The azure sky behind the horizon, like a giant blue wall, began to melt into hues of scarlet and pink. The event reminded the graffiti artist, painting pleasant murals in the Society's name, of fresh paint. He grinned ear to ear as the egg-yolk of a sun began to sink to its rest. It reminded the boy sitting atop the brick wall of something entirely different. Mostly, it didn't remind him of anything - except fear. Knuckles white and face pink from breathing, Klaes shook slightly as he closed his eyes. His eyelids acted as a filter to the light, darkening the colors ever so slightly. Finding it easier to breath as the dark blue and red swirled beyond his eyelids, his hands took a looser grip on the wall. He continued to sit in such stasis on top of the wall until he found the colors dark enough that he could open his eyes. The altitude was causing the wind to bite more strongly than before. He could feel the cold slowly creeping up his skin under his grey sweater as he looked timorously at the ground, trying to remember how he had scaled the wall. He swiftly twisted around and put his foot in the highest handhold. As he reached the ground, he began to make his way homeward.
Even at night, the city was a storm of color and light. His feet seemed to echo through the pavement and the buildings as he navigated his way through crowds of colorfully dressed people, breathing shallowly and loudly. The sheer touch or voice of another person makes him sweat nervously as he walks, never knowing if the touch or whisper is meant for him. Smiles glare at him from every beautiful and ugly face like the headlights of a car. His feet become stiffer and stiffer as he is caressed, brushed, touched slightly be people he does not know. Love-filled whisperings weave themselves around his face, complimenting his features, making his jaw clench in hatred. Worst of all are the colors, the bright, obnoxious colors everybody wears that are meant to show compassion and individuality and understanding - but only seem sinister to Klaes. He stiffens up as he makes his way through the last of the gentle crowds on the sidewalk and enters his own home.
The house is cheerfully warm and bright.
He flips his hood up over his electric blue hair as he kicks his shoes off into the corner. "Lisa?" He asks, calmly into the lighted emptiness of the house. His voice is cold, loud, and strangely awkward in the silence. His dancing eyes are silver, the pupils showing dark green in the half-light. The whites of his eyes are yellowed, like pages of parchment.
"Boo!" screams a little girl from behind the door. She laughs and wraps her arms around the older boy's legs. "Hello, brother." The three year-old smiles. She has entirely blue tinted eyes and inhumanly yellow hair.
Klaes's face is still and unchanged. He does not remind Lisa that they are not related. He bends down to her height and looks her sternly in the eyes. "Why did you leave the lights on?" He asks icily.
"I don't like dark," she whimpers. "Light is better. Caretakers say light is nice and colorful."
Klaes's breathing stops at the mention of Caretakers. "Did they stop here?" He asks quietly. Lisa smiles and shakes her head. He breathes in with relief, yet the issue of the caretakers is still in his mind. "I'm going to bed," he tells his foster sibling.
Music is flooding his room through the window. He hates music. The boy shuts his window with a slam, as well as his door. Collapsing on the bed, he wraps his arms around his pillow and breathes into it, willing the world to stop. The world, as he is finding again and again, doesn't do as it's told.
The scarlet trench coats of the Caretakers flood and flutter through his mind as the sound of chimes stabs through his window. He imagines their terrifyingly colorful hair and eyelashes, their psychedelic eyes. He imagines their Cheshire Cat grins as they ask if his day has been lovely and beauteous as it should. His stomach flips as he imagines them silently escorting him away in the night, a mysterious outsider that is to be done away with.
An inevitable future.
"Are you having a lovely day, citizen?"
He doesn't understand the Society's fascination with love and compassion. He doesn't understand why everybody is appalled when he is unkind. It is unfathomable to him why everybody "loves" each other so profoundly.
There's something wrong with him, he's sure. Why else would he be different than everyone else? Why else would colors, supposedly beautiful colors, scare him witless?
Someday the caretakers, dressed in blood red, were going to take him away to god knows where. Maybe it was for the best. He was a menace, being hateful in a world of lovers. He was the outlier, the black and white in a rainbow. As accepting as the world was, he knew they wouldn't be able to accept him.
Almost as if reading his thoughts, the lights at the party blacked out simultaneously. He raises his head from the pillow curiously.
The sky outside was dark blue, like a stormy ocean. Not that Klaes had seen a stormy ocean - he had read about it. Both occurrences had sent chills up his spine.
People were piling out of the house next door, dragging themselves into the street slowly. The air smelled of intoxication and candy vanilla. The city's din of machines and voices had stopped, to be replaced by hesitant chatter and whimpers.
Klaes went to the light switch with a sour taste in his mouth.
Flick. Flick. Nothing.
He crept backed to the window slowly, gripping the sill with both hands as he leaned out into the midnight air. He saw bits and pieces of the partier's doe-like expressions as they looked around in the darkness, boots and high heels clicking on the painted road. Leaning as further out the window as he could, he strained to hear what they were saying.
"Did you hear that?"
"The generator must have broke-"
"That flash -"
"What the hell is that?"
Everything quieted - chatter, boots, and breathing. Klaes's own breath followed suit as he held onto the window's latch, feet on the sill, hanging from the window by one hand as he looked above the motley group of citizens.
They were in a hushed, paralyzed circle, staring down at the road. The road was its regular shade of green and blue, which looked horribly ooze-like in the iridescent moonlight. Something was moving in the circular trap of feet. Klaes looked closer, eyes teaching the movement.
In the middle of the circle scuttled a large spider darker than any color he had ever seen. He felt the oozy road begin to become darker and safer as he looked on the spider, and shivered pleasantly as the dark blue sky began to feel as warm as the summer breeze. The spider itself was beginning to slow its frenzy, almost as if sniffing the brightly colored people it had been presented with. One foot raised slowly, and Klaes's heart twisted. The face was cool and unfeeling as it centered over the spider.
"Stop!" Someone yelled, their bare footsteps slamming against the pavement. Klaes was startled to acknowledge that the voice was his, and the feet were his. He was no longer on the window, but stomping towards the circle, shoving his way into it.
"This is a creature of non-color, citizen." Said the partygoer with confusion. "It is outlawed by the Society."
Klaes's insides are just as confused as the partygoer's outward appearance is. He feels strangely attached to the small, sinister looking arachnid.
He glares at spider's predator, shoving the ribboned and bejeweled foot aside as he bends down towards the spider.
"Acts of hate are punishable by banishment by the Society," he says, holding his hands out to the spider as he smirkes. "Which one would you rather risk, citizen?"
The spider crawls onto his tanned palms timorously. It's legs feel like pin-pricks. He raises the small dark thing towards his face, inspecting it as goosebumps erupt on his skin. Barely glancing up at the confused citizens, he says goodnight and crawls back through his window.
