AN: Thanks for the feedback guys! I really appreciate it. It should be obvious where I'm going with this
now: I'll have one more part entitled 'yellow'. Please continue to let me know what you think! =)
```
Part Two: Red
```
Red is for stopping. I know this because I read about it in a book.
But I disagree.
Red is not stillness- red is circulating blood; the throbbing heart. A warning in the darkness that motion is
soon to follow.
Red is surgery on a cold table, people telling me that if I simply lie still, then I will make things better for
all of us.
I think they only want to make me stop.
```
"Great Hyne, where are you, Selphie?"
The words sit on my brain, but they don't sink in. My weapon dances like a python, wraps around the
goat's sharp horn and I yank hard. The breaking sound is metallic, as if the frozen creature in front of me
is no living being, but a kind of strange machine instead.
When it slams into me, blood splatters across my face and all over the snow as if to tell me differently.
Usually I'm tired when I'm sitting at the controls here; when I'm eating off a tray in the cafeteria, when
I'm waking up in the morning, but never when I'm fighting. Long and discolored heads don't exist here,
nodding or shaking their heads in approval, and neither do instructors in stale wool uniforms scratching
at the blackboard.
There's just the blood, dripping over my eyes, surrounding everything, and I'm victorious.
"Selphie!"
Ten shocked faces are openly repulsed. My instructor arrives and makes it eleven. The boy who is
supposed to be my partner gives me a contemptuous glare. He's making a sign so that everyone knows I'm
crazy. Laughter dashes from one head to another.
"Why don't you get back to the doctor and he can take a look at that."
I'm going to tell her that she's wrong until I look down and see that she isn't. My blood is red and
unstoppable.
```
Sometimes I ask people if they don't remember a better place.
They don't.
It's not that they don't remember things, like me. It's that there was nothing better about the places they
came from, and they speak only in whispers about mothers and fathers and bruises. It's a losing battle to
speak—I can't talk about memories for too long, because I know they are going to find out about the thing
inside my mind.
One day, though, I can't take it.
I'm sitting in our broken, ugly auditorium and there is a pale head at the podium, thanking us for all of
the work that we have done, and no one is moving, and no one is saying anything. I am standing up for all
of them and screaming something out about slave labor, and the heads are all looking at me as though I
have just broken something that is irreplaceable.
Someone is calling me young lady and telling me to come with him and I recognize him as the same head
that I saw behind the door shuffling papers and talking with the Shumi behind the desk in the office on
the day that it all began.
```
"Malignant GF," someone says. An accidental discovery leaves me with nowhere to hide. It is creeping
into all the cracks in my brain, to explain it to a layman. It is ruining my memories and the control that I
should have and don't, to explain it to a layman.
That's what they're saying.
That, and that they need to operate soon, but nobody has experience with anything like this, but if they
don't get this now then in a few months I'll be little better than dead. I'll be a zombie. I already feel like a
zombie, but they don't listen to what I'm saying.
They're not listening to me because I'm crazy. The violence is part of the craziness. It explains all the
times that I wouldn't work with a partner and got covered in blood, and got sent to the headmaster's
office. The screaming out is part of the violence.
The operation has to be soon, of course. And I will miss the next assembly but that's ok because I
shouldn't be around large crowds anyway. It's possible that I could be dangerous.
The surgery will take place the next morning, and it's important that I eat the food that they are giving
me. It's good for me and it's so good I wonder why I've never seen it before in the cafeteria when we're
all so hungry.
It's important to rest too, not to exert myself going fighting this afternoon when I practice. I should lay
down and relax.
It's even ok if I can't sleep, just as long as I try not to move.
~
now: I'll have one more part entitled 'yellow'. Please continue to let me know what you think! =)
```
Part Two: Red
```
Red is for stopping. I know this because I read about it in a book.
But I disagree.
Red is not stillness- red is circulating blood; the throbbing heart. A warning in the darkness that motion is
soon to follow.
Red is surgery on a cold table, people telling me that if I simply lie still, then I will make things better for
all of us.
I think they only want to make me stop.
```
"Great Hyne, where are you, Selphie?"
The words sit on my brain, but they don't sink in. My weapon dances like a python, wraps around the
goat's sharp horn and I yank hard. The breaking sound is metallic, as if the frozen creature in front of me
is no living being, but a kind of strange machine instead.
When it slams into me, blood splatters across my face and all over the snow as if to tell me differently.
Usually I'm tired when I'm sitting at the controls here; when I'm eating off a tray in the cafeteria, when
I'm waking up in the morning, but never when I'm fighting. Long and discolored heads don't exist here,
nodding or shaking their heads in approval, and neither do instructors in stale wool uniforms scratching
at the blackboard.
There's just the blood, dripping over my eyes, surrounding everything, and I'm victorious.
"Selphie!"
Ten shocked faces are openly repulsed. My instructor arrives and makes it eleven. The boy who is
supposed to be my partner gives me a contemptuous glare. He's making a sign so that everyone knows I'm
crazy. Laughter dashes from one head to another.
"Why don't you get back to the doctor and he can take a look at that."
I'm going to tell her that she's wrong until I look down and see that she isn't. My blood is red and
unstoppable.
```
Sometimes I ask people if they don't remember a better place.
They don't.
It's not that they don't remember things, like me. It's that there was nothing better about the places they
came from, and they speak only in whispers about mothers and fathers and bruises. It's a losing battle to
speak—I can't talk about memories for too long, because I know they are going to find out about the thing
inside my mind.
One day, though, I can't take it.
I'm sitting in our broken, ugly auditorium and there is a pale head at the podium, thanking us for all of
the work that we have done, and no one is moving, and no one is saying anything. I am standing up for all
of them and screaming something out about slave labor, and the heads are all looking at me as though I
have just broken something that is irreplaceable.
Someone is calling me young lady and telling me to come with him and I recognize him as the same head
that I saw behind the door shuffling papers and talking with the Shumi behind the desk in the office on
the day that it all began.
```
"Malignant GF," someone says. An accidental discovery leaves me with nowhere to hide. It is creeping
into all the cracks in my brain, to explain it to a layman. It is ruining my memories and the control that I
should have and don't, to explain it to a layman.
That's what they're saying.
That, and that they need to operate soon, but nobody has experience with anything like this, but if they
don't get this now then in a few months I'll be little better than dead. I'll be a zombie. I already feel like a
zombie, but they don't listen to what I'm saying.
They're not listening to me because I'm crazy. The violence is part of the craziness. It explains all the
times that I wouldn't work with a partner and got covered in blood, and got sent to the headmaster's
office. The screaming out is part of the violence.
The operation has to be soon, of course. And I will miss the next assembly but that's ok because I
shouldn't be around large crowds anyway. It's possible that I could be dangerous.
The surgery will take place the next morning, and it's important that I eat the food that they are giving
me. It's good for me and it's so good I wonder why I've never seen it before in the cafeteria when we're
all so hungry.
It's important to rest too, not to exert myself going fighting this afternoon when I practice. I should lay
down and relax.
It's even ok if I can't sleep, just as long as I try not to move.
~