I was at a carnival unlike any I have actually been to. So much was going on, it was romantic and seedy. There was something wrong with me, I was sick.
I was weak, delirious really and my head hurt. A women helped me, she found a place for me to lie down and got help. The bloodlet-ter came, he was covered with tattoos, he didn't look clean, but he was confident. He took a small knife out of his sheath and punctured my skin above each knee. It didn't hurt that much.
He then became very solemn telling me about the next thing he had to do. He said
“This thing is serious”, then ran the knife from the top each thigh down to my knee.
It was deep, I thought the knife seemed sharp like a razor blade. My blood was thin, streaming out in sheets a along the incisions. It stung. It coagulated quickly and left two long narrow scabs. I was wondering what people would think when they saw my legs, It looked as if I had just been pulled through a very tight space or out of a giant mouth with sharp canines.
The two cleaned up the blood, they slid the cutting board out from under me and rinsed it off in the sink, it looked just like one I had in my house only bigger. I watched them sluice the blood down the sink and I worried about them getting my blood on them and told them to be careful. The women said to me
“I'm licensed” and the bloodlet-ter said
“I'm not”.
I didn't care, I felt so much better and my headache was gone.