It was as I pushed the needle into his eye that I knew I had crossed a threshold. A life full of increasingly dark and self-destructive choices had led me to a doorway, and as I began to harvest this man, I walked through it. My hand trembled as I pulled up the plunger and his ocular fluid filled the vial as the eye beneath began to shrivel. I had thought he was still out, but as I finished, he began to stir. His good eye rolled in the silver frame of the eye speculum I had applied, and then it found me. Perhaps he recognized me. Maybe it would make it easier for him if he did, give him something to focus on other than the pain and the terror. He could spend his final moments wondering why his baby girl was treating him this way. Why she was taking choice bits of him, slowly killing him in the process.
As he began to cry and flail against his restraints, I found myself wondering the same thing. He wasn’t a good man. By many definitions he would be called evil. But I had seen far worse things since running away at sixteen. Had become far worse myself.
But the time for regrets was past.
I had already walked through the door. And they were all waiting and watching.
There is the world as you know it, and then there are worlds beneath that world. I stumbled into one of those worlds when I was a homeless and desperate young girl worried more about not starving or freezing to death than I was the mysteries and moralities of life. It was as I lay shivering in a shadowed corner of a rundown subway station that they found me and offered me a new life. A new path to walk.
They call themselves Takers. It’s hard to say if its more of a philosophy or a religion, as for the past five years I’ve only known the practical details I needed to perform my duties as an initiate. Like any good secret society or cult, they save the inner workings for after you are in too deep to get away or risk telling anyone. But to be fair, I never cared that much about my ignorance.
When they found me in that subway, I had been homeless for almost a year. A year of living on the street had hardened me, made me ruthlessly pragmatic. Social taboos and moral restraints start falling away the second or third time someone tries to cave your head in or rape you. I had more scars inside and outside than I had when I’d run away, but I had also grown up a lot. My priorities were surviving and improving my life when I could. Everything else was trivia.
They took me to a small, clean apartment. Told me it was mine now. Gave me a debit card to a small expense account and told me to use it to buy some new clothes and food. Gave me a burner phone and told me to always answer it without fail. They said someone would be by the next day to evaluate me further.
It’s almost funny now, looking back at that seventeen year-old me. Dirty and tired, I sat there crying with a mixture of gratitude and disbelief at how quickly things had changed. There was stuff for sandwiches in the fridge, and I ate one and a half before my shrunken stomach rebelled. I took a long shower, the first in two months, and then I went to sleep in a bed softer than just about anything I had ever felt. I slept deep and well, never troubled by why I was being given this, and what the price would be.
It wasn’t that I was stupid. I knew there was a catch. There’s always a catch. But I just didn’t care. If it was sex, I would try to get away if it was more than I could handle or endure it if I could. If it was violence, I would do my best to hurt them worse than they hurt me. If it was anything else…well, I could tolerate a lot to not go back to that cold subway.
The next day a short woman in horn-rimmed glasses came in and asked me a series of questions. Weird, random stuff like you’d probably see on a psych eval or personality test. Whatever she was looking for, she seemed satisfied with my answers and moved on to explaining that I was being given an opportunity to begin a new job. A new life.
A new path.
One begins in the Takers as an Initiate. That’s a fancy word for assistant. Several times a week I would get a phone call to go somewhere and do something. Both the where and the what would vary greatly. Sometimes I was told to just go and watch a location for awhile with no specific instructions of what I was watching for. Other times I was told to carve or paint a symbol in a specific location. Over time I figured out that there were two separate sets of symbols I was being given. One related to something they call “The Convenience Room”. Those symbols wouldn’t be requested except every few months. The others related to the main business of the Takers.
Taking people and harvesting them.
The marks were a way of letting a Taker know who a potential target might be and some details about them. Takers in an area would be told the general location of potential marks and then they could pick and choose which ones to seek out. The marks will always be near a place that the victim frequents, be it their home or work or a movie theater they always visit on Tuesday nights. This victim has been independently vetted as a good candidate that meets several criteria.
First, relative health needs to be good to excellent. Smoking, excessive drinking or drug use all decrease the likelihood of being taken. Second, they need to live a life where they won’t be overly missed. This is important, but not as important as you might think. Most people, even if they have families or important jobs, aren’t going to be truly missed by more than a handful of people. And there are many that won’t really be missed by anyone at all.
If you think this just applies to the homeless or the aged, you’re wrong. The first time I marked someone’s house, it was a man in his late forties who worked at a local delicatessen. He lived within his means, he had friends at work, he even had a sister who lived in New Mexico. Within a month of him being taken, his house was rented and his missing person’s report had gotten lost in a stack of others.
And to be clear, I’m not apologizing for what I’ve done. I’m not claiming I was tricked or ignorant of what was going to happen when I put the right combination of symbols underneath his mailbox. I was using a specific code, the code I had been taught, to convey who this person was and when they would be at home. And while there was no guarantee anyone would ever use that information, I knew if they did, it was going to be a bad time for the deli guy.
Because the Takers never lie to you. They’re very matter-of-fact, and while they have a lot they just won’t tell you, they aren’t shy about letting you know what happens to the people that you watch, the people that you report on, the people that you mark for taking.
They become cattle. Vetted, safe to take and consume, cattle.
I’ve heard it ties into old Egyptian ideas of mummification and immorality. I’ve heard it ties into something called The Kingdom of Ash. Whatever truth can be gleaned from all the rumors and hearsay over the years, I can tell you at least part of what they do.
They take these people, these cattle, and they extract things from them. Bits of their brain and heart. Spinal or ocular fluid. Blood and marrow and bile. I don’t know how they choose what they choose, but whatever they take, the person must be alive for it all and conscious for at least a portion of the time. And whenever they’re done taking, they consume their prizes and dispose of what remains.
Before the night when I drained the fluid from my father’s eyes, I only knew the mechanics, not the point of it. I looked at my graduation from initiate to a Taker as more of a job promotion than the key to unlocking some greater mystery. I had spent the last few months preparing for this, learning all the techniques and making sure I wouldn’t make a mistake. The permissible amount of drugs for incapacitation, the surgical techniques for extraction, the various rules that must be followed so that the Harvest was not tainted. The day I took my father, I spent most of the day nervously reviewing my notes as though I was cramming for an important exam.
Hobbling: Hobbling describes the restriction of free movement through either binding the legs or feet together or through damaging or removing the same from the person’s body. This is always permitted so long as it does not interfere with the Harvest.
Quieting: Quieting describes the severing of the tongue or vocal cords. This is only permitted when there is no alternative. It is always preferred that the person be allowed to vocalize their pain and grief.
Cleansing: Cleansing describes the use of antiseptic to cleanse an area before extraction. It can also describe sanitizing an unknown infected area if it potentially compromises the quality of a Harvest to leave it unclean. While cleansing has been frowned upon traditionally, with the increase of Methicillin-resistant (MRSA) bacteria and other hard to kill infectious agents, the practice is becoming more commonplace and widely accepted.
Harvesting: Harvesting describes taking specific items from the body for the purpose of induction.
Rendering: Rendering describes when an item to be harvested from the body requires changing the body’s state for collection. This most commonly describes melting down a body to collect fat via an apparatus called a “sluice gate” or to more easily separate muscle from bone.
Stilling: Stilling describes utilizing either drugs or physical damage (blunt force trauma, a full-frontal lobatamy, etc) to render the person unconscious or unaware of what is happening after they initially awaken. This is forbidden, as it irrevocably taints the Harvest.
Induction: Induction describes consuming the Harvest and descending further down the Path through the consumption.
I kept those rules and dozens of others close to my heart as I began to cut my father apart. The first time they always make you take someone you know. That you can be connected to. It’s their way of insuring you can never turn against them later. And that was fine by me. My hands kept shaking, but I knew I could make it through. That is, at least, until he spoke to me.
“Lori…I’m sorry…I’m…I’m so sorry.”
I froze. What was I doing? What had I become? I knew they were watching me from the shadows, but gone was the mad desire to please them and the thrill of fear at what might happen if I failed. Instead I was filled with disgust and rage at myself.
I looked down at the man laying on the table in front of me. He was moments from dying and far past saving. He was still trying to look at me with his shriveled, useless eyes, but his strength was failing. It was too late for him. It was too late for all of us.
I slit his throat and ran from the room. No one tried to stop me, and I ditched my phone just outside the office building where my father’s murder was conducted. I ran and ran until I got to a bus stop, and then I rode as far as it would take me before getting off and heading to an ATM. I would try for one big cash withdrawal to give myself some traveling money, and then I would disappear. I half expected the card to already be turned off, but it worked. I got out $300 and walked the five miles to the train terminal.
Four weeks later and I hadn’t seen the first sign of them. I’m halfway across the country and living above the laundromat I work at now. I don’t use anything but cash, and no one knows who I am. I should be safe.
But I know them too well. I know how good they are at what they do. So I keep looking for people that don’t quite belong. For symbols and codes in spots that a Taker on the hunt would be told about. Places no one notices unless they’ve been told where to look—and waiting there, a private menu meant just for them.
I found the menu last night. It was scratched into the paint behind the trashcans in the alley. To most people it would look like nonsense, but I could read it just fine.
Female, early 20s, very good health. Works below. Lives above. Use caution. Take heart.
I eased the trash can back into place as calmly as I could. For all I knew, they were watching me, and I didn’t want to give any more indication that I knew than could be helped. I went in, finished my shift, and then went back upstairs to write this down.
I’ve thought of running again, but what’s the point? They’ll just find me again. They’ve been doing this for too long. They’re too good at it.
So instead, I’m providing this account and then I’m going to go back to living my life, however short or long that might be. Who knows? Maybe no one will ever come. Or if they do, maybe I can survive it.
And if not? Well, I’ll do my best to take them with me.
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