Blue & Red

Fear or love? Uncertain, she sped away committing a hit and run.

Decades ago, when I entered the eleventh grade, my English teacher asked the class to write a short story. At the time, I was one of those kids who faced learning difficulties. I would not have been able to explain sentence structure, adjectives or point of view, but I was thrilled. Ignorance was bliss. As a highly imaginative individual, I wrote the story with no clue about the teachers motives for evaluating grammar proficiency. This did not prove advantageous. I failed. Confident in the quality of my story, I entered the piece into a writing competition hosted at the school library. Strangely, the story ended up as the winner and my teacher had to personally hand me my award. Without my consent, the story ended up getting published in the school newspaper. To my embarrassment I had included the name of my high school crush within the body of the writing. 

I continued to write stories with major grammar violations until I graduated. Life happened and then a few years ago, I took up writing again and figured it would be fun to rewrite them. I still struggle with grammar but they have turned out well. This one, however, transformed into spoken word poetry. I encourage you to press play on the audio recording and read along.

Blue & Red

Hitting him felt like running over a large dog; your body flinched. You thought the young man returned your affection, until you overheard him mock you to his friends. So you drove by his house an hour after dinner.

About the time you knew he walked the family dog.

The windshield did not shatter. It cracked around his face. His eyelids twitched then rose revealing his alluring blue eyes. They locked onto yours.

As he tried to remove his face his hands smeared around in his blood.

What felt like a fuse descended the posterior of your neck. Its spark travelled through your spine and down the back of your legs then exploded through your knee caps.

The emotion you felt was a blurry blend of fear and love making it impossible to discern one from the other.

His strong tanned and veiny hand reached through the hole towards the alabaster skin of your neck. Your heart quickened its beat You wanted to feel his touch but knew it meant death. So you slammed the truck into gear. It jerked forward. Chards of glass pierced and tore his forearm his body flung to the side.

Now, you had committed a hit and run.

Bursts of air accosted your face. The smell of pine from the countryside soothed your internal wounds. The truck ran out of gas.

Your mind went berserk. You tried to think of solutions, answers, excuses, anything. Then There he was. Through the outline of his face in the windshield he came like a wood ornament. Closer and closer. His eyes blue and his blood deep and red.

Fear scorched the underneath of your skin.

He pranced on the hood the truck bobbed from the weight of his body. Stillness befell you. For a moment All you could hear was your breath.

Then methodically he plucked at the lightening-shaped split glass. One piece at a time. The outline of his face deformed the pieces fell to the hood like an ominous wind chime.

Strangle you? That can’t be all he wants to do. Rather, he should want to do much worse. Like stuff your putrid white body into a spiked speck of a room. Drown you in a scummy pond. Starve you until you eat dirt.

Go ahead (insert high school crush) Keep your love from me. I would surely die knowing you loved me and could never show it.

The image of his face was no longer there. Only a huge empty gap. His murderous hands reached out yet again. They took away the last breath of air, deep down in the depths of your lungs that was most likely kept there for him anyway.

You jumped the distance from the seat to the pavement and ran as fast your body would allow. His footsteps boomed after you in full stereo. Approaching your home, you fumbled for your key. Then silence nothing. He was nowhere. Your love for him punched at your heart. You leaned against the screen door. Did he die? Had your crime elevated to homicide?

The mud smeared screen door, pulled back slightly from the suction of the scratched wood door opening. You adjusted your body to face your father. But there the young man stood. Your bloody blue-eyed lover.

Around his soft, brown neck on a frayed rope hung the shining key.

Something changed about him as he raised his bloody arms again. This time they said Help me While his face conveyed pain, fear, betrayal, hope, life, death and love.

Blood choked up from deep down. The places you hurt him the most. He wasn’t out to slaughter you. He was trying to say he loved you.

You backed yourself into the cold fence making him struggle to reach you. Why was it you pulled away?

When he finally reached you he placed his bloody hands on either side of you body and gasped his last breath of air.

First he compressed at his knees then at his waist. His fingers left a series of blood streaks down the fence. He encircled his arms around your legs and held tight for a little while. Then deflating into death he left his beautifully haired head against your feet.

Falling to the ground you rolled his flimsy body over, and enclosed his gentle pink mouth with your own. You breathed for him until his lips grew cold.

With no hope left of his rising his eyes died open. They stared at you, until your black pupils shriveled at the sight then stared straight brown.

With shaking fingers you pushed his eyelids down. Covering the light box blue.

Though they had no life left to clench you slipped your fingers between his.

That night you lay beside his body long enough to feel the gentle touch of the spider’s silk. It sticked together your enclosed hands.

This became the story of you how loved him, blue and red.