The Deal Changer (Book IV)

Chapter Nine - TMI

                                                                                    Chapter Nine

                                                                                             TMI

JOANNA GARTH.

My name practically flashed at me with bright lights and loud beeping sounds. I couldn't stop staring at it because it seemed entirely unreal. This couldn't possibly be me. No way. I didn't sell my blood for drugs. I didn't sell my blood period. But my name was in this book, along with my blood type, and it says otherwise. I have no memory of this, but I don't have much of a memory of my past when I was in my drug haze.

I looked at my name and the date: January 1st of 2007. It was definitely before I became sober and sought help, which was several months later in December. But I would remember if I sold blood for drugs, right? Someone would remember something so insane, even with drugs, right? But I didn't. Not even a lick of a memory of doing it. I had marks on my arm always, but those were because I was involved in other drugs. I didn't pay those marks on my arm any attention at the time.

Barely breathing and unblinking, I turned the page to the notes at the end of that week.

"Everyone arrived according to schedule. Blood has been shipped to the facility and pills administered."

I flipped to the next date my name appeared, which was on the 15th of January, two weeks later. My information was slightly different this time and instead read:

Joanna Garth – A negative – ¼ of a pint – Thirty-seven minutes late – Shipped.

The notes explained why my information changed in a disturbing way.

"All but one arrived according to schedule. Joanna Garth arrive thirty-seven minutes late and was entirely unresponsive to any commands. During the blood drawing process, Garth became hysterical. Only ¼ of a pint was drawn. Garth's dosage has been requested to be upped."

It didn't make sense, not until now. If I was going—no, if any of us were going to sell our blood willingly for drugs, we wouldn't need to have our dosages upped when we wouldn't donate. In fact, we wouldn't receive our pills if we decided to not sell blood for drugs. There is only one reason someone would continue to hand out drugs and up dosages.

It wasn't willingly.

Drugs have done a lot to me physically and emotionally, but I've never lost my entire memory. Sure, my memory would be hazy and possibly I'd be missing patches of some nights, but never my entire memory of a whole night. That's when I realized it wasn't the drugs causing memory loss; it was the vampires.

Matthew told me long ago people with weaker minds were easy to control. After being malnourished, sleep deprived, and completely weakened, Matthew was able to control my thoughts enough to force me to sleep and eat. The weak are vulnerable to vampires. He couldn't even erase Cindy's memory without her being sedated properly. It made sense now why they were upping dosages and why I kept fighting them; they needed us to be drugged in order to control us.

I wanted to puke.

Several years back I would do anything for drugs, aside from going as far as Cindy did with selling herself. It wasn't uncommon for me to wake up in an alley with a bottle of pills in my hand and be completely hazy on how I obtained them. But it still completely puzzled me why someone would go through so much trouble as to hand out drugs to addicts for their blood. My name appeared every two weeks in the book with the occasional note about me being late or having my dosage upped for not responding to commands.