She looked like she had been thoroughly fucked.  The mirror told her as much, and as she stared into the eyes she knew were green -- stared and stared until they stared back at her -- she wondered when caring had become obsolete.

Wondered when wondering had taken the place of wishing, when wishing had overtaken hoping, when hoping had smothered dreaming, when dreaming had become shadowed and swallowed caring.

When the shadows had lengthened and darkened and animated enough to consume her.

She filled the bath and let herself slide in until the water reached her mouth and covered her nose and drowned her.  It was well over her head and she opened her eyes and watched the hair -- hair she knew was red and wet, mermaid-hair -- writhe soundlessly above her.  She thought back to the girl in the mirror and had so many things to tell her, so many.  Absorb me, she wanted to say.  Pull me into you and make me into you and make me into someone else.  Gather up all the parts and maybe I can be assembled.  Maybe I can be made.  Into someone else.

But she didn't say a word.

She opened her mouth and imagined letting the water into her.  Drinking it like coffee on a cold day, just swallowing and swallowing until she was filled.  Until being consumed was preferable to being drowned.  Until the choice was taken away from her.  Until the end and until the beginning of the end.

But she sat up and pushed her hair away from her eyes and pulled the bathplug.  She stepped out of the tub and reached for a towel and dried every inch of skin, and thought with something too black to be called hope, that perhaps if she rubbed hard enough, the stain would bleed out.

She tugged a nightgown over her head and opened the door, flipped the room into night.  She held out a hand and could see the dark that engulfed it, that rose from inside her like a serpent; silent and coiling and oozing from her pores like ink from a leaky pen.

Her eyes were covered with it.  But it differed there; cold and thick as a black mist that concealed everything, hid her in the shadows, waited.  For her.

She pulled back the crisp sheets -- they were always clean, always perfect, the sheets on their bed -- and slid beneath the covers.  Scott shifted in his sleep to accommodate her weight on the bed and she reached over and traced the smooth lines of his goggles. What would he do if she were to take them off?  What if - what if she removed them and put them to her own eyes?  Would she be able to see what he saw?  Would she be able to see the shades of red he lived with?  Would she envy him his color?

She pulled back and lay down and let herself submerge into the covers and tried to sleep.  She didn't know if he appreciated what he had, didn't know if she would appreciate it either, if she had it.  They were two people who shared more than anyone knew, shared less than anyone suspected.

He could see only red.  She couldn't see at all.
 

END
 

Colorblind -- Counting Crows

I am colorblind
Coffee black and egg white
Pull me out from inside
I am ready
I am ready
I am ready
I am
Taffy stuck, tongue tied
Stuttered shook and uptight
Pull me out from inside
I am ready
I am ready
I am ready
I am...fine
I am covered in skin
No one gets to come in
Pull me out from inside
I am folded, and unfolded, and unfolding
I am
colorblind
Coffee black and egg white
Pull me out from inside
I am ready
I am ready
I am ready
I am...fine
I am.... fine
I am fine