Siphon by A. A. Medina

Hindered Souls Press, 2018

ISBN-13: 978-06980217

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

Siphon by A. A. Medina describes an unhappy nebbish who becomes possessed, and, eventually, controlled, by an urge to drink blood and act out his sexual fantasies.  Dr. Gary Phillips is a hematopathologist, orphaned as a child and raised by an abusive grandfather.  He is tortured by unfulfilled sexual fantasies and dotes on a sexy phlebotomist whom he follows on Facebook.

Dr. Phillips’ compulsion to drink blood (hematophagia or Renfield’s syndrome) arises from his own psychosis, not from vampirism or a supernatural entity.  When he “blanks out”, his “God” takes more and more control of his thoughts and actions.  His mania increases from sneaking sips of lab blood, to drinking menstrual blood, to siphoning blood from living humans.

Siphon is a horror story, but not a fantasy.  Although the plot is shocking, it is not altogether unbelievable.  I wish the author had delved more into the origin and power of Dr. Phillips’ psychosis.  His duties in the laboratory are those of a hospital lab technologist, rather than that of a hematopathologist.  The book contains profanity and intense sexual scenes.

Contains: profanity, graphic sex, gore

Reviewed by Robert D. Yee