Green and Violet

Good Morning

Purple is the color of extraordinary things, I've noticed. It's the color of lavender and violets, of the robes of ancient kings lacking crowns, and of the eyes of a woman I met today.

She speaks a language so old and fragile that I believe her trying to communicate with me will damage it. She smells of organic saltwater: the sea and sweat. Her hair clung to her face and her shoulders, matted up around the roots like she'd been tangling it since her inception. It was sopping wet, as was the rest of her torn clothing, though I barely looked at it. The second she had opened her eyes, the violet eyes gripped me and erased my environment. I imagined that I may have died. I am recounting this to you for no other reason than to have something spectacular following my death.

-I have a terminal illness. There is nothing I can do to prolong my life, all I can do is make it marginally more exciting. It is not wise to leave my house, I have dozens of machines and devices that make my quality of living easier but no less depressing. I was a lonely man before but it is all the more scathing when I know death sits calmly in my living room, flipping through channels on my television to waste time until I inevitably perish in my home. You would think a man with so much money would have more to do, more to salvage in his body. I don't. I have no reason to make new memories alone, memories I would be unable to take with me to the supposed other side. The argument is that I should have no regrets, but everyone does. I have such a multitude of things that I wish I could have done differently that no few new additions will change the grand total's influence. My parents are dead, one from heartbreak and the other from the same genetic destruction that wreaks chaos on my body now.

I suffer from Maylou's Disease, just like the other ten thousand recorded cases in my country of Teltina. Instead of getting hit by car or blowing up in a craft accident, I have to waste away in my above-water home. This planet used to be a wasteland but flourishes now; how many times have I assumed that I would be the same? That the skinny, translucent body I inhabit would one day be plumper and hued? Almost a century has gone by for Lumino, and the disease steadily declines in appearances, but is that anything to celebrate? Victims of Maylou's Disease don't suddenly not have it simply because the genetic defect is getting destroyed when people don't want to have Maylou's children anymore. I discussed this with my therapist but like with most of our meetings, I find it hardly liberating and more stifling than anything else; Dr. Ferra is nice, but in a way that has the texture of sandpaper. The only person that I can stand to speak to is Dr. Young, but even he is a bit too reserved for my tastes.

I hate the sound of his pen on the paper. The scratching noise feels like talons ripping my skin into crepe paper, just ribbons of flesh so he can get to my neuroses. Nothing I listen to has any enjoyment and rudimentary sounds give me the sensation of what I can only describe as quiet, continuous torture.

"Dr. Ferra prescribed you a new medicine a couple weeks ago," He began, and I narrowed my eyes. I know that the pair of doctors must have some sort of constant communication about me, but it still rubs me the wrong way. "Any side effects?"

"I sleep worse than I did before and nearly any food I eat comes up almost immediately," I responded blandly.

"I see...Do you believe those symptoms could be alleviated with smaller doses?" Dr. Young questioned.

"I'm wasting away, doctor," I snapped, "I don't have the energy to think about solutions. After all, I am just postponing my death."

"We're all postponing our deaths," Came his cool reply. He set the clipboard and pen down on his lap, but his writing was too loopy and sloppy for me to even read what he'd written about me, "Yours just happens to be faster and more painful than the rest of us."