The Color of Pain

Red is the color

Staining your lips,

And bringing back

The memories of

A lost tomorrow.

So many people believe that red is the color of death. They believe that it’s a symbol that foreshadows the end. But what they don’t realize is that death is the ending of both good and bad. It is the last moment, the last second, the last breath.

No one realizes, but red has nothing to do with the end of all things. Red is never ending, never changing and it only dulls after time and wear.

Red is not the color of death. Red is the color of pain.

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There’s a lot of blood everywhere, Ross Thompson thinks. He stares at it, watches as the puddle of red liquid seeps into the bottom of his worn Nike shoes. It’s going to take a long time to get this color out of the treads and he wonders why he’s not freaking out over this more. He’s a Beta without an Alpha now. It’s like a dog without a master (he has to chuckle a little hysterically at how ironic that is) and now he’s alone, completely lacking direction or purpose. He feels empty. And the kidnapper’s voices don’t even register until one thing makes it through the maze of his muddled brain –

“She was just a bitch, anyway.”

And it really isn’t the statement alone that makes him angry. It’s the way the other men – humans – in the room say it and the way they laugh. Idiots, all of them. He wants to crack their skulls with the heel of his shoe and show them just how damn strong he can be. The problem is that he still has poison in his system from where they gassed him with a new string of wolfsbane product. It’s designed to be airborne. Enough of it can be lethal to a werewolf, but just the right amount will knock one out for a while and give them one hell of a headache.

Ross was hit with the latter, but he’s not sure if he should think of it as a mercy or not.

God, this room smells of blood.

The scent of the congealing red liquid and death is so strong that Ross feels his eyes pricking with tears. He never cries, but this is a little too much even for him.

“Don’t cry, kid! It’s fine, you know? I mean, yeah, sure, we get the dog breath, but we’re together right? You’re pack now. And I’ll take care of you, Ross. I’ll protect you, okay? So don’t be sad, kid.”

A memory of a time lost to him now. He closes his eyes, blinks hard. Back then, she was little more than a kid herself. It makes Ross sick to his stomach to connect that smiling, happy Alpha to the broken girl lying at his feet. Her skin is black and blue from being repeatedly smashed in with both knuckles and booted feet. Her dark eyes, tightly shut before, have gone slack and half lidded, and her blond hair is a tangled mess of brown and red.

“So, who’re you supposed to be, kid?”

Ross doesn’t look up, keeping his eyes glued to the tops of his Nikes and trying to contain his growing fury. It’s dangerous for a creature like him to get angry, even just a bit. Sure, he had an anchor, but now it – no, she – is gone. Now there’s nothing to hold him back, nothing to keep him from slaughtering every single human within a thousand miles. And that is dangerous, because going on a killing rampage, not just here but everywhere he can reach, won’t end well for him or the rest of his pack.

“He’s, what, fourteen?” a woman with a gun full of wolfsbane bullets says casually from the corner of the room. She’s leaning up against the wall, directing a glare that looks freakishly like a creepy leer in his direction.

Kill them. Just. Kill. Them.

His wolf wants to end them so badly but Ross holds himself back because he knows that Trisha wouldn’t have wanted this. She would have fought for him, but she wouldn’t approve of him dirtying his hands for her. It used to burn him up on the inside, revert his attitude back to the misbehaved and out of control troubled kid that he used to be before the day that he was bitten. But she would just catch him by the shoulders and squeeze, her nails digging into the skin beneath his shirt.

“It’s too easy, Ross. It’s just too easy. Cliché, even. Like… like a story, ya’ know? A story where they make the boy who defends the girl out to be the big hero. But it isn’t like that, kid. In real life, killing someone else? It’s like taking a piece out of your soul and giving it away. You die a little on the inside and it just gets easier every time. Now, Rossy, we never take the easy way out, right? Nah. We’re hard on the outside because we earned it, but going down the path of least resistance is never a good idea. Trust me on that.”

He wonders if seeing death is as bad as causing it, because he doesn’t feel as if he has any part of a soul or a heart left. He still feels empty, still feels incomplete. It’s as if he’s lost something vital to his very being and nothing anyone could ever say or do will get it back for him. He kneels next to Patricia, his jeans soaking up blood like a washcloth. He ignores his stained clothes, running a finger down her pale, cool cheek and wiping off some of the grime on her skin.

He can smell the salt in the tears that run down his face against his own violation. Ross slowly turns his hand over and stares at the red marring his otherwise tanned skin. Slowly he brings it to his face and presses his palm against his nose and mouth, squeezing his eyes shut. He wants to scream, to cry, to kill.

He leans close, nudging her temple with the tip of his nose and whispers, “Sorry.”

And as he turns, as he lets the claws slide out and the rage take him over, he really is sorry. Sorry that he couldn’t save her, sorry that he has to do this, sorry that he can’t help himself. He thinks maybe Trisha was his soul. Maybe Trisha, in all her loving, beautiful glory, was his heart.

And he’s sorry that, when she died, both those things went with her.