My story began as something that happened to my friend Mike, but now I’m involved too and I’d love to get some advice about what to do next. Maybe I’m just imagining things, but I don’t know.
So, Mike and I are, or at least were, roommates. We’ve actually known each other since college. We live in a city in the northeastern USA, and neither of us were making great money. In my case, that’s understandable, because I majored in music with a minor in mythology, but Mike really ought to have done better with a major in biochemistry. That was supposed to be a hot field, right?
We’ve both ended up doing lots of temp work rather than being proper employees for anyone. And both of us have tended to end up with shitty graveyard shift crap. I’ve done lots of night watch stuff, which is boring and doesn’t pay well, but I thought Mike was doing okay. He had a late night shift for a blood processor.
Basically, whenever you give blood, before they use it for transfusions or anything, it has to be tested to make sure its safe. That was Mike’s job, in a shift that ran 10pm to 6am. His task was to type the blood, check it for known pathogens, viruses, etc., and then package it and send it on to hospitals. He loved that job, because blood saves lives. If you’re not a blood donor, you should be.
Mike’s boss was a guy called Dr. Tan, who Mike claimed looked like Santa Claus working a second job. I’d never met him, but Mike said he had the kindliest face he’d ever seen on anyone. He could smile and wink and you’d less like you were doing a mundane and repetitive job and more like you were included in the most awesome club ever.
So, Mike didn’t feel odd at all when Dr. Tan asked him to add another step to his testing procedure. Apparently, what happened was that Dr. Tan opened one of the drawers, got out a small lockbox, and in the lockbox was a stone, which Dr. Tan called the “oxidizing stone”. Mike had to take a single drop of blood and drip it onto the stone. For most people’s blood, it would foam up furiously, just like the reaction you get with blood and peroxide, but for some of the samples, nothing would happen. That, Dr. Tan told him, was bad blood.
Dr. Tan explained that the stone was performing an “old fashioned” test that had mostly been forgotten these days by the medical establishment. A similar test could be done with modern equipment, but it wasn’t nearly so accurate. He winked at Mike conspiratorially, and told him they were saving money and saving lives testing the blood this way.
Dr. Tan was very protective of the testing stone. It was always cleaned and put into the lockbox at the end of Mike’s shift. Originally, Dr. Tan would always get the stone out and set it on the lab bench, and put it away afterwards (“because it was delicate”), but eventually Mike convinced him that he could be trusted with getting it out and putting it away.
That was when Dr. Tan showed him the underside of the stone. It had a circular logo with a star. Dr. Tan said, “Creepy huh? That’s the old Procter and Gamble logo. They’ve got rid of it now, because too many people thought their logo was some kind of occult symbol. But there’s nothing occult about making soap or doing chemistry.” Dr. Tan smiled his smile and Mike laughed too. He told me about it that day, asking if Procter and Gamble really did have a logo that looked like an occult symbol, and I told him yes. I was going to get out my phone to show him a picture, but we were having burgers and since he’d already seen the logo, I didn’t bother cleaning the ketchup off my fingers to get out my phone.
So, Mike was testing blood. But the other odd thing was what happened to the blood that failed the stone test. Whereas most reject blood went into a bio-waste container, the blood rejected by the stone went into a separate bucket. I’m sorry to say that I don’t really know the explanation Dr. Tan gave Mike, because I didn’t really listen properly when he was telling me about it, but it had something to do with the CDC, special disposal rules, and possibly some kind of research. What I do know is that Mike would fill a container rather like a bucket, and place plastic over the top of the blood, and then put the lid on. Then it would go in a cardboard box that was just about the right size to hold the bucket. The box had stuff printed on it in large letters, at the top left, it said “BLOOD” and on the bottom right it said “FOR DISPOSAL”.
Mike was happy. I was happy. All was good with the world, until I was looking through one of my old college mythology books to post a reply to a question on reddit when Mike said “Hey, that’s the Proctor and Gamble logo!”. It wasn’t. It was a variation on the classic Baphomet goat-head occult symbol, favored by TV shows everywhere. The most clichéd symbol of the lot.
I thought it was weird, but Mike tried to brush it off. I asked him if he really knew what happened to the blood that went into those “FOR DISPOSAL” boxes, and he said that he just put them in a storage refrigerator and they’d usually be gone the next day.
I think I did get to Mike though, because he said, “Did you know none of the blood I test is men’s blood? Or kids. Or old women. It’s always women. And the age is almost always between 16 and 21, sometimes younger or older, but not often.”
I could see that Mike felt odd about it and had questions. But I think he trusted that there was a sane explanation for all of it, that Dr. Tan would put him straight.
Normally Mike is home from his shift at 8am or so, but he didn’t come home that morning. I fell asleep without seeing him, but I did see him when I woke up.
He laughed, and said, “We’re idiots.” I felt relieved. “I don’t know why I was all mixed up about the Procter and Gamble logo,” he continued, “but it looks nothing like Baphomet.”
“What about the weirdness about the boxes of blood?” I asked.
“Yeah, I should have told you,” he replied. “We stopped separating the blood a few months back. The CDC research program is over, so we don’t need to do that any more.”
I should have felt more relief, but something was wrong. Surely he’d have mentioned something as important as that the day before, because it would have made everything seem less odd. And there was something about his eyes; his mouth was smiling and saying all the right things, but his eyes weren’t.
The next day, Mike laid into me about running up charges on his credit card and not keeping the house tidy and about six other things, none of which had a grain of truth to them. He seemed less like my friend and roommate, and more like someone who despised me. Within the week, he’d moved out while I was at work, leaving me three months of rent in an envelope.
I don’t know where he went. But what’s weird is that neither do his folks. His mom called last weekend, and she didn’t know he’d moved out, and didn’t know where he’d gone.
Don’t you think that’s odd? I keep thinking I should go and report him missing, but every movie and Internet comment thread I’ve ever seen tells me that you don’t want to involve the police if you can possibly avoid it. I don’t want to end up in an interview room being asked what I’ve done with his body!
Okay, so this was weird enough, and I’ve lost a friend, but the story isn’t over. Remember how I told you I’m working doing night security? Well, for right now I’m doing it for a major food manufacturer. I won’t name them, but they supply chain restaurants, smaller restaurants, and some of what they make ends up in grocery stores too. Basically, if you ate today and you’re not living on a farm, you probably ate something they make.
So I’m doing my rounds through a secure storage area and through a refrigerated section, and what do I see through the glass door to one of the fridges but two words on a cardboard box: “FOR DISPOSAL”. I walk up and see that below those words is a white label, saying “if unused after December 31”. Looking closer, I also see “BLOOD”, but above it is another label saying “PIGS’”.
Maybe it’s just the same brand of box, and it really is pigs’ blood. That would make the most sense, but with all the strange things that have been happening, I just don’t know…
So, what do you think…?
Submitted November 30, 2015 at 06:02AM by Maristic http://ift.tt/1RfyQAm nosleep
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