StaticA Story by Mandi LuCan you see the colors through all the static?Maybe I couldn’t see because the moon was hidden behind a cloud, black like licorice, thick like clotted blood. Maybe it was the blown out street light, keeping the alley in the shadow of death. Maybe I had my eyes closed. I live in an old movie, something black and white playing on your grandmother’s static TV set. Where everyone wears the same sports jacket and nice tie, the sane hair bob dyed just right. Perfect light gray, perfect pouting dark lips. My hands are slick, I can feel them, the knife in my hand is slipping. I look down, oh yes, my eyes were closed. Opening them I see my same world, the same deep grays that make up the typical night, the same blacks that drape over the backdrop of human life. The same fine mist that settles during the rainy nights in the hot city. As if the filth of the buildings and streets condensed and swam around your feet, reminding you day after day that you live here, you die here, you are forgotten here. Something else is here though, something on my hands, running down my arms and pooling in my palms. Something rushes from me and traces the grooves in my hands and fingers, something so bright my eyes hurt; my pupils explode inside my sockets. I lean closer, the knife clatters to the ground. What is this? I know the substance, any 3rd grader can tell you if you get cut you bleed, but it is not the gray I’ve seen my entire life. It’s not the thick black of blood when it clots. Suddenly I can see this color everywhere, in my mind. All those days driving to work as a corporate drone, I see the color of the light. That one light. The signs, “STOP”, the color blinds. It’s the color of a woman’s lips, no longer just a dark pout but brilliant and bright. Or the color of her dress at those cocktail nights where the wine was dull and her dress was originally drab. It had life in my head. My arms stung from the gashes, and the blood was slipping through my fingers now, and onto the pavement. The sides of my vision were blurring. Gritting my teeth, I wanted to hang on another few moments. Just long enough to memorize the gash this color had left in the film reel of my life. I reached up and smeared it on my lips, thought in my mind it would be beautiful. When they found me they wouldn’t think, “Oh, what a shame, what a loss.” They would think, “Oh. How beautiful. Have you ever seen lips like that?” No one would understand the color, and maybe no one would see it, but at least I knew it was there. Slumping forward, I felt dizzy, and I could see the ground was just stained. I smiled, and thought that if I had known I had this color inside of me, I would have picked up the knife a long time ago. © 2010 Mandi Lu |
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Added on August 12, 2010 Last Updated on August 12, 2010 AuthorMandi LuNYAboutI'm currently working on bringing all of my work over from DeviantArt, so bare with me, it may take a while for everything I've created to appear :) I'm also moving over my short stories first, than n.. more..Writing
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