Red Zone
She was born with red-stained hands.
The doctors were baffled. They tried, with different chemicals, solvents, mixtures, and medications to wash her clean again. But her palms, her fingers, her knuckles stayed scarlet, the deep red of poppies and robin's breasts. Her family was deeply embarrassed for her. They tried to cover it up, give their child a sense of normalcy and propriety, but to their bewilderment, the red would seep through somehow. They'd look away, they'd let her sleep, and when their eyes fell back on her hands, the gauze or the gloves or the mittens would be the same fresh-blood color. Leave the cloth on longer, and it would disintegrate into flimsy shreds that would fall away and slough off like old, dead, carmine snake skin. Her family began to experiment simultaneously with the doctors. While the latter continued to concoct their cocktails of pills, creams, and liquids, the former searched for any material, any substance, that could hide their daughter's dire affliction and burning-flame shame.
They did not understand her. However, she did. She knew, instinctively, what she was, and her mind was a shining bright ruby, hard and glittering and sharp when cut the right way. She understood the paths of her life unfurling before her, had read voraciously and persistently. She had done experiments of her own, on the rare few moments of solitude. Anything, absolutely anything she touched long enough would turn red, and then, would begin to corrode, and fall apart. They might put her in a factory for the rest of her life, when they realized there would be no way to "cure" her. She could turn objects red for a living. They could give her away to the military, attempt to isolate the compound that suffused her touch with vermilion venom, or figure out how to weaponize her, corroding and destroying for a living. She could run away, find people who could love her without ever touching her bright bloody hands. She had so much more of her, so much more to her. Perhaps there were others out there, a man with blue hands, and a woman with a forest green touch, a child just born with deep violet fists waving in the air. They would not be affected by each other's touch. They would colour the world; destroy it and make it in their own images.
Right now she felt alone. Deep down, terrified. Despair eating away at the edges of that hard ball of fear she kept hidden, knowing that when the sorrow consumed it, her hands would turn on herself, wielding a razor to get all the red out of her for good.
She teetered on the edge every time she stared down at them, her red-stained, red-staining appendages. On the one hand, there was nothing but woe and doom, to be an outcast and freakshow all one's life, singular and suspect, staining and corrupting everything she touched until she or someone else finally ended her miserable existence. On the other hand, there was the slim possibility that there would be others, to be like her or to love her, or (she dared hope) both. A life of agony, or a life of tentative happiness.
Twining her fingers together, she knew both paths of shame and triumph would be there together, vying for her fate, red against red, rage against passion. In this sense, the burden eased slightly from her soul. She was like everyone else after all.
One morning, before her eighteenth birthday, she woke up to find her hands plain, fleshy, and powerless. And yet, the futility and possibility of life still stretched before her, endless.
The doctors were baffled. They tried, with different chemicals, solvents, mixtures, and medications to wash her clean again. But her palms, her fingers, her knuckles stayed scarlet, the deep red of poppies and robin's breasts. Her family was deeply embarrassed for her. They tried to cover it up, give their child a sense of normalcy and propriety, but to their bewilderment, the red would seep through somehow. They'd look away, they'd let her sleep, and when their eyes fell back on her hands, the gauze or the gloves or the mittens would be the same fresh-blood color. Leave the cloth on longer, and it would disintegrate into flimsy shreds that would fall away and slough off like old, dead, carmine snake skin. Her family began to experiment simultaneously with the doctors. While the latter continued to concoct their cocktails of pills, creams, and liquids, the former searched for any material, any substance, that could hide their daughter's dire affliction and burning-flame shame.
They did not understand her. However, she did. She knew, instinctively, what she was, and her mind was a shining bright ruby, hard and glittering and sharp when cut the right way. She understood the paths of her life unfurling before her, had read voraciously and persistently. She had done experiments of her own, on the rare few moments of solitude. Anything, absolutely anything she touched long enough would turn red, and then, would begin to corrode, and fall apart. They might put her in a factory for the rest of her life, when they realized there would be no way to "cure" her. She could turn objects red for a living. They could give her away to the military, attempt to isolate the compound that suffused her touch with vermilion venom, or figure out how to weaponize her, corroding and destroying for a living. She could run away, find people who could love her without ever touching her bright bloody hands. She had so much more of her, so much more to her. Perhaps there were others out there, a man with blue hands, and a woman with a forest green touch, a child just born with deep violet fists waving in the air. They would not be affected by each other's touch. They would colour the world; destroy it and make it in their own images.
Right now she felt alone. Deep down, terrified. Despair eating away at the edges of that hard ball of fear she kept hidden, knowing that when the sorrow consumed it, her hands would turn on herself, wielding a razor to get all the red out of her for good.
She teetered on the edge every time she stared down at them, her red-stained, red-staining appendages. On the one hand, there was nothing but woe and doom, to be an outcast and freakshow all one's life, singular and suspect, staining and corrupting everything she touched until she or someone else finally ended her miserable existence. On the other hand, there was the slim possibility that there would be others, to be like her or to love her, or (she dared hope) both. A life of agony, or a life of tentative happiness.
Twining her fingers together, she knew both paths of shame and triumph would be there together, vying for her fate, red against red, rage against passion. In this sense, the burden eased slightly from her soul. She was like everyone else after all.
One morning, before her eighteenth birthday, she woke up to find her hands plain, fleshy, and powerless. And yet, the futility and possibility of life still stretched before her, endless.