Blue

I found out about San Diego Momma's PROMPTuesday via Slouching Mom. I've enjoyed reading SM's responses to the creative writing exercises and, this week, I'm jumping on the bandwagon. Go to SDM's site to read the prompt, and keep reading here to find my response. It's fiction.

***

The sky is midnight blue. Light leaks through the house’s picture window and it is blue, too, but more frenetic and kind of dazzling. I stand on the sidewalk, directly opposite the curtained panes. Azure shadows flicker on the colorless palette of grass. I wonder what she is watching on TV.

The trees have skeletal hands that bleed leaves. They are caught by the wind in cold eddies around my feet. The temperature doesn’t touch me as I imagine so much broken glass and its affect on the eerie color scheme pervading this late hour. Opening curtains, white light bathing pale skin, blue turning to black as Letterman deadpans onscreen.

No, not tonight.

It’s not real, me standing here now. Behind the curtains she is reclining on her faux suede sofa, underneath a down throw because she’s always cold, as she watches the flat screen with indifferent lethargy. Maybe a clock ticks, so ubiquitous that she no longer hears it. Maybe the heat kicks on, pumping hard to warm her cold blood. Maybe her phone rings.

Finally I feel it, the chill against my ear as I wait.