Scarlet Prison

Chapter 14

               Nothing felt real any more. Every day I would wake up and think about the things I had to do. Work, the bank, clothes, groceries. A date with Dominik. It all felt so normal. Sometimes I tried to remind myself how fucked up my life really was. You work with vampires, Zermia. You buy groceries at a freaking human pet store. But my brain just wouldn't have any of it. That shit was old news and after a while, work is work and groceries are just groceries. And each day that I grew more accustomed to my life, I felt more distanced from it, like I was merely an observer, while Nova navigated my life for me. She was better at it than I would have expected. She blended right in, without even drawing a suspicious glance. But there was one thing she didn't know. Something I knew before she ever existed. Every week I had one moment all to myself, as Zermia, just me and no confusion. Only crystal clarity and the pleasure of feeling present in my life once more.

            I reached for my tourniquet and gently uncoiled it before sliding it around my arm. Novashi used to do this for me. It was a sacred form of trust for those involved with the dark secrets of the Greenhouse.

            I tightened the tourniquet and balled my hand into a fist, watching as the vein in my arm bulged. The translucent skin of my arm rose and fell ever so softly, as the blue blood pumped through, screaming to be released. I stroked it with an alcohol swab. The pressure throbbed beneath my fingers. I traded the swab for a needle and held it before my eyes. Back before Novashi would do this for me, I used to do it for someone else. Funny that I should think of Ekai now.  He had left my life for good several years ago.

               But the truth was Ekai was never too far from my mind. I tried to not think of him too often, but he had left a lasting imprint on my life. The day we met, he took me beneath the Greenhouse and let me watch him play Naroekoo. I watched with a concentration like it was the only thing in the world that mattered. I suppose at that point in time, it was. I begged Ekai to teach me the rules and let me play.  He explained that every self-respecting blood gambler had an apprentice, and he was in the market for one. After making sure I understood the job was to be taken seriously, he agreed to become my mentor.

             Apprentices, I later learned, never actually blood gambled, much to my disappointment. They played Naroekoo with their mentors, and served as assistants during tournaments. If my mentor had been anyone else, I would've complained, but Ekai tamed me. I respected him enough to do what he told me. He walked me home each night, but my parents never met him. The only people that knew we were friends were the other blood gamblers.

         On days that he missed school, which happened a lot, it was my job to gather his assignments from his teachers, who seemed to be under the impression that I had been bullied into the job. I suppose, in a way, I had been. I served him under the threat of losing him. I lived in fear that he would wake up one day and realize that he no longer needed me, so I made myself as useful as possible.

             But my most sacred job of all didn't come until he knew he could completely trust me. When that day came, we met at the Greenhouse when no one was there, and he taught me how to fasten the tourniquet on his arm and insert the needle. The loser of the game was required to give his blood to the winner. Letting another person draw your blood was a sign of complete trust, which is why it was such a sacred job for the apprentice. There were people at the hospital who accepted pre-drawn blood, no questions asked except about the blood type. Extra donations were rewarded in cash. After Ekai had introduced me to those people, it became my job to exchange our winnings. As his apprentice, he let me keep one-eighth of the money, but I had a feeling that not all apprentices were so lucky.

           I wasn't in it for the money, though. I had originally agreed to be his apprentice in order to escape the mess that my life had become. But even that reason became of less importance. My main motivation for continuing to involve myself in illegal activities was that I had a hopeless crush on Ekai, and I dreamed that one day he would no longer see me as just a kid.