Story Four: RED.

            It was there when I came home from work. Like a reward, some prize for a brilliant weekend, some bullshit like that. Like I could be won over by a f*****g letter, or piece of art, or poem. Whatever the hell it was, I didn’t want to know. I let the envelope sit, festering, addressed to me but never to be seen, sitting on the counter.

            It was a matter of short time before other papers covered it up: newspapers, bills, folders from the office. I had forgotten about it.

 

            Out of sight, out of mind.

 

            I see things, sometimes. Like I’m dreaming in reality. I see colours on the walls, spots that don’t exist. Sometimes patterns, sometimes just blotches. I used to think I was going insane, but it’s been such a long time that I got used to the colours. They occur almost exclusively with sound. The sound of a bell, I see little yellow specks, a dog bark, sharp jabs of black and grey, and when the TV down the hall is left on, I sometimes see faint rainbows, flurries of red and violet that turn to orange, yellow, then back to blue and violet again.

 

            See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

           

            I didn’t open the envelope when it arrived because it was red. Not the envelope itself, though it surly did appear so at first glance. But the sound and the feel. All of it: red.

 

RED.

 

            Red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning.

 

            So I let it rot on the counter, and I moved on with my life. I moved onward and upward, forward and frontward. Papers of blue, periwinkle, and cyan stacked atop the scarlet monstrosity.

Blasphemous piece of s**t.

 

The Boy came over this evening. This is his name to me. Only he and I know his birth name and only he and I know of his existence, (or at least of his relevance in my life.)

 

Secrets don’t make friends.

 

But they do make lovers.

 

The Boy came over, and we did the usual dance. Pants, shirt, panties OFF, quick and silent. Fluid movements, panting, nothing but breath and touch and skin on skin, lips on lips, clawing and scratching and seething. I see the fireworks of orange and black and yellow on the walls and on the headboard. I do not close my eyes.

 I always see the fireworks, but I never feel them.

The music died, the waltz ended, and the silence continues once more. When the colours left, he left, and I stumbled nakedly off the bed. Clumsy mother f****r I am, I fell off the f*****g bed and into the arms of no one.

 

            Laugh and the world laughs with you, weep and you weep alone.

 

            I laid unclothed on the floor. The Boy left, ages ago, so I feel entitled to dwell in my clumsiness. I left my eyes open, because there was music playing in the apartment next door and though it was muffled, I heard enough to see. Swirling and twirling, it always feels like falling through a wormhole. Were it my choice, I would do just that. Fall out of time and space and thrive in a world in which I am breathless and simply air.

 

            Simple.

 

Even a worm will turn.

 

The Boy returned, and I was sleeping nude on the floor. He smiled a delicious, maliciously cunning smile. As if he has won something by being able to tower over me. Just because I gave him a f*****g key and he forgot his watch on the bedside table, and felt entitled enough to come in unannounced to get it. It’s pretty late, isn’t it? It’s dark out. I could see stars, if you could see stars here. The moon is lit. I pretend I do not notice him scoff, I do not notice him enter and exit and brush my leg with his foot, accidentally on purpose. I remained still; I played dead for the bear. And he left.

I got up, tossed on an old baggy T-shirt, and walked into the kitchen.

Wednesday night.

 

Wednesday’s child is full of woe.

 

My mother used to read me rhymes; my father used to quote common phrases. Commonly used, commonly heard, and I collected them all. Ironically, I am Friday’s child.

 

Friday’s child is loving and giving.

 

It was Wednesday night, weeks after the letter first appeared in my mail slot, that it was rediscovered and uncovered amid the mass of blue and periwinkle and cyan colored newspapers and bills and folders. Except tonight, they were white. It was late and the silence rung over everything. All was white, as it should be.

 

 

 

Except the little red envelope.

 

Reviews

[ba_mcfarlane]

No saccharine, no maudlin here. It cuts savage to the bone. It's damned impossible to get to the comfort place with a read that rips it up and spits me out. It grabbed me by the throat; shoved my face into an anger I recognized as not unlike the one I keep hidden from myself. What a wild ride. Brilliant and defiantly raging with no remorse to be found. I love being jolted like this.