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"Black" pt. 1
John was standing before a spectacle that both confused and frightened him, one that held within its structure ambiguous figures and flames that licked the night sky like searing tongues- a mass of things that had surely been birthed from the insides of some hell. John had gotten lost in the forest when he went back to go look for the watch that Stacy had given him on his nineteenth birthday.
She showed up at his house looking the most beautiful that he had ever seen her. Her lips were plump and her azure eyes made even the bright red and orange autumn leaves behind her look dull. Her hair was a deep crimson and John had just awakened from a dream in which he was lying naked with her in bed and they were both wrapped in her soft hair, which was impossibly long. It filled the bed and spilled onto the floor. John walked half-asleep to his door after hearing the doorbell ring and opened it, surprised to see her. She had told him that she was sorry for waking him up but she had to go visit her grandmother in a few hours and thought that this might be the only chance for her to see him on his birthday. Her grandmother was in the hospital with a fever. “You never know how things that you and me can get over so easily can affect someone her age, you know?” she had said in her soft voice. She said that she wanted to give him his gift before she left though, digging through her blue purse and pulling out a small white box that was tied in gold ribbons. “It’s nothing special, but I saw it and thought of you,” she said, slightly blushing and smiling a smile that could churn the soul of the devil into doing good. She handed John the gift, gave him a kiss on the lips, and told him that she would see him soon. “Happy Birthday,” she said. That was the last John had seen Stacy. John, Stacy, Paul, and Elizabeth were supposed to go camping the next day for John’s birthday. Paul was John’s best friend and Elizabeth was Paul’s girlfriend. They had only been dating for two months but already had plans of spending the rest of their life together. John had never been camping and often talked about how he wanted to go someday.
Stacy called John at around nine o’clock at night on his birthday. She said that her grandmother wasn’t doing well. She had sweat so much that it soaked through her mattress and the doctors had to replace it with another one. She’d been lost in a frenetic sleep during most of the day and Stacy had witnessed it in all of its stages from a chair by her bed, holding her hand the whole time. Her grandmother had cried at one point and even laughed. She coughed up blood once and it sprayed onto her white pillow in a fine mist. She had whispered, “My little Magdalena, I know you are with me,” when all of the doctors had left the room and the sun shown through the window as a pink ball, ethereal in its construct. Magdalena was a nickname that Stacy’s grandmother had given her as a child. Stacy and her grandmother had taken care of each other for the longest time. Stacy’s grandfather died from cancer before she was born and her parents died in a car accident three years ago. Their car slid over an ice patch and went through a guardrail like it was nothing before smacking into a tree. They died instantly. Stacy lived with her grandmother and always feared the day when she would have to let her go too. But she was glad that she had John. He loved her more than anything and would do anything for her. When she called him crying on his birthday, he told her that he wanted to be with her, that he wanted nothing more than to be with her. But she assured him that everything was ok, that everything would be ok. She would stay in the hospital until her grandmother was ok, though. She told him to have fun on his trip and to not worry about her.
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