Green, Violet, Scarlet

Green

An extract from the green notebook:

The sea seems to change colour as it shimmers in the light of the evening – a film of steely blue, shades of pink and purple, green and turquoise.

This is where Isla stood at the edge of her life, the shoreline, contemplating her years, her son’s birth, her husband’s death.

This is where I came swimming in March and came out of the water blue-skinned, wracked with shivers and a coldness deep inside me… [there is a shimmer, a glitter, of pink light on the water. Are they fish? It seems unreal] … A coldness that didn’t leave my body until I woke the next morning.

This is where the serial picnicker took his first-date ‘victims’ who never heard from him again; where he took Alice, his dying wife, and where he wished he was somewhere at sea, someone else.

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Violet

Photo #1, Berlin War Memorial: The blocks look more like a geometric pattern than a place; a piece of abstract art rather than a photograph. Serene considering what it represents. Powerfully peaceful. No sense of size. These structures could be small, they could be colossal. The blocks are smooth lavender on top, dusky cerise where the sides catch the light and indigo in the shadow, scratchy, dipping down to black in the spaces, the avenues between.

Photo #2, Pigeons in Venice:            //////////////////////////////////////≥  («that was my cat) Pigeons with their little pink feet fill the frame. Violet, grey, white, black. Their shadows double their numbers. A cool blue lens flare streaks down from the top of the picture and a faint pattern of tiny pink circles, like pink leopard-print, is layered over the top, most visible over the lilac flagstones.

***

Scarlet

When the turkeys are all killed, it’s time for the geese. Gareth carries one over and puts it upside-down into a conical bucket with a hole in the bottom so that its head and neck stick out. Below the bucket is a drain covered in blood of such a vibrant scarlet it’s almost orange. With the turkeys, Gareth stunned them with electricity before cutting their throats, but now Paul is brandishing a hockey stick, whistling as he swings it round. He takes aim and cracks the goose on the back of the head. It bleeds from its eyes and bill, unconscious if not dead, as Gareth pushes his knife into its neck and wrenches forward to rip its throat open. Its body twitches as the blood drains out and it’s long neck relaxes and contracts, curling like a snake, with its head dangling off at an unusual angle.*

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*From my creative essay Birds of a Feather

In response to today’s Daily Prompt: Colo[u]rful