The Colors of Blood

They had a history, those two.
He once took her to a play, the kid did, ironed his shirt and drove her to the theater. He didn’t really know what he was doing, he just went and did it. Seemed like a good idea. And it should have been.
It was terrible, though. The play, not the idea, it really was something awful. Blanche, the misguided anti-heroine, floundered about the stage in her role; her delivery was awkward and phony, and her demeanor, well, it was hardly fitting of the dame from Belle Reve. In reality, Blanche wasn’t on the stage, but, rather, she was sitting in the fifth row next to the girl, wearing an uncomfortably starched oxford shirt and trying desperately to salvage the date. Of course, though, the pair would later learn that Blanche wasn’t the soft and victimized Southern Belle she claimed to be, was she? And neither was the kid who he was trying to be. But we all are deceived by the devil of loneliness sometimes, even if we won’t admit it.
The theatrical travesty continued, so he simply pushed more gumption into his efforts to salvage things, but she was stoic. He didn’t exactly accept the world with that sort of stoicism included, though, and he was confused for awhile, confounded by missing the right question. He asked himself, “What should I do,” never realizing, or perhaps refusing to realize, the better question was “What am I doing?”. Or, more specifically, “What am I doing here?” He just wanted it, just wanted something there. For God’s sake, he was hurting so bad, he couldn’t even recognize that he had a wound.
The play was really laughable, a staged drama turned into a live farce, and he quickly felt embarrassed for having chosen it. Really though, the situation should have been great, better than expected, due totally to the production’s shortcomings. Anyone could have, and really should have, seen the humor in the situation, seeing a well-hyped but eventually lousy show as an alternative date, but she didn’t. She had other ideas, though he’d never know what those were. She never saw the play, maybe never even noticed the rest of the audience. It was funny, it really was. They were all older, much older, some even elderly, and, as the pair would soon discover, the cast had all likewise seen a great number of years. And the house was full of them, these ancient theater-goers, which he thought would indicate the great quality of the play; they were still thinking people, after all, right? They’d seen humanity, and they’d seen its impostor, they must have in all their collective years; he missed the fact that they weren’t gathered here to see that, that raw humanity splayed out in front of their wide eyes. He missed that that wasn’t something one flippantly seeks as entertainment. Everyone present but the kid knew the harsh abrasion left by contacting unadulterated humanity; no, they’d much rather watch these poor charlatans put on their droll display than toy with the truths of their existence. If he had only looked down, if he had only recognized the scarlet fountains erupting from his veins, he would have understood so much of his predicament, his wanting it real and raw and suppressing the truth; the truth that it, the root of it all, tried to engage him every day. He really hunkered in fear of it, this attempted engagement; he just chose to believe that his voice could prove his eyes wrong. Really, if she had just seen them, his spurting veins, maybe she’d have avoided it, too.
They were 40 years the junior of the next youngest onlooker in the theater, he and she, and they bore the brunt of many inquisitive eyes. And here they were, packed in with 150 eager grandparents, all tittering back and forth about the young love in their midst, to watch a pathetic display of theater. Why was that not the least bit funny to her? He missed so much that night, but he really missed it all in general.
After that night, they forgot each other. He went on about his life and what was normal, just bleeding all over everything. He bled for a long time, but he never accepted the pain. He’d go about his normal business, just mindlessly bleeding away, ignoring the excruciating agony of the exercise. He’d bleed on his favorite things, but they could be put out the window or hidden in forgotten drawers, just so long as they were out of sight. If he couldn’t see the blood, then he really wasn’t bleeding. And he always had the damned smile, always. What was that, that damned, churlish grin? Sure, he had things to be happy about, but only the most foolish of stooges sacrifices his head to keep his body. Him, the stooge. He kept on smiling until he met her again.
She went black that night, after the play, just boiled straight up and into the black vapor of nothing. Sure, she was somewhere, she had to be somewhere, but even nothing is somewhere. See, she just had to dwell in nothingness so that she could become the perfect nothing that she sought. Do you see it now? She didn’t want him, because he required her to be a tangible something- his desperate prattle kept her existence there, in the musty theater with the musty old people and the musty performance. In spite of impossibility, she tried, really pushed, to boil herself straight up into the blackness above their heads in the darkness of the lofted theater ceiling, but he couldn’t shut it, couldn’t shut his infernal hinge that incessantly condensed every drop that floated off her; her every black bubble just barely floated up before going drip-drop back into her seat. So she waited and went black just after, when she was away from him- she walked from the car straight to her building and bubbled right into the black of the night as he drove away. And she mingled in amongst her beloved black. It was more aqueous than ten thousand oceans, she found; she could bounce and glide, float and bob here like had never been done before, and she easily fell in love with the watery shadow. Smooth, viscous, and lovely, she drank it in and felt the swelling of paradise in her deep and dark insides. But she had to surface for air, and that bastard, that sinister devil, drained the black sea from under her. It wasn’t her fault, really, but it wasn’t her place, either. It wasn’t anyone’s place. She was barely dry again when she saw him, the boy, once more.
There was a new interest. His babble no longer anchored her in reality; it didn’t seem to pain her anymore. She encouraged it, inhaled to force his exhale, craved the rambling. It wasn’t for her ears, it was for her brain, that spongy, spotted pile; it pulsed and rolled and cowered at her command, and it became increasingly more and more consumed by the spotted disease as she forced herself into the role. God, but what pain she truly must have endured, as the blood poured out of her every orifice and all over everything. Strange though, really, it wasn’t just red, but blue, yellow, and green gushed from her, too. The green escaped in a frothy flood from between her pursed lips, while watery blue cascaded from her eyes. The yellow, that sickly suspension squirted straight upward from her navel in great pulses as her loins raised and fell, and it covered her stomach no matter what she did. The black no longer wanted anything to do with her, and its rejection was painted in living color all over her from that point forward. She walked in a colored rain of her own life’s water. He ignored it though, didn’t concern himself with the prior dark and amorphous object of her esteem or the hues that constantly stained her skin and clothing; the words streamed from him at her, making a thick soupy cloud of noise about her, but he wasn’t really talking to her anyway- he was chatting with the devil, trying to buy his way back in. He thought maybe he could bleed his ailment out, he wasn’t sure, but he thought he could, and thus he thought his words could make his veins flow.
But they didn’t. They wouldn’t. He knew he lacked her colors; he had his own, but they weren’t hers, not so stark or lasting as her own. As he slowly accepted this, he could no longer bear the sight of her yellow belly or the glassy azure that dripped from the corners of her eyes and covered her face, no matter how much he wanted to loose his own essence. It stirred and twisted his innards; his guts churned with disgust, and he cringed to hold back his aversion of her. He turned from her, and he tensely looked himself over for a scab, searching for even the most minuscule of punctures for one last hope, which he knew would be a false one, although he wouldn’t admit it, but there were simply no wounds to be found. He’d have broken open any abrasion he might have found, no matter the pain involved, and he didn’t have a doubt he’d find more than a few opportunities to do so when he’d first begun; he simply had to make sure he wasn’t like her, had to prove his was still deep garnet red, but there was nothing at which to claw. His skin didn’t seem so tough, but he couldn’t bring himself to break it, much preferring to open some old injury, but, despite the many bruises and blemishes across its moist and pulsing plane, nowhere was the skin any longer broken. His disappointment was strange, as he first seethed in anger at the astonishing discovery that he was, for the most part, healed, as if the healing was never something he had wanted or asked for. This feeling passed, though, and he accepted his new wholeness, although it did not come without a profound sadness, one that was somehow foreign and new to him. He rose up again from his search, and his face showed this different melancholy, which seemed a totally unique emotion, but still a form of sadness all the same. Something about it, though, it seemed a purer sorrow, like he carried a new, quiet reverence for it. The devil just watched, leaving his blade inexplicably sheathed. Something about the boy, some intangible, struck stony fear into the great demon. The boy had learned what he would have to do.
When he turned back, she stabbed him. The jagged blade drove straight into his chest, and his mouth stood agape. He didn’t think it would come to this; it wasn’t her place to expose him like that. Her eyes welled with big blue bloody tears, but her face never twitched while they shared the moment. The world went white, white as the Gods’ Truth, and she slowly pulled back the blade. The two waited with conflicting anticipation. He was afraid, for the doom of the hopeless might have spilled upon the spotless ground at any second. He felt no pain, but he could hardly breathe, although he no longer much wanted to as he endured the moment.
Her expression was expectant, and her breath rattled nervously in and out of her as she waited for her wish to be fulfilled. She expected it, wanted to see it, the sign that her affliction was shared; she wanted to see the vivid colors pour from him, greens, yellows, blues, maybe even a little black, hoping the new shades might just ever so slightly obscure her own. Time froze for the whole of the evening, and, when it resumed again, their eyes remained locked on the deep gash on his chest. His skin, thinner than he had thought it was, particularly across the chest, clung to the sinewy muscle underneath like old peeling wallpaper, begging the blood to come and fill the void and bring life back into its dead, dry form. Alas, though, it did not come; she understood then, was actually forced to see, that she could no longer beckon it, even with her blade, sharper than most. He saw it, too, and he sighed a great and long sigh of gloomy relief as he cast her one last look of recognition. The boy then turned on his heels and began taking long, tired steps away from her, each a little longer than the last. She just stood, a forlorn figure, taking her time to understand her error.
As he walked, he resigned himself to keeping dry awhile, accepting that he could bleed again when the time was right. The devil, shrunken to the size of a mere imp by the change in the boy, hopped and skipped alongside the boy’s steady stride, incessantly poking and jabbing his tiny sword into the boy’s ankles. Although not granting any blood to the demon’s tireless effort, the boy could finally feel the marvelous shots of pain through his feet and legs. The pain was not unique to him, but it was something he knew he had to feel alone, and every pang was real and invigorating. It was a funny little smile, the one that just barely curled upward anew on his face, different from the juvenile smirk of former days; it was a wholesome expression, like his sadness finally had some substance and filled in some missing piece inside him. He lifted his eyes to the space in front of him as he set off in search of a new blade, one which might again spur the glorious crimson showers to erupt from his veins. Red, the living color; the boy laughed contentedly as he considered its possibility.