By Caleb Fasnacht
A story of hope
When the only thing that the citizens of Lewisville know is dehumanization and subjugation, their spilt blood becomes the norm. One day, Nicky has enough, and she dreams of a brighter future.
Like her people, the country of Lewisville had once been beautiful. It was the basement of some kind of old church but had since become little more than a crypt. Somewhere in the citizens’ minds, they remembered that countries were larger than fifteen hundred square feet, but the fifteen people who made up the population had been in that country for so long that they could no longer imagine anything larger. Especially Maggie. She was the country’s first natural-born citizen. To her, the whole world was unpainted cement walls, a muddy faucet, and the master’s door. The master’s door that loomed like an omnipresent shadow in the citizens’ minds. The master’s door that held the only escape behind it.
Archie looked around the room of their country. He wasn’t the first citizen, but he was the oldest, and as a former nurse, it was his job to make sure everyone was healthy enough to work for the master. “Check-up time,” he called as he gingerly lowered his frail form onto the floor near the faucet. The other citizens formed a line, and Archie looked them over. Tiffany was first. The middle-aged woman seemed to be doing well. Like the rest of the population, she was malnourished and far too pale, but she breathed regularly, lacked a fever, and–most importantly–had a strong pulse.
“My payment?” Archie’s voice was resigned. He hated making people pay for this, but the master took half of the earnings, and the rest went into medical supplies.
Tiffany nodded solemnly, and Archie carefully inserted an alcohol-cleaned syringe into her arm, drawing out a quarter-cup of blood. Tiffany didn’t flinch. The citizens of Lewisville were well used to blood transfusions.
Archie carefully emptied every drop of currency into a mason jar. “Next.”
Buck stepped forward. He was as large and as healthy as an ox. He was able to safely give up far more blood than the rest of them, and as such, lived in the most comfort, as relative as that may be. This check-up was no different. Buck was healthy, needed nothing, and was sent on his way.
As the rest of the citizens finished their check ups without issue, Archie breathed a sigh of relief. They all seemed to be doing okay, and with the amount of blood he managed to collect, maybe he could buy them something to lift their spirits.
The Brown family was last. Since Heather, Jordan’s wife, died, Sonny and Nicky were the only couple in Lewisville. They approached with their daughter, Maggie. Archie’s eyes softened at the sight of the child. The way she sang the songs she made up or painted the walls with carefully spilled water made everyone feel like there was still something normal and good and worth living for in this country.
Nicky and Maggie were doing well; however, Nicky was noticeably more emaciated than everyone else.
“You know you shouldn’t be skipping meals,” said the nurse.
Nicky waved away his statement. “I’m okay. I’m just trying to get back to my pre-pregnancy size.”
“After six years?”
Nicky shrugged. “Better now than never.”
Archie glared at her. “I don’t care how much it costs. Get yourself an extra half serving.”
“Yes, sir,” Nicky said in a way that made Archie sure she had no intention of obeying him. He knew she and Sonny had been skipping meals to pay for Maggie’s needs. It was a game they played. He told her to care for herself more, and she disobeyed. They both knew that the family didn’t have a choice if they didn’t want Maggie to pay too.
Archie quickly resanitized his syringe and held up his hand for Nicky’s. Sonny put his hand in the nurse’s instead. “I’ll pay for all three of us.”
Archie blinked. “Sonny, you know that’s not healthy–” he stopped, catching a feeling of the younger man’s wrist. The nurse’s hand snapped to Sonny’s forehead and gasped. “You have a fever.”
Sonny winced. “I was hoping you wouldn’t find out.”
“You know the law.”
“The law is stupid. Blood is blood, isn’t it? Why can’t you let me take care of my family one last time?”
Maggie looked up in confusion as her mother muffled a sob.
Archie shook his head. “Sonny, I like you, I really do, but if I help you break the law, it will be my head too, and then who’ll take care of everyone?”
“Not Lewis.” Sonny’s words were quiet, but they echoed across the small room. You could hear a pin drop as every eye turned to Sonny and then immediately to the master’s room.
Archie held his breath for one heartbeat, two, and when the master didn’t appear, he sighed in relief. “Sonny, you shouldn’t–”
“You shouldn’t say things like that.” Buck thundered over to Sonny. He pushed into the smaller man’s chest with one, beefy finger. “The master has been taking care of us for years. How dare you be ungrateful?”
Sonny weakly rose to his full height, well short of Buck’s, “And what should I be grateful for? We give and give and give to the master, and what does he give back to us as our lifeblood empties? Scraps.”
“There’s been a famine topside. You know this. He gives us all the food he can spare.”
“Yeah, and he’s going to murder me for having a fever.”
“He has to.” Buck was shouting. “If you get the rest of us sick, we’ll be done for.”
“What’s murder?” Maggie turned to her mother who was letting her tears flow freely now. Nicky didn’t answer. Despite how much she had been crying, she stepped next to her partner. “You listen here.” Her eyes went from Buck’s to Archie’s “If either of you say anything about Sonny’s fever. There will be hell to pay.” She turned to the rest of the country who were desperately pretending to not be listening. “If anybody says anything, there will be hell to pay.
“We all know sick blood is just as good as healthy blood Lewis, and what he doesn’t know can’t hurt us. He’s just one being.” Nicky’s tears had gone from grief and fear to a righteous rage. “If we just work togeth–”
Sonny, wide-eyed at Nicky’s words, interrupted her before she could say anything truly incriminating. “Please, take my blood for them,” he said, turning to Archie. “If I’m going to be a dead man, I want to die for them.”
The nurse opened his mouth to speak, but just then, the master’s door opened. Like a well-oiled machine, everyone’s eyes found the floor, unwilling to meet their his. Not even Nicky dared to look up.
Lewis was very similar to his subjects. He was frighteningly pale, short, and gaunt, but unlike them, he glided through the room with the confidence and power of knowing he owned everything and everyone in it. Even the room’s shadows bowed before his presence.
“Did I hear that somebody has a fever?” He stepped directly in front of Sonny. Buck cowered away, grabbing Nicky to pull her away from danger, but scared as she was, she tore her arm away from his. Maggie began crying, not really knowing why.
Sonny couldn’t meet Lewis’ eyes. He stammered some kind of response before the master put his fingers to the man’s lips. “Shh shh shh, I wasn’t talking to you.” Lewis turned to Archie. “Did I hear correctly that somebody in this room has a fever?”
Sweat dribbled down Archie’s lips. He visibly shook under the scrutiny of Lewis’ crimson eyes. “I–I–I don’t know.” His eyes flew from Nicky’s to somewhere below Lewis’, settling on his needle-like teeth.
“You don’t know?” Lewis’ teeth seemed to bite into the air as he spoke. He took another step closer to the fear-paralyzed nurse.
Archie gulped. He could feel his old heart beating against his chest almost like it was trying to burst out and flee. “Well, well, there have been a–a lot of patients today, and I–I can’t be expected to–”
“Oh, but I can expect you to know about everyone’s health,” said Lewis. He was smiling in the way a cat smiles at an arthritic mouse.
Archie’s eyes once again found Nicky’s pleading ones. She shook her head.
Archie gulped one more time, but deep down in his heart, he knew it would be better for everyone if he obeyed. His head slumped, and now there were four people’s eyes he couldn’t meet. “I think Sonny has a cold,” he said weakly.
As fast as lightning, the master’s clawed hand approached Archie’s face. The nurse winced. Lewis gently patted him on the cheek. “There’s a good boy.”
Lewis let out a growl of hunger and pleasure as he pounced on Sonny as quick as a shadow flees from the light. His fangs sunk deep into his neck. Sonny tried to scream in pain, but a sick gurgling sound was all that he was capable of.
“Get off of him!” Nicky screamed, punching at Lewis’ head, but the vampire swiped an arm, hitting her in the ribs with such force that she lifted a full two feet in the air and slammed into the far wall with a sound that made everyone wince. She fought fiercely for consciousness, but the master finished before she came to.
He delicately wiped Sonny’s blood off his lips with a red handkerchief. “Don’t fight me again, Nicky. You don’t want Maggie to be orphaned.” The monster left his subjects, reentering his room with a smile that made even Buck want to retch.
Sonny’s body lay in the middle of the floor. His skin, white as a sheet, had shrunk into his bones, leaving a mummified husk–a mummified husk whose face was permanently stuck into an expression of pain and helpless fear.
Nobody had tried to help.
Nicky limped to her partner’s body, sobbing as she pulled her daughter into her chest. “This,” she said through gasps of grief, “this is what murder is.”
She wasn’t talking about Lewis. Everyone in that god-forsaken country knew it.
The next few days went by as normal. The master did nothing for his subjects without payment. Food, water, clothing; it all cost the very blood in their veins. Lewis said that it was clever to use such a renewable resource, but when people saw Sonny’s cold body lying under a sheet in the corner of the room, the citizens quietly doubted how renewable that currency really was.
Nicky was not doing well. In her fall, she had broken her hip. As emaciated as she was, she was healing poorly. She could do nothing other than lay in her cot, her daughter faithfully at her side. Archie knew she would die if she didn’t recover soon. He wanted so badly to treat her, but he knew the law. He looked at Sonny’s body. He knew what breaking the law would mean for him.
Finally, Buck had enough. He approached Nicky. “You and Sonny have always been lazy. You’ve always been trying to mooch off of the master’s good graces without paying like the rest of us. Stop being stingy. Your daughter needs a mother. Just pay for the damn medical treatment.”
Like lightning, Nicky’s arm snatched Buck’s shirt and pulled the much larger man closer to her. As pale and awful as she looked, Nicky’s eyes contained the living blaze of the sun. “You are a small, pathetic man.” Each word dripped with venom. “You’re so privileged that you can’t see how good you’ve got it.” Nicky’s spotlight eyes gazed upon the rest of the room. “Tiffany, do you remember when Lewis raised the price of vegetables? You had to compromise on your values and eat meat like the rest of us.”
Tiffany’s face turned green at the thought.
Nicky wasn’t done. She turned to a middle-aged man. “Jordan, your wife caught a fever last year. Do you remember?”
Jordan couldn’t meet her eyes.
“She met the exact same fate as my partner. We had to sit with her body for a month before we could save enough to have Lewis bury her.”
Jordan mumbled something about it being her time to go.
“And it’s that exact attitude that I’m sick of!” Nicky was yelling now. “Lewis kidnapped us. We’re captives of a place we didn’t choose, and Lewis forces us to follow laws that we didn’t agree to. The worst part is that stupid leech has robbed us of the ability to imagine a better world.”
Archie’s eyes filled with tears. “It doesn’t matter. The master is a monster. He’s far more powerful than us. He’ll kill us all if we don’t obey.”
“And you call this living? Archie, every time you’re forced to bleed us for payment, you break your oath. Aren’t you supposed to ‘do no harm?’”
Archie flushed.
Nicky was just getting started. All of these things that she had been thinking about bubbled inside of her and her heart was too broken from the death of Sonny to contain them any longer. “Lewis is stronger than any one of us, but we’ve always been more powerful than him. He’s a vampire. He needs our blood to survive. Without us, he’s nothing, and it doesn’t matter how strong he is physically. If we worked together, he would be nothing against us.”
Buck loomed over her. “You’re talking about treason.”
Nicky didn’t flinch. “I’m talking about a better future for Maggie.” The child held onto her mother, the yelling frightening her.
“There would be no future for her if she died.”
Tears welled in Nicky’s eyes. “We’re already in hell, Buck. The next life can’t be any worse.”
While Archie was listening to all of this, his mind drifted back to when he was a young man. He went to college with dreams of opening a free hospital, but not long after his graduation, he met the master. He remembered the vampire’s eyes being a hypnotic purple. Before he knew it, he was living in Lewisville. All of these decades, he had been robbed of the ability to help people. He was a veterinarian prolonging the lives of cattle until their utters ran dry enough for them to be butchered. He found that his old hands were shaking. He muttered something.
The country went quiet.
“What was that?” Buck turned on the old nurse.
Archie took a deep breath. “I said,” he straightened his back and met Buck’s eyes, “if we’re going to fight, then I’m in.”
Tiffany gasped. Jordan looked like he was going to faint. Buck glowered.
Nicky smiled, and it lit up the room. “Anybody else?”
The room was once again quiet, and Buck looked at everyone in triumph. Finally, Tiffany stood up. “He’s made a murderer out of me. I’m in.”
Sean, a man who had once been an ice cream truck driver stood up. “I’m in, too.”
Jenna, a woman who had once been a lawyer, stood up. “So am I.”
One by one, the people of Lewisville stood up, even old man Jordan. A few minutes ago, their eyes were as dead as a sheep’s, but now a new fire seemed to burn behind their irises.
Buck shook his head and backed into a corner, his eyes wide. “You people are crazy.”
That night, when Lewis came out of his room, he smiled at his citizens. “I have wares to sell and you have blood to give. Line up everybody.” His smile quickly faded when he saw how everyone was looking at him. For the first time in a long time, they were meeting his eyes. He glared over from Buck cowering by the sink to Nicky. The feeble woman grinned at him with such victory in her expression, that the all-powerful vampire nearly backed away. “I think some of you have forgotten your place.” His words came out like a growl, but before he could do anything, his citizens were on top of him. He struck wildly, feeling the satisfying sensation of flesh rending and bones breaking, but it was like striking a hurricane. Before he knew it, he was splayed on the floor. Three people to a limb, his victims strained even his might. He gasped and growled and threatened, but he was as trapped by them as they had once been by him.
Archie was pushing against his right arm. He pulled out a small, metal object. “I took an oath to do no harm, but you’re already dead, aren’t you, ‘master’?”
Lewis’ eyes went wide as Archie slashed with his scalpel, severing the tendon in his right arm, making it hang loosely–uselessly–at his side. “No,” said the leech.
Three more quick incisions, and just like Nicky, Lewis could not move under his own power. “You’re nothing without me!” he screamed. “Is this the thanks I get? I’ve been taking care of you worthless wretches all of these years. I–” his words were cut off when Tiffany shoved a sock into his fanged mouth.
Nicky looked around at the carnage, whispering softly to her daughter not to open her eyes. Blood stained the floor, and not just from Lewis’ wounds. Jordan’s body lay lifeless at his side, his head bent at a sickening angle. Archie helped her to her feet and though she gasped in pain, she looked down at her captor. “Yes, this is the thanks you deserve.”
Without a word, the citizens of Lewisville gathered up Jordan's body which leaked with fresh blood and Sonny's empty, drained corpse and entered Lewis’ room, where they knew the exit was. All of them them except–
Buck knelt next to Lewis’ paralyzed body. Tears streamed down his face. “Master, what have they done to you?”
Archie turned, the argument to convince Buck to come with them on his lips, but Nicky shook her head. “Leave him. He’s not ready for freedom yet.”
The last act of the people of Lewisville was to close the master’s door.
Caleb is a graduate teaching assistant at Wright State. His passions are many, but writing is his greatest love–especially of hope, healing, and humanity's beauty.
