Last January, I was fired from my job due to the pandemic. I couldn’t pay my rent, but evictions were frozen, so I basically sat at home stressed and terrified that my unseen landlord would find some other way to drive me out onto the street. I felt like my fears were coming true when he showed up unexpectedly one evening, but I opened the door to find a smiling stooped-over old man wearing a disposable blue mask and baggy clothes that hung from his skeletal frame.
“Thought I’d go around meeting my tenants, since we’re all tied together for the time being,” he told me, his voice quavering from age. “You can call me Mr. Durham.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” I lied, hiding my stress. “I’m sorry about not paying the rent this month. Everything’s shutting down, you know, and I lost my job, and—”
He waved away my excuses. “None of that, no worries. I’m an old bag of bones, what would I do with money?” He looked up, locking eyes with me, and took several seconds to lift his cheeks for a wide smile that I couldn’t see behind his mask. “I’ll waive your debt. All I ask is that you donate to a blood drive this month. Give back.”
I couldn’t believe his generosity. “Really? That’s so incredibly kind of you.”
He waved away my thanks the same as he’d shrugged off my excuses. “It’s fine, no worries.” He slowly gripped my wrist and squeezed it for a long moment. “Do you need me to send you some nice home cooked meals? Got to keep your strength up in these trying times.”
Surprised at his physical contact, but, as always, chronically incapable of accepting gifts, I shook my head. “I’m alright. Thanks, though.”
He removed his hand, but soon brought it back with a little red card. “Here’s the blood drive’s address.”
“Oh.” Taken aback, I gazed down at the card in my hand. “You… had a specific one in mind.”
He winked. “Got to make sure you actually do it.”
With that, he turned and hobbled away at a snail’s pace, leaving me to feel subtly violated in an odd way I couldn’t quite put it into words.
But what choice did I have? If I could avoid being homeless by donating blood, well, I had to do it.
The next day, I went to the address on the card. It was only a few blocks away, but the walk took me in an unfamiliar direction, past heavily trafficked roads thick with car exhaust and down labyrinthine side streets full of shuttered businesses. The directions on my phone told me to turn into a dead-end alley, but I stood there at the mouth for a couple minutes, struggling with my trepidation. I could see the steel entranceway from here, and a small red sign. Why was a blood drive through a barely-marked door at the end of an alley in a semi-abandoned part of town?
Nobody else went in or out while I waited, but the afternoon was wearing on, and I told myself to get it done before the sun set. I didn’t want to walk home in the dark… after texting a friend my location in a semi-joking manner, I headed down the narrow clean alley and grabbed the door handle.
Within was a white waiting room. The chairs, the walls, the floor… all spotless ivory. A nurse with pale skin to match sat at a white desk reading a book. I couldn’t see anything but her eyes behind her mask, and she ignored me until I walked up and said, “Um, hi, I’m here to give blood?”
She glanced over from her book, looking first at my hands, then around my upper body, as if expecting me to be holding something.
Confused, I added, “For Mr. Durham?”
“Ah.” She turned in her chair, grabbed some forms, and handed them to me. “Fill these out.”
Not unexpected, I supposed. I sat in a chair and filled out the forms with a red pen, on edge because of how oddly silent the place was. I didn’t hear anything beyond the waiting room, and I still saw nobody else entering or leaving.
I was definitely feeling nervous, but I thought it through: why would anyone here hurt me? If I didn’t return from this place, the authorities would immediately connect my disappearance to Mr. Durham because of the text I’d sent my friend. On top of that, the nurse behind the desk was genuinely bored. I watched her out of the corner of my eye. If she was part of some sort of organ thieving or human trafficking ring, she would be on edge just like me. Instead, she just sat reading… I leaned to look… oh. Fifty Shades of Grey. She saw me looking and narrowed her eyes. My cheeks burned.
Right. Not a human trafficker. Taking a deep breath, I stood up and returned my forms.
“Follow me,” she said, leading me back through a set of pearl doors into a sterile hallway.
I glanced back at the front desk, about to ask whether it was okay for her to leave it unattended, but it didn’t seem like anyone was coming in regardless. I followed her into a standard medical room and sat on the chair within. She had me make a fist and tense my arm. She cleaned a particular spot, and then brought a very large needle toward me that was connected by a tube to a hanging bag.
It was only as I felt that familiar enervation from having my blood drawn that a thought occurred to me: I hadn’t asked for proof that Mr. Durham was actually my landlord. He could honestly have been anybody, walking up to apartment doors in search of suckers on behalf of—
—I lifted my head suddenly, fighting an overwhelming draining feeling.
“Take it easy,” the nurse told me. “You passed out.”
She removed the needle, and I blinked groggily. “Am I done?”
“Yep, all done. See you next month.”
“Oh, I’m not coming back—” I stopped halfway through my sentence. I’d assumed this was a one-time thing, but if it was in lieu of rent, it would have to be monthly, wouldn’t it?
She led me back to the front, and I stumbled into evening twilight feeling light and shaky.
Well, they hadn’t killed me or stolen a kidney.
Right? I touched my abdomen.
No surgery scars. Thank god.
Later that night, I sat around talking about it over a group video call with my friends. Feeling tipsy after a single beer, I explained what had happened in dramatic fashion.
The guys didn’t seem to fully understand. One asked, “So this Durham guy waived your rent, then asked you to donate blood as some sort of pay-it-forward thing?”
“I don’t know,” I told them. “It was at this super shady and out of the way place. I was really scared.”
Another said, “Yeah, giving blood can be pretty scary sometimes. Did you pass out?”
“I did, but—” I tried to explain why it had all felt so weird, but I supposed it was impossible to convey without having been there. They lightly teased me for ‘fainting,’ then the topic moved on.
For the next couple weeks, I moved on, too—until rent time rolled around again. Without anything better to do, I just sat in my bedroom waiting to see what would happen. Inevitably, a knock came on my door on the second evening after rent had been due.
I answered it to find Mr. Durham standing there. He wasn’t quite so stooped-over, and his voice was a little stronger. His eyes were intent above his mask. “The blood drive’s expecting you.”
“Oh, right,” I said warily. “Instead of rent again?”
He nodded. “That’s the deal.”
“I’ll go tomorrow.”
“See that you do.”
Feeling odd all over again, I closed the door softly as he walked away. What had initially seemed like an act of charity and community now made me feel uncomfortable. Worse, I was starting to run low on savings, so I didn’t really have a choice.
The next day, I went earlier in the afternoon than before. The same nurse was there, all but her eyes still hidden behind her mask. This time, she was reading A Clockwork Orange. I didn’t have to fill out forms, but I still had to wait for some reason, until I realized she was just finishing her current page. She closed the book, stood, and said, “Follow me—”
—I lifted my head suddenly, fighting an overwhelming draining feeling.
“Take it easy,” she told me. “You passed out again.”
I rose from the chair a bit early, almost accidentally pulling at the needle that was still in my arm. I was in the back room, though I couldn’t quite remember walking in there.
She put a small bandage on my arm, then let me stumble out.
I felt very groggy, and it was nearly sunset. I was confused about the time, but I made my way home, fighting the urge to pass out again. Once I got there, I crashed in bed, and I only woke up the next day.
Over a group video call, it was my friends that told me, “Aren’t you supposed to wait two months in between blood donations? Maybe that’s why you’re so tired.”
I looked it up, and they were right. As my savings neared empty, I paced my apartment, not sure what to do. Over the next couple weeks, I started eating less to save money, so my strength returned slowly. The inactivity sure wasn’t helping. I busied myself with games and television, trying not to think about it.
The evening after rent was due again, Mr. Durham knocked on my door. He was as old as ever, but didn’t seem so frail anymore. He told me simply, “The blood drive’s expecting you.”
“I’m too weak,” I told him. “It’s too soon.”
“I’ll have meals delivered,” he countered. “Nice full hearty meals, on me. We’ll keep your strength up.”
I frowned openly at him for the first time. “I’ll find a way to pay you money.”
“Like I said, I don’t want your money.” His eyes were quite serious above his masked and unseen expression. “I want you to donate blood.”
“Then I’ll do it at another place.”
“No. It has to be that one.”
I shook my head. “Why? Why do you want me to donate blood at that specific place?”
“I don’t owe you an explanation,” he said, his tone final. “Do it, or face the consequences.”
He strode away, and I glared after him. He’d put on the manner of a nice old man at the start, but now he felt vaguely menacing.
But what choice did I have?
—I lifted my head suddenly, fighting an overwhelming draining feeling.
“Take it easy,” the nurse told me. “You passed out again.”
I jumped up from the chair, pulling painfully at the needle that was still in my arm. She gripped me hard by the wrist and gently pulled it out before applying a small bandage to seal the wound. I stumbled out into evening twilight, wondering when I’d even left my apartment. Everything was blurring together, and I was feeling beset by a blanket of exhaustion and mental fog.
When I awoke two days later, I stared at the morning sunlight on my wall for a full twenty minutes, facing the reality of my situation. It was time to consider what I now deemed both obvious and impossible: my landlord was a fucking vampire.
Looking up what information I could, I tracked down his residence, and started following him during the day. Through his windows, I could see Durham puttering around in his unassuming little house, and I watched from afar with a cheap pair of binoculars. He didn’t burst into flames in sunlight, and he didn’t seem to be an overt creature of the night, but I could think of no better explanation for him taking my rent in blood, which I could now objectively see was an insane proposition.
On my regular group video call with my friends, I told them, “This guy—this one little old man—owns like five hundred properties all over the city. Some of them have been in his family for over a hundred years!”
My friends seemed uncomfortable. One asked, “So you’re… stalking your landlord?”
“I’m just looking into him,” I shot back. “Why aren’t you guys on my side here? He’s literally taking my blood!”
“Well, he’s not taking it, you’re giving it,” another said. “And you don’t have to pay rent. That’s awesome. I’d kill to not have to pay rent. Oh man, I could save up so much money without that expense! I might even afford a deposit on a house…”
They all agreed wholeheartedly with the fantasy of not paying rent, but I angrily shouted, “I’m not saving any money! I don’t even have a job!”
Then, I hung up the video call.
I’d gone too far. Nobody called me back.
As the days passed, all I could do was eat the meals Durham sent over and weakly pace my apartment. The night before ‘paying rent,’ I decided I wasn’t going to do it. I’d rather be on the street.
—I lifted my head suddenly, fighting an overwhelming draining feeling.
“Take it easy,” the nurse told me. “You passed out again.”
I stared up at her. “What the fuck?!”
She blinked. “Rude.”
Pulling the needle out myself and foregoing a bandage, I staggered down the hall and into the evening twilight. It was all I could do to make it home and pass out in bed, awaking in a blink of an eye to afternoon sunlight. What day was it?
I’d ‘paid rent’ two days before.
I got up, found the pile of delivered meals, and hungrily wolfed them all down, ignoring how long some of them had been sitting out. I passed out again, this time from a food coma, and awoke in a mess of wrappers in the middle of the night.
My life was becoming a blur. Too weak to do anything else, I lay around watching television for an indeterminate amount of time. I’d just watch one series while I recovered, I decided. Then I’d—
—I lifted my head suddenly, fighting an overwhelming draining feeling.
I tumbled forward, interrupting the nurse’s platitude. I grabbed the wall and lurched this way and that, fighting my way out of the donation center despite nobody trying to stop me.
I slept right in the alley all night long, and nobody woke me.
In the morning, I rose like a zombie and shuffled my way home. Where was all my time going? I could see my browser and location history on my phone. I’d been alive and awake and doing things since this had begun, but it was all a haze in my mind. It was even a month later than I thought it was—I’d lost track of how many donations I’d given. I literally couldn’t remember one of the times I’d been there.
I had fantasies of grabbing a wooden stake and sneaking into Durham’s place to put an end to this the movie way, but the lag time on my motivation meant every time I set my mind to doing something, another month would pass before I even tried.
Eventually, I found myself staring at a gaunt husk of a man gazing back at me from beyond a coffee shop window.
It was me.
I was a husk.
I’d lost touch with all my friends, I’d left all my plans by the wayside, and I barely had enough energy to survive each day.
I didn’t even have the energy to cry. I just asked strangers on the street for change, a laborious process which took hours and drained all I had left. They were quite giving once they really noticed me and saw how sick and listless I was, but it took a lot of convincing to get anyone to actually look at me.
I bought a bus ticket and crumpled in a rear seat.
—I lifted my head suddenly, fighting an overwhelming draining feeling.
I screamed incoherently and finally shed a tear, but it wasn’t the nurse.
The kindly old bus driver shook me again. “You alright, kid? You look like you’re half dead.”
I shook my head. “No, no. I need to go home. I need to go home.”
He glanced around at the empty bus, then back at me. “You know where it is?”
I held out my phone, which I’d used to map the route the day before.
“You just hold on,” he said. “I’m not supposed to do this, but I’ll drop you off at home before I clock out for the night.”
I just kept crying, desperate to go home. I can’t imagine what my parents must have thought, seeing a commercial bus pull up directly to their house, but that saint of a man must have knocked on their door and explained things. I awoke in my childhood bed some unknown number of days later, finally able to think again.
Weakly, I climbed out of bed and made my shaky way downstairs, where my worried mother immediately rose from the kitchen table and hugged me. My father was close behind, asking me what the hell had happened to me.
All I could explain was that my landlord had been taking my blood. That was enough to make my parents horrified and defensive. They took me to the emergency room, where I was checked out to ensure I wasn’t literally dying. Then, they sent me home, and I was put back into my bed with strict orders to rest, drink, and eat very carefully for several weeks.
I was almost starting to feel better—but then, Durham found me.
I was sitting at the kitchen table one morning when my father entered with a letter in hand. He looked to my mother with concern. “We’re being sued!”
“Sued?!” she asked, looking to me.
That sense of violation had returned. It was him. “Is it Durham?”
My father nodded. “We have to go to court.”
“For what?!” I demanded.
He seemed perturbed as he read further. “He’s suing for the remaining rent due on your lease. He’s suing for your blood.”
It was true. I grabbed the papers and read them with a profound sense of horror. Landlord-tenant disputes did happen, certainly, but did the court have any idea what they were entertaining?
My parents hired the best lawyer we could afford, and we did have some strategy sessions, but we hadn’t figured out a solid plan by the time the hearing date rolled around. Our lawyer had never dealt with anything like this, and he kept saying he wasn’t sure whether he was being pranked.
After hours of sitting around waiting, we were finally led into the courtroom, and I stood nervously across the chamber from Mr. Durham. He looked taller and sturdier than I remembered, and some of his white hair had shifted back to its natural black. He gazed back at me above his mask, his expression impassive.
I couldn’t match his gaze. I knew if I said the word vampire, my case would implode, so I decided to keep my mouth shut.
The judge entered, and I waited, heart pounding, as he took his sweet time sitting and reading the relevant papers on his high desk. Could Durham hear my pulse racing in my ears? For some reason, I believed that he could. I felt like a prey animal standing stock still near a predator.
Finally, the judge looked over at me. “You’re the tenant?”
My lawyer elbowed me, and I said, “Yes, your honor.”
“Did you sign these?” He held out some forms.
My lawyer went forward, took them, and brought them back to me.
I scanned over photocopies of the paperwork the nurse had given me at my first blood donation. I hadn’t really paid attention then, assuming they were basic medical information forms, but I could see now that they were ‘loan conversion’ papers to sign up for rent payment through blood instead of money. My expression fell. “I mean, yes, I did, but I didn’t know what I was signing.”
“That’s no excuse,” the judge responded. “This is unconventional, but you did sign it.” He laughed. “I’d give an arm and a leg to live without a rent payment. You should consider yourself lucky.”
I looked to my lawyer, who shrugged. I saw him glance past me at Durham and nod a moment later. Horrified, it occurred to me that our ‘top lawyer’ had been particularly useless at helping us, and that might have been for a reason. Taking a step away from him, I said, “I won’t live in that man’s apartment.”
“That’s up to you,” the judge told me, shaking his head. “But you still owe the rest of the year-long lease you signed. I see Mr. Durham here has even been feeding you out of his own pocket. Seems to me like you’re a charity case that’s trying to pull one over on this fine upstanding citizen. I’m considering ordering a summary payment in full right now.”
I looked to my parents behind me, who seemed confused, while my lawyer remained silent. Putting two and two together, I protested, “A full year of blood donations given all at once would drain me dry. It would literally kill me!”
The judge hesitated. “Oh, right. Guess I didn’t think about that. Such a strange case.” He took another look at his papers. “Alright, what I’ll do is make the full payment due immediately as a debt, but you can pay in installments, with interest.”
“Interest?” I shot back, raising my voice. “How can I pay interest on giving blood? I can only donate so much at a time, and then I have to wait. This will make me owe him indefinitely!”
“That’s for you and Mr. Durham to work out, I suppose. If you don’t pay, I’ll have you imprisoned, and then they’ll just take it from you there.” The judge sighed and raised one eyebrow. “You kids, I swear. You knew what you signed up for. Now it’s your responsibility to pay what you owe.”
Raising my voice even louder, I lost my composure and shouted, “Is this a fucking joke? This man is a goddamn vampire!”
“Now listen here, insults do not belong in this courtroom!”
“I’m not insulting him!” I screamed, getting desperate. “I’m saying he’s an actual in-the-flesh vampire! Why the hell do you think he wants me to pay in blood?!”
The judge balked. I felt like I was getting to him—and then I saw him glance over at Durham in askance.
Mr. Durham nodded slightly.
Oh.
It was like that.
The lawyer, the judge—this was all a sham. Mr. Durham owned five hundred properties in this town, and who knew what else. I’d walked into a deathtrap.
I darted to the back, speaking to my parents. “Mom, Dad, we gotta get outta here. We gotta move away. He’s gonna drain me for the rest of my life!”
My dad seemed uncomfortable. I could tell he just saw this is as a normal courtroom. He thought the system was functioning, and that something must be wrong with us, not them. “I don’t know… you did know what you were signing up for… it’s up to every individual’s personal responsibility to pay what they owe. That’s what I was taught, and it worked out for your mother and me.”
I pleaded with my mother. She winced sadly, but said, “Listen to your father. He knows best, and I’m sure everything will turn out alright so long as you make your payments.”
I looked to some of the other watchers in the room, who were quietly awaiting their turn on the stands, but they had their own problems. They avoided eye contact with me.
Fine. Forget my dignity. Going up to Mr. Durham, I told him, “Look. I’ll give you my blood. I’ll give it to you regularly for the rest of my life. Just let me do it at a pace that doesn’t leave me barely alive!”
His eyes were ice cold above his mask. “Why should I?”
He was actually asking me. He wasn’t being rhetorical. Surging with energy, I let it all flow forth. “I just want to live. I don’t have big dreams. I won’t ask for much. I just want to be a person. I want to have friends. I want to watch television shows. I want to go on walks. I want time.” Tears ran down my face as I thought about the fog I’d briefly escaped. “I just want time. I just want to be a person! Can’t I just be a person?!”
Considering my words, Durham’s cold eyes jumped to the judge.
I followed his gaze. The judge’s eyes were misty, but he was far more scared than he was compassionate. At the other stand, my lawyer had his gaze averted. His knuckles were white on the handle of his briefcase. They both knew exactly what they were doing. I looked back up at Durham.
He decided simply, “No.”
My heart sank like a rock. “What? Why not?”
He almost seemed surprised I didn’t know already: “Because I don’t care.”
The judge said something by way of dismissal of the conversation, and I found myself being led out by my parents in a daze. Durham had come to me in the guise of a kind old man pretending to have my best interests at heart, but behind that act was an inhuman monster. He was going to drain every last drop of vitality from me and leave me a husk, and he didn’t care one single bit.
It was only on my stunned car ride home that I started receiving messages from the friends that had recently left me behind. They’d all heard about my case by word of mouth. Apparently, I’d set a precedent, and now they were all excited to convert their leases to paying in blood instead of money, too.
It was the only way to get ahead, they said. Save enough money on rent, and maybe, just maybe, they could buy a house of their own and never have to pay rent again. It was the only way to beat the system—
—I lifted my head slowly, no longer fighting the overwhelming draining feeling.
