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Five | He lost her because of colour

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Colour. What is colour? It is a spectrum of infinite possibilities.

As a schoolteacher, she taught her students that every colour was beautiful. Every colour was integral to the painting that is the world.

But her town did not believe that. Her town believed in bigotry; it believed in the supremacy of just one kind.

In a town built above gold mines, everyone dreamed of a rich man's life. Yet she fell for an unlikely man, a man of a darker tone, a free man who worked in the cocoa plantation beside the school. It took only one smile each day, as he passed the school, to steal his heart. 

Sure, they looked different, but did it really matter? 

Colour did not make them different. They were made of the same fibre, they'd strip down to the same bones. At the core, they were all beings capable of love. 

They were drawn to each other not because of what they have on the outside. She loved his simplicity of character; he loved her open-mindedness. They courted like any others. Flowers, love letters, sincerity and attention. 

But the town caught up with their relationship. A relationship between two different races was a crime after all. Herman, son of the police chief, was the most notorious. Motivated by disgust and jealousy, he set his eyes on capturing the boy. How could he, a man with nothing, a man as worthless as soot, beat him to her heart? He had to be ridden of. 

Cheating was easy for Herman. He could do it with a simple order from his tongue. Just a few words, and they placed cursed gold in his bags and framed him for someone else's crime. Ruthlessly, he and his men seized him.

But she knew it was not so simple. The boy would never do such a thing. He needed no extra gold; he had a heart full of it. 

She confronted the perpetrators, but Herman only hissed in her ear with menace. "Your very relationship is scandalous. Your very relationship is wrong."

"There is nothing wrong." she retorted in fury.

"How many times have you slept with that thing? You think your father would accept this? He'll kill you. So if you want to live, keep quiet, and let him take the fall."

There was no way she would let him. 

In the night, with a mixture of charm and intoxication, she took the keys. She snuck to the cellar, where he had been kept. 

"Let's run away from here," she requested, and so they did. 

They ran. They ran from the sickening place that they were ashamed of. They ran from the myopic place. They knew that the world around them was all like that. But perhaps, if they persist, they could find a place that was different. Frantically, they climbed onto the boat, and paddled away from the shore with as much strength as they could muster. In a distance, men and horses appear, torches in hands.

And they paddled, because they would not let those irrational fires burn down what is important. Herman and his men were hot on their heels. But they forged on, determined to escape. 

Gunshots were fired. The boy fell. 

Horror engulfed her as she slumped down beside him, and cradled him in her arms. And even if everything was blood-stained, she did not care. In the moment of anguish and pain, she cried out over his listless body, her eyes a broken faucet.

"Get back here, Marilyn," Herman ordered. He was satisfied; he knew he had won. 

Did he? 

She picked herself up from the floor. "No, Herman, over my dead body."

A devilish grin inched onto her face, and she jumped.

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