Mysteries of Blood

There weren’t always Dragons in the Valley.

At least, that’s what I was told. In reality, I don’t ever remember a time when the Dragons weren’t in the Valley—such a thing was a natural part of life, just as breathing or eating was an inevitable part of existing.

To question the Dragons’ presence and arrival in the Valley was unthinkable. Very rarely, the subject may be broached in hushed whispers and roundabout implications, lest our Dragon overseer heard it. However, each time it happened, the result was always the same. An immediate expression of horrified fear covered the faces of the older generations in our work, the ones who were still alive of course, and they quickly forced used back to work with naught a word said regarding such criminal thoughts.

Those questions were pure ludicrous, because it was known that the Dragons had always controlled the Valley, our city nicknamed for its placement between two mountains which acted as natural gates against attacks. We were told that the Valley was a peaceful place, a way to escape and find inner strength by working at the factories: a way to clear our minds to simply focus on order and the completion of tasks. The work we did at their organization’s behest was useful, and for everyone’s benefit.

And if we did our work well enough, we might even ascend to Dragonhood.

Our dreams of ascensions distracted us from noticing how factories danced over where green hills used to flourish, staining the world black with the sins of its sludge burrowing its way into the ground, like a wound that could not be clawed out of place no matter how much one scratched. Some of the older generations even claimed that water used to be the color blue back in the day, or clear, or something other than the gray that it was right now, painting a dismal landscape.

The Dragons had always controlled the Valley. The only color to my day was seeing the gray cloud billowing from our smokestacks, only contrasted with the golden rays of the rising sun, the faintest sliver of hope before being covered in an instant by the ever-present smog.

However now, now with the words written in blood upon the wall, another color had been added to my life.

And maybe the Dragons hadn’t always controlled the Valley.

It was well before sunrise when I entered the facility, and saw those words sprawled over my station. I arrived early due to being the shift manager, before the factory had a chance to spread its creaking limbs, and it was only because of that that I was given a chance to survive.

Panic was the first emotion that seized me, my limbs not obeying my brain as fear rushed through my veins. My legs wanted me to run away, to get as far away from this disaster as possible. My brain wanted me to hide in the plant and pretend like I never saw it. My hands wanted to add my blood to the wall and end it all.

No matter the differing opinions on my course of action, the common defining factor that all my body agreed upon wholeheartedly was that the Dragons’ wrath was to be avoided at all costs.

“No,” Lynn shouted, the recollection thundering through my thoughts, even though I tried my best to fight off its embrace. “This isn’t right,” Lynn screamed again, and I gritted my eyes, knowing what was about to come.

The dramatic irony killed me as time seemed to slow for the next part of my memory, “The Dragons aren’t liberators, but enslavers. The Dragons haven’t come to make the Valley better, but to exploit it for their gain. They preach liberation while their fists hold our chains. They—”

He never got to say another word for at that moment, our Dragon overseer stepped forward, a lowest ranking Foot at that, and in silence, he grabbed Lynn’s throat and squeezed. A resounding crack was heard all over the factory floor, and Lynn collapsed clawing at his windpipe, a memory I can’t forget even now, no matter how hard I try to drown it away.

The worst part was, Lynn was still alive as he lay on the floor, his eyes alit with the fire of his anger, but without the ability to communicate it. The Dragon merely grunted at the exchange, cracked his knuckles, and that’s when the Dragon tattoo, from where the organization got its name, lit up, starting from the base of his neck all the way to his fingertips.

It was horrifying and mesmerizing at the same time—a thing of beauty to see that red and gold light stream down his arm to cast that whole limb in a fiery aura. That’s when the Dragon finally spoke, the first words he said since the incident. “I’m not done with you,” he hissed as he bent down and slammed his palm into Lynn’s chest, his tattoo flaring up again with that mystical energy as it flowed into Lynn, searing my mind with Lynn’s otherworldly expression of painful contortion and a scream that he could just not verbalize.

After what seemed like hours, though it may have been a matter of minutes, Lynn died from the sheer pain.

For the Dragons had always been in the Valley, and to suggest otherwise was a fate worse than death.

But someone had risked a fate worse than death to send me a message. Someone had been willing to write in their lifeblood what they believed was the truth. And someone had been selfish and manipulative enough to put my life in jeopardy.

Quickly, I rushed to grab a bucket of water and a rag and clean up the scrawl as well as I could. The blood hadn’t dried yet, which meant a lot of things that I couldn’t dwell on, and for now, I just needed to exist in the moment of trying to get this cleaned before I was seen with it.

Or worse, before our overseer walked in.

Each factory had a Dragon overseer, one for our personal protection, or so they told us, but we truly knew what their purpose was after Lynn.

And I would do anything to not share his fate.

My hands never moved so fast, becoming red with the blood, mixed in with the rasping of my palm against the rags and sponges against the wall, a state of constant motion. I had to clean at all costs.

The red on my hands grew worse, specks of skin flying off as I pressed harder into the gray-painted brick, small cuts on my palms intertwining with the blood of whoever created this death sentence. My arms moved at a speed so fast that even I had a hard time viewing them, each one simply blurring together with the other to where there were no arms. There were no hands. There was only the red on the wall.

And no matter how hard I scraped, no matter how fast, the blood was still there, sticking just like the Dragons who were always in the Valley. Always present and unceasing and unrelenting, no matter the cost.

Glancing out the window, I saw with fright that the first rays of dawn were slowly peeking through the window, and I had only managed to roughly scrape off half the letter V from the message written above my workstation. Maybe that much was enough to pass as a practical joke.

There weren’t always Dragons in the Alley.

Maybe I should just start completing my funeral rituals right now and save my co-workers the trouble.

Frantically, I racked my brain for some other option, some other way that I could maybe survive this nightmare. Washing it and scrubbing it definitely wasn’t working. Throwing chemicals on it would probably make it worse. Taking a sledgehammer to the brick wall would solve the problem, yet count as destruction of Dragon property and sentence me to a similar fate.

In all honesty, I wanted to hide and leave the blame to the first employee who arrived, and yet, I couldn’t. Not because I didn’t want to, or cared necessarily about the employee who would suffer such terrible consequences, but because the responsibility would fall on me—that I hadn’t come in early enough to stop such a circumstance and that it was over my workstation. And I would still pay the price of such failure. There was no way I could hide and—

Wait a moment. I never had to truly remove the message. What if there was a way I could… My legs burned as I pumped energy into them, sprinting to our supply closet in a matter of seconds. Hopefully the canister was still there and… Yes! It was. Finally, something in my favor. Rushing back over, I immediately starting shaking the gray paint violently, the metal tight in my fist as I put all my energy and hope into this inanimate object.

The apprehension bloomed as I finished the sequence of priming it, and finally climaxed as I aimed the nozzle at the mess in front of me and squeezed, a rush of fear flowing through me as every possible outcome ran through my mind if this didn’t work.

I was once told that once that out of everything I worry about, 97% of those things won’t occur. Of the 3% that does occur, the majority of those events aren’t as bad as one thought.

So, I guess I’m extremely special when the gray mixed with the red and did nothing to cover up the message, merely adding another shade in front of me, distorting the wall and yet not distorting it enough.

I really should just start engaging in self-vivisepulture—it would really save everyone the trouble of being forced to dig my grave.

Slowly, my fears gave way into the realization that I was going to die. Not just die, but die the most painful death anyone has ever experienced. That’s strange, isn’t it? How death is a finality that happens to all, and yet there are differing degrees of such a simple word. Some can die content with their lives; some can die with unfinished business; some can die in a fight; some can die painfully; some slowly. In all cases, the outcome is the same, but the journey, the action of dying itself is changed and different and unique.

And I was in a unique position where I had the opportunity to choose that journey, that death for myself. I didn’t have to subject myself to the torture of the Dragons. I could make one last choice, one last path of individuality spurred on by the cost of the message in front of me.

Glancing at my work station, a box of nails caught my eye, and I hesitated as I slowly reached in and pulled a single one out, feeling the cold metal in my hands as I took in my surroundings for the last time. The iron shaft felt small in my fingers, and as I reached to point its tip at my throat, a million thoughts ran through my head.

I thought about the temperature of the metal tip pressing against my Adam’s apple, close to my jugular vein, cool and soothing. The message still glaring over me, and the unfinished mystery of who would dare to say this. The content of what it meant if the Dragons hadn’t always been in the Valley. The managerial change and who would take my place, and how long they would last at the factory. The tattoo that I would never get, my dream unrealized of joining the Dragons and leaving this torture. The ascension that everyone dreamed of, but few earned. And worst of all, the pain that my life was meaningless. I had just been a cog in a wheel, a gear that grinded over and over again without thought and without purpose and without care. I let them run me like this. I let them enslave me.

And I just once, I wanted to know why. Why the Dragons, and their illustrious leader… A small bead of blood dripped down my throat, the first layer of skin barely punctured as the final idea hit me, my last proposal that could save my life. With nail in hand, I got to work.

1 hour later

“And so,” our Dragon overseer continued in his morning speech. “You all should have the dedication and respect that your manager did to come in early in the morning, and nail a sign of ‘The Heads’ right over his workstation. A monument to our leaders, and a proof to his commitment to us. You have an hour to replicate this dedication.”

There was a rustle of commotion as everyone tried to professionally speed-walk, also known as running while trying to look dignified, to attempt to get to the back storeroom first and grab the rest of the signs and posters scattered about of the various parts of the organization.

Lower Dragons were referred to as Feet, and then Legs, then Scales, then Arms, Claws, and finally at the top, the Heads, the ultimate leaders.

With the nail in hand, I had managed to drive the parchment over the entirety of the message, just barely. I don’t even remember why we had the Dragon insignias in our storeroom, and yet, they were my savior.

Isn’t it ironic how the Dragons ultimately saved me from themselves?

Breathing a sigh of relief that I knew wouldn’t last long, I wiped my brow and groaned as I felt something smear across my forehead, and I looked down to see the blood covering my hand, the last mark of the message that I so desperately tried to hide.

Red was all I saw as I placed my hands in the sink, trying to scrub off this morning and all of its events with each repetition of the rag scraping against my palm.