The Colour of Summer
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“Youth; hear me and tell. From the greens of the spring to the browns of the autumn, what lies in-between? Tell me, what colour adorns the season of the sun?”
The voice was soft-spoken and while it sounded close it was surely out of reach. You see I was standing in an empty field with absolutely no one around for miles. It was bright and cloudless, and strangely hazy. Tall grass covered the field lazily swaying back and forth in the almost still wind.
“Yellow I guess, like the sun.”
I said that aloud, at least I think I did. Not that it mattered seeing as no one was there to hear me. Still, the soft-spoken voice replied.
“In a fortnight you will answer this question, if you are wrong know that this summer will be your last.”
Fear possessed me all of a sudden, the irrational kind of fear that drives the heart to its breaking point. I was speaking with Death. Feeling out of breath I gasped for air, there was none. My knees weakened and I fell I think. Then the sun went out and everything was covered in darkness. Not the darkness of the night, no, for the night sky held no moon, no star, no nothing. Was this a vision of death? Everything was utter black. And then I opened my eyes.
My heart was racing and I was drenched in sweat. For a couple more minutes I just sat there calming my nerves and gaining my breath. The dream was as of yet vivid and I recalled every single detail.
“Calm down Mark, you were just having a nightmare.”
Somehow hearing my own voice helped me relax.
“It does not matter. In a fortnight you will die if you answer is wrong.”
The voice almost sent me flying. I turned towards it and sitting there on my desk chair a - for the lack of a better word - girl was staring back at me. Hers was undoubtedly the voice from my dream, and she was not human. Her form was that of a girl yes but she seemed ageless and her appearance was hard to put down in words. It was like describing a watery reflection; the truth was bent and twisted by ripples and refraction and whenever you put down a word the image would have changed.
“You… are Death right?”
“Do not ask if you already know the answer.”
It was strange because she was right, I knew she was death, I knew the dream was more of a vision, and I knew that in a fortnight I would die. I wasn’t even allowed to doubt it, it just was. Many other questions popped up, but they just didn’t matter. I wanted to word them regardless however I was not allowed to. In the end the only thing I managed to formulate was:
“Why?”
Her gaze went from me to the corner of my room. She didn’t answer. She couldn’t answer.
“Are you going to follow me for the next 14 days?”
“I will, as I have always done.”
“Wait, you’ve been with me all the time? Like in constantly next to me?”
“Where else would I be? I am not simply death, I am your death”.
I must admit I didn’t feel at all privileged. Rather I found her statement to be somewhat disturbing.
“That’s imposing on other’s privacy! It’s wrong!”
I was going to die in a fortnight and this is what came out of my mouth. Perhaps I was trying to distance myself from the reality of my current situation, but she wouldn’t let me.
“It does not matter what you think or feel, I cannot exist without you, nor can I exist away from you. You should just simply ignore me.
“It’s not simple at all” I grumbled.
I could remember several instances I didn’t want to share with anyone. I was a healthy high-school boy after all, the most recent would be surfing FAKKU for… art. Yet I amazed myself with how quick I accepted the current situation. I was completely serene about it. Nothing seemed to be out of place, it all made sense and was as it should be.
“The colour of summer is yellow no matter how you look at it.” I thought aloud.
“Whether that is true or false will be revealed in a fortnight.”
And that was it. I started researching about colours and summer yet the more I researched the surer I became. Yellow was the most widely accepted colour to symbolize summer. There really was no other alternative. It made me uncomfortable however to know that yellow also signified approaching death. Was it a coincidence?
I found it rather awkward to be followed around constantly by Death, I will call her Shin from now on. She agreed to stay out of the bathroom and look away when I changed, but at all other times she was right next to me. I wasn’t surprised that no one seemed to notice her or that she didn’t need sustenance. I was surprised however by the fact that she had substance. She could walk through walls but mostly she didn’t. She explained to me that it was easier opening a door than walking through it. When in a crowd people unconsciously noticed her but never any more than that. Another thing that surprised me was the fact that she slept. I realized this when one day I woke up in the middle of the night and found her lying sprawled on the floor next to the bed. I was dumbstruck. I quietly went to the kitchen to have drink and she woke as soon as I had reached the door of my room. She silently followed me and when asked she replied that dreaming was a necessity. I didn’t understand why and she didn’t bother explaining.
As the days passed I noticed a change in Shin’s appearance. She slowly gained more stable traits such as a fair and bright complexion, long white hair, and amber eyes. It became more apparent that she was my age, and I must admit I steadily grew found of her in a way that disturbed me. I tried not to think much of it, but she was almost constantly on my mind.
And so a fortnight passed.
I woke up earlier than usual on the day of the deadline. Shin was still sleeping. She looked unusually real today. I mechanically reached out to brush away a lock of hair covering her eye. My fingers accidentally brushed her skin and I came to realize for the first time that she was warm. Moving closer to her my gaze swept down to her lips. Were they warm as well? I wondered. Closer yet. I could feel her breath on my face, very real, very… human. Realizing what I was about to do I tore myself away from her and almost ran to the bathroom. I heard her get up as I left the room and her soft footsteps as she followed me.
Cold water certainly helped me wake up from my feverish state. I kept repeating to myself that these thoughts were simply due to a long abstinence of, well… FAKKU. Because of her I hadn’t surfed FAKKU for a record amount time. Yes. That would also explain why I felt so drawn to her, it was instinct, pure male instinct. She seemed perplexed when I returned but didn’t ask anything. I tried to ignore her existence as she had previously told me to, but I couldn’t and come midday she finally asked:
“Why are you ignoring me?”
“So you can ask questions? And for your record I haven’t particularly ignored you.”
“Liar, if you will it I can hide myself as I have done before.”
“NO!” I almost yelled to her surprise.
“I…, it’s just… I just…”
Her smooth skin, full lips, long white hair, amber eyes everything about her entranced me, excited me. Even though I wasn’t able to formulate myself my feelings where heard quite clearly for she suddenly went almost completely red. She probably would have stormed out if she could but since that was impossible she simply vanished.
For several minutes I stood there with various feelings boiling inside of me. Her leaving was for the better, it really was. I mean a relationship between a human and Death - the irrationality is only bested by death actually taking on a shape. I felt like laughing, cursing, and crying. I did neither. And so I spent the remainder of time I had alone, at least visually alone, waiting for my time of death. Would she appear and ask me? I wondered. No, I hoped. The hours crawled away but nighttime did come just as it always had. I was restless. I paced back and forth the living room and then it happened. The sound of glass shattering was the signal I had been waiting for. I went towards the sound expecting her to be there but she wasn’t. The glass door to the garden however really was shattered. Then a loud bang sounded accompanied by sharp pain, I fell unconscious.
I woke to a thundering headache. Dazed I looked around to orient myself. I didn’t have to look for too long to realize my situation. My chest and feet where bound to a chair and in front of me was my father’s laptop. It was plugged in to the electric safe containing certain valuables. Yes, a thief had just snuck into my father’s mansion. Said thief was currently pointing a gun at me. He didn’t say anything, he didn’t have to. The laptop asked for a password, and the hint was “summer”. For a while I just stared at the screen, was this it? With that the final piece of the puzzle fell into place, I was supposed to answer wrong here and die. Shin, however, made me connect summer with colour allowing me to think of yellow, she had wanted to save me. My hands weren’t tied so I wrote “Yellow” in the textbox. I was about to press enter when Shin once again appeared. She had been crying. I didn’t know death was capable of tears. I wanted to console her, to tell her that she didn’t need to cry, that thanks to her I would live. That’s when I realized the password was wrong, and apparently the system didn’t allow for second chances seeing as it shut down. My mind went blank with the system and the fear that had gripped me in the dream or vision came back a hundred fold. I didn’t want to die.
“Sorry Mark. Forgive me. In your fathers eyes the colour of summer is the true colour of the sun: White.”
She slowly walked towards me, closer and closer. I wanted live, I wanted to live. That was the only thing racing through my head at that moment. I wanted to live. It was as if time diluted with every step she took until everything around me was frozen. She stopped when her face was right in front of me.
“Do you fear me?” She asked.
“No” I thought. I wasn’t quite able to speak.
Her hands grabbed mine. They were as warm as I remembered them to be. That warmth slowly spread from my hands and like a reverse shiver ran up my spine. I couldn’t hear anything but her breathing, couldn’t see anything but her face, couldn’t feel anything but her touch. I realized that while my heart was still racing, it was racing for her now.
“I am sorry” she whispered.
Entranced I stretched my neck slightly forward. More than anything else I just wanted to know one thing. But I couldn’t reach her. Then she closed the final gab and our lips touched. Hers were cold.
The voice was soft-spoken and while it sounded close it was surely out of reach. You see I was standing in an empty field with absolutely no one around for miles. It was bright and cloudless, and strangely hazy. Tall grass covered the field lazily swaying back and forth in the almost still wind.
“Yellow I guess, like the sun.”
I said that aloud, at least I think I did. Not that it mattered seeing as no one was there to hear me. Still, the soft-spoken voice replied.
“In a fortnight you will answer this question, if you are wrong know that this summer will be your last.”
Fear possessed me all of a sudden, the irrational kind of fear that drives the heart to its breaking point. I was speaking with Death. Feeling out of breath I gasped for air, there was none. My knees weakened and I fell I think. Then the sun went out and everything was covered in darkness. Not the darkness of the night, no, for the night sky held no moon, no star, no nothing. Was this a vision of death? Everything was utter black. And then I opened my eyes.
My heart was racing and I was drenched in sweat. For a couple more minutes I just sat there calming my nerves and gaining my breath. The dream was as of yet vivid and I recalled every single detail.
“Calm down Mark, you were just having a nightmare.”
Somehow hearing my own voice helped me relax.
“It does not matter. In a fortnight you will die if you answer is wrong.”
The voice almost sent me flying. I turned towards it and sitting there on my desk chair a - for the lack of a better word - girl was staring back at me. Hers was undoubtedly the voice from my dream, and she was not human. Her form was that of a girl yes but she seemed ageless and her appearance was hard to put down in words. It was like describing a watery reflection; the truth was bent and twisted by ripples and refraction and whenever you put down a word the image would have changed.
“You… are Death right?”
“Do not ask if you already know the answer.”
It was strange because she was right, I knew she was death, I knew the dream was more of a vision, and I knew that in a fortnight I would die. I wasn’t even allowed to doubt it, it just was. Many other questions popped up, but they just didn’t matter. I wanted to word them regardless however I was not allowed to. In the end the only thing I managed to formulate was:
“Why?”
Her gaze went from me to the corner of my room. She didn’t answer. She couldn’t answer.
“Are you going to follow me for the next 14 days?”
“I will, as I have always done.”
“Wait, you’ve been with me all the time? Like in constantly next to me?”
“Where else would I be? I am not simply death, I am your death”.
I must admit I didn’t feel at all privileged. Rather I found her statement to be somewhat disturbing.
“That’s imposing on other’s privacy! It’s wrong!”
I was going to die in a fortnight and this is what came out of my mouth. Perhaps I was trying to distance myself from the reality of my current situation, but she wouldn’t let me.
“It does not matter what you think or feel, I cannot exist without you, nor can I exist away from you. You should just simply ignore me.
“It’s not simple at all” I grumbled.
I could remember several instances I didn’t want to share with anyone. I was a healthy high-school boy after all, the most recent would be surfing FAKKU for… art. Yet I amazed myself with how quick I accepted the current situation. I was completely serene about it. Nothing seemed to be out of place, it all made sense and was as it should be.
“The colour of summer is yellow no matter how you look at it.” I thought aloud.
“Whether that is true or false will be revealed in a fortnight.”
And that was it. I started researching about colours and summer yet the more I researched the surer I became. Yellow was the most widely accepted colour to symbolize summer. There really was no other alternative. It made me uncomfortable however to know that yellow also signified approaching death. Was it a coincidence?
I found it rather awkward to be followed around constantly by Death, I will call her Shin from now on. She agreed to stay out of the bathroom and look away when I changed, but at all other times she was right next to me. I wasn’t surprised that no one seemed to notice her or that she didn’t need sustenance. I was surprised however by the fact that she had substance. She could walk through walls but mostly she didn’t. She explained to me that it was easier opening a door than walking through it. When in a crowd people unconsciously noticed her but never any more than that. Another thing that surprised me was the fact that she slept. I realized this when one day I woke up in the middle of the night and found her lying sprawled on the floor next to the bed. I was dumbstruck. I quietly went to the kitchen to have drink and she woke as soon as I had reached the door of my room. She silently followed me and when asked she replied that dreaming was a necessity. I didn’t understand why and she didn’t bother explaining.
As the days passed I noticed a change in Shin’s appearance. She slowly gained more stable traits such as a fair and bright complexion, long white hair, and amber eyes. It became more apparent that she was my age, and I must admit I steadily grew found of her in a way that disturbed me. I tried not to think much of it, but she was almost constantly on my mind.
And so a fortnight passed.
I woke up earlier than usual on the day of the deadline. Shin was still sleeping. She looked unusually real today. I mechanically reached out to brush away a lock of hair covering her eye. My fingers accidentally brushed her skin and I came to realize for the first time that she was warm. Moving closer to her my gaze swept down to her lips. Were they warm as well? I wondered. Closer yet. I could feel her breath on my face, very real, very… human. Realizing what I was about to do I tore myself away from her and almost ran to the bathroom. I heard her get up as I left the room and her soft footsteps as she followed me.
Cold water certainly helped me wake up from my feverish state. I kept repeating to myself that these thoughts were simply due to a long abstinence of, well… FAKKU. Because of her I hadn’t surfed FAKKU for a record amount time. Yes. That would also explain why I felt so drawn to her, it was instinct, pure male instinct. She seemed perplexed when I returned but didn’t ask anything. I tried to ignore her existence as she had previously told me to, but I couldn’t and come midday she finally asked:
“Why are you ignoring me?”
“So you can ask questions? And for your record I haven’t particularly ignored you.”
“Liar, if you will it I can hide myself as I have done before.”
“NO!” I almost yelled to her surprise.
“I…, it’s just… I just…”
Her smooth skin, full lips, long white hair, amber eyes everything about her entranced me, excited me. Even though I wasn’t able to formulate myself my feelings where heard quite clearly for she suddenly went almost completely red. She probably would have stormed out if she could but since that was impossible she simply vanished.
For several minutes I stood there with various feelings boiling inside of me. Her leaving was for the better, it really was. I mean a relationship between a human and Death - the irrationality is only bested by death actually taking on a shape. I felt like laughing, cursing, and crying. I did neither. And so I spent the remainder of time I had alone, at least visually alone, waiting for my time of death. Would she appear and ask me? I wondered. No, I hoped. The hours crawled away but nighttime did come just as it always had. I was restless. I paced back and forth the living room and then it happened. The sound of glass shattering was the signal I had been waiting for. I went towards the sound expecting her to be there but she wasn’t. The glass door to the garden however really was shattered. Then a loud bang sounded accompanied by sharp pain, I fell unconscious.
I woke to a thundering headache. Dazed I looked around to orient myself. I didn’t have to look for too long to realize my situation. My chest and feet where bound to a chair and in front of me was my father’s laptop. It was plugged in to the electric safe containing certain valuables. Yes, a thief had just snuck into my father’s mansion. Said thief was currently pointing a gun at me. He didn’t say anything, he didn’t have to. The laptop asked for a password, and the hint was “summer”. For a while I just stared at the screen, was this it? With that the final piece of the puzzle fell into place, I was supposed to answer wrong here and die. Shin, however, made me connect summer with colour allowing me to think of yellow, she had wanted to save me. My hands weren’t tied so I wrote “Yellow” in the textbox. I was about to press enter when Shin once again appeared. She had been crying. I didn’t know death was capable of tears. I wanted to console her, to tell her that she didn’t need to cry, that thanks to her I would live. That’s when I realized the password was wrong, and apparently the system didn’t allow for second chances seeing as it shut down. My mind went blank with the system and the fear that had gripped me in the dream or vision came back a hundred fold. I didn’t want to die.
“Sorry Mark. Forgive me. In your fathers eyes the colour of summer is the true colour of the sun: White.”
She slowly walked towards me, closer and closer. I wanted live, I wanted to live. That was the only thing racing through my head at that moment. I wanted to live. It was as if time diluted with every step she took until everything around me was frozen. She stopped when her face was right in front of me.
“Do you fear me?” She asked.
“No” I thought. I wasn’t quite able to speak.
Her hands grabbed mine. They were as warm as I remembered them to be. That warmth slowly spread from my hands and like a reverse shiver ran up my spine. I couldn’t hear anything but her breathing, couldn’t see anything but her face, couldn’t feel anything but her touch. I realized that while my heart was still racing, it was racing for her now.
“I am sorry” she whispered.
Entranced I stretched my neck slightly forward. More than anything else I just wanted to know one thing. But I couldn’t reach her. Then she closed the final gab and our lips touched. Hers were cold.
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Jericho Antares
FAKKU Writer
Edited because you are aware of the word count issue already. If you knew this from the beginning, though, I fail to see why you even need to list it as an entry. It isn't like you can't post something here if it isn't a contest entry.
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You've got a point. However I posted here before I reread the rules, and I reread the rules after I posted the short section in the "summer writing contest" thread (did that make sense o.O). Should I just remove the brackets from the title?
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Jericho Antares
FAKKU Writer
LIBRO wrote...
You've got a point. However I posted here before I reread the rules, and I reread the rules after I posted the short section in the "summer writing contest" thread (did that make sense o.O). Should I just remove the brackets from the title?That would work. You could also cut it down if you want but from what I've read it seems you've already done some streamlining. Knocking off another 500 words is no small order and if it's simply for the sake of a contest I don't think it's worth it. I'm sure you could whip something up in 11 days if the fancy takes you.
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Writing short stories is not my strong point. It took my all to limit myself to 2000 words, and it should be obvious in the text. It was fun writing however and I didn't really strive to win any contest with this. Looking back I should've simply let the story use the amount of words it required and posted outside the contest, it's too rushed in its present state.
I do apologize for the misposting, thanks for enlightening me.
I do apologize for the misposting, thanks for enlightening me.
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Jericho Antares
FAKKU Writer
LIBRO wrote...
Writing short stories is not my strong point. It took my all to limit myself to 2000 words, and it should be obvious in the text. It was fun writing however and I didn't really strive to win any contest with this. Looking back I should've simply let the story use the amount of words it required and posted outside the contest, it's too rushed in its present state.I do apologize for the misposting, thanks for enlightening me.
No worries, I'm looking forward to either reading an expounded version of this or another work of yours.
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Cinia Pacifica
Ojou-sama Writer
You can still post a smaller story for the contest though! It's not like you'll have to use this for it~
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Jericho Antares wrote...
LIBRO wrote...
Writing short stories is not my strong point. It took my all to limit myself to 2000 words, and it should be obvious in the text. It was fun writing however and I didn't really strive to win any contest with this. Looking back I should've simply let the story use the amount of words it required and posted outside the contest, it's too rushed in its present state.I do apologize for the misposting, thanks for enlightening me.
No worries, I'm looking forward to either reading an expounded version of this or another work of yours.
Thanks, and that would be the second. It was hard writing this inside the 2000 words limit, I don't want to let that go to waste.
Cinia Pacifica wrote...
You can still post a smaller story for the contest though! It's not like you'll have to use this for it~I don't see that happening, but thanks for the info. I'm really not much for short stories, 2000 words is my limit xD
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Cinia Pacifica
Ojou-sama Writer
LIBRO wrote...
Cinia Pacifica wrote...
You can still post a smaller story for the contest though! It's not like you'll have to use this for it~I don't see that happening, but thanks for the info. I'm really not much for short stories, 2000 words is my limit xD
Okay, and please refrain from double posting. They're against the rules of the forums.
You can always copy the contents of your second post, delete it - then edit your previous post (which was before the second one before deletion) and paste it at the end of it, perhaps with an edit note if you so wish.
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LIBRO don't listen to them this amazing story, but on the other hand they do have a point. If your intentions was to write some for the contest then this a fail. None the less this an amazing story, I would love to see some more.
"what other people call a urban jungle, I call a urban desert."
"what other people call a urban jungle, I call a urban desert."
0
THE simple wrote...
LIBRO don't listen to them this amazing story, but on the other hand they do have a point. If your intentions was to write some for the contest then this a fail. None the less this an amazing story, I would love to see some more.You guessed right, I originally wrote this for the contest thinking the limit to the word count was 2000 words. I was about to simply delete it but decided to post it here. In that process I made some technical mistakes that they firmly corrected (which is a good thing really, order must prevail! A chaotic forum is after all a preview of Hell). Regardless of that thank you very much for your comment, if you enjoyed the story than that in itself is my prize ;-)