I sat in the waiting room reading my book, the universal sign for “Don’t bother me”. I used to get nervous waiting for my blood tests. I would sit and stare at magazines, flipping through stories about philanthropic celebrities, pausing on pictures of beautiful homes that I will never afford. But now, after about 2 years of blood tests every month I have definitely become numb to the anxiety. The needle doesn’t scare me but the dread does set in when I see the older patients, probably on their 200th blood test, hunched over clenched fingers clearly in pain. We look at each other with a knowing look, they think “Oh this poor young thing” while I think, “Maybe I’ll die before I get to that stage”.
The waiting room in a rheumatologist office is often filled with existential dread and pity. We all know what the others are going through but every pain and every symptom is so different that we just sit in our personal agony, quiet and alone.
I felt a brush against my hair as I was turning the page to my next chapter.
“Your hair is so beautiful” I saw his twisted arthritic fingers before I saw his face. A grin that toes the line between innocent and terrifying plastered on his wrinkled face. Before I could even get angry, or scared, the phlebotomist called my name.
Grateful for the deus ex machina I stood up, flattened my hair back down, and walked to the backroom. I didn’t recognize this one, I thought I knew all the staff in this office, she must have been hired within the last month. She seemed nice enough, she had a thick accent, maybe Eastern European. We talked about how my classes are going and what plans I had for the day, but something definitely seemed off about her. She wasn’t smiling and her hands were ice cold. She began preparing the needle and I looked away. Despite the years of doing this I still can’t watch the needle go in or the blood come out. I can separate myself from the pain if I just don’t watch. Instead I read the cutesy comics that all the phlebotomists put up. It always reminds me of my first tattoo, lying on my back, looking up at the ceiling at silly one liner comics that the artist put there as a distraction. Although not as fun as a tattoo I am grateful that the blood tests are much quicker. I felt the pinch of the needle as my eyes rested on a particularly gruesome comic.
“That’s weird,” I thought to myself. The comic almost looked biblical, a man was holding a massive knife in one hand and a disemboweled baby in the other. Behind him stood a dark looming shadow with twisted horns. Before I read the caption I decided, against all previous experience, to look at the needle.
“Hey, what the hell!” I began to shout, there was something black in the needle and it wasn’t coming out of my arm, it was going in.
I jerked just enough to make the entire arm support crash down, the needle ripped through my skin and fell out forcefully. It fucking hurt.
The hole had torn a little larger than the normal needle mark and black sludge was spilling out of my arm.
“Lady what the fuck is this!?” I screamed at the woman holding 2 more massive needles in her arm, filled with more of that black sludge. She looked shocked, not at the black sludge but at my reaction. She turned around and that’s when I saw the horns sticking out of her hair. I screamed again, ripped the band off my upper arm, grabbed my purse, and ran out of the room.
“Wait, we’re not done!” She shouted as I slammed the door, but her voice had changed. There was no more accent and she sounded possessed and angry.
I ran through the hallway, passed three rooms of standard blood tests, past the receptionist and out the door. I didn’t even wait for the elevator, I sprinted down the 4 flights of stairs and ran out the door to my car. I was finally able to look down at my arm when I was safe inside. Black sludge was squirting out, like oil from a car. I was starting to feel a little woozy and nauseous but I had to get home. I couldn’t let that… thing… find me.
I don’t even remember the drive home, I think I was running on pure adrenaline. I stumbled into the bathroom with the open gash on my arm still spitting out that black sludge. It had slowed down to a steady trickle at this point.
O no, something’s coming up.
I leaned over the toilet just in time for hot black vomit to explode out of my stomach. The sludge was bubbling and moving in the toilet.
Is that what she put in my arm?
I reached up to flush the toilet and as soon as I pulled the handle, everything faded to black.
I woke up hours later, the little window in my bathroom indicating that I had missed the entire day. Stars and moonlight peeked into my small space, spotlighting what had happened. My arm was finally done dripping but around the hole my veins all looked black and bruised. Like a spider web made of something purely evil.
The toilet was stained with the black goo that had splashed out during my Exorcist audition. Instead of pea soup though, I was working with black tar.
I looked down at my phone and I saw that I had about 15 missed calls. I listened to the first voicemail.
“Deandra. Please call us back. We are so sorry about what happened today. The police are here and we need to speak to you.”
The voicemails got more and more urgent.
“Deandra, please call us back so we know you’re ok. There is something very wrong with the phlebotomist who helped you today.”
I had one from my friend Jane, who is obsessed with otherworldly things.
“D! Have you seen the news!? The cops caught some crazy doctor who was super into satanism! The arrest video is insane! She starts screaming about demon blood and unfinished business. I swore I saw some horns under all that hair! Anyway, call me back girl, we were supposed to grab drinks…” The phone slid from my hand before I could hear the rest of her phone call.
Demon blood?
Is that what was in those vials!? Did that demented monster try to infect me with demon blood!?
My phone was buzzing, a number I didn’t recognize popped up on the screen.
“Hello?”
“O my god, thank god we got ahold of you! This is Officer Young with the police, we’ve been trying to reach you for hours!”
“Yeah sorry, I…” I trailed off, not knowing how to explain what had just happened.
“Never mind, we have officers coming to your house now. The woman we caught, her name is Dusanka Cerny, we think she is from Slovakia but we can’t find any trace of her. We arrested her after you ran from the Rheumatologist but Deandra, she escaped from the station.” My heart started pounding, she wanted something from me, she needed me.
“Deandra. The police will be there any minute, stay on the phone with me until they get there.” His calm but scattered message was interrupted by a knock at the door.
“They’re here. The police are here.” I started to get up and walk towards the door. My hand was on the handle when I heard Officer Young screaming.
“DON’T OPEN THE DOOR! That’s not them!”
It was too late, the door was opened. There was a tall dark figure standing in my doorway. Her hair was gone and two twisted horns poked out of her head. They looked just like the old man’s fingers who brushed my hair early. Jagged and useless.
The creature’s mouth opened and that same black sludge dripped out down over its sharp yellow teeth.
“You haven’t finished your treatment” She said in the same gentle voice she used when I first walked into her room. That accent was horrifying coming from this giant horned creature. I turned to run but immediately fell to the ground when it jammed two needles into my back. My head hit the wood floor with a crack and my eyes started to close. The last thing I saw before I fell into utter darkness were police lights flashing in my driveway and an officer running towards me.
Inherent Fear 