Wisps

Color Sense

I never really liked red. It reminds me too much of blood - the blood that rushes to one's face, giving away feelings, the blood that keeps my enemies alive, the blood that I have spilled, the blood that gets sticky on everything and is impossible to clean off. I much prefer gold and bronze and copper - orangey type colors. However, I was going on a blind date, and I needed something good to wear, and my red dress was the only one not at the dry cleaners.

I put on the dress. It was, despite its garish color, a beautiful garment, and made me feel like a million dollars. My date was at a fancy restaurant near a faraway hotel, and I needed to look real good. I quickly blobbed on some makeup, slipped into my copper-colored high-heel sandals, and drove to the airport in my best car. Unfortunately, it was silver. Silver doesn't go with copper. Not at all.

The flight was less than an hour long, but I was impatient. As soon as I got off the plane, I ran to the hotel, threw my stuff onto the bed and sped off to the restaurant, where I plopped down in a chair and waited. The ornate clock on the opposite wall told me that I was four minutes early. Two hundred and nine seconds later, I heard my name called by a nearby attendant. "Please come to Table 6," he said. So I came.

At Table 6 was seated a young man. He wore a dark brown suit, and his rusty orange hair was carefully combed over his ears. He stood and shook my hand. "You must be my date," he said with a smile. I looked him up and down.  He was, I noticed, almost entirely shades of the copper color I loved. Only his eyes were bright green. He was a bit on the short side, with a round face and smooth bronze skin. Everything about him exuded youth and innocence. Yet behind those wide, childlike eyes, I sensed a maturity beyond his apparent years, and when he spoke, his voice was deep and confident. We both sat down as a waitress brought us glasses of water.

The only thing I knew about my date was his name and that he appreciated good color sense. However, he turned out to be a very enjoyable man. He was polite and funny, and seemed genuinely concerned about my welfare. What a shame, I thought to myself. He won't be so concerned once he sees my reaction if he ever would dress in silver. After dinner, he took me to the hotel. It turned out that his room was just next door to mine. Weird, but OK. Suddenly, I heard a voice coming from his room. A female voice. There was something about this voice I didn't like.

I sat on my bed, listening hard. I could hear the female voice laugh, telling my date that she loved him, that she was looking forward to seeing him for so long, and asking how his day went. I heard my date laugh, talking about some stupid office party, something funny he heard on the plane here, and then...the date.

Suddenly I couldn't hear anymore. Something must have happened to the piece of wall where I was listening, or maybe he just hushed his voice, or maybe it was rage and jealousy clogging my ears. I took a key from my purse and started carving a hole in the wall. I didn't expect it to work, but apparently it was made of plasterboard and hasn't been replaced in ages. If I got out of this, I would sue the hotel for overcharging me. However, my thoughts were interrupted by the chunk of the plasterboard crumbling. I knelt before the ten-foot-square hole, staring into the astonished green eyes of my blind date, hugging the woman I heard through the now-destroyed wall.

The woman (girl, actually - she couldn't have been more than eighteen) also had copper skin, but a bit lighter, and her eyes were gray. Her hair, also, was gray. Not old-person gray - it had been dyed a bright silver and curled into tight ringlets that reached her lower back. Silver, I thought. I knew it. I didn't know who she was. I didn't care. My date reached for the telephone next to his bed and dialed security.

By the time the hotel police got to the room, I had already killed him. I killed the girl too. I had to. She might have been his girlfriend, she might have been his sister - I didn't care. I couldn't stand the sight of such a color combination in the room next door to mine. Before the security dragged me away, I caught a glimpse of the girl. Her hair wasn't silver anymore - it was red with blood. It made a wonderful contrast to the green of my date's still wide-open eyes, unseeing on the carpeted floor.

I'm on the run now. I guess I can't go to the business meeting I scheduled for next week. What a shame - I heard my potential trading partner has a good color sense.