True Colour

Fox

"Everyone lives in grey. Both literally if you live in the city like I do, and metaphorically. The negative people hide your true colours, and try to squash your hustle. So you live in grey, and force the other homies to live in grey too, 'cause that's all you know. But to see in colour, in true colour... that's the dream, you feel me?"

- The dead brother

The fox is prisoner to the city that birthed it. All he does is hide from the world in small, damp alley ways and gutters, and scavenge for any food he can find in the bins. His existence is known to no one but himself. He feels trapped.

Occasionally he will see a human. The fox learns to fear humans, as they hate foxes. If he sees a human or a group of humans, they will never fail to yell at him. Sometimes he'll hear them say
"I bloody hate foxes. Mangy disgusting
creatures. There should be a fox cull, there should."
and he'll believe them. He has never heard anything else, so he has no reason not to. The fox goes about his life believing he is better off dead. So one day he decides to make it so.

As the fox approaches the motorway he thinks on his life. The earliest memory he can remember is hiding from a human in a pile of rubbish. Ready, yet unwilling to attack. The human barely noticed him. The fox came to realise that the human had his own life, his own story and his own reason for being there, just as the fox did. He also realised that the human has forgotten all about him, whilst he remembers that human.

The fox felt the rush of cars brush the end of his whiskers, the tail lights like lasers boring into his eyes, burning his mind. He reflected on all the harshness the world had inflicted upon him, and decided once and for all that his life was not worth living. He was going to kill himself.

And so the fox, blindly, stepped out into the motorway.

He was going to die as he'd lived: blind, afraid, and suffering.

The fox continued to walk into the motorway. The cars screamed by him like Eagles hunting their prey.

Half way across the motorway, the cars began to come from the other side. The fox knew that he would be hit sooner or later. So he continued to walk.

Until the cars stopped coming.

The fox felt soft earth underneath his paws. Nothing like he'd ever felt before, this ground wasn't hard and cold, but soft, and welcoming. It was grass.

He wandered cautiously out into the country side, leaving the roaring city behind him. Soon he found himself surrounded by roses. He looked around, his eyes adjusting to the vibrant colour, the likes of which he never saw in the grey city.

As the rays of life shone down upon him the fox spotted a grassy hill with a view of the horizon. He sat atop the hill and watched the sun rise. The fox felt his life fill with joy as he saw the sky fill up with beautiful colour, from a deep purple to red to orange to eventually a bright blue. The fox's heart raised and jumped in the realisation that he was in a better place now. He was in the place the before he could hope to even dream about.

A place where the fox was free to be.

Ending the night of the fox's depression.