The Blood Artists

The fear in the eyes of the waiting was potent. They watched her suspiciously as she passed in and out of the rooms unsuited, and a few begged her to tell them what was happening, even as they knew. Their anxiety became too much for her, and soon she left and found a private space in the outer hallway, where she cried tears that would not fall. She felt as though her eyes, her brain, her entire person were being pickled in sorrow.

She fought back her emotion, and from then on she restricted herself to the isolation rooms where the sick were being attended to. She began by giving blood until she was dizzy. It took so much to derive so little serum, and she saw that there was barely enough of her to go around the World Congress building, never mind the entire world. She started going gurney to gurney, sitting with each sickened person a few moments, talking if they talked, nodding if they cried, or taking their hand if they just stared. She assisted the slow-moving agents in yellow suits as she could, changing IV bags and taking blood pressure readings.

She was doing that when Maryk came to get her. He looked haunted in the doorway, showing none of the confidence he had shown at Lewes Penitentiary. His shoulders sagged and the black bag seemed heavy in his big hand.

They underwent an ultraviolet wand scan before leaving, to kill any surface Plainville. She wished to feel the viruses dying on her skin, falling away like beach sand in the shower. She was tired of the constant cleansing, the empty renewal of dressing and undressing, and the inhumanity of her latex hands. In the car before they left, Maryk PCR-tested her blood. Her forearms were tender and so badly bruised from blood giving that he had to pull an excruciatingly slow cc from between the third and fourth fingers of her left hand. She sat looking up at the darkened convention complex until the tablet declared her clean.

They rolled through the desolate night streets of downtown Atlanta, passing through a depressed area of the city, tired cars parked along the curbs like toys arranged by a careless child. The apartment buildings were sooty and looming, with tenement-tiny windows of the type infants tumble out of on the hottest days of summer. Even the streetlights looked shiftless, bored. Maryk took two or three more turns that didn’t feel right to her. “Where are we going?” she said.

His voice was exhausted, though his eyes remained bright. “I need to stop for fresh clothes.”

She wondered what stores would be open that late at night. Then she realized he meant his home. For some reason the prospect of visiting Maryk’s residence shocked her; she could not picture him in any habitat other than that of the BDC.

He parked outside a security-grated baby apparel store and they entered a numbered door riddled with graffiti, stepping over a splash of accumulated mail to a long, narrow flight of stairs. They walked the length of the doorless hall to a second flight, and then a third. At the top of the fourth flight they came to a clean white door, and Maryk produced a key.

He stopped before inserting it in the lock. He knelt and silently examined the white plate around the doorknob. There was a bit of brown dirt, maybe food, smudged on the metal plate. Maryk picked it off, looking at it on the tip of his gloved finger before flicking it away. The knob turned keylessly under his hand.

The door opened on an apartment dark with night. It was spacious like an artist’s loft, with high ceilings, few furnishings and walls, and large factory windows. Then the smell of decay hit her immediately, and the curious part of her mind shut down.

Maryk moved through the loft with evident alarm. Melanie could sense something on the wall behind her, even before Maryk switched on the high, track lamps, and she turned.

It was a long word smeared in mud and food over the wide wall. It read, drippingly, MESSENGER.

Two steel picture frames hung on the desecrated wall. Each contained a canvas that was now slashed to shreds. What she could make of the tattered images was dark and visceral, yet familiar. She saw three more canvases hanging on another wall, and one standing on a display easel in a corner. All were in ribbons.

The paintings were her own. They were the ones Maryk had purchased anonymously. He had not junked them, as she had assumed. He had designed his living space around them.

She walked to the one set on the easel. A steak knife was jammed dead center through the frame, and something hung from a wide, blue ribbon on its handle. It was a medallion, like a large gold penny, smeared with what looked like shit. She realized it was Maryk’s Nobel.