Blood Drive!

I tried to look around for anything that could be seen through my handicapped vision. I knew that I was in a large open room or at least it seemed that way. My bare feet could touch the cold floor and it wasn’t not an even surface. It was slanted forward, my foot had to extend in order to fully rest on the floor. However, glass shards surrounded the area and my feet paid the price of my movements.

Out of nowhere the bag suddenly flies off. I felt a small hand grab at the top of my head and quickly yank the sack off my head in one swift motion. I tried to see my attacker, but my naked eyes weren’t adjusted to the darkness yet. The room is pitch black and my sight became fixated on the only object in the room that was producing light. To my left, illuminated by a small desk lamp, a folding table with medical supplies. Band aids, gauze pads, a cherry lollipop?

“Are those needles?” I thought to myself.

An assortment of needles - thin, small, thick, and large. Some had designs on them. A silver butterfly with a needle tip peeking out from below it. A toy lizard with an open mouth and a needle sticking out of that same mouth. There was even a small, smiling monkey that resembled a stuffed animal or one of those beanie toys. It was lying on its back looking at me with an upside-down smile. Inside its right “hand”, a needle poking out to greet me as well.

Three spotlights were suddenly lit and shone brightly against a gigantic red curtain. It was filled with holes and tears. It had to have been neglected for some period of time. Now I understood where I was at least. This was a theater or what was left of one. I was strapped in near the center aside, possibly the dead center of the entire room. I tried screaming for help but there was no one around to hear it. Hell, I didn’t know where I was, and felt exhausted.

“Why do I feel so drained?”

In the residual lighting created by the spotlights, I finally saw that my arms weren’t bond to anything on the chair. I just couldn’t move them. Perhaps it was something on top of my arms? No. At least seven maybe eight needles had found shelter, borrowing around the various arteries and veins of my left arm. I panicked when I realized each needle was attached to tubes being filled with very dark blood. My blood. Trailing off into the darkened corner of the theater that I couldn’t make out. The arm was numb and didn’t respond to anything I told it to do! I was numb head down.

The right was much the same. Many needles inside with little tubes on the end of each. No blood in them though. It was still numb and unable to move. Finally, there was the issue with my neck, it still hurts like hell right now. After tiring out from attempting to move my hapless arms, I tilted my head back and the motion stopped too early. Something was in my neck, two rods jammed in forcing my neck to have limited motion. It felt uncomfortable but not painful.

I tried shaking my head around to see if they would loosen. My hands were never able to move freely and feel around my own neck. I never saw what was in me. In the aftermath, based on the marks left behind, I have to believe something was inserted under my skin.

As I continued to jostle with my neck, I barely heard the guitar player. Somewhere behind me, an acoustic guitar had begun playing a beautiful tune. My fears were amplified and mixed in with natural curiosity. Not only because of the existence of the player or the presence of this tune. You see, I vaguely recognized it.

I knew I had heard this tune before. At least once maybe even twice, but I couldn’t pin point the name of it. The guitarist was repeating the same verse over and over again. Still, I couldn’t name the tune. The playing continued and I began to make a connection. The guitar would play an occasional wrong note during each verse. It was coming from behind me and wasn’t a recording.

The guitarist played louder as the sound of wheels began rolling around back stage. Wheels, then footsteps, more wheels, then more footsteps, more wheels, then more footsteps. This went on for what felt like hours. Maybe it was. A sudden bang rang out from behind causing the guitarist to cease playing right in the middle of the verse. The curtains began to open and I could hear more footsteps behind me.

The unknown presence was right behind me but even those fears had to take a back seat after I finally saw what was on that stage. Rows of tables standing vertical in a straight line. For each table, a person strapped in, in a similar setup to my own. Except I was sitting and they were hanging by their arms. Needles and tubes plugged into the arms of men and women alike! All of them there in no discernible order, gagged and unable to move as they just hung there! One other figure was just standing at the center of the stage with a microphone and began making a shushing noise as if to quiet a crowd.

This figure was a woman. Very short and frail. She couldn’t have weighted more than 90 lbs. She wore a nurse’s uniform, complete with blue latex gloves and was in all white clothing with a red plus sign on her chest. On her face, I could see her eyes peering at me through her glasses. Even from a distance, I could feel her glare at me. Her mouth and nose were covered by a green rubber mask resembling the bottom half a large lizard’s face. The mask’s nose was rounded with two slits for nostrils and the mouth was perpetually open showing off its large yellow teeth.

Ignoring the horrified moans of the people on stage as they tried to scream, she slowly got down from the stage. She was walking over to me. Slowly. Very Slowly. My first thought, I was about to join everyone else on stage. But if that were true, why was I in a seat with no wheels and for that matter why would she bother to place me here! In the middle of the theater! She continued to approach, getting closer and closer, with the microphone still in hand. Then she stopped around the halfway point between the stage and where I was sitting. She paused, for a few moments and while raising the microphone, spoke in a calm but raspy old voice:

“Welcome to our show.”

“Let your arms unfold as we invite you to help these new angels begin their journey to Honah Lee.”

“Now, let us properly thank them for saving our boy, Jackie.”

Thunderous applause erupted from the building. My body wanted to jump a little despite my limited mobility.

There they were.

The footsteps.

They were all here somehow. How big was this theater? Why didn’t I notice them sooner? The theater amplified their clapping, so even a crowd of a few could sound like the applause of a hundred and I never saw any of them.

As the crowd continued to applauded, she screamed out in a surprisingly loud voice:

“NOW LET US RELEASE OUR ANGELS SO THAT THEY CAN FLY!”

More thunderous cheering came from the mystery crowd, even louder than before– all cheering together for a common goal. I could hear the guitarist begin to play again as the woman began to walk back to the stage.

As the vile woman got on stage, she began acting strangely. Breaking out into a sprint, she ran to the people on stage and began violently stabbing one of them with needles. Starting with an old man, the needles began draining him, to the horror of the captives on stage. They couldn’t do anything about it but watch.

All of a sudden the crowds began singing along in a chorus along with the guitarist, like mass goers singing along with a hymn. The song, the one I couldn’t figure out before, was now being shouted out by this crowd of people.

''Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea and frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honah Lee. Little Jackie paper loved that rascal puff and brought him strings and sealing wax and other fancy stuff. Oh Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea and frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honah Lee. Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea and frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honah Lee.''

I just watched in shock. With the voices of the crowd continuing to get closer and closer behind me, I could only watch as the woman aggressively drained everyone on stage. She was collecting their blood in these bags and placing them in coolers. One by one, they were drained – unable to move and like me could only watch.

Hours past.

I was still awake somehow, with the woman still going onto her 9th victim and the crowds still chanting. My torment ended when my tubes were now filled with blood.

“This is the end” I thought.

My blood would be drained, it had to be. But something was wrong, this wasn’t my dark blood – it was healthy red blood. New blood. It most have been too much for me to handle because I remember very little after the realization that I wasn’t losing blood but gaining it.

Safe in my bed I awoke. Convinced it was a dream at first, that drinking coffee before bed had caused it. I laughed, as I simply thought.

“What the hell was that?”

That was the last happy thought I had before heading into the kitchen. It was here, when I found the cherry lollipop and that note on the kitchen table that my memory and pain returned.