“LOSS OF BLOOD,” by Jeff Stautz.
Read by Joel Watson. (16 min)

Pepper coughs and her eyes snap open. Then she yelps and recoils from me, my white uniform and blue gloves, my belt blinking with electronics.

“No, I’m fine,” she says. “Just fainted, is all.” She scrambles backward across the floor.

Everyone tries to do this, soon as they recognize who we are and what we’re there for. It never does any good. We already have our hands around Pepper’s arms and I’m trying to shush her, keep her calm while Titus does the blood sample. He presses the tagger’s piston to the inside of her left elbow.

“Don’t,” she says. “I can explain.”

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Jeff Stautz lives in Vancouver, Canada. He is the Fiction Editor of PRISM international, is a former Fishtrap Fellow, and was a writer-in-residence at the Montana Artists’ Refuge. His work has appeared recently in The First Line and Event.

Joel Watson is the author of the comic strip “HijiNKS Ensue” and one-third of the HijiNKS Ensue Weekly Geek Podcast. He lives near Dallas, Texas.

In the book, “LOSS OF BLOOD” is illustrated by Kris Straub. This podcast episode was edited by Matthew Schwartz.