In the light of a candle - The Crimson Cemetery

A Story by D.Y.Petkova

Good evening. Please, come in. The place is new but I hope the next minutes are going to be really… interesting. Come, this is my room and we will be here tonight. Pick a cushion and a spot on the carpet. Now let’s light the candle and begin with tonight’s story. It is called The Crimson Cemetery. Here it is …
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The Crimson Cemetery is a rather popular destination for those who do not want to visit anything else. It is where all diseases are cured and all injuries �" healed. Its official name is not The Crimson Cemetery, of course. It does not actually have an official name. It is where the really desperate ones go to be saved. It is a myth, a rumour and a legend. And a truth. Because it exists. It is a real place with real patients and real… doctors. Or so people say.
What is really strange about it is that although it is a clinic of sorts, nobody has actually gotten out of there healed. There are visitors, but they are strictly observed and nobody is left to wander around. These visitors are often seen at the funerals and can be recognized by their blank faces and empty eyes. They are the closest family of the recently passed �" spouses, children, siblings. No girlfriends, uncles or cousins. Oh, and another thing ? All the coffins are empty, the remains declared dangerous to be taken from the clinic. Everybody is crying on these funerals, except for the visitors �" they have no tears left.
Here is the place to ask “Why ?”. Why would they subject their loved ones to unknown treatment that hasn’t shown any results ? It isn’t because they believe the results would be good �" they are warned from the beginning that nobody leaves alive. So why ? I will tell you.
Because they buy time. No matter how severe the illness is, they postpone the end. That’s what they do �" postpone. Not cure, not forever. Just a few days or weeks, depending on the patient. And nobody talks about what happens inside. But I know.
Visitors are rarely allowed in because many are known to have passed out or even away at the picture before them. In every room there is only one patient. Lying in a glass tank. Naked, with a needle in one arm and a needle in the other. And blood is flowing through the tubes. Now, there is similar treatment that is popular in hospitals and actually gives positive results, but this is something else. Because this is not blood, not the real kind. It is thick and red and takes over the body entirely. And kills slowly. The nurses wear masks and nobody is allowed to near the patients without protective clothing. The visitors witch through a glass wall. A dark cement room with nothing but a glass coffin.
And the patients are conscious. All the time. No sleep, no relief, only dull pain. They are not in pain, no. Waiting for the end. And when it comes, they scream. Because they do not die of poison, blood loss or broken bones. No, they drown. Every patient reaches a point where his body just can’t take more. That is when one of the needles pop out and the tank fills with the red liquid. Quickly. And all the staff does is to drag the visitors out. There are screams, cries and pleads, and not only from the visitors �" the patients know what is happening. The try to break the tanks, the window or the doors, try to stop the flow, try to get out. Nobody has done that.
And this is why the visitors are dry-eyed at the funerals. Because they have seen what they have agreed on. They know what they have forced their closest ones to endure. And they have to live with it.
Because everything in the Crimson Cemetery is consensual.
Sleep tight and sweet dreams.