Auburn

      Daylight is loud. Birds screams slip through the tightly shut windows. Wind bellows all around the house. Everyone is awake. Everyone is alive.

    Once night comes, I sleep hard enough that the entire wilderness is ... silence. Pure and beautiful silence. Nothing to be afraid of. Nothing to wish for. Nothingness. Glasslike in its simpleness, the reality of abyss. No darkness, no light, just the black splotch that ends each phrase.

    Red splots my hands as I pluck berries from the underbrush. I place them into my basket and ignore the juices seeping into the moss that I kneel upon. I sometimes reach down and touch the moistened moss, rub my hands over it; it's warm. As it dries it leaves my hands an auburn-y red. 

    I rinse my hands under the sink and watch as the auburn races down into the drain. I try to replicate the auburn with the juice of the raspberries, but it is always too sweet a red. 

     Sometimes, the berries break as I wash them so I must go back outside to get more. I never look up.

     Today, I looked up. 

    I shouldn't have looked up.

    So much horror on their faces. Mouths agape. I wonder what their last thoughts were? I try not to think about it. 

    What might my last thoughts be? Do I even think at all? Do I have dreams? 

    I go to bed to sleep it all off. I must have been imagining.

    When I wake up I feel sticky and sweaty.

    I go look in the mirror.

    My hands are auburn. My face is auburn. My clothes are auburn. Everything is auburn.