A Need For Color (standard:drama, 1035 words)
Author: Charlotte D'Espoir	Added: Jul 08 2003	Views/Reads: 3464/4	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A girl alone in the world. Locked inside an empty room. Left to the trails her mind takes every night. This is a story about a girl whocannot stand the emptiness she is forced to live in and in a desperate attempt to make it standable, she found the color

Her eyes were closed. The house creaked around her. Pearls of thunder
rolled around outside, distant enough to be relaxing. She turned over 
to face the wall beside her bed. Her eyes, no longer shut; she stared 
at the whitewash walls. She longed for a painting in her room. 
Something to wipe out the bleakness. 

There were no windows in her room. There was only a plain white door,
her twin-size bed, a six-drawer dresser, white, a simple white desk 
with four drawers, a white straight-backed chair. At the end of her bed 
stood a simple nightstand, which held her alarm clock and a lamp. 
Lastly was wall-to-wall carpeting. A constant white. Her lamp was still 
on and she watched the wall with such vigor that one with think at a 
single glance that there was something in it. 

She did this every night, and every night she thinks exactly the same
thing. A painting, something that would take her mind off everything. 
How her father beats her every morning, how she watches him beat her 
mom when he doesn't like breakfast. How she is sent to her room for 
breathing to loud. Every day it is the same thing. 

She was starting to crack. It was happening. She could feel it. Pretty
soon, she was gong to explode; she needed to do something before she 
did something rash. She rolled out of bed and onto the carpet. The 
harsh feel of it almost made her wince. Her bruised body screamed in 
torment as the coarse rug scratched at her skin. She could take that. 
Pain helped. It always brought her back to where she was. It calmed her 
mind. She could concentrate on the pain and handle everything. She 
looked around her room. She had spent the majority of her life in this 
little room. Not that it was overly small. It was just so, confining. 

A scream filled the empty house. It was her mother, instinctively her
hands flew up to her ears and she squeezed her eyes shut. Her mother 
was sobbing now. A painting. That was what she needed. And she knew how 
to get it. Slowly she let her arms drop to her sides; her mother's sobs 
weren't subsiding. Tears glided down her cheeks. She stood up, 
completely unaware of their presence. Making her way to her desk, she 
pulled her hair back behind her ears. Sliding open the main drawer of 
her desk she rummaged through a small assortment of pens and pencils 
and erasers and found her straightedge ruler. The kind with that medal 
strip in it. She picked this up and a pencil. She walked over to her 
wall and brought the tip of her pencil to it. 

She let it rest a moment against the perfect white of the room.  Then
she brought it down harshly. Silently for hours into the night, she 
drew, pictures of her mother crying, broken plates, a pretty white 
house set in a country scene, a white house. She drew trees and a 
lightning storm. As she stood in the center of her room and spun slowly 
to examine her new room, she started to smile, and that smile spread to 
a giggle, and soon she was spinning her head thrown back, eyes closed, 
arms spread out wide. She collapsed and felt such a rush of energy from 
what she had just done. If her father found out-- but he won't. He 
never goes into her room. She had beaten him. He can't hurt her 
anymore. As she looked around her room, she felt something was missing. 


She listened for a sound in the house. There was none, but the storm had
landed atop the house and it rumbled it's glory for all to hear. She 
smiled. She knew what was missing. Color. And she knew what color. 
Blood. 

She thought for a moment. Her brow creased, in determination. She picked
up the ruler and knew what she must do. She heard the walls screaming 
around her. The night wind echoing their cries. A bolt of lightning 
stuck nearby, but she didn't jump. She was ready. She slowly let the 
ruler rest on her arm, in a quick sharp draw, and pulled it across from 
wrist to elbow. She almost cried out. Looking down at her arm, tears 
clouding her vision. There was no blood. She took the ruler this time, 
pressed the tip against her wrist and pushed. A cry escaped her as it 
broke the skin. Tears poured down from her eyes in raging river, her 
lips quivered in pain and her body trembled in preparation. 

She pulled the ruler down slowly, making sure it was a deep cut, feeling
it tear at her skin, and she felt it breaking, a fire raged in her skin 
and she bit her lip. As the ruler neared her elbow she pulled the ruler 
away from her bleeding arm. 

Blood was running down her arms and hand, dripping on the white carpet.
She held her arm out, and let the blood fall, as she tasted it in her 
mouth. She slowly went in a circle large enough to lay in. going over 
it a few times. On her crisp white carpet, now lay a circle of vibrant 
red. She cried and cried but she forced herself to bear it. She knew 
she could, she had come so far. The blood started to clot she could 
tell. She hadn't severed the artery completely. She picked up the ruler 
again and with a scream she dug it into fresh wound, biting her lips to 
stifle the scream. She slid the ruler down to her elbow again. Started 
at the wrist and did it again. 

Around the third time she collapsed in her circle. The ruler dropped
carelessly to the floor. She cried so hard, she thought her chest would 
break and her lungs would collapse. She lay curled on the floor, 
feeling the burning pain in her arm. Concentrating on it until it was 
no more. She watched her new room fade into nothing, until there was 
just blood. Even as the scent lingered, the blood faded away into 
darkness. Soon there was nothing. 


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