love

Midnight Blue

Revealing why this shade of blue became the new color of love.

She was able to tolerate an edited view of the back yard. Anything more would flood her senses with funeral-like despair. At this point she accepted that the blushing sun, that breeze tinging the laundry flapping on an outside line with addictive earthy scents, the gray squirrels quarrelling in a nearby maple tree were only mirages. Intent on tricking her mind as she lay limp on the sofa in her desert of a room.

Today was the first day that she was able to see it. A thick gray vapor, dotted here and there with specks of black and occasional dirty white coin-shaped patches. Soiled.

As this cloud expanded in size, filling the room, it also seemed to decrease. A constant pulsation. Reminding her of an accordion. Soundless without the cute little monkey. Wait, maybe there was a faint woeful howl, probably a growl.

The sweeping haze occasionally revealed shapes of a Rorschach inkblot nature. She saw rodents, sewer creatures mostly, snakes, skulls with sunken features and blood-red eyes and hundreds of corpses. Periodically a grease slicked hairy claw stabbed at her from the sludge-like ether. It looked like it belonged to a twenty-times-bloated pier rat. That talon poked aggressively and by its choice only, touched nothing. Yet.

Evil.

At one end of the room, the muted television screen streamed familiar information. News services were not reporting this sinister and hazy phenomenon. If the experts knew of its existence, they were choosing to protect the public and avoid panic.

The night before, she convinced herself she had been dreaming. A nightmare. An emaciated four-legged creature covered in mottled reddish-brown fur caressed her forehead with one hoof. The thing’s second appendage sprouted at least fourteen black, spiked tentacles. The extensions quickly and aggressively dug into her eyes, painfully, causing her to scream and immediately sink into a catatonic trance.

In the morning she remembers the beast covering her mouth and nose with its pointy snout. And the smell. A stench of rotten teeth and breath peppered with mold, mixed up with an aroma of burnt sugar. The irregular contrast confusing her as her mind drifted away.

That same morning she stretched cat-like, before slipping from her shared but currently empty queen size bed. Dazed. The room contains a massive, rounded mirror once belonging to her grandma. It sits on a wall close to the bed, above a chunky corner bureau. She glanced as she walked by. She, Elsa, froze. Her feet felt too heavy to move. Stone.

Elsa’s previously admired large brown eyes were now a stunning shade of midnight blue.

Next, Midnight Blue Part 2:

© Suzanne V. Tanner, 2020. All Rights Reserved.

Thanks again for your time, my dear reading and writing friends. If you need to reach me by email: [email protected]. I am sending wishes for the entire world to Be Kind.