August 17, 2016

From “A Purple Nosebleed” by Blythe Hilson

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“Oh my god, your nose!”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s just a nosebleed. I get them sometimes.”

“That’s not what I meant. It’s purple! Your nose is bleeding purple!”

“Oh, don’t worry about that.”

“I am. I am worrying. This is me worrying! Why is it purple? Blood is supposed to be red!”

“If you must know, one of my grandfathers was a brachiopod. I inherited hemerythrin-based purple blood from him.”

“That’s really gross.”

“You should talk! Your blood is bright, bright yellow!”

“It’s not my fault my dad was a sea squirt! Leave me alone!”

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December 5, 2012

From “Suck ’em Dry” by Markus Bozeman

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“Oh, shit,” Mellany said. “It’s Carter.”

“Look the other way and maybe he won’t see us.” Susyn turned and tried to ease herself to the outside of the bloodmobile line without losing her place.

“Mellany! Susyn! What are you doing there?” It didn’t work. Carter, looking as disheveled and unstable as he had in their tutoring group, approached the line waving his hands. “Why are you lining up for the vampire bloodmobile?”

“Because it’s the right thing to do,” Susyn sighed, without facing him. “They always need blood.”

“Also we’re in a blood race with Sigma Qoppa Phi,” Mellany added. Susyn bopped her for making them look shallow in front of the handsome line handlers.

“Don’t you see? The bloodmobile is just a front for vampires to satisfy their demonic bloodlust without drawing attention to themselves! And we line up to be part of it like suckers!”

“Oh God,” Mellany winced, visibly pained. “More of your paranoia, really? Go yell at some other line.”

“Yeah, I hear the lunch line is really a cannibal plot to fatten people up,” Susyn added.

Carter continued his gesticulation. “Not until people wake up and see the truth!” he yelled. Turning to the line of people leaving the bloodmobile with choc’late chips and juice, he continued: “Are you happy with yourselves? You’ve sold yourself to the nosferatu overlords for cookies! Bloodwhores, all of you.”

“That’s just sad,” Susyn muttered to Mellany. “Just do your best to ignore him.”

Turning to the bloodmobile itself, Carter rolled up his sleeves and held his wrists forward. “Bet you’d love to get what’s in here, wouldn’t you? Full of AB positive, the vampire special reserve! Bloodsucking freaks!”

Inside the driver’s cabin of the bloodmobile, on the right side of UV-screening tinted windows, Count von Saugen glanced outside. “What’s all the fuss about?”

“Just another wacko,” said Archduke Bluttrinker. “Here, try this glass of B negative. It’s a 1989 vintage with excellent color and bouquet.”

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October 27, 2011

From “The Bloody Print” by Albert R. Fostere

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“Whenever he closed his eyes he could see the image of a bloody handprint, like it was burned into his eyelids. The doctors said there was nothing wrong, that it was all in his head. He tried to ignore it, but it was always there, like the spots you see when you stare at a light for too long.”

Ralph made a show of yawning and stretching.

“Then, one day, he came home to find his house empty and his family missing. The door were locked and nothing had been disturbed…aside from one bloody handprint near the basement door–his wife’s.”

“That’s it?” Ralph said. “That’s the best you can do? Give me the flashlight.”

Arnie, who thought that his tale had been a masterpiece of horror, grudgingly surrendered the torch to his competitor and slunk off toward the latrine with only his measly pocket light in hand.

When he got there, Arnie played the light over the whitewashed metal, looking for the handle. Instead, it alighted on something that hadn’t been there in the daylight.

A bloody child-sized handprint.