Black to Grey

At this time of year the trees are an ugly shade of rust, streaked with sanguine, crimson rivers that show us the patterns their sticky lifeblood traveled before the deep freeze turned the whole world amaranth; almost alive but trapped in stasis until the bloody sun decides to shed it's warmth on the hard soil of my family's estate.

The terra cotta bricks that form the drafty walls of the house I grew up in are cracked with old age. The poisonous rain has stained parts of the walls a tired mauve. They look as though they could crumble any day now. Rose bushes run rampant on the walls and lawn, their vermilion petals still blooming strangely amidst the disturbing cold. Their leaves have withered into brittle chestnut fingers, atrophied with an arthritis that I will never be afflicted with.

Its lonely here on the dry sienna hills, surrounded by rough, scrubby and foul-smelling shrubs. Mother always said it was the roots rotting in the corrosive soil. I always wondered if they shriveled at the sight of her once beautiful carnelian lips, pressed into a rigid line as she surveyed the ruin of her fathers empire. An isolated house built on a desolate hill and surrounded by the deadest landscape he could find. It illustrated his legacy well.

A man who sterilized everything he came into contact with, including his own genetics, his own blood. Death was perfection, stone cold and engineered into clean red lines. My mothers perfect skin with her fire-colored eyes and auburn hair...she was her fathers greatest achievement and she was rewarded with his empty legacy. That sour pill of bitterness stayed with her until she died, raving and moon-mad, screeching her way across the burning hills. A little gift from her fathers obsession with perfection. They told me that her DNA had been unraveling for years and it was just her mind that failed first.

I don't believe them.

I think she ran mad in mourning for her life lost in my grandfathers endless pursuit for beauty. I think she did it on purpose.

I saw her body against the burgundy rocks, her tainted blood staining them bright. My tainted blood racing through my perfectly engineered heart. I was an abomination to my grandfather, a weak link in his genetic chain. An abomination to my mother in name...but she loved me in her way. Empty, but ruby red and warm.

My eyes, colored like hers, like fire, sit inside irises trapped within the inky, tar colored 'whites' of my eyes. Uncomfortably scarlet hair that stands out startling against ivory skin so like hers, doll-like. My lips, shaped in mirror to her, pressed into the same jaded line, but colored a pure ebony. They are a dark gash across my face. Were you to peer inside you would see pearly teeth in a dark mouth, like a dogs. My tongue is grey, and my fingernails are the same pearl white as my teeth.

I stand on the ruin of a bloody, forsaken estate and stare at the town below. They are frightened of me and my sangria colored house. It makes them more aware of the desolate world around them.

I stand in my personal monolith tomb of garnet sky and rust colored dirt and consider running mad like my mother did. To run mad and spill my own tainted blood on the rocks. But I will not. I will stand and watch the earth warm, searching for life among the endless rolling world of red.