Visions in Crimson Hues

"...As all the Heavens were a Bell,

And Being, but an Ear,

And I, and Silence, some strange Race,

Wrecked, solitary, here…"

~"I felt a funeral in my brain" by Emily Dickinson

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Inside the freezer, me and Thaddeus sat eating the meat from the bone, throwing the carcasses of animals and flanks of bovine creatures at each other as we remained locked inside the metal cage. Blood that had splattered the floor just moments before was now frozen in place, sub-zero temperatures materializing a solid out of anything ready for the taking.

Nobody told us the testing would end this way, freezing to death inside a glorified refrigerator, feasting on our own kind. All the sharpened-pencil, fill-in-the-bubble, mind-numbingly boring testing had led to a disaster. At least we weren’t in danger anymore, but the padlock would only hold so long until it, too shattered from the cruel wrath of bitter air.

Thaddeus looked at me, dark hair wild and overgrown like a bed of thorns. Regret welled up in his eyes but no tears fell. I should have held him, told him everything was going to turn out fine. But that didn’t happen.

I pawed at my crushed velvet school uniform, ripped and torn with gaping scars of fabric. No matter the regret and damnation that I faced, I was finally full. But not for long. The hollow would open again, I was sure of it. When you fill a gaping hole with sand, it shouldn’t swallow. It was different with our kind. Even worse with the others.

“O-oli??”

My younger cousin’s voice garbled out from his rosebud mouth, sticky remnants in shades of red stained along his jawline. His whole body trembled at the speed of a mosquito buzzing, estranged from everything he held dear

I understood, but my only instinct was to stay alive, a rabbit fleeing from its small-minded problems to find shelter from the predators that stalked its native land.

Something had changed in my genetics as I evolved, no longer finding care and comfort useful to my existence, creating a cold, hard, persona that I only hoped would melt as the temperature rose.

“Thaddeus.” I replied, at long last, keeping my face monotone as I searched for signs of injury on my body.

“I-I’m so very…c-c-old…” he stammered, blood-stained lips turning blue as he hugged the thin maroon blazer closer to his chest, bunching the dowdy fabric into a twisted ball. Then he reached over, hands outstretched towards my chest, mouth gaping like a sickly child. Suddenly, he collapsed onto my lap, his small, soft head of hair flipping onto my wet hands.

Maybe he was no more than a sickly child. One that I cared for, nonetheless. Thaddeus’ face was thin and drawn, barely breathing onto my legs. I petted his soft curls with my ragged fingernails, reminiscing about the rabbit I had owned as a small child. Now that I thought about it, perhaps I was subjecting myself to hypothermia, a numb cancer springing and tingling its way painfully to the center of my body, its access point through the weak limbs.

I began to hum a tune, one that my mother used to incorporate my name into as an effort for me to remember the long, complicated name the looming figure of a father had given me.

Surrounded by crimson, freezing my body eternally, I sang a song of happiness in a time that could only be described as sorrowful.