As the white sky rained red I swept the road with the souls of my feet. Dust kicking up around my ankles. Debris from nearby trucks blowing on my skirt. None of them stopped to help me or to ask “What are you doing out here all by yourself? Where’s your family?” None of them even considered the idea.
The tires teased at my feet. I wish I was the kind of person to just jump underneath them. To take all the second chances and last breathes and just through them under the rubber. I couldn’t possibly live in a world fragranced with decay. One where I would be relying on the support of corpses rather than the present. A day ago, no, two hours ago I was a mere child. Playing with blue trucks with chipped off paint and wheels that only rolled 5 inches before getting stuck. And the glittered covered dolls that rolled around in my art supplies when I wasn’t looking.
I had a tree house that smelled of moldy oak wood. A special place of sanctuary. My family had all helped build it. Just for me, so I could see beyond what the other kids at school saw. Just for me they made four walls with a roof. I really loved those four walls. Those same walls that were now painted by them. My sanctuary was a lie.
Every word, every laugh. It’s all a lie. This life was an illusion tricking us towards bottomless cliffs. I want to jump off like everyone else, but it was like a glitch in a game and I can’t exit. I can only keep running forward. Covered in the red. Drowning in the red. Becoming the red.
My hair was soaked, weighed down like strap on weights. My feet sinking into the road. The in-between of my toes carrying rocks. Everything reeked around me. I’ve already thrown up about seven times. I prefer the taste of vomit to blood. I really want to throw up again just to forget for one more moment that this was anything but normal sickness. But I can’t stop now. Breakfast dribbling down my chin onto the front of my shirt, I didn’t stop. It was already ruined anyway. Every color was that color. All of it. I can’t even remember what blue or yellow looked like. Red rain, white sky.
When the colors dominated each other, which is when the sounds came. The lights began screaming.  At first I thought something was chasing me, but I’m too small to chase. When the people crouched down and cried; when they kept looking behind themselves in every which way, was when I figured it out. The lights were screaming everywhere. Perhaps all over the town or the country. Maybe even the whole world. I high pitch cry of distress is what it sounds like to me. Maybe their crying for us. Though I’d prefer if they stopped.
I could see a bit ahead of me. An old women was laying in the middle of the road clutching at her head. Her hair sticking in a clumpy mass seeping into the rest of her sagged form. She appears like someone who would smell of cookies or maybe cheap perfume. That’s what my grandma used to smell like. When she had died she only smelled of painted wood.
I began calling to the old women but I don’t think she can hear me. Or I can’t speak from my throat anymore, it was hard to tell at this point. One of the trucks beside me started pulling ahead. Dust clogged my throat making me choke. Waving my arms at the truck I pointed to the old lady. It kept moving, faster and faster. Like me. It didn’t stop even as I yelled harder I had ever before. I could hear myself over the lights, it was that loud. He doesn’t stop though and the old lady didn’t move. I couldn’t look.
I prayed as I ran that heaven was nicer to old people then this world was. I do hope it is, because if it isn’t that means my mother had lied to me and I don’t want to think like that. I want that at least not to be a lie. Not those words exactly, but that dream. I really needed that to be there for me, for them. For that old women.
Soon ill probably be dead as well. I hope someone prays for me when that happens. Tears begin trickling down my cheeks before I even feel them coming. I don’t want to die. I really don’t, that’s why I’m crying. I don’t want anyone to be dead. Is there really a reason that happens? Why it happened? Why it’s happening? I don’t deserve this. I haven’t even lived a single day in my life yet. But why am I already running from death. Why is my mommy and daddy dead? Why did my brother pick up that gun and paint my tree house.
He didn’t take me with them, even though he knew I was there. Something was so wrong with him. I think he was sick. He was crying as well because he knew that he wasn’t being himself. He knew it was all over for him. He knew I would end up here. He made the sky rain blood. He was the one that made the lights scream.
I still can’t stop running. I have to keep going, I’m not sure where but I’ll get there. My short legs and small feet will take me everywhere so that one day I can carry old ladies on my back. One day I’ll stop trucks with my bear fists. Ill save people before they become nothing but blood on wooden walls. I’m going to change the world. I know right now I’m nothing but a red stained eight year-old but one day I’ll be a big and strong hero. So now I keep going and I won’t stop. I’m screaming at the white sky catching red rain in mouth. Spitting it out between the gaps in my teeth I charging faster. Harder. Farther. Because one day, one day.