Colour Blind

Reading time: 1 minute

Photo by Paul Blenkhorn on Unsplash

When the struggle ceased with an audible splash, like a stomach gurgling from the spasms of emptiness, my hands were dripping green while everything else was still. There was my breath, pounding slowly like a sentence. There was that smell; fresh, and sweet, and primal. There was the weight of my sticky nightgown; but mostly, there was the kaleidoscopic mess on the bed.

The emerald and the sage, the shamrock and the seafoam, the pickle and the pear, the lime and the crocodile, the olive and the fern, the chartreuse and the mint; all perfectly green. All perfectly chewed and spat between my legs. My throat tasted like iron. My fingers tasted like his knuckles. I smeared the green paste over my mouth, made a big clown smile, then painted my hair with what remained. Green: like fire, like a sunset, like the first squirt of juice my knife had released.

I found no heart inside his chest; not a trace of the heart he promised me the day we married. In its place, just a squishy mass the colour of vomit; like a tumour, but worse. As I’d suspected. Only a heartless monster would treat his wife the way he did.

When the time came and questions flew like bullets, I said he wasn’t human. Humans have blood in their veins.

Blood is red, I’ve been told, and all I could see was a sickening mess of green.