She Was Red

This is another short story I just cranked out right now. I mean very very short. I'm watching Donnie Darko and feeling rather bleak. Here tis!

(EDIT: I recently went through and edited this, so I'm reposting it...Uh. Yes)

"She Was Red"


What she felt was a pure anger, that only small children truly feel.

Sure, adults and older teens may feel anger, but it is always laced with a poisonous twinge of depression or jealousy, or even just dry grey fingers that scratch with age.

“Mommy, can I have a bouncy ball? I wanna blue one.” Her small fat finger rubbed a greasy mark into the glass holding the toys in. She stood on her tip toes in shiny black shoes. A blue ribbon rested in her hair like a bird, and she would have liked a bouncy ball to match. She liked matching things.

Her mother glanced down at her watch hurriedly, looked to her younger daughter who looked like she might cry, and sighed. She muttered to herself, dug in her purse for a quarter and handed it to her daughter. “Jamie, get your canvas in the car! We’re going to be late!” She was already getting her keys out, and glanced around to look for her son. The keys jingled loudly in the quiet of the store.

The little girl was still angry. The keys were too loud, the little boy in the aisle was looking at her and she was just angry. The bouncy ball that came out was a bright scarlet and she stared at it unhappily. It was big in her pudgy hand. There were swirls of clear spots she could see right through, and she held it up to her big brown eyes.

The mother caught the hand holding the bouncy ball, trying to take her to the car outside, and it rolled and bounced across the streaked white tiles of the floor. The girl shrieked, and the little boy peeked around the corner. He tottered on short legs and his squashed face with its tongue sticking out oddly made her feel sick.

She grabbed the bouncy ball from the hand he was offering it with and glared at him, her face pink.

He stared blankly at her and her mother’s retreating backs and thought about red.

He liked red, he liked red apples, and red bouncy balls, and the lady’s red collared shirt. Joseph thought about visiting his grandfather in the months when there were red leaves and they got to eat fat, ripe apples and make applesauce and cider. Apples were a good thing.

He wanted to follow the lady with the red shirt, but he got to ride in a red car with his mom instead, which was better.

The giant canvas Jamie had just bought was big and white and took up the entire backseat that wasn’t occupied by the small girl.

Jamie liked being dramatic, and that made the girl mad too. He liked being the center of attention and over-reacting to everything. It was completely unnecessary.

“Mom, I need to talk to my history teacher, make up a test for Thursday. We have that Chem lab that’s gonna take two periods no matter what the hell Mrs. L says.”

The mother hummed in agreement. “Don’t forget to.”

The trees blurred and bent as they sped by. Cars stopped and went and people looked blankly at other people.

She was so mad. It was just filling her brain with dark thoughts and she hated being stuck here. With her mother who had bright watery eyes and talked about being late all the time, and her brother who was always talking about dramatic things and what he would paint next and who he was currently dating and what was wrong with them.

The red bouncy ball that she hated spilled out of her slackened fingers and rolled around the car floor. The bumps in the carpet on the floor made it jump around and thunk against the canvas repeatedly. She watched it blankly until Jamie turned in his seat in the front, frowning.

“Stop messing with my canvas.”

The girl nodded quietly and grabbed the bouncy ball off the floor.

She could see the light ahead of their car switch to red. The worst color ever. She stomped her foot uncontrollably on the floor, once, the anger filling and overflowing her heart, and the ball fell again.

The car did not slow down, even though it was supposed to, even as Theresa’s back stiffened and her hands gripped the wheel so tightly and and she screamed and stamped her foot in it’s sensible shoes on the too.

Jamie reached out and grabbed his mother’s shoulder, and the small girl in the backseat sat still, eyes bright and wide.

Her older brother said again and again, very quickly, panic infusing his voice, pitching it higher and louder, “Stop stop stop it’s RED MOM STOP THE-”

The red bouncy ball was dented from the pressure from the mother’s foot and the brake pedal and panic.

The canvas next to the small girl was splashed with thick, sickly smelling dark red and it was torn through with different sized slices of glass, sparkling in the late afternoon.