochemical model that had launched a dozen classes of medications hit a crisis. Then came the technology for transferring mood itself, at least in its basic forms of "up" and "down." Mood donation took off as blood donation had done, though many governments had felt the need to mandate it. As a technician, Sami was exempt from any mood donation. Her friends all told her they felt low for at least a fortnight afterwards, and longer for extendeds. In a cruel irony, some people even killed themselves.
"Done." Sami got up and uncoupled the apparatus.
For a few seconds, he didn’t move. She held out a tissue to wipe his dampened face, but he didn’t take it.
"Are you okay?" She usually didn’t ask this most pointless of questions, but she couldn’t help it with Cecil.
He looked up. The pain in his eyes made her look away. "Am I okay?" He heaved out a laugh. "What do you think?"
She said nothing and wiped the scalp contacts clean and dry. More souls waited in line outside.
"I can let you have five more minutes, Cecil."
Barely moving, he took all five minutes.
"I’m so sorry, Cecil, but it’s time for the next donor."
"Of course, of course," he mumbled as he got to his feet.
She pretended to focus on her screen. Anything but watch him shuffle out. Yes, it was worse with friends.
~~~~~
After the next donor had left, Sami’s webphone rang. There was no mistaking the fake silver hair flowing over those well-padded shoulders.
"Good day, Sami," said Minister Galya Vozd, her hands folded on her enormous ministerial desk. "How are the extractions going?"
"I’ve just done another extended, Minister," Sami was glad to report. Pity it was Cecil.
"Excellent! And how many is that this month?"
She brought up the analysis module on her screen and displayed the bar chart.
Vozd looked down and read off the total above the bar marked "extended."
"So you’ve been a busy bee. Our citizens are so obliging. But is Citizen Sami as obliging?"
Sami swallowed. "How much would you like?" She tried to sound like she was merely handing out ice cream but failed.
"My dear Sami, there’s no need to be like that. It’s very stressful being a minister in the government, with these doctors all so up in arms against my new bill. I need my relief. And there’s plenty of relief to spare, wouldn’t you say? Especially with all these lovely extra donations. You’re always so good to me. One of my better decisions. There were others, you know, in the same position as you. Others who could, shall we say, have received a degree of unwanted high-level attention were it not for my ... modest efforts."
Vozd never let Sami forget it. "How is my case coming on?"
"I’ll bring you right up to date when I arrive. Shall we say seven o’clock this evening?"
Sami excused the receptionist who needed to go home and prepared the apparatus to give rather than receive. At five to seven, Vozd strutted through the door, marched up to Sami’s desk, and put her gloved hands together in a gesture of expectative delight.
"I’ve felt the weight of responsibility particularly keenly this week," said Minister Vozd. "Do you know how much responsibility weighs, I wonder?"
Sami didn’t look up from her task. "Nearly ready, Minister."
Vozd threw her handbag and coat over the back of Sami’s chair. "I can’t decide what to listen to during the procedure. First I thought that I was in the mood for something grand like Mahler, like his Symphony of a Thousand. But it’s been such a stressful week, with my tiresome advisors talking about another flu epidemic, and everyone shouting about who should be given the vaccine first. Perhaps something calmer like a Mozart piano concerto would be better. What do you think?" She settled herself on the bed and took out her portable music device.
Sami made some kind of non-committal gesture and connected the Minister to the donation apparatus coupler. "Mozart."
"What a good idea. That’s another thing I like about you, Sami. You make such good decisions, though I suspect that this one was intuitive. Being a technician has its advantages, like exemption from donations, but knowledge of culture is unlikely to be among them."
Sami began the loading procedure, diverting the precious good humor that Cecil and so many other citizens had given up for the public good. Before the Minister’s attention was completely lost to the euphoric hit, there was just time to introduce the subject of most importance to Sami.
"Minister, can we talk about my case?"
Vozd was now humming along with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s opening tutti. Sami moved closer and repeated her question.
"Your case? Well, I do believe it’s receiving favorable attention. Ah, and now the soloist enters." She lifted her hands as if imitating the pianist at the point of striking his first notes.
"So, where am I on the list?"
"I believe that the medical assessment tribunal are meeting again soon. This time, of course, they have some new information on your circumstances, namely my ... patronage. Is that the right word? This ought to work very well in your favor, don’t you think? And after the development comes the recapitulation. Such a master of sonata form!"
"So, will I know soon? I need to know. Soon."
As the ecstasy suffused the minister’s face, Sami hated herself
just a bit more.
"Yes, yes, you’ll know soon." Vozd’s voice was faint now. "Don’t you worry your pretty little head."
Sami was the first to admit that her head wasn’t in fact all that pretty. "When will they decide?"
But she knew that this conversation was over for the next fifteen minutes. There was nothing else to do but sit on the chair and watch the monitor. She sat upright, not wanting to make contact with the minister’s coat still draped there, looking at the monitor without really seeing. She tried not to think about Cecil or how he was coping right at that moment. Probably not well. Here she was, giving his happiness away to increase her chances of getting her the one treatment that would halt her cancer. With a tumor as rare as hers, it was inevitable that the more standard — and cheaper — approaches had failed. The medical tribunal alone would decide if she got the eta-interferon. As its members were reliant on state funding for their research, they generally considered it unwise to upset the Minister who doubled as National Research Council chairman.
She checked Vozd for signs of returning awareness. "How was that?"
"Oh Sami, my dear little Sami. Just wonderful, oh just wonderful. I feel as if I could handle any public inquiry single-handedly. You’re so good to me."
"So ... about my case, Minister. When will I know? I’ve lost more weight this month, I’m sure I have."
"Don’t look so worried! I think it suits you. Even though I myself am always in rather rude health, I have to admit, I understand how difficult it is for you. I really do. I’ll find out and will put in another good word for you. You’ll get that eta-interferon, little Sami. I’m convinced of it."
At last, it was done. With the apparatus disconnected, the minister got up and adjusted her clothes, sighing contentedly. The echoing of her heels striking the floor echoed in Sami’s head. On hearing the door shut, Sami fell onto the chair and let it spin her halfway round. She wanted to lie down on the bed, but this one had been rendered unclean. Seconds after telling herself Don’t cry, she broke into sobs. She told herself to keep her eyes on the prize, as someone very famous had once said. It didn’t matter who or what the prize was then. All that mattered to Sami was the tribunal.
~~~~~
Maybe she had got the date wrong. Maybe the hearing hadn’t been when the Minister had said it would be. And maybe it would take a while for them to inform her of their decision. The uncomfortable fact was that Sami was still at her day job, sucking the living joy out of the public, waiting for news a month after the Minister’s last visit. With guilty conscience, she rang Cecil. He’d been signed off work and had barely moved from his living room sofa. Despite their friendship, she found herself retreating into day-job mode. After some long silences, she hung up. She couldn’t tell if he’d appreciated her calling or not.