"This will hurt a little," he warned me.
I could see the hole in the end of the needle before it punctured my skin, Dr. Parker popped the valve on the vial, which slowly filled with blood, only the blood wasn't velvety red, it was black. He capped the container gingerly and handed me a cotton ball. I noticed he was careful not to touch me.
"What the hell's going on, Doc?"
He put the vial into a metal case and screwed the lid down tight. "I'll send this off, but there's not much point. I know what's in there." He leaned against the sink and looked at the floor.
"Go on."
"Ink."
"Excuse me?"
"Ink. Like you find in a pen. It's in your blood."
I looked at the dark blotch on my arm. "How did I get ink in my blood?"
"It's a virus. You get it from contact with writers." There was something condemning in his tone.
Shit.
I went through the list of my new hangouts -- the coffee house in the basement of the old church on Ponce, the cafe in Decatur, this place -- what the Hell had I been thinking?
Well, you know what I was thinking: cheap coffee and free entertainment. I knew this place was full of writers, who else would be reading poetry at an open mic? I managed to convince myself that you were reading someone else's poetry, but of course you wrote it yourselves. You wrote all those febrile words, then you spoke them humming and crackling through the amp -- breathed them into my face like God breathed into Adam.
So, I asked him, "what will it do to me?"
He took a deep breath. "You've already noticed the oscillating tremor in your hand. You'll get pains in your fingers and wrists, headaches, and tightness in your chest. You'll be prone to distraction, bouts of depression and mania. You'll probably start manifesting obsessive behaviours, and insomnia." He looked me in the eye for the first time since I walked in. "It will eventually consume you and you will die."
"But..." My lips said the word "die" three times, but my voice was frozen somewhere under my ribs. I saw myself crystallizing from the inside out until I turned into a translucent, brittle -- I shook the words loose in my head. "There has to be something I can do about it!"
"This isn't like a staph infection where I can give you antibiotics. You're full of words. They shift and change so rapidly that there's no drug that will touch them. The best you can do is try to relieve the pressure."
"How do I do that?"
"Buy a lot of paper and start writing."
I thought he was being a jerk, and I told him so, let a lot of the more obnoxious words loose on him in the process, but it turns out he was right. I've filled up fifteen of these cheap composition books already. My veins look like they're pumping oil, but my mind's clearer now.
The mic looks hot.
I brought the twelfth notebook with me. It's full of sonnets -- the iambic parameter spilled out of my black veins, dribbled down my arm, and leaked across the pages. I can feel the words aching between the cardboard covers like a fever waiting for a fresh head.
Have you put your name on the sign up list yet? I'm in the ninth slot. There's a few faces in the crowd tonight that I don't recognize. Now, don't even pretend to be nervous; I see that smile. You're happy they're here too.
