All the Time in the World

Blue and Red

   It's strange how so many common "facts" we all know and repeat are actually lies.

   You don't have to wait half an hour after eating to swim. Yes, the body requires extra resources in order to digest, but not nearly enough to prevent the muscles in your arms and legs from working as they should. A penny dropped from the top of The Empire State Building cannot kill you; it only would only feel as though you had been flicked in the forehead. The sun isn't yellow or orange and lightning can strike more than once.

   Also, blood is not red.

   It is maroon.

   It is burgundy, wine, crimson, vermilion, ruby, puce, claret.

   It is the color woven into the universe you see after scrubbing at your eyes for too long.

   It is the hue that lives in the tip of a flame, just before it fades off into nothingness.

   Blood is dark dark dark and it's splattered all over the inside of my mother's broken windshield.

   Inky dots are splattered over the whole front seat of the car. On the seats, on the doors, the windows, even the roof.

   Her blood. Mama's blood.

   I don't realize I have taken a seat on the ceiling of the truck until I feel the insistent discomfort of an object jabbing at my thigh. I lift my leg to move it, then freeze.

   In the few pictures I've seen of guns, most of the basic characteristics are the same. They are all either black or sometimes dark brown, with a place to put your hand, a trigger, a tunnel for bullets to travel through before making their way to their targets (called the barrel, I believe), and a hole for them to shoot out of. I'd assume that they are heavy, seeing as they have literal balls of metal embedded in them. Some are bigger than others and are used for different things. That's about as far as my gun knowledge goes. I've never seen a real gun, let alone held or used one.

   The gun that I pull out from under my leg seems to defy all these stereotypes. It is bright white, light as a feather, and has no trigger that I can see. Instead, the grip seems to have been made by someone holding the material so tightly that it held the shape of their hand. The barrel is the only recognizable part of the firearm, but it is ringed with a spiraling pattern of vivid blue stripes, faintly pulsing with light.

   It's mesmerizing, yet disgusting.

   Why would my mother own a weapon like this? Why would she keep it in her car?

   Mama.

   I throw the gun to the floor or the ceiling or the walls. I can't tell which.

   It doesn't matter.

   She's right next to me. She's hanging hanging hanging like an inverted puppet. It's all wrong.

   Blood, so much blood. All over the wheel, dashboard, the windshield.

   But not dots. Puddles.

   Puddles the shade of the bursts of pain when your tongue is scorched.

   Puddles of the warmth you feel when you don't speak and see the snickers behind hands, the suppressed smiles, the hidden laughs.

   Puddles of the hue behind your eyes when your brain tells you kill them all kill them all kill them all.

   Puddles the color you see when you're supposed to stop stop stop.

   But you don't.

   And you're driving that black van.

   And it's all your fault.

   It's all your fault that she's wrapped in her seat belt, the thing that's supposed to keep her safe, but couldn't.

   It's all your fault that her warm brown arms are draped over her curly halo, lolling around on the ceiling.

   It's all your fault that when you turn her head, her smile is not there.

   There is only blood, running down her forehead and into her hair, dripping from her broken nose into her unfocused eyes. Those eyes that will never look at you the same again because it's all your fault.

   Feel for a pulse.

   Olive 2.0 is back.

   My body complies without my conscious mind's consent. I see my hand reach out and place itself under her jawline.

   Her skin is warm, but strange to touch, as if it has lost all its elasticity. There is no pulse.

   Frantically, I try to find one. Nothing.

   I glance around, trying in vain to find something to help.

   All the colors blur. Blue bleeds onto red and they mix and dance behind my eyes and they're filling my lungs and I can't breathe and she's gone again.

   So many useless details.

   The dent in the shattered glass of the windshield where her forehead must have flown forward from the force of the impact. The strange blue gun, lying on the ceiling. My stomach is eating itself, still down by my feet from when it dropped upon seeing her. A flashing watch, bound tightly around her dark beige wrist, beckoning me with its light.

   I am reaching for it.

   I am putting it on.

   Breathe. Look at the trees. They're still there.

   And the world stops its spinning.

   And all I feel is empty.

   And confused.

   And mad.

   So mad.