FicWad

Stepped outside, beyond criss-crossed shadows cast on snow, and the world was bright, so vivid that she raised her hand to her eyes and blinked back tears. Stood on a roof, rose on her toes, and turned and turned and turned until colours bled together, a jumping, twisting rainbow. She found rainbows in puddles, stopped and stared, wide eyed, her heart thudding in her narrow chest.

Bought a yellow dress, the color of daisies, she'd been told. She bought a book full of pictures, and placed the flower to its name. World's gone to Hell (everyone said, she'd heard of Heaven and thought this must be it), but industries still churned out powders and glosses and creams. A roll of cash in her hand, she stepped into a store -- ducked without any conscious thought when she felt a camera at her back -- and stared at rows of nail polish lined up on shelves. Red and orange, silver and gold, green and pink and she would buy a new bottle every few months, carried colour against her nails.

Snapped back into herself at the feel of a needle piercing her vein, sinking into the flesh at the crook of her elbow. Opened her eyes wide, huge in her face, and stared up at the ceiling, a dead grey. Lips as leached of colour as her face opened, cracked the frozen shape of her face, tried to scream as dull blue and grey and black pressed colours out of her being. Jerked against straps wound about wrists and chest and legs and clung to violets and oranges and the red of a ripe tomato bleeding out across her kitchen counter.

There was a shadow growing at her side. A stern father at her side, and this was all for the best, be a good girl and listen to daddy and the world's all right. A pale face etched with lines, eyebrows so light they nearly disappeared against his flesh. He was an empty outline devoid of colour, of vivid life, and she closed her eyes, tight, so tight that colour bloomed behind her eyelids.

She wondered if there were rainbows in tears, but she couldn't cry, wouldn't if she could (but she can't, so maybe she really would if she could) and life is a steady drumming of dull blue and grey and black against her senses. They tried to make her blend with the walls, as ordered and proper and controlled as this world of dull mock-colours. She was wearing red socks when she turned herself in and they stripped them off of slender feet, found a pair of grey socks the same colour and feel as those she ran away in. She twitched her toes in protest, smothered beneath mass-purchased socks perfect for the colourless drones they were supposed to be.

The world she gave herself up to was the colour of a bruise.

She closed her eyes, watched colours burst against her eyelids. Watched as they jumped and wavered and faded to black.

~end~