Seeing Red
Author: Mae
Warnings: none
Red and Blue. Red and Blue.
Blair leaned against the truck's bumper and watched the world around him flashed these colors in a consistent pattern. First a flash of red followed by a flash of blue.
Or was it blue then red?
Blair absently tossed the thought aside. It didn't matter.
But why were they red and blue? There had to be a time and place when someone decided that red and blue were important. Why not yellow and orange or some other pair of colors?
Blair thought hard about this mystery. Symbolically, it made some sense. Red was passionate and intense. Red was a sign of danger and used as a warning to stay away. And yet, there was blue, which meant the opposite of red. Blue was suppose to be calm and comforting. Blue was an indication that help was coming.
In this case, blue came too late and red dominated the scene.
No.
Blair didn't want to think about what was behind the flashes of color. He wasn't going to think about the man who walked into his former business, taking his revenge with a gun. He didn't want to give thought to the two officers who risked their lives and were injured trying to bring him down. And he certainly didn't want to think about the body bags that were coming out of the building. There was nothing to do but try to figure out why red and blue were important.
It wasn't working.
The sights and sounds of the chaos before him was sending him back to reality and the flashes of color faded away until all he saw was the nightmarish aftermath of a shooting.
"Why?" Blair whispered to himself.
He continued asking until the word became a mantra. "Why? Why? Why red?"
"Sandburg?"
He looked into Jim's concerned eyes and saw blue instead.