SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: THE BLEEDING MAN

 "The Bleeding Man" by Craig Strete  (originally published in Red Planet Earth #*, April 1974, as by "Mark Horse and Craig Strete"; reprinted (as by Strete alone) in Galaxy Science Fiction, December 1974; reprinted in The 1975 Annual World's Best SF (also published as Wollheim's World's Best SF:  Series Four), edited by Donald A Wollheim & Arthur Saha; included in the author's collections The Bleeding Man and Other Science Fiction Stories, 1977, and If All Else Fails..., 1980)

John Clute, in SFE: The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, writes, "the suggestion has been bruited that Strete is the pseudonym of a Native American author of Cherokee birth who does not wish to reveal his real name, but this has not been confirmed.  He has written as Strete and as by Sovereign Faulkner, and possibly under other names, by himself and in collaboration, at least forty of the eighty stories claimed by him must almost certainly be under unrevealed names."  Strete's Wikipedia entry makes no note of the name being a possible pseudonym.

Strete began writing Native american-themed science fiction stories in the early 80s.  In 1984, he edited six issues of the monthly amateur magazine Red Planet Earth, a "magazine of American Indian science fiction" published by the Northstar Intertribal Council, where several of his early stories (including this one) first appeared.  Strete's first professionally by-lined story was "Time Deer" in the November/December issue of If; the story had previously appeared in issue #4 of Red Planet Earth.   Strete has published six collections and at least eleven novels.  'The Bleeding Man" was nominated for a Nebula Award in 1976.

The man, who has no name and does not speak, has been bleeding since birth froma gaping wound in his chest.  He is now 23.  How so much blood keeps flowing and bow he has managed to survive are unanswered questions.  According to his uncle, his Native American parents had tried to kill themselves with poison while he was in utero.  The foetus allowed the poison to strike the parents but kept them alive until his birth; the poison intended for him, he has turned to water.  After the child was born -- bleeding -- the parents died horribly, and the uncle took him in, using him as a carnival sideshow attraction.  Eventually, news of the bleeding man came to the attention of the authorities and they "bought" the boy from the uncle for the sum of $12 a week.

"His chest was slit with a gaping wound  that led profusely; his legs and stomach were soaked with blood."  For seven years, those studying him have not been able to explain him.  If it were stigmata, it was the most extreme case in the world.  the bleeding man was a biological impossibility.  Various including surgery, chemical therapy, psycho-chemistry, primal reconditioning, and bio-feedback. have all be tied to stop the bleeding, but nothing has worked.  Now a no-nonsense scientific administrator has been put in charge.  She has determined that the bleeding man is not human and proposes dissecting him to see whether his tissues would regenerate.  (This would not be murder, in her mind, even if he were human; his tissues would still be alive.) 

And now, the bleeding man has started drinking his own blood.  His uncle gives a warning, 'Do not walk in his shadow.  Leave him alone, for he is not you.  For twenty-three years he has been gathering power."  The new administrator does not listen and the bleeding man stops bleeding and his power becomes evident...

A story of Native American mythic sensibilities, of science and magic and legend, and of the futility of thinking we know that we know.  Powerful and unforgettable.