When it started, it felt harmless. Just a little blood from your child, only a drop from their finger onto your tongue, and your forehead wrinkles would disappear. It wasn’t like Botox where they’d come back in six months, either. Once the wrinkles were gone, they stayed gone.

Naturally, people began experimenting, trying to see how far they could take it. A teaspoon full of blood under your tongue, and now you got the spring back in your knees. A tablespoon, and your back didn’t hurt anymore. A half cup, and your hair grew back.

Soon enough, the first child died, and the practice was outlawed. Legions of social workers were deployed for education and monitoring of parents and their children, to make sure that this dangerous and unacceptable practice was stamped out at the root.

But it was too late. The secret was out, and people would do whatever was necessary to become young again. School busses would go missing on the highway, never to be seen again. Schools were guarded like prisons, until they finally had to be shut down. Not only for security, but for lack of enrollment.

One day, all the children were gone. The adults looked healthy and resplendent, childless, glamorous. Then the rejuvenation started wearing off. It was temporary, after all.

The young adults began disappearing next, the colleges emptied and the delivery people vanished. We found that the older the blood, the less revitalization we received, but we were desperate. The clock was ticking faster and faster for us.

After the people in their twenties were consumed, those in their thirties and forties were next. By the end, it was a savage free for all. Blood drenched the streets. No one was safe.

I’m the last one alive, as far as I know. I haven’t seen anyone for weeks. I wander from place to place, searching for some sign of life, someone to talk with, and there’s nothing, no one.

But when I look in the mirror and see that shining hair, the glowing skin and perfect teeth, I know it was all worth it. To be gorgeous, perfect and young again, if only for a little while, I would do it all again.