All That Is Red (2 page)

C
HAPTER
3

Bright lights danced on the inside of my eyelids. White. Red. Bleached. Colored. Dull. Vivid. They speckled and blurred in my vision creating shapes and images. They fused
together and then melted apart. They were whole and broken all at the same time.

I inhaled the morning air. Crisp and clean, it seemed to be the complete absence of scent. My eyes opened to a White sky blanketing over me. It merged into the Red horizon, where the river
continued.

Reaching for something that I knew was supposed to be next to me, my hand stretched out, grasping, searching. Finding nothing but seamless flat ground, I got up. However, I was quickly
overwhelmed by the White that surrounded me. I choked on the White air and gasped as it filled my lungs. The cold White filled me from deep inside and I felt a chill that spread through my skin as
I adjusted to the White that was now inside of me.

Adjusting to the White was easier than I had imagined. My body found no need to fight it and simply welcomed it, as if it had always been inside of me.

I heard a similar gasp next to me and turned to see the boy gulp in the White air looking as if he were trying to resist it. His whole figure blanched ever so slightly, losing a shade or so of
Red. When he met my eyes, his became wide.

“You ...” He fought to tell me something. I’m sure he did. But the White silenced him and screamed over his voice. With his panicked eyes, the boy looked years younger than the
one I had met yesterday. I found it hard to accept that hours ago this same boy had been the only solid thing I could cling to.

There was something in me that desperately needed to help him. There was a connection between the boy and me. One that I didn’t understand, but I knew that it simultaneously ached and
brought us together. I felt the White plunge into him, as he breathed the White air into his lungs. I felt all this, but there was still something in me that could bear to stand unfeeling and watch
him cry out in agony. I saw his cry reach out to me, where it seemed to freeze in my hands: cold, still, lifeless, and unfeeling. It reminded me of myself.

I looked on silently, standing motionless, waiting for the White to be finished with him. I waited until his cries died out and all that was left of him was a crumpled shell in front of me. His
eyes were open, but blank. His lips were parted, yet silent. He breathed, but his breath was like ice.

Only a day ago, when I had lain helpless, the boy stayed with me. Now, however, with our roles reversed, I contemplated leaving. In the end, I don’t know why, I stayed. I just
couldn’t leave him.

I never had any sense of time. I remembered months ago when I had told my mom that I was going to take a bath. I had spent over an hour in there. Thinking. Just thinking. All my thoughts and
worries had swelled up beneath my skin.

When I couldn’t stand it any longer, I had sought release and found it the only way I knew how. And it had worked. At first, they had only trickled out, but then they gushed; my thoughts
had cascaded out of my body into the bath water around me. It had felt beyond amazing. It had been surreal.

It had taken a knock on the door to bring me back to reality. My mother had asked what was taking so long. After convincing her not to open the door and assuring her that everything was all
right, I had drained the rusty water and then cleaned the bathtub, all the while, telling myself that I would never do that again.

I had known that I was lying to myself and that what I was doing was sick, but I had also known that I couldn’t just step away from the incredible feeling of release. Taking care to pick a
shirt with long sleeves, I had looked down at my arms. I had known that it would only be a matter of time until I found myself in the same situation; again needing to feel.

After that close incident with my mom, I never really could trust myself with time. I remembered that humans made time themselves, but they only remember its existence when it suits them.
Therefore, I can’t say when the boy got up. I only know that when he did, I heard a voice from behind me.

“He looks awfully pale doesn’t he?” The voice said. With its tone of naivety, I imagined it belonged to a fairy-like little girl and when I turned around, I was greeted by
one.

She could be considered petite, but was not overly so, with the top of her head reaching my chest. Her ruby hair made her look both pixie-like and reminiscent of something from either a myth or
a bedtime story. Her hair curled around her face and set off her dark skin. Two bright eyes, which were Red like her hair, peered out from beneath her curls and entranced me with their steady gaze.
For some unknown reason, her eyes didn’t frighten me. Instead, they captivated me. I was afraid to look away, scared that they would disappear if I did.

I watched, as her lips formed words before they were delivered to me on sweet breath. They reminded me of two trembling Red poppy petals unfurling against the rough wind.

“You chose not to help him.” She seemed to reaffirm the empty guilt in the hollow of my stomach. Like the boy, her words seemed older than she appeared.

I couldn’t defend myself, how could I? I didn’t have the words it took to justify watching him suffer.

Thankfully, the little girl did not wait for my pitiful answer. She crossed over to the boy and pulled him alongside her into the river. Although he looked uncertain at first, he followed her
without hesitation. Side-by-side, their feet, hers dark and his pale, entered the Red river and then disappeared under its surface. Laughing, she let go of his hand and I watched as he escaped the
White.

The White fog left the land in the early afternoon. It seemed to drain out of the boy. It left his body and slipped away into the river, where it churned and mixed with the Red and was washed
away.

The swirls of Red and White in the water looked chaotic. They each tried to overcome one another in a tense dance that seemed to end only when the White succumbed. The river sighed with relief
and finally looked peaceful. Its waters were Red as they had always been, as if nothing had happened. As if I had imagined it all. Noticeably translucent after the ordeal, the boy appeared weak in
the midst of the roaring Red.

The little girl beckoned me, motioning me to the river. Compelled to follow, I found myself in the river. We waited. We all did. I held my breath and watched the water where it grabbed at my
ankles. I waited for the iciness of the White to disperse and for the White to wash off me as well. I waited to feel, but nothing happened.

Suddenly, I ran out of the river, as if its waters had burnt me, and for all I knew they could have and I wouldn’t have even felt it. I wanted to cry; to feel my eyes burn with tears, but
I couldn’t. Instead, I was forced to stand there numb and cold, as the White gripped at me. I couldn’t escape it.

I felt the girl’s hand on my shoulder. Her graceful feet made no noise against the colorless sands of the riverbank and it came as a surprise when I felt her fingers touch my shoulder. In
her eyes, a mixture of fear and worry swam about, as she wordlessly took my hands in her own small, childlike ones.

I touched cold metal in a sheath of the softest leather and I tasted bitter irony in the fact that such an innocent girl could be holding such a horror; a weapon that had the potential to
destroy life. When I looked down upon the blade, its beauty astonished me.

“It’s beautiful.” The girl softly placed her fingers on lips, silencing me, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the blade. With perfect symmetry and alignment, its edge
was a flawless creation of mankind.

A jolt ran through me, as I saw an image on the surface of the blade. I looked past the silvery gray to a pale figure with a blanched face. Its thin straggly hair grabbed at the face it held
drowning in the White air around it. The whites of its eyes were large and bloodshot. Suspended in them were two pinpoints of black, seemingly captured and trapped amongst all the White. I snatched
my hands away from the blade and if it hadn’t been for the little girl’s hands beneath my own, I would have dropped it in fright. Bubbling and fighting fruitlessly against what I did
not know, a scream was trapped in my throat.

“You saw something.” The girl’s words weren’t a question.

“Take it away from me,” I said, my words coming out strangled. Though I begged, she only pushed it further into my hands.

“Take it.” She closed my fingers over the sheath and I felt my joints protest in earnest.

“Take it. The choice is yours and will always be yours. It has always been yours,” she said. “Only you can help yourself. You know that. But, right now, they need your help
more than you know.”

I stared back at her, expecting her to elaborate. I silently wondered who ‘they’ were.

“You are the one,” she stated, as the corners of her mouth quirked upwards. “A small one needs your assistance. We all do.” The little girl looked up at the boy and he
gazed back with understanding eyes, clearly comprehending something that I did not. They seemed to communicate with that one gaze and, eventually, the boy simply nodded, as if an agreement had been
reached.

“Are you sure?” The boy asked her.

“Yes.”

Relieved at the escape, my eyes darted from the blade. I knew the girl was right. The choice to cut or not to cut was mine and always had been; but that did not mean that I knew which choice to
make or even what her final words meant.

The choice to harm myself was mine, but it was the only way I knew how to feel, and I had to feel whatever the cost to me.

“You must do whatever you can-” the girl said, breaking me from my thoughts, but the boy interrupted her.

“I understand.”

“Even if that means-”

“I do understand.” The boy reaffirmed.

“Then you know where you must immediately take her.”

“Yes.”

“Where?” I asked, but my voice sounded on deaf ears. Both the boy and the little girl refused to answer.

As the boy and I bid her farewell, the girl helped me fasten the sheath, so that it fell against my side. With every step, I was reminded of my decisions; the decisions in the past and my future
decisions, of which I had yet to imagine.

“Remember to lead with your heart. All the best decisions come from there.” Those were the last words the little girl said to me.

With the Red river on one side of me and the boy on the other, my legs carried me on forever. He and I seldom talked, but the silence seemed meaningful. It didn’t stifle us; but rather, it
was a voiceless conversation between him and me. Nonetheless, when we did talk, it was more substantial than those empty dialogues that usually pass for conversations. Our conversation was
weightless and flowed from our mouths into the air between us.

“What are you trying to find here?” I asked the boy.

“What do you mean?” he replied, though he knew well enough what I meant.

“You know what I mean.” When I voiced this, he just stared at me blankly. I met his gaze as evenly as I could and refused to let it go.

“You asked me what I wanted and I answered you in all honesty, but you didn’t answer my question.”

“I don’t need anything,” he answered steadily.

“I didn’t ask you what you need. I asked you what you want.”

He shook his head with a small boyish grin. “I have no need; therefore, I have no want.”

“You may say that to everyone else, but I don’t believe it.”

“Maybe you should.” The boy’s wry grin grew into a brilliant smile that brought light to his sober expression and smoothed the harsh lines on his face.

I exhaled at the sight of his unexpected smile. To say he was beautiful was an understatement. His form was flawless. Every angle of his anatomy seemed to be measured out in perfect proportion
and every shadow of his body seemed precisely calculated.

“And if I can’t?”

I saw another side to the boy, one that was more child than it was adult. He loved to banter back and forth and took evident pleasure in it. And just when I thought the smile on his face
couldn’t get any wider, it did.

“Then maybe you know me a bit better.”

He didn’t say anything after that, but I couldn’t leave the subject. I knew there was something that he wanted more than anything else, something he wanted as much as I wanted to
feel.

“I know you well enough that I can tell you want something desperately. You want it so much you actually feel like you need it.”

The boy went mute and refused to look at me. I knew I had hit on something.

“You’re searching for it, but you don’t quite know what it looks like.” Surprised, the boy looked up. His boyish smile was gone and he had Red tears welling in his
eyes.

“That’s why you helped me,” I whispered softly. I wondered before why he had stood by me, but I had never really connected it with his wants.

“I don’t know who I am ... That’s what I want. I want my identity, my name.”

And that was how we came to begin our journey together. One wanted to feel and the other wanted a name. Together we were alone no longer, yet we both still felt desperately separated from
humanity.

C
HAPTER
4

I don’t remember how long we walked. It could have been for days or just minutes, but what I do remember is that I felt uncommonly at ease with the nameless boy. Even
though I had no idea what we were walking toward, walking with him seemed to be the most natural thing to do. Neither of us followed the other. We just let the river direct us.

I was the first to spot the strange man. He seemed to be in his late thirties and had Red stubble spanning his face. The stubble matched his Red hair, which gave him an appearance not unlike the
boy’s. None of this struck me as much as how we found him: he sat in the middle of the river, its Red waters at his chest, and all he did was laugh.

Even as we walked closer, the man didn’t appear to notice the boy and me. We stood at the edge of the riverbank and I wondered if we should approach him. Thankfully, the boy made that
decision for me and I followed him, as he started wading into the blood Red water.