A drop of Colour
Nothing seemed to make a single sound. Not the crunching snow under his shoes, not the occasional honk of cars on the street, not the busy patrons of the city who bumped into him from time to time, and certainly not the beating of Ricky's empty heart.
Everything seemed defening. Devoid of colour and sentiment, the world seemed to have lost its self with Julian's death. In a world of grey and grief, Ricky's red scarf stood alone, wanting to break free. A drop of colour in the self-brought black and white realness of the world. It was here that fiction met reality, where darkness met light to create the bleek colours of the city.
The street lights too afraid to show their true colours, only enough to make even more shadows in the lives of people they touched. The snowflakes acting as innocent as newborns, were but a minor annoyance getting in Ricky's eyes. They tried to mask his mixed feelings of hate, anger, naustalgia, dispair, and longing...but to no avail.
Christmas eve had never been a means for celebration to Ricky. Back when the older of the two brothers, woke to find the other awake, it had brought back a feeling he had long forgotten, one that was too great for words, too old for definition. A time like that was now far behind him, lost in the dark.
Ricky didn't even know where he was going. He seemed to be wandering aimlessly for the only reason that he didn't want to be caught by his feelings. His butterfly revolver, stirred under his black trench coat. Longing to be set free like the engraving on its side.
The first sound made its presence. It was silence that reached his ears. His eyes, which had been void of anything at all, were now alert and scanning the area for things and people that weren't there. There weren't any cars, people, even the snow ceased to exist. He couldn't distinguish the hands on a clock past the haze of his frozen breath.
His only tell for time was that he seemed to be alone for miles in every direction. It tortured him to know that the whole world was asleep in their warm beds with the people they loved, about to wake up to Christmas morning, while he was awake, on the cold streets, with the ones he loved back to dust from whence they came.
In the short time that he'd stopped, his senses had come back to him. He could feel his coat tails whipping his legs, his dark grown out hair tickling his jaw, and the bitter taste of anguish resting on his tongue. The smell of smog reached his nose and the clock hands finally came into focus, although he no longer had use of them.
The sun began to creep up on the world around him. Even though it was bringing a new day, the same day had been repeated month after month for Ricky. Today seemed to be the only time that his world didn't stand still.
A faint smile made its way to Ricky's lips, as he spoke to a man who wasn't there, "Merry Christmas Julian...."