Sundowning by Joanne Merriam « Biology in Science Fiction: Free Fiction

In the future, blood donation isn’t optional.

Title: Sundowning

Author: Joanne Merriam

Length: short story

First Publication: Strange Horizons, 2010

What the Story is About: In the future, blood donation isn’t optional.

Life is wonderful though, isn’t it? It’s not the wonderful I remember being promised as a child, before the infection, before the war, before the New Deal, when everybody was supposed to grow up to become President or a pop star, but it’s wonderful, in a subtle way, just to be alive. I woke up and gave my father a bath, and he smiled at me over breakfast, and then I went to work, and I cooked a lot of hot, greasy food for people who enjoyed slowly killing themselves with fat and sugar because it was such a delicious contrast to being instantly killed by somebody else’s need for blood.

Read Merriam’s explanation about how this is a personal story.

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