Code Red

Long, winding, red roads stretch around the beautiful city of Halley. Beautiful houses, beautiful stores, beautiful theatres, a beautiful museum with beautiful artifacts inside. This city is home to 15,724 beautiful residents, all prescribed a beautiful pair of ruby-red glasses in whatever frames they choose. No one questions why they wear them, they just do. Sun up to sun down. In this town, there was a beautiful family of 2. They might not seem very conventional, but they were beautiful because they loved each other. This small family consists of Zenna May, 35 and Kara May, 12. During the day, Zenna works as a graveyard worker while Kara goes to Hiddleston Central School, named after the founder of the school, Thomas J. Hiddleston. She gets bullied everyday for her stature, tall and skinny, standing at 5’8 and weighing 137 pounds.

On one faithful Tuesday afternoon, school had just gotten out and 3 kids
were picking on her for her size, Zack Picklin, Maizie Skye and Mallory Whelks. They were standing just behind a wall of the school so no one can see what was going on. They backed her up against the wall, shouting mean and horrible things to her, some of which I can’t and won’t say, but others I can say but simply won’t. The meanest of the 3, Mallory Whelks, pushed her to the ground and started kicking her in the stomach. Zack and Maizie were taken aback. “What’re you doing!?” exclaimed Zack. Maizie tried to pull her back, but Mallory just shoved her away and kept on kicking. She only stopped once Kara coughed up blood on her new pristine white shoes. She gave one last final kick and then ran away with Zack and Maizie to who knows where, leaving Kara alone on the warm red ground of Mars.

When she finally got the strength to get up again, 2 hours had passed.
Kara checked her phone to find it cracked and with 20 missed calls, all but 1 from her mother. Kara looked up from her phone and realized everything looked different. The once beautiful trees with vibrant greens, yellows and reds were now brown and gray. The beautiful school made out of a beautiful sky-blue stone is now slate gray. She tried to get up but her hand got poked by something on the ground. It was the lenses in her glasses. Her glasses fell off her face and on to the ground when Mallory pushed her. It was virtually unrepairable, so Kara just walked home, leaving the broken lenses and the frames on the ground.
Kara finally arrived home at 5:20 P.M to her mom sitting in the front room worried sick.

As soon as Zenna heard the door open, she leapt up off the couch and rushed to her, but immediately shocked when she didn’t see Kara’s circle-rimmed glasses.
“What happened to your glasses?” Zenna asked, almost monotonously. “They broke. Also the weirdest thing-“ Zenna walked towards the home phone the had on an end table. “Mom?” Kara said. Zenna didn’t hear her and dialed 5 numbers on the phone. 3-1-5-4-5. “Mom,” Kara said again, “what are you doing?”. Zenna spoke into the phone only 2 words, “Code Red.” Zenna hung up the phone.

_________________________________________
 
Kara woke up in a dark room only illuminated by a single hanging light, kind of like in
an interrogation room Kara sees in her police dramas. She tries to get up from the wooden chair she’s in, but she realizes that she’s tied down to the chair. She takes the time she has alone to analyze her surroundings, well, what little surroundings she has. All she notices is a small amount of light coming through a window in the door right in front of her, about 20 paces away. The whole room was 25 paces long and 10 paces wide, and it creeped her out. Why was she here? When will somebody come, if at all?
Her thoughts we cut off by an older man walking into the room, his white hair and beard
causing a stark contrast from the blackened walls. He comes in the room holding a clipboard and rolling a chair. He introduces himself as Bradley Smith. He unties her from the chair and starts asking her questions about her age, height, weight, hobbies and other basic questions that gave her no information to why she’s tied to a chair and not doing homework or having supper, or even sleeping. She doesn’t know what time it is. She knows it’s after 5, but she’s not sure how far past 5 it is. He then asks her questions about her glasses.

“What happened to your glasses? How did the break?” he asked in a gruff voice.

“Well these 3 kids were picking on me and then one shoved me to the ground and then
she started kicking me and then they ran off and-“

“When did your glasses break?” he asked again, more stern this time. She felt like he was
getting impatient with her. He was.

“I don’t know. It was sometime before 5 and after school, so around 3?” Kara said.

He started writing on his clipboard. Kara couldn’t see what he was writing, but she could infer it was about her answer. What exactly? No idea.

“What did you see when you took off your glasses?” She hesitated and looked
uncomfortable. “You won’t get in trouble for your answer.” He adjusts his rectangular frames.

“I saw a lot of brown and gray. Like the school? Gray. The trees? Brown. The
ground was still red, though. Just less red. Very dull.”

“How did it make you feel?”

“Sad. Very sad,” Kara replied. “I prefer the bright colors more.” She
paused. “Was it because of the glasses the colors changed?”

He changed the topic. “Are you thirsty? I can go get you something to
drink.”

"Yes, please.”

He walked back out into the hall and made Kara a special mixture of homemade lemonade and sleeping pills. He stirred the lemonade with a stir stick to dissolve the pills faster. He didn’t want he to suspect a thing, at least until it was too late.

“Here you go, drink up. We don’t want you being too dehydrated.”

"Thank you, sir.” Kara said. She drank the whole glass in less than a minute. She was obviously thirsty, and lemonade was her favorite drink, so of course she was going to drink the whole thing.

“Thank you for your time. I will call your mom to come pick you up. In the meantime, stay here while your new glasses get made.” Bradley Smith walks out of the room, leaving Kara alone once again.

A few minutes later, she starts feeling dizzy and tired. She thinks it’s because it’s late, but she doubts it’s that late. And besides, she was just feeling fine a few minutes ago, so what suddenly happened? She then remembers the drink. It wasn’t clear, so she couldn’t see if anything was inside. Did he… drug her? She couldn’t think of anything else before she passed out.

_________________________________________

Kara woke up in her bed the next day to her alarm blaring. She groggily reached over to her phone and debated pressing snooze, but decided to turn off the alarm and get up. It was 6 A.M and Kara thought that was way too early for any child to get up and function right, but she had to get up anyway. She started recapping the previous day in her head. Breakfast, walked to school, went to class, saw Zack, Maizie and Mallory,… what else? She couldn’t remember what happened yesterday. Whenever she would ask people what happened, they either wouldn’t give her an answer or would say that they also didn’t remember. Even though Kara has no idea what happened to her, she will find out what happened, even if it kills her.