Color-Blind

by Daya Daniels

  Taking a deep breath, I reached for the handle to open the door and stepped out of the truck, throwing my hoodie on at the same time and snuggling into it. The cold October air hit me, tossing my hair around in the breeze and cooling my cheeks. I rubbed my hands together, starting off across the sidewalk toward Violet’s loft. I slowed when I spotted a man lingering just outside with a lit cigarette dangling between his lips. I continued forward, shoving my keys in my pocket.

  “Hey man, that’s a really cool ride.” He said approaching me nervously, his gaze darting between where I stood and where my truck was parked beneath the street lamps.

  “Thanks.”

  “Where do you get something like this? I mean it looks like custom work.” He questioned, causing me to halt my stride.

  “My brother, Asher. He does restoration on classic cars and trucks out in Cannon Beach.”

  “Oh, is that where you’re from?”

  I narrowed my eyes to meet his gaze and his head slanted in my direction before he took an incredibly cocky stance.

  “Yeah.” I huffed, getting closer to the stairs.

  “It’s a little late to be coming by, don’t you think?”

  “Excuse me.” I said slowly, spinning around to face him again.

  He backed away a little, taking another long draw of the cigarette as I approached. If he wanted a fight tonight, he’d get it. A gust of wind blew through, blowing the thick material that had covered my hair off. Quickly, I pulled it back on and headed for Violet’s door.

  “Isn’t this cliché.” He muttered.

  I glanced over my shoulder at his words and caught him running a hand over his hair, as the cigarette in his mouth bobbed between his lips. “The ogre and the blind girl. You probably think you’ve struck gold…since she can’t see you and all.”

  I stood in place for a second and then headed in his direction, finding myself in his personal space in less than three strides. He was tall but still, I towered over this douchebag.

  “I don’t know who the fuck you are.” I said gritting my teeth. I took another long look at the guy and realization slowly set in. I laughed a little. “Actually, never mind. Yes, I do.

  “I suppose you’re, Jared.”

  He gave me small grin and a faint nod, puffing on his cigarette again. “I don’t know what you manage to do with a face like that.” He mumbled.

  “I fuck Violet with my cock, which she seems to enjoy, not my face. Except, for when I do.” I smirked.

  The cunt in front of me scoffed and dropped his cigarette on the pavement beneath us. It seemed that on top of being a massive asshole, he littered as well. “Does she?”

  I headed off again. “I’m here, aren’t I?” I sang out over my shoulder, taking the

  stairs two at a time.

  This conversation was over.

  When I finally made it inside, the place is in darkness and the lingering vapor of

  oil paint is in the air, mixed in with the familiar scent of Violet. She’d been in her studio. I wandered through the foyer and into the den, running my fingers over the satin robe she usually wore when she was working.

  Slowly, I headed down the hall and peeked in the bedroom to find her snuggled beneath the thick white comforter. I stripped down to my boxer briefs and slid in behind her, wrapping my arms around her waist and pulling her close. I hadn’t had this is in so long. It felt so foreign and so good that I knew I couldn’t give it up. I nuzzled my nose into her soft strands.

  “You’re here.” She said with sleep in her voice.

  “Yeah.” I answered, running my lips over her bare shoulder.

  She rolled over and pressed a kiss to my lips, pushing her fingers into my hair, teasing it for a moment. “I missed you.”

  “I missed you too.”

  I focused on her pouty top lip when she said the words, that spilled into me like a full-bodied wine, intoxicating me, making me drunk on everything her.

  “Are we together?” She asked.

  “Do you want to be?”

  Could I tame the beautiful monster? We had more in common than she realized and that I refused to accept. Violet was horrid on the inside as I was on the outside. A perfect match.

  She giggled. “Yes.”

  “I want to be too, Violet but I’ll have to be honest and tell you I don’t know if I can give you everything you need.”

  Her hand lowered and rested on my cheek, sliding over the skin on my neck. I stiffened but I allowed her touch me there. To explore but she doesn’t speak. Only her soft breaths puffed against my face and her eyes wandered, while I pushed the plush comforter off her, enjoying the vision in front of me as the moonlight dusted her perfect curves.

  I took her hand in mine and pressed soft kisses to it, listening to a frustrated sigh leave her lips. I placed her hand over my heart, allowing her to feel the beat as we lay in the quiet. The angelic look on her face told me that she was listening to the beat. A beat that I swore in the past few weeks was only for her.

  I shifted to lie on my back, while her cheek rested against my chest and ran my hands through her hair. After a moment, her breathing grew deep and I knew she was out.

  I had nothing and now Violet was my everything.

  Violet

  “Violet, the blindy bat!” Allison sings as she shoves me.

  I wipe the tears that are falling from my eyes, when I struggle to keep my balance.

  Their names are Allison, Gail and Paige. The Muts, I call them. They follow Brooke and I home every day from school taunting us and calling only me names.

  “Leave her alone!” Brooke yells, yanking on my coat, holding me closer to her.

  “Brooke, you should hang out with us! Why are you friends with this freak?” Paige yells.

  “I don’t want to be friends with you.” Brooke quips, holding my hand tighter.

  “Well, you’re a freak just like her then. A handicapped lover.” Gail teases. “If something about you doesn’t work properly, my dad said it means you’re handicapped.”

  “Violet is handicapped.” Gail says in a serious tone.

  “I’m not handicapped.” I babble out through my tears.

  “Where’s your mother, blindy? I bet she left you when she realized you couldn’t see.” They giggle, shoving Brooke and I again.

  I trip on something ahead of me and fall grazing my knee.

  “See.” Gail says. “You should think of getting one of those walking stick thingies…for handicapped blind people.” She laughs.

  I run my fingers over the exposed burning flesh at my knee and attempt to brush away the sand that covers it.

  The group of girls leave, heading off in the other direction, still singing “Violet the blindy bat” as they walk away. I cover my face with my hands and cry.

  “Violet.” Brooke whispers, touching my shoulder and pulling me into her. “Don’t worry about them. I’m your friend. We don’t need them.”

  I nod my head as she helps me up. Then throw my arm over her shoulder adjusting to the new limp in my leg as we set off walking home.

  “It was just a dream.” I said to myself, pressing my palm to the center of my chest, accepting that it felt more like a fucking nightmare about a time long gone and things forgotten. Or were they?

  I rolled over to the other side of the bed hoping to be swallowed up in the crook of the big warm body I expected to be there, but there was no one. I was completely alone in this loft. I could sense it. I could hear the quiet and the distant hum of the Subzero down the hallway and the traffic outside. I was so used to being here alone but this morning for some reason, the eerie silence felt deafening, suffocating, all-consuming. I hugged myself, running my hands over the bare skin on my upper arms, wishing the man that held me the night before was here, right next to me.

  “Elijah.” I called out, maybe somewhat hoping I was wrong but I wasn’t. There was no response confirming he’d already left.

  Sighing, I slipped back into bed and pressed my fac
e into the soft pillow inhaling the scent of Elijah’s skin that lingered there.

  I missed him already.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Elijah

  Staring at myself in the bathroom mirror in front of me, I shut off the tap bringing my hands to my face, examining the lines in the left one that were fainter than the ones on my right, caused by a deep cut that I’d gotten a few years ago. My brows furled and my forehead furrowed when I thought back to the very night I’d gotten it.

  It’s three in the morning and the house is eerily quiet, except for the sound of the tick tock of the clock on the wall. I’d only awoke from the soft voice coming from the bathroom. I slide out of bed and stand when I realize Jennah is in there talking to herself. Stepping across the cool floors, I reach for the handle, jiggling it. It’s locked so I knock softly a few times.

  “Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream.” She sings.

  “Open the door.” I demand, jiggling the handle again.

  When it doesn’t open, I stomp towards my dresser, searching the drawers frantically for the key. As soon as I find it, I push it into the door knob, unlocking it and twist the handle.

  A tall slim body, covered by pale skin, her face partially obscured by choppy dark hair stands a few feet away from me, staring at the crimson pool at her feet.

  She’s holding a large knife and looking at herself in the mirror. Hair is everywhere. There’s more of it on the floor than on her head. I realize she’s been using the knife to cut her own hair and herself.

  My eyes pin hers almost in slow motion and in disbelief, while my heart rate picks up speed.

  “Does it look good, Elijah?” She smiles, showing me all her teeth.

  I stare at her in shock, watching the blood run down her wrists, dripping into the deep grooves of the white tile floor. She’s lost so much blood, I’m unsure of how she’s even still standing upright.

  “Jennah.” I whisper calmly moving towards her, attempting to get the knife out of her hand.

  “Give me the knife, Jennah.” I say.

  In an instant, she swings and stabs me in the hand. I growl in agony at the pain and the vision of the blade, lodged between my tendons. Instinctively, I pull it out, ignoring the searing pain that shoots through me when I do it. We grapple and fall to the floor in the pool of blood. I wrestle her violently until she’s subdued. This will be the last time she sets foot in this house.

  A gust of wind that slipped through the windows jolted me out of my daze. I headed back to the bedroom and crawled back into bed to find her already awake. I settled myself to ease down between her legs and looked over her pretty face for a moment. I kissed her lips and ran my fingers through her hair. Her warm hand slid up my neck and cupped my cheek.

  “I love you.” She whispered hesitantly.

  “Mmmm.” I hummed. “I love you back. I was beginning to think you’d never say those two words fully awake, since you’ve been saying them all week in your sleep.”

  She smiled but doesn’t respond.

  “I love you too.” I tell her.

  “How’d this happen?” She asked while her hand lingered on my cheek.

  “An accident.”

  Her eyes darted around as I eased down and pressed a kiss to her forehead, admiring her creamy skin beneath the moonlight.

  “Dylan’s your son?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Jennah?”

  “She was my wife.”

  She gave me a nod, still caressing my cheek.

  “They’re both dead.” I explained.

  She froze and her breathing halted for a moment. “I’m sorry. I-I thought maybe you were going to tell me you were divorced, not that.”

  I let out a long sigh. “I don’t like talking about it.”

  “What happened to them?”

  The band that had been bound around my chest for the last two years grew tighter.

  “They both died in an accident.”

  “The same accident that caused this.” She said cupping my cheek.

  “Yes. It was an accident - a bad car accident.

  “They both died. I didn’t.”

  “When?” Violet asked running her fingers through my hair.

  “Two years ago, on Valentine’s Day on Interstate Highway 405 in Portland.

  “It was a bad car accident. I still don’t know exactly what happened but I think I do in some way.” I explained. “Dylan and Jennah died on impact. I almost died. I was in the hospital for months with a broken hip, a broken collarbone and severe lacerations to my face. I’m lucky to be alive really.

  “I was in a coma when they had their funerals.”

  I swallowed back my tears when I thought about how I never really got the chance to say goodbye to my son. One day, I had him and then he was gone just like that. My somewhat life had changed in an instant, tossing me into the pits of hell and despair when I realized it would never be the same again and somehow, I had to put all the pieces back together.

  “I’m so-sorry.” She stuttered out, while a tear slipped from her left eye and trickled down into her ear. “What was he like?”

  I sighed. “He was a good kid. His name was Dylan Alexander Griffon. He was ten years old when he died. He’d be twelve now. He was very athletic, always happy and optimistic. He looked just like a little version of me, never wanting to cut his hair.

  “We spent a lot of time on the beach down there, kicking ball, playing frisbee and just talking. My father is the deputy principal where he went to school here in Cannon Beach.”

  “I’ve never lost anyone, well except for my mother, even though she isn’t technically dead she might as well have been.” She said. “And you’ve been -.”

  “Alone ever since.” I confirmed.

  “Are you okay?” She asked hesitantly. “I’m sorry that came out wrong.”

  “It’s okay. I know what you mean. It’s strange at first, like one day your life is full of life and joy and the next day it’s gone. You’ve been left behind and you have to start over in some way even if you want to.” I explained wiping her tears.

  “You didn’t want to?”

  I sighed. “Not really and my face didn’t help much at all. What woman was going to date me, Violet?”

  “Elijah.” She scolded.

  “I wasn’t looking for anyone. I’d gotten so used to being alone that it was just the way it was. I focused on getting my life back together in whatever way I could.”

  Violet’s tears continue to flow.

  “I concentrated on physical therapy and then when I was well enough, I went back to work but my life was different. I accepted that it would never be the same.”

  “What did you do?”

  I laughed. “I prayed. It was all I could do.”

  “What was your wife like?”

  I had no desire to talk about Jennah. If anything, I fucking hated her.

  “She was unstable. I was alone for a long time, even when Dylan was alive.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The three of us lived here and when Jennah left, Dylan stayed behind with me.”

  “You were getting divorced.”

  “I was planning to divorce her. There was nothing I could do. Jennah was sick. She was a schizophrenic.” I explained shakily. “It wasn’t bad when we first married but after a few years it became worse and we separated. I was raising Dylan on my own for a little over a year before he died. Jennah was gone, living with her parents and in and out of mental institutions.”

  “She became dangerous. She hurt us. She killed my son. I couldn’t love someone who wants to hurt my child.”

  “I’m sorry.” She whispered against my lips, pushing her fingers into my hair in a soothing repetitive gesture.

  I wiped away the tears flowing from my eyes. “I was a doctor. A clinical psychologist. How would it have looked if my wife was suffering from something as serious as schizophrenia?”

  She remained silent.

&nb
sp; “We kept it as quiet as possible but her condition became more severe and I began to fear for Dylan and I’s safety.

  “Jennah was also refusing treatment and her medication, which as you can imagine only made things worse.

  “The day of the accident, I was driving Jennah back to her parents, after we spent the day with Dylan downtown. We went to a movie and had lunch. It was all so she could spend time with him before she had to go back.

  “I was driving down the Portland 405 freeway at the speed limit. Out of nowhere Jennah yanked the steering wheel so hard, I lost control. The car flipped and bounced over the concrete median strip into oncoming traffic. Vehicles tried to stop but there was tractor trailer that couldn’t and we were hit head on and that was it.”

  “I’m sorry.” She repeated.

  “Yeah, me too.”

  I dipped down and grazed my lips over her soft pink ones and inhaled her light breaths. Worry and apprehension were etched across her features and I knew she still had questions but there was one in particular that I knew was racing through her mind.

  “I didn’t love her, Violet.”

  She swallowed hard and let out a soft exhale.

  “I didn’t love her.” I repeated. “It was never a good marriage. Never. I held onto to Jennah for as long as I could but she’d been unstable for years, from as far back as university. I hoped she’d get better but shortly after she moved back in with her parents, she’d also begun using drugs. She was self-medicating with everything besides the anti-psychotic prescriptions she should’ve been taking. She’d already tried to commit suicide twice back in college.” I sighed. “It was all downhill from there.”

  Violet’s brows crashed together.

  “I lost her long ago, way before we’d officially split up.” I added.

  “I understand. What-what did she do for a living?”

  “She was a microbiologist. A brilliant scientist. She held two master’s degrees and her post-doctorate degree. She was a genius but she just wasn’t stable.”

  I raked my fingers through Violet’s hair, feeling the soft strands slide between my fingers. Then lowered my hand, sliding it over her warm skin, observing her lips part when I encircled her breast with my hand, teasing her nipple, taking it into my mouth. I run my tongue over her flesh, sucking hard as her legs slide open.