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“Just shoot me,” he whispered. Dead eyes stared listlessly at the ground, trembling lips downturned as a teardrop curved sinfully over the contours of his face, “Just shoot me, if that’s what you want. Just shoot me.”
A chuckle slipped out of his red-stained lips, his head falling further forwards to rest on his chest. Red on white, white on red. Like blood on snow, his lips rested just inches away for the pure cotton of his sweater. Pure, unlike him and her. Unlike the fingers she raised to point at him, angled like a gun.
“Just shoot me.”
With her words, her bullets, the vicious lashings of her tongue. As many as she wished, he took. Like lashes from a whip, they stung and bit into his skin as he cried out. Hurt him, break him, tear him apart, the voices whispered.
She laughed, eyes large and greedy in the face of his weakness, always wanting more. She loved it, loved the action and the drama and the red on white. She loved the garish purple marks that stood out on his collar bones like watercolour on paper, begging to be acknowledged. Mostly, she loved her power over him. Oh, she adored it. The rush, the unending revelation that she was stronger and he was weak, always allowing it, never stopping --
And she shot him, alright. She twisted his words, turned his friends against him, watching on as his shoulders slumped and tears slipped from his eyes. Bullet after bullet, a never ending crash ringing through his ears. He prayed, sitting there and taking bullets from ones he used to cherish so closely. Like a poisonous thorn, she had dug deep.
I never expected it to be like this. On a summer’s day, much like a romance movie, I first saw you. But like reality, that turns red so easily, you were like a drama to me.
Hands clenching the biting metal of the table between them, he took bullet after bullet, raising a fist to clutch at his chest where a delusive, whimsical wound lay.
He blinked his red eyes, once, twice, thrice. No matter how he wished, it wasn’t a dream. Though, he supposed with an irrational smile, you couldn’t dream if you never slept. And the dark circles under his eyes, so alike to the bruising on his body, was a testament to that.
He took as many hits as she wanted, each one lodging further into his heart. She left holes in him, encouraging and urging his friends to do the same. It hurt, oh it hurt but he couldn’t stop her, couldn’t say anything but --
“I’m fine.”
He begged her to aim for him, hoping that perhaps this would be the bullet to finish him off. That maybe, just maybe it would all be over and he could finally sink downto the darkness, floating higher than the deceptive clouds.
Like a script, she said, “It’s over now.”
She had been a cloud, he supposed, a cloud that came with no silver lining. How pure she had seemed, so different to his tainted self. Yet he touched her, reached out and found himself drenched, submerged in his fears. He suffocated under her, only able to watch through the haze. He could feel every second, could see the bruises blossom and flourish so sickeningly on his skin. But he couldn’t do a thing, and he hated himself for it.
Like an explosion of colour, he watched as the crimson from his lips dripped ever so slowly onto his white shirt, a stain that spread and dug its way into the fabric; like a thankful embrace, it bloomed on the white.
Red on white, once again. Red on white.
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She stood there, eyeing the dripping of red onto white, taking a perverse satisfaction in it. It framed his slumping shoulders ever so magnificently, a picture perfect victory. She had won.
Standing there, a crowd behind her, she revelled in his defeat.
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The haze clung to his senses, unwilling to be shifted. He blinked, the effort seeming to increase twofold with every repetition. Like fog, the murky haze whispered and enveloped him, muting all around him. Except…
He could feel the pain. The aching, growing, biting pain in his chest that didn’t want to go away, that squeezed and gnawed at his chest. The pain blossomed and unfurled, expanding and spreading along his body, seeming to wake his senses with every touch. It crept up his chest, inching along his neck until it bloomed on his face, opening his eyes.
The first thing he saw was the colour.
Red, white, black, blue, pink, yellow - it was endless. Like the subtle nuances of crimson on his sweater, like the envious green hiding behind the eyes of her, like the blue tinging his nails. Where once, he saw white and red, it was bright and it was vibrant.
On trembling legs, he stood. Raising one arm, he stared at her.
Wide eyes. Plush lips. Porcelain skin. In doll-like confusion, she gazed at him. Her delicate fingers haltered in their position, slowly being drawn closer to her chest. She tilted her head, trying to understand this broken man. She’d won, hadn’t she?
His own bullets left him, words flung at her and the crowd behind her. He spoke the truth, sending colours and realisation into their lives, giving them something she had taken away and colouring in their reality like it was a plain canvas.
“Vicious words, they hurt like a bullet,” he stared at her, a sad smile on his lips. His hand, still clutched to his chest, unwound slightly and dropped to his side. The red that bloomed on his shirt was, he thought, beautiful in a way - if only for the contrast against his white shirt.
Blue, green, purple; the colours marking his skin. White, cream, pink; the colours of his sweater. Silver, the colour of the last tear he would let trace his features.
Red on white; the colour of blood on his sweater.