Blood Money

Living becomes eerie when you’re preparing to die.

It was easy the first time because I was unsuspecting, knocked out easily, and when I woke up, I didn’t remember a thing. No guilt. No sadness. No regret. Like ripping a band-aid off when your nervous system is incapable of feeling pain.

This time, however, I am forced to prepare for it; the sudden migraines, vomiting every time I eat, feeling lethargic no matter how much rest I get. This slow bleed in my brain will kill me. I might as well make the most of it and go out with a bang, even if I die with blood on my hands.

It turns out I’m not the only one living with the shadow of death hanging over my shoulder, as Jasper informs me one day.

“You wanna know the real reason why I got involved in all this shit?” He says to me under his breath, though he doesn’t appear to be trying to hide any of this from Ruby. She probably knows all of this by now, anyway. The two are inseparable.

“It’s because I’m in the same situation as you.”

That sentence alone makes me confused. I’ve become accustomed to the feeling, to be quite honest. I don’t think I’ll ever be fully satiated as long as I’m with The Vultures.

“You’re supposed to be dead?” I ask him wryly. To my surprise, I actually get a chuckle out of him.

“No,” he says, “But I’m going to be. Soon.”

My interest has peaked.

“I guess we have more in common than we thought.”

In your average cookie cutter romantic comedy, this would be the moment where everything gets silent, our bodies gravitate toward each other, our faces increase in proximity, and our eyelids flutter closed as we kiss. But we don’t, because nothing about this is romantic. There’s no room for romance when there’s death involved.

I learn that the hard way.

“As you may have noticed, I’m very pale,” he starts.

You don’t say.

“I have a rare disease that sometimes accompanies albinism,” he explains, “It’s the reason I became interested in the human body in the first place. It’s why I went to medical school.”

He tells me it’s called Chediak-Higashi Syndrome and it’s apparently a lot like AIDS. He says it usually kills you before you even reach adulthood.

“I guess I just got lucky.”

He tells me something about his white blood cells unstoppably dividing and invading his major organs and causing fever and bleeding and infections; pretty much everything that’ll make a doctor’s paycheck grow exponentially if he were to actually get it treated.

“I’ve been getting sicker and sicker. I can hardly go outside anymore; I have to wear a black cloak when we do business.” He continues, shaking his head, “Ruby wasn’t kidding when she said you were a godsend.”

I thought it was Gemma who said that.

“Why are you telling me this?” I inquire with a crinkle of my eyebrow.

It’s honestly alarming how fast these two have taken me in. Almost like they knew I was coming.

“Because you’re involved now and you should know what you’re getting into. Because I don’t know which of us is going to die first.”

I guess there’s no room for beating around the bush when you’re just waiting for the day you drop dead.

“What’s Ruby going to do when we’re both gone?” I ask him. He shrugs.

“Hopefully we’ll have made enough money by then that she’ll be able to quit this business and stand on her own.”

We both know that’s not true. Even with my limited experience knowing these two and being in the Red Market, I already know Ruby loves this blood money. She’s obsessed with it, and both of us dropping dead won’t change that. She has too many people in her system that’ll be forced to come to her aid in case of emergency.

That is, if we don’t get caught before then.

“Well,” I sigh, “I’ll race you to the finish line.”

We’re on our way to meet an inside source at the hospital; the same person who supplied mine, my mother’s, and the rest of the car wreck victims’ bodies. His name is Jonesy and he almost faints when he sees me. I don’t blame him. The last time he saw me, I was probably hanging out with the rest of the corpses.

Like everyone says, I’m supposed to be dead.

Jasper is in his aforementioned black cloak, his entire body covered save for a thin strip across his eyes. He looks like the Grim Reaper himself. Ruby has gone into full Gemma Bird mode. I think it’s how she does business. She handles the details and keeps them hidden from prying eyes, while Jasper gets to cut the bodies open and provide the product, along with the help of all their friends. I use the term “friends” loosely, though, as I suspect they’re all being blackmailed in some way or another. That’s another part of Ruby’s job. She does participate in some of the dirty work, in a sense that she digs up dirt on other people.

And that’s exactly what leads to our downfall.

I am starting to catch on as to why she isn’t allowed to cut the bodies. It’s not that she doesn’t want to, because believe me, oh, she wants to. It’s that she can’t be trusted.

“Listen,” Jasper whispers to me, “You should know something else.”

I turn my full attention to him.

“Ruby’s kind of…fucked up.”

Dissociative Identity Disorder, Split Personality Disorder, whatever you call it. Ruby’s not the only one living inside her head.

“There’s Gemma,” he starts to list on his fingers, “You’re well acquainted with her.”

Sweet Gemma Bird with her Southern drawl. Of course.

“Then Valerie Victoire,” he adds in a perfect French accent, “She claims she’s from Paris and she’s always talking about her goddamn sister or some shit. I’ve actually learned quite a bit of French through her, believe it or not.”

Should I be taking notes on this?

“And there’s Lily,” he says, “Lily of the Valley.”

As soon as I hear that name, I know she’s going be trouble.

“She’s some Eartha Kitt, Rita Hayworth kind of character,” he describes to me, “She talks like some old fashioned 50’s movie star. She hardly ever comes out, but when she does, it’s usually when things are slow and we got nothing to worry about.”

Gemma Bird. Valerie Victoire. Lily of the Valley. Got it.

Jasper heaves a sigh, looking down in concentration.

“I shouldn’t even tell you about this one.”

Now I’m really curious. He looks up at me with his ice blue eyes filled with dread.

“What’s her name?” I ask quietly.

The air is still as he answers.

“Shiva.”

The two syllables instinctively give me fearful, mountainous goosebumps all over.

“I’ve only seen Shiva come out once, and I don’t plan for it to happen ever again.”

He tells me that Shiva is the reason they decided to graduate to organ-selling in the first place.

“One day I found her hovering over this old Chinese dude’s body,” Jasper takes a deep breath, “One of Chu’s family members, y’know.”

Funny, for us three being in his embalming studio so much, I’ve never met the guy.

“And she was draining his blood,” he rehashes, “We never did the draining back then. It was all Chu. But she went in there by herself, and she was just…” he shakes his head, “She was just…staring at them. The bags of blood. And she wouldn’t stop. You gotta understand there’s a point where you have to stop draining and start replacing with formaldehyde and shit, otherwise the skin gets all sunken in,” he demonstrates with his hands, “It’s not pretty. But she just…sucked him dry.”

Shiva the Succubus. Sister of Lillith.

“And I asked her what she was doing and she…she turned to me real slowly and said with this,” he cringes, “awful voice I’ve never heard her make before…and she says…‘What do you think would happen if I cut him open?’”

I gulp, waiting for him to continue.

“By then, I knew it wasn’t Gemma or Valerie or Lily or even Ruby herself…so I asked her who she was…” he speaks slowly, “And she told me her name was Shiva.”

I sit there silently, trying to process all of this.

“That’s why she’s not allowed to cut the bodies,” I observe in understanding. I absentmindedly wonder if she has even more of these characters hiding under her belt, just waiting to come out.

“Just…the way she looked at me…” Jasper shakes his head, still visibly disturbed, “She didn’t look like herself. She didn’t look like anything I’d ever seen before.”

Don’t let her cut the bodies. Don’t let her cut the bodies. Don’t let her cut the bodies, I keep repeating over and over in my head.

“If looks could kill, Shiva would have wiped out the entire town by now.”