Blood Will Out - Free Fiction
I knew I shouldn't have imposed a schedule to releasing new short stories. With all my other projects going on there was no way I was going to be able to produce a new story every Friday. So from now on I'm simply going to call these posts 'Free Fiction' and drop the 'Friday' part altogether. That said I am going to try an write something new each week, I just won't advertise it as such.
I hate blood. I'm really squeamish - can't watch Holby City or any medical drama. Stuff creeps me out. I go weak and feel ill at the sight of a needle. This poses a few problems because I almost exclusively write grim stuff about people in great physical jeopardy. The story below is no exception, and it has the added bonus of being explicitly about blood. The quick bit of research I did made my skin crawl and that was from a cycling blog. So I present to you a story that made the author feel a bit ill (it's not actually that graphic or disgusting however, so don't worry).
Blood Will Out
OF COURSE IT WAS ILLEGAL but everyone did it. Well, the winners did and I was a winner. Yellow Jersey for the last three stages. This was my sixth Tour, and in just a few days I would be the proud recipient of my third trophy. It had started quite innocently, this whole ‘doping’ thing, with steroids during training. It helps build muscle quickly then you can go off the drugs and maintain the mass while every last trace is flushed from your body. Its frowned upon but what can anyone do? There are no drugs in your system during competition and that’s all that counts.
The next stage is to actually take banned substances during competition. You might think that this is pushing it a little too far. They test for all kinds of things before and after each stage and people do get caught. The losers get caught. But I’m not a loser. I wake up and I’m already winning. As much as you can kid yourself that it’s the drugs, it’s the stimulants, it’s the banned substances the truth is that winning is all about your mental mindset. Losers get caught. Losers come in second. If you’re prepared to be first no matter what the cost then that makes you a winner. Besides, everyone is doing it and don’t let them convince you otherwise. If they all cheat then it’s a level playing field. I just happen to be more drive than most. End of.
If you have a good team you can get inventive. I’m not talking Dick Dastardly style, swapping the road signs so the other competitors go off a cliff. I’m talking about real-world solutions to surmountable problems. Blood tests are unavoidable, and you can only do so much to hide what’s in your system. One team I know of swapped samples. This works but you need people on the inside and this leaves you open to risk. Better to keep it all in the family.
Our Doc, a Ukrainian guy called Sergei, came up with a plan to do a full blood transfusion. At first I was sceptical but he convinced me. It had been done before with great results going as far back as the sixties. We’re talking up to 16% increase in performance in addition to removing all traces of dope in the system. We started winning big time. I was worried that that the results would draw attention, but I hadn’t counted on people’s natural desire to love a winner. And I was a winner.
I was getting old. Early thirties. Maybe a couple more races in me before it started to get really suspicious that I was still at the top of my game. I found that I needed more of a boost to keep me at the peak performance too and by that time we’d pushed the regimen as far as it would go. One day Sergei comes into race HQ with a new plan. He’s got new blood. Good stuff. Not mine, but compatible he says. Some kind of augmented plasma he’d concocted. Whatever it had in it was untraceable, or so he said. Not only would I win, but I’d break records, destroy them.
The plan was to do a full blood transfusion after the third stage. We booked two hotel rooms, one in town and one just outside which is the one where we set up the operation. If the officials ever came to inspect out HQ they’d only find two beds and an exercise bike. This other place was like a hospital but set up in a cosy double room with en-suite. I sat on the bed while Sergei attached a dialysis machine to me. It’s the kind of thing we’d done before but this time I felt the change straight away.
And out on the road I felt it even harder. I was a beast. At first I wanted to take it easy, hold back and stay in the pack, then right at the end put on a burst of speed and leave the competition in my wake. But I couldn’t. I had to get out front. Every part of me was on fire. My muscles simply had to pump harder it was almost like I wasn’t in control. I pushed through the pack, legs heaving, teeth gritted. My knuckles were white as if the bones were straining to burst through the skin. The blood inside me—I could feel it surging through the veins, filling my heart with power, flooding my muscles with WIN. Win, win, win. Unstoppable force just cruising right on through. They said I was laughing right before the crash. The thing was my bike couldn’t take the strain. I was pushing it too hard. The front wheel came detached and I spilled across the road, tumbling over and over. It must have been a hundred meters or so before I came to a stop. The racers behind me didn’t see me and just ploughed right into the bike and me. It was a mess. Twisted metal, twisted limbs, cracked skulls.
Is that when it happened?
Yes.
Tell me about it.
What do you want me to say? You saw the video footage. Everyone saw the clip. I changed.
I want to hear your side of story. What did it feel like for you?
Look, I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I didn’t want anyone to die. I felt strong. I mean I was strong. That blood inside me was like this whole other thing driving me. All that energy had to go somewhere so I lashed out at everything around me. I reckon that had the bike not broken I could have focussed all that power into winning. That was my one goal, the one thing that kept me going. When that was taken away—Energy has to go somewhere right? So I changed. I changed into that thing. There’s no way we’ll know where Sergei got that blood from, he’s long gone. But he’s the one responsible for this. He did this to me. I mean you can’t hold me responsible for what that animal did to those people. That thing wasn’t me. I never wanted for them to be eaten, I just wanted to win. You have to understand that. I just wanted to win. There’s nothing wrong with winning. I’m a winner.
