Lucid Waking

Blood

        Mauve turned into the driveway of the Adler Sanitarium quickly enough and after slamming on her brakes to make an obvious squeak, she threw open her door, got out, and slammed it shut. The man she wanted to see conveniently waited for her on the steps depriving her of the pleasure of going in and finding him herself.
         “What is the meaning of this?” she screamed. “Is there some sort of personal gain you hope by committing my brother?”
         “Not at all, Miss May. We only hope to ensure the public’s safety from a mentally instable individ—”
         “Oh, don’t ‘Miss May’ me! You’re putting him on bull pucky charges and you know it. If you had any sense at all…in fact, the crazies are more sane than you sometimes!”
         “Miss May, please. Do not let this get personal—”
         “How much more personal do you expect this to get—taking my brother! It started out personal! Or maybe it wasn’t maybe it was about business after all…what did she give you? Riches, land, all the virgins you could want?!”
         “You know as well as I that’s a myth.”
         “Bull pucky, you’d milk that one out for all it’s worth.”
         “Mrs. Alcott did not call in, this time.”
         “She’s complained about everything else about my family. You’ve only started caring since you’ve asked to marry me! How much did she offer? $100? $1000?”
         “Please.”
        Maude pursed her lips. “Fine, let’s go inside and you can explain.”
        She followed the doctor into the building and through the marble lobby to his office near the back. He held the door for her as she sat down in a red velvet chair in front of the desk. The room was painted black with a crystal chandelier being the only source of light in the entire room. Cherry wood furniture adorned the office with various pictures of castles in Europe.
        “Your brother came to one of our doctors last night asking to be diagnosed.”
         “Everybody has that stupid disease. Who does he think we are? Living?”
         “Well, shouldn’t that be a give-away that something was wrong? It’s common, but he thought it serious to be locked up. Honestly, we did what he asked first and tested him for hierophobia and hagiophobia and even alliumphobia, but he tested negative for all of them. Well, he was in the orange for alliumphobia, but he had to be in the red zone for us to lock him up. He wouldn’t harm others when confronted with garlic.”
         “So fear of holy things, saints, priests, and…garlic?”
         “He asked. It was interesting how he seemed to want to find something wrong with him. We ran a couple more sanity tests, but the real discovery was his anemia.”
         “What?!”
         “Yes, he tested positive for anemia. So we did the one test he was afraid of and, unfortunately, tested positive.”
         “You wouldn’t dare.”
         “I wasn’t there, Miss May. I was only told this morning. I’m sorry but your brother is severely hemophobic.”
         “Afraid of blood but…how’s he eating?”
         “He’s not. We have to give it to him in the meat in his diet. We had to lock him up for his safety, not ours. I’m sorry, Maude, but I didn’t have much of a choice.”
         “I-I-I-I…”
         “Don’t think about it now. I have to check on a few more patients, but I’ll come back and then we can talk about paperwork. Don’t take it too hard on yourself, it isn’t your fault.”
         “But…a vampire who’s afraid of blood…what would dad say?”

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 27th, 2007 at 10:20 pm and is filed under Fantasy, Fiction Prose. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.