SCARLET

The Other Side of Your Color

     In Brownsville, every line designed round brown and blue silouhettes. The edge of the landscape was brushed by wooden roofs, dried up pine tree tops as well as beaming waves of heat.

There was no green color.  Everthing was brown and blue. The inhabitants wore light blue or brown-beige cotton shirts, skirts, dresses, pants or the combination of either or both.  All women were round, not fat, but round. They sat on brown peeled wooden benches that rested quietly in dried up parks.

     A woman wrapped in beautiful red silk garments, not apple red but orange red, a live red, a vivid red, appeared suddently and walked down the dusty roads of Brownsville.  All people, dressed in rags of brown and blue, did not understand other colors existed. This girls red was ignored and denied by everyone. She had no one to talk to. No one dared talk to her.  It  was too risky.

"Excuse me sir," shed say to someone. Or, "excuse me missus," but they all ignored her, pretended she  was not there.

Her name was Scarlet, a name no one had heard of or was interested in knowing about.

The next day, Scarlet decided to do her mision. She would entertain.  She walked down the main street of  the town, with her body tightly dressed  with vivid red garments.  She was the only woman walking through town that was not round, nor fat. Her silouhette projected a Marilyn Monroe figure. She walked down the main street where people where coming and going on the brown dusted sidewalks. She jumped, she sang, she danced, summersalted, but no one seemed to notice her.


"They have not noticed me yet," she thought. They have got to notice me. She stood on a screechy bench that barely held her. "I'm here. Look at me. You have got to listen to me. See  me. By God youve got to listen to me. It is your only chance. The only way."

The echoes of  her voice vibrated in everyones ears. Yet everyone continued their activities as if nothing was there.  Silence permeated every corner of the whole town. No whispers, no words, no looks, nothing.

Scarlet dragged her feet until she reached the long asphalted torn road that laid in the outskirts of the town. No one else dared to go beyond the dirt road.  "Ive got to give them the message," she thought. It is extremely important. Otherwise...  " she burried her sweaty face in her dusty hands- "No, it wont happen. I would let it happen. I have to let them know somehow. I won't I cant let them down. I'll let them know somehow... but how?" Her tears streamed down the road as she walked back home.

               II

Scarlet disappeared. For more than 10 years, red had not been seen in Brownsville. The air in the village grew thicker every day like heavy gray clouds hanging stagnant over the sky not releasing one single drop of water. one. single. drop.

 Two round, not fat, but really round wrinkled ladies, one wearing blue and the other one brown were sitting on a dry bench snoring out loud.  The blue woman burps and wakes up, the other hiccups and wakes up also. They nudge each other.

-    "Marty, it's bad isn't it?"

-    "Real bad Meg, real bad."

-    "What are we going to do, Marty?"  Marty is still half asleep. Meg pushes her.

      "Come on Marty, wake up!"

-    Marty yawns, "lordy, lordy, lordy... heck Meg I don't know!"

-   "Promis we wont think about it again, that girl, Marty!"

-   "Yeah, it wasnt good Meg, she never was good!"

     Both Marty and Meg fell back to sleep and continued snoring out loud.

     Meanwhile, in the same town, the clouds grew dimmer and dimmer. The heat of the sun grew stronger and stronger.  So strong it began to melt people who were crawling on the sidewalks. Their skins melted and turned into brown sidewalk chalk. They stretched for their lives, but melted into dust, piece by piece, leaving blue and brown-beige rags of clothes all over town.

    Two fat men, not round, but fat, really fat, sat in front of blue painted bar. Both were puffing on an old times sake cigar.

-     "Hey Jack, remember that red figured creature that mingled around town a few years back?

-     "What a disgrace Charlie, wasn't it?"

-     "I used to think so Jack, but look at us now..."

-     "Oh Charlie! Don't tell me. Do you suppose that is what is happening in the town?"

-     " It's obvious Jack, isn't it?"

-     "But that was the devil, Charlie, you know that."

-     "We were wrong Jack."

-     "Come on Charlie we did the right thing!"

-     "I don't think so Jack, soon it will be our turn. Our turn to..."

They took a large drink from the clay mug and spit back into it. They stared at each other as their skins began to sag and melt like heated wax, that rolled and became part of the dirt.

Children were frozen at first. Their skins melted like clear streams of pure water. Their death was not brutal. They were innocent. A wind blew and the streets echoed in silence. All souls were asleep. The corpses had melted into dust completely. Being washed away, because....

Scarlet suddenly appeared.  She was wearing the bright red dress, except this one was brighter.

"Oh, no.  I'm late. Again, I'm late! I'm always late!" Their was not one person left alive. She sat in the center space of the whole town and looked around.  Tears of her desperated soul  streamed light calming rivers through the whole town in hopes that her tears would save some souls left behind.

Yes, Scarlet represented the vibrant color of red. Of life. Of a shiny apple, except this time it was not the forbidden fruit. It was the fruit of hope, for a greater understanding, for change. Stagnation always leads to desperation, which leads to termination.

    Scarlet decides to get up and walk out of the town. Feeling sad, she had to let it this one go.  She began to wander through a small alley that directed her to a heights of a mountain. Then a very gentle soft voice came down from the heavens, and said,

-      "I congratulate you. Once you have reached the other side of the mountain, you will find another town, Blacksville. There are many people in it. They are all dressed in black and white.  Good luck, my child."