Blood Money
pense à moi
They call themselves The Vultures.
Body snatchers, grave robbers, cold-blooded murders, they’re all the same thing. Business people in the people business.
“We’re just recycling life,” Ruby always tells me, “Doing our part to save the environment. We’re altruistic, really, when you think about it.”
Part of that is true if you think about it hard enough, twist the words around until they’re tied in a pretzel knot, and squint at them from far away.
In other words, it’s all bullshit.
But that’s just what Ruby Ranson does the best. I swear to God, the girl’s so crafty she could sell a corpse a vacation. In another life, she must have been a car salesman or a real estate agent. It’s amazing, really, how she managed to build a vast empire out of something so vulgar, so gruesome, and look at us now: Mighty kings sitting on thrones of flesh with crowns of bleached bones atop our skulls, laundering blood money into multitudes of Iranian and Indian banks, living like the rich fat cats of Wall Street when we started off pilfering from the Red Cross and working in an embalmer’s studio in South Carolina.
Drugs are old money. Flesh is our business. Blood is our currency.
“It’s all the same,” Ruby reminds me, “Nothing is simply humane anymore, darling. When people go to blood drives, they give up their precious cells for nothing, and you know what happens after that?”
No, Ruby, I don’t know what happens after that.
“Blood donation is a million dollar industry. The people give for nothing, the industry behind the blood drive sells the product to hospitals, so really,” she eyes me with those beautiful dark irises of hers, “The patients never really, truly receive a completely free donation. What we’re doing is fixing the business. We’re cutting out the middleman and giving straight to the receiving end.”
This is Ruby Ranson speaking. Physically, she may appear to be present, but more often than not, one of her headmates has taken over.
Gemma Bird, she always comes out when we’re doing business. Sweet southern drawl, making men quiver and give her whatever she asks for.
Valerie Victoire is her alter ego from Paris, speaking perfect French, telling me about her mother who moved to New Orleans when she was just a little girl and got caught up in the voodoo magic.
“A fortune teller put a curse on her,” she’d tell me in her Parisian accent, “She simply went insane and started to zink she was a vampire.”
It’s ironic, really.
“She started stealing from blood banks. She drank so much blood zat she died of iron overload.”
It’s called Hemochromatosis. Something tells me she’s bullshitting me again, but at the same time, it makes sense. That would explain how she got into the business in the first place. Then again, she’s told me so many stories about her family that I don’t know what to believe anymore.
“She took my sister, you know,” she tells me, “My younger sister. She kidnapped her from my fazer and I, and I haven’t seen her since. Maybe she’s a vampire, too.”
Valerie will tell me tales of her childhood, about playing with her sister in the wheat fields, skinny dipping in the creeks behind their house at night. Valerie, you can tell she’s more sentimental than the other headmates.
Valerie’s my best friend and Lily of the Valley is the love of my life. Sweet Lily, with her soft spoken, wistful 40’s movie star voice, calling me “sugar” and “baby doll”. There’s something about her, the way her words wrap around me like sweet prose, making me close my eyes and picture an imaginary woman speaking to me with milky white skin, red lips, sapphire eyes, and chestnut pin curls.
But when I lift my eyelids, there’s Ruby. Smooth, caramel complexion, dark eyes, sharp, demanding features. She’s not Lily at all. She’s the head of the business and we’re just her cronies.
And then there’s Shiva. I’ve never seen Shiva before, but I’ve heard about her through the grapevine. Beware of Shiva. She’s the devil. Don’t let her come out.
We’re both scared of Shiva, Jasper and I, but in retrospect, I’d say Shiva is the most important part of this story.
Because Shiva is where Ruby got her bloodlust in the first place.
Body snatchers, grave robbers, cold-blooded murders, they’re all the same thing. Business people in the people business.
“We’re just recycling life,” Ruby always tells me, “Doing our part to save the environment. We’re altruistic, really, when you think about it.”
Part of that is true if you think about it hard enough, twist the words around until they’re tied in a pretzel knot, and squint at them from far away.
In other words, it’s all bullshit.
But that’s just what Ruby Ranson does the best. I swear to God, the girl’s so crafty she could sell a corpse a vacation. In another life, she must have been a car salesman or a real estate agent. It’s amazing, really, how she managed to build a vast empire out of something so vulgar, so gruesome, and look at us now: Mighty kings sitting on thrones of flesh with crowns of bleached bones atop our skulls, laundering blood money into multitudes of Iranian and Indian banks, living like the rich fat cats of Wall Street when we started off pilfering from the Red Cross and working in an embalmer’s studio in South Carolina.
Drugs are old money. Flesh is our business. Blood is our currency.
“It’s all the same,” Ruby reminds me, “Nothing is simply humane anymore, darling. When people go to blood drives, they give up their precious cells for nothing, and you know what happens after that?”
No, Ruby, I don’t know what happens after that.
“Blood donation is a million dollar industry. The people give for nothing, the industry behind the blood drive sells the product to hospitals, so really,” she eyes me with those beautiful dark irises of hers, “The patients never really, truly receive a completely free donation. What we’re doing is fixing the business. We’re cutting out the middleman and giving straight to the receiving end.”
This is Ruby Ranson speaking. Physically, she may appear to be present, but more often than not, one of her headmates has taken over.
Gemma Bird, she always comes out when we’re doing business. Sweet southern drawl, making men quiver and give her whatever she asks for.
Valerie Victoire is her alter ego from Paris, speaking perfect French, telling me about her mother who moved to New Orleans when she was just a little girl and got caught up in the voodoo magic.
“A fortune teller put a curse on her,” she’d tell me in her Parisian accent, “She simply went insane and started to zink she was a vampire.”
It’s ironic, really.
“She started stealing from blood banks. She drank so much blood zat she died of iron overload.”
It’s called Hemochromatosis. Something tells me she’s bullshitting me again, but at the same time, it makes sense. That would explain how she got into the business in the first place. Then again, she’s told me so many stories about her family that I don’t know what to believe anymore.
“She took my sister, you know,” she tells me, “My younger sister. She kidnapped her from my fazer and I, and I haven’t seen her since. Maybe she’s a vampire, too.”
Valerie will tell me tales of her childhood, about playing with her sister in the wheat fields, skinny dipping in the creeks behind their house at night. Valerie, you can tell she’s more sentimental than the other headmates.
Valerie’s my best friend and Lily of the Valley is the love of my life. Sweet Lily, with her soft spoken, wistful 40’s movie star voice, calling me “sugar” and “baby doll”. There’s something about her, the way her words wrap around me like sweet prose, making me close my eyes and picture an imaginary woman speaking to me with milky white skin, red lips, sapphire eyes, and chestnut pin curls.
But when I lift my eyelids, there’s Ruby. Smooth, caramel complexion, dark eyes, sharp, demanding features. She’s not Lily at all. She’s the head of the business and we’re just her cronies.
And then there’s Shiva. I’ve never seen Shiva before, but I’ve heard about her through the grapevine. Beware of Shiva. She’s the devil. Don’t let her come out.
We’re both scared of Shiva, Jasper and I, but in retrospect, I’d say Shiva is the most important part of this story.
Because Shiva is where Ruby got her bloodlust in the first place.
♠ ♠ ♠
ton chagrin s'en ira.this is a story that came into my head just last night. it's going to be fucked up and short and maybe a little confusing. let's roll with it.
xo sunny d