5 Feeding a blood generator

I spent the next two days going in to work as if nothing had occurred. I still had not thought of a way to condense blood into a food-resembling substance yet.

That did not prevent me from enjoying the bounty that had fallen on a broom handle. The first day I came back into the abandoned mechanical area, the corpse had bled a good ten centimetres of blood that filled the bin. Maybe it was a lapse of judgement, but I wanted to receive the entirety of the nutrients available to me. I drank all of it.

I had never experienced being blood bloated, and I got some rather peculiar looks from my coworkers as I started my shift with a distended stomach area. If the first bottles I had drank could be compared to an energy drink, then the dose was like having pure caffeine fed through an IV tube into my blood stream. I was almost shaking with the sheer amount of energy that became available to my blood-engorged cells. Work went by in a flash, ending with another trip to see our good friend Clemen and harvesting the blood that had accumulated during my shift.

I didn't even need to sleep that night, instead preferring to wander the streets in search of something to aid my smuggling idea. I came across a street merchant that sold old medical tools and laboratory equipment. I couldn't see anything of interest as I browsed the shelves, mostly since I had no idea what most of these tools were used for. I marked his location on my phone and decided this was a worthwhile person to know if I was going to get into the blood business.

The second day started out much like the one prior, with an albeit slightly smaller accumulation of blood. I inspected the body to see why this was the case and could see that many of the limbs were growing back from their cauterized mounds. The head had even fully stopped bleeding, but I didn't want to stare into his face enough to discern the exact improvement.

The blood also seemed a bit more dilute in its nutrient providing properties. To keep with the previous analogy, I'd say it was akin to a strong coffee. A noticeable difference from yesterday's consumption. In any case, the accumulation over the previous days has resulted in my build becoming quite defined. Before we could see most of my ribs through my skin when I had my shirt off but now my skin has become tighter as muscle mass starts to accrue under it. The difference in power and energy also allows me to worry less about sleep and snacking. This results in more time being awake, more time questioning basic principles and societal standards and basically ends with me having a mid-life crises every waking moment.

It might sound exhausting, but compared to the unending suffering that is starving from not enough blood, It really isn't that bad.

On the second day, I also learnt who was my new quartermaster. He was a rather average looking vampire that wore a dress shirt to work and stayed almost ninety percent of his shift inside his office. Seems that no one was really concerned about Clemen's disappearance in the middle of his shift, which was fine by me. I couldn't help but get a feeling that something was off, but that was just my intuition speaking. In any case, it wasn't like he was dead, he was still serving his function as well as he possibly could inside the factory.

The new boss didn't seem to have it in for anyone and only concerned himself with reaching quota, which meant he wasn't a pain to deal with. Perfect, now I could work on my plan to get my payment out of here without bother as long as I did my job.

It was on the third day that I noticed two problems that were arising slowly.

The first was that the blood had taken on such a low quality that I felt drinking sparkling water might have a better empowering effect. Clearly the nutrient quantity had gone down drastically over the past few days, this becoming obvious in my mind as I thought about how the qualities had peaked and then progressed in a downward trend.

This nutrient deficiency would be an issue. I was counting on my corpse to generate a whole bottling company's worth of blood for my own selfish uses, including dire need for rent funds. I had to think about how I could solve this conundrum.

The second issue, one which took very little time for me to spot when I entered the mechanical room, was that Clemen's brain functions were returning to him. Evidently, Forgoing the inspection of his head was a bad choice as he had recovered enough brain function to start to moan and gurgle. None of it was intelligible, but that meant that his healing had progressed at a rather fast pace since the injury occurred only three days ago. It seems I had underestimated his healing factor.

The solution to this latter problem was quite easy. Going to the tool cabinet, I picked up the machete that I had taken the day of the incident. With one hand holding my ex-boss' head by a handful of hair and the other arced back with a razor sharp machete, I cleanly severed through the thick neck tissue and vertebrae.

If I thought the legs had a good amount of blood loss when cut, the neck was akin to a waterfall. Blood gushed out of it at an alarming rate, some drops even hitting the ceiling of the room. I no longer had access to the butane torch I had used earlier since it was out of fuel. It was time to improvise.

Taking a page out of some rather masochistic adult stories I had read, I took off my belt and looped it around the newly bloodied neck stump. I pulled as much I could to force the flow of blood to slow and then hooked in the pin of the belt. It did not stop the blood flow completely, rather slowing it to a rather disturbing gargle and bubble as residual air in the throat was brought to the surface. Unless someone had seen Clemen naked before and knew his markings with great knowledge, it would be very difficult to determine to whom this body belonged to.

While the issue of the cadaver calling for help while I was away was recently solved, I still needed to fix the nutrient deficiency. Something to replace the life that Clemen's body used to hold.

It was only as I was cleaning a rather filthy cell that I came up with an idea that made my robust stomach churn slightly. The blood in this cell was quite thick and the excrement and urine smells that hit me when entering the room of slaughter were quite unpleasant. Usually I would smile for having thought of a solution to a problem, but this one made me doubt my own sanity. In any case, it would have to be taken care of at the end of my shift, after I had collected a proper amount of ingredients.

If anything, this almost made me feel bad for my old quartermaster. He definitely deserved this, but at the same time, no creature on earth should have to suffer this type of treatment. But, it's not as if my morality was going to stop me from achieving my goals.

I stood in front of the headless figure with a bucket in my hands. In the severed neck there were a multitude of visible features, spinal chord and vertebrae, muscle tissue, skin, adipose tissue, veins and most importantly was the esophagus. The fleshy hole was clearly visible from the top and provided a direct line to the stomach. Theoretically, the internal organs inside the body are still operating, which means the stomach can still digest blood if it is provided and the kidneys can pull out all the other nasty particles present within it.

Practically, this means that Clemen will be able to digest this bucket of disgusting wastewater that I've pulled out of my cart. The contents slosh within my container, the entire mixture being a dark rusty brown and smelling like liquid hell. Trying my best to not splash the content everywhere, I slowly tip the bucket until a stream of the foul potion falls out of the bucket and onto the neck.

The liquid splashes and wets the bleeding neck tissue, coating it in a slick and sickly looking concoction. After a few seconds of adjusting my aim, I get the majority of the flow to fall into the hole that leads to the human gas tank. The body guzzles up the waste, a sight that is not fun to witness or imagine. Being the big boy that he is, the bucket is almost empty as I see the liquid start to bubble up to the top and over flow. This is a good thing as the objects that occupy the bottom of the bucket would be quite distasteful to witness being sloshed onto a corpse.

If this was human flesh, it would be the nastiest way to get a serious case of sepsis. Vampires have rather robust immune systems, being already dead and such, so I am not as concerned about that more than I am concerned of ruining all the future blood if this is my only way of filling up Clemen.

It seems saving that medical equipment merchant from a few nights ago was the right call. I am going to have to come up with a more efficient way to deliver nutrients from the body, and a better way to extract them as well if a viable option comes into play. A new plan starts to formulate in my head from the very limited medical knowledge that I possess. Time to jerry-rig a corpse as a blood purifier.