The Color Red

The Color Red



He knew nearly everything, and yet, he was a fool.  He could feel himself slowly going mad, and despite all his earthly knowledge, Nemo Novit could do nothing to prevent his own slow spiral into insanity.  When the little red pill had listed suicide as a side effect, he was not inclined to believe it, even after he took it initially.  But he believed them now.

         Even the apple, bruised from it’s long ride inside of his coat pocket, seemed to feel like a heavy stone in his gut.  The apple had experienced pain when it was torn from the tree and temporarily frozen.  Of course, being only an apple, the pain was dull and remote-feeling, sort of vague and innocuous, like a swirl of color from the light of a lamp that you can see even when you close your eyes.  Human suffering was a thousand times more acute.  Humans…  Well, humans experienced pain on a whole new level.  And Nemo felt every jolt of it. 

         Reading minds was not what he expected.  Not at all.

         He felt a new flash of pain so excruciating that he almost fell to his knees in the middle of the crowded street.  The apple tumbled from his pocket and skittered by a pile of leaves flattened by passersby, (he felt every twinge as they were crushed) finally coming to rest at the feet of the cause of his most recent discomfort.  Annalies Bates.

         Annalies bent down and gently picked up the apple from the ground, studying it with old, wise looking brown eyes which did not match the rest of her face in the least.  She was a severe looking young woman of perhaps twenty, no more, dark haired and sharp featured, with long strides and a calculating, brooding eye. 

         Catching sight of Nemo, who was staring quite angrily at her for being the cause of such intense pain, she smiled (a fake smile, he knew) and strode to his side.

         “Sir?”  She inquired, holding out the apple, “are you ill?  You look quite unwell.”

         He realized that he had somehow moved into a doubled up, static position in the street, and that he was being quite rudely bumped and jostled by the ignorant mass of people on their way to work.  He also realized that he wanted to strangle her.  But, seeing as how that was hardly an option on a busy city street…

         “Your parents died last week, and you are heartbroken.  You frankly cannot understand how a loving God could allow this to happen and you are contemplating suicide.  You are only alive because of your son, Charlie, whose father left upon his birth.”  He said coldly, straightening up to look her in the eye.

Deep, piercing brown met unyielding, smoldering grey.  If she was upset by his words, she did not show it.  She merely nodded and considered.  He narrowed his eyes and stared at her meanly.

“Correct.”  She said at last, smiling (a fake smile, he was sure) briskly.  “Now, perhaps you will allow me to buy you a coffee?”

Despite himself, Nemo was intrigued.  He was not quite the type that usually got asked to coffee.  He was thirty five, but looked older, and had greasy, limp blond hair and tired, angry grey eyes.  Nobody wanted to buy a crazy homeless man coffee on a normal day, much less one who was quite possibly a stalker, or, appeared to be, anyway.  He wasn’t.  Not by choice.  And still, even as he contemplated this, her suffering needled into his belly and made him want to die.

He nodded once, curtly, and followed her into a coffee shop, making sure his Scrooge-worthy snarl was still in place. 

They sat on a bench outside, her legs crossed primly at the ankles, his feet planted firmly apart, purposely wide enough to make sitting down uncomfortable for her because of the amount of space he took up.  She pretended not to notice, (although she did, he observed drily)

“You looked like you needed a friend, Mr…?”  She said companionably.

He ignored her implied question.  “Aren’t you going to ask how I know all that about you, Annalies?”  He smiled as creepily as he could, half hoping and half dreading that she would get up and leave, or call 911.  She did neither.  Everything she did surprised him.  He could read her thoughts, but not her intentions, not her mind.  He was fascinated.  Unlike most people, Annalies was not the sum of her thoughts.  There was something else, something beyond a chemical mixture and a few cubic centimeters inside of her skull.  Her pain was sharper to him, clearer, more concise, and she was like nothing he had seen before.

“Well, no, actually, I already know the answer.”  Came her reply.  Prompt, businesslike.

He sat up straighter, nearly dropping his coffee.  “Pardon?”  How could she know about the pill?  He could read her mind, but her answer still surprised him, because he was still a fool.

“You’re an angel of some sort, aren’t you?”  She asked.  Nemo tried not to feel disappointed.  “What’s your name?  Or do angels not have those?”

Nemo decided to laugh aloud, trying to be as hurtful as possible about it.  “An angel?”  He chortled, laughing much harder than was necessary, despite the pain she was inadvertently causing in his ribs.  “I would have never expected this from you!  You seemed so smart!”

She did not respond.  But merely stood, seeming to pout a bit.  “Would you walk with me?  I don’t want to keep sitting.”

He wanted to be obstinate, but he was too fascinated to refuse.  “My name is Nemo.  I am technically going insane.”  He said grudgingly.  She smiled as though she had won some sort of victory.

Then he realized what it was that set her apart.  She saw victory.  Somehow, she always saw victory.  And this terrified Nemo, by God, it terrified him.

“Tragedy surrounds you, Annalies, and yet, it has not destroyed you.”  He asked, studying her eyes closely.  She stared back just as intensely, searching him as well.  Still studying each other, their feet took them to a scenic little cobbled bridge overlooking a canal.

“And has is destroyed you, Nemo?”

“Yes.” 

The anger that had consumed him before returned with vengeance for no discernable reason, --probably just his insanity-- pounding in his head and burning his throat and distorting everything.  “Yes.”  He repeated quietly, musingly, and then swallowed hard.  He had more to say, but was not sure if he would say it.  Nobody ever says what they are thinking freely, except Annalies, apparently…  He decided to return the favor.

“Yes, Annalies!  How could it not destroy me?  Do you know what I see?  What I know?  I feel everything!  Everything!  And I. Am. Dying!”  He was nearly screaming now, throwing himself against the wrought-iron railing of the bridge like he intended to tear it loose and hurl himself over.  “O-Or maybe…”  He finished quietly, feeling suddenly weak, “I’m already dead.”

Annalies, somehow, understood that when he said everything, he truly meant it.  She understood, in an odd way.  She could not read minds, but she still felt acutely the world around her.  Her empathy was strong and the suffering of others hurt her in her soul.

Nemo felt, in his stomach-- not his heart, never his heart anymore, it was rotted out-- an odd tugging, an urgent need to flee, to scream curses at the top of his lungs, to rend, tear, do anything he could to destroy and maim something besides himself.  Instead, he doubled over and cried.

Annalies said nothing, but merely watched.  Finally she put a tentative hand on his back.  “You may be dead, but you can be brought back to life.  If you can feel everything, you are blessed.  Blessed.  Because if there is suffering, there is also joy.”

“Where is there joy?”  He howled, drawing looks from many people walking by, young couples arm and arm and elderly men wishing their wives were still alive and that their kidneys still worked…

Annalies pointed across the water.  “There it is.”  She said, again sounding victorious.  Nemo once again marvelled at her ability to see victory in the smallest things.  He watched the children toss a bright red ball back and forth, expecting a cheerful, picturesque little image that he could smile at, until a large boy pushed a small girl down and she began to cry.  Then he overzealously threw the ball to his friend a good ways away and the ball rolled into a graveyard.  He then proceeded to skip merrily into the graveyard, leaping over headstones and laughing uproariously, before realizing the ball was now in the river.  Nemo winced and raised his eyebrows at Annalies.  She smiled back, still victorious.

“Looks like that little brute got what he deserved, huh?”

Nemo nodded mutely, unsure what to make of her analysis, then spied a bruised, broken single red rose laying a few feet away.  “The man who dropped that had been intending to propose to his girlfriend tonight.  He got a phone call saying that she had found someone better and was leaving him.  He fell to his knees in despair and he still has not left his apartment since this happened three days ago.  Show me the beauty in this.”

She smiled, a real smile this time.  “Don’t you see, Nemo?”  She asked, tearing up a bit with the emotion of whatever it was she was feeling.  Nemo, somehow, did not know what that was.  She was feeling with something beyond her brain, beyond emotion in it’s chemical sense, which is what he could decipher.  Medicine, such as the pill, is only a matter of chemicals.

“It is beautiful in it’s sadness.”  She said.  “Look at the emotion it conveys!  Look at it, really, really look at it.  Don’t you see the beauty?” 

“No.  I do not.  I see a flower with a sad backstory that is wilting, and bruised, and with a broken stem that was thorny to begin with, Annalies, just like me.”

“Exactly!”  She exclaimed, as though coaxing a correct answer from a slow student.  “This rose, this beautiful, tragic rose, is a perfect picture of us.  All of us. Aren’t we all broken?  Trodden underfoot?  Thorny?  Yet here this rose stays, mottled with brown and black, abused and even despised, and yet, it is still a rose.  Still a symbol of love and beauty.  Like a phoenix.  Life isn’t over for this rose, not yet anyway, it still has a second chance.”

“The rose is dead.  It has been since it was plucked.  What do you make of that?”

“Then I suppose this means there is an afterlife.”

He sighed in exasperation.  “But it. Is. Broken!”

“No, only bruised, and anyway, why is the broken any less beautiful than the whole?”

He sighed again.  He did not have an answer.  He very slowly bent down and picked up the rose, which left several petals behind on the ground.  He held it out to her.

“Then give this rose a new story, Annalies.  Let it be a symbol of beauty again.”

She smiled, a bit sadly.  “You need it more than I.  I am sad, I am broken, but I am also mending.  And I have never truly been shattered because I am not made of glass.”

“And I am, made of glass?”

“No, but your reflection in a mirror is, and that is all you see of yourself.  You’re but an image of what you could be.”

“How do I cease to be an image?”

“Cease to see only the pain in everything around you.  No, more than that, see the beauty in the pain.”

“Annalies, clearly the only angel here is you.”

“No, Nemo, I am no angel.  I am, however, human.  More that you.  Because that is what being human is, finding beauty in tragedy.  Emotion, pain, love…  It is who we are.”

“Why is the broken less beautiful?”  He repeated softly, holding the rose in his hand.  He did not notice as the petals fell off one by one, scattering like blood onto the cobbled bridge; nor did he notice as the thorns bit into his hand until actual blood joined the petals.  “Why is the broken less beautiful?”

And that’s when he realized why Annalies was special.  She was human, yes, and that was why he never knew what she was thinking.  She was more than chemicals in a few pounds of brain tissue, she was more than herself.  She was beautiful, and so much more human than anyone else.  She had a heart.

Aside from being human, though, was the realization that she was wrong.  She was not ‘broken, but also mending’, she just wasn’t broken.  Ever.  Humans don’t break.  Humans cry, scream, and get back up.  They make a decision, for better or for worse.  Machines break, sculptures break, and yes, even mirrors break.  He was a mirror, truly.  Transfixed by the idea of himself as a silent sufferer, the sole possessor of knowledge in a world of ignorant half-wits.  But no, all along, he was a fool. 

He may have possessed knowledge, but he did not possess wisdom.  All of the knowledge in the world was worth nothing without wisdom. 

The sun was beginning to set, and Annalies’ eyes were gleaming, shining like nothing he had ever seen before.  He had another startling realization.  She was beautiful.  Not in a way that meant he ‘wanted’ her, that was not how it was at all.  Merely that she was beautiful in a way that made romance seem silly and roses smell dull. 

In spite of having a graveyard and water and a fiery sun behind her head, and a broken rose and a broken man next to her, she was more beautiful than anything in the world.  No, not in spite of, he realized, because of.  The light shines brighter in the darkness, like a gem against a dark velvet backdrop.

But no, not even that.  She was not beautiful like a gem, or like a bird, or like anything traditionally beautiful.  She was beautiful like the blood on the ground, vibrant and real and alive.  Like the remains of the flower he held, bruised, but never broken.  Like the apple that had begun this whole conversation to begin with… Her life was beautiful, not her body, not her face.  Her existence was beautiful, her unique perspective on the world.  Maybe everyone is beautiful like that.  Or maybe not.  He was just a broken mirror, what could he know?

She smiled at him, a fake smile, he noticed, and said it was lovely to meet him but she really must be going.  He smiled back and then stopped.  Something was wrong.  He was not sure what, but he had a strong feeling in his stomach that she was in danger.  Something beautiful like her could never survive.  It was sure to self destruct.

“Be careful, Annalies!”  He cried after her, hastily.  She smiled (fake) again and nodded.  But he saw that she would not heed his words.  And there was nothing he could do, but he knew what was going to happen.

He very slowly turned around left.  As he wandered back to his apartment he noticed eleven roses laying in the gutter, being trampled underfoot.  The rest of a dozen red roses.  He looked at them for a long moment before dropping the rose which he still held onto the pile.  One stubborn petal had managed to hang on, but even that one finally fell off and lay at his feet.  But there were at least a dozen stems, all together now, and that is just as beautiful as a dozen roses, just like death is just as beautiful as life, and red is red no matter if it is from a flower or a vein.