Dorothy's speaker is not someone you'd like to meet, worse - is not someone you'd want to discover you actually know.
A chilling, worrying mind to...
THE COLOUR OF MURDER
Let us consider the tramp, the vagrant, the homeless, the complete waster/loser in the doorway over there, life’s detritus, - I know not why he is there, nor do I care. He will do well for my synonym right now.
Take a good look at him, if you can bring yourself to do that. He is dirt. He is ingrained dirt, ground in, muddied, worn, grey. As grey as the face you will wear when in your coffin for a short time. When colour goes and preservatives are swilling round your long dead veins, you will go grey.
We can safely say grey is the colour of death.
What colour is life, would you say?
This is more difficult. Looking around, I would say pink is the colour of life, if you take notice of the young girls in their pretty little tops and shorts, with pink bags swinging by their side, pink bows and other fal-de-dals in their hair. Pink princesses, every one of them. Who would want to harm them, I ask, unless of course their demands as princesses become too much and the money will not extend to buying yet another pink thing on demand and then, yes, you could. Do you really think child killers kill only for sexual reasons? No, they take out the whining demanding divas before they become older whining demanding divas. And save us the job. We should praise them, not incarcerate them. They do a public service for the rest of us who cannot stand the whining and demanding.
We can safely say pink is the colour of life. For some.
What colour is love, would you say?
Love is two colours – black and gold.
Love is gold when it is fresh and new, when there is nothing but lust instead of love, when the adored one is everything, when that chasm is breached, the last stronghold of the one against the other – you know of what I speak? Sex, of course. What else drives this human race but sex? Even money doesn’t rank alongside the power of procreation.
And love is black when the lust dims and the loved one becomes familiar and there is a new and exciting gold love just around the next road where you can go and be accepted and invited into that deep chasm which is exactly the same but you fool yourself it is different and the love will never become dim and the loved one become familiar. Oh how we fool ourselves with our desires!
The fallout from the discovery that it is just the same after all makes black the colour of love.
I think sometimes it is the only true colour of love, that the gold is a mere fleeting fantasy which lasts perhaps a whisper away from the white wedding and the new home.
What colour is murder, would you say?
Ah, here we can range over many colours. Silver if there is a blade used, brass perhaps for a blunt instrument, bullets come in all colours, take your pick.
But the true colour of murder is red.
You see … and here come the secrets, which every killer spills in the end, do they not? She – that hussy/slut lover of mine – had a special message for me. Red slinky dress with the longest zip down the back, underneath the red bra cradling creamy globes of delight and red briefs covering the portal of delight.
The dress would slide carefully gently sensuously to the floor, the bra would follow, the briefs a moment later. The red pool on the floor indicated It Was Time. Once, twice a week the red pool would gather on the floor and we would be locked in the timeless embrace of lust.
Then it became once a week, then once a month and I, being the deluded fool that I am, took several months to realize this was happening. Why did I not miss the red pool earlier? But I didn’t.
And then it stopped. Completely.
A further two months went by and I discovered why – another man, of course, one for whom the gold light glowed and the lust was strong and of course he would never become familiar, would he, as I obviously had.
She began to wear pink. Pink dresses, pink underclothes -pink! A reason to kill, if ever there was! Anything but pink! No little girl stuff for me, thank you!
I trapped her in her lies and confronted her with the evidence, photographs, texts, timed calls on the landline, everything. She said she wanted to go and I saw black. The endless black of loneliness and depression of being without her. Of imagining her with another man.
I said fine, go pack. I followed her into the bedroom and watched the packing, watched the red dress and the red underclothes go into the suitcase. When she turned away to get something else, I took out the red bra and the briefs. In a moment I had her helpless, stuffed the briefs into her mouth and, before she could scream them out, strangled her with the red bra. I left her in her own red pool. Blood gushed from her as she struggled, something I didn’t expect. Seems the damn catch on the bra sliced the jugular vein. Perhaps I needn’t have pulled quite that hard. Perhaps I should have made it slow and painful instead of fast and furious. Shows what happens when you lose control. I think about it now; wonder what I would do given another chance. I leave you to decide.
And now she is grey. I made sure of it, made sure she was buried, not cremated, so the beauty would go grey and wrinkly and old and tired long before I did.
The prison cell is pretty much grey too, but nothing I can do about that. I can live with grey. I can even tolerate the occasional flash of pink as the sun sets and the gold of the morning. Pretty much I live with the black of solitude, of being without the woman I loved.
Just don’t ask me to tolerate the colour of murder.
_________ The End _________
Dorothy Davies is a writer, editor and medium who lives on the Isle of Wight, just off the south coast of England. It is reputed to be the most haunted place in the UK, which may explain why she has done nothing but write horror stories since she moved there.
She is an editor and contributor with Static Movement and Red Skies Publishing.
