Balck-and-White

Дайте малко да използвам блога по предназначение. Качвам си преработения разказ. Трябва вече всичко да му е наред. Трябва да го предам на 1 май. Това ми е final, т.е. не съм напълно сигурна, ама може оценката ми за курса да е базирана само на него, така че четете и пишете какво мислите :)

The single candle on the wooden table in the middle of the room was wildly throwing creeping shadows along the cold concrete walls. The flame, subordinate to the whimsical winds of the world, was hissing and bowing in all directions. The ominous breeze broke through our shield of loving embrace every now and then. The damp hospital basement was by far not the place where I would normally want to be on a frigid November night. But it was the only place in the world I could share with my sister Molly, and where she was, was where I belonged back then.
Molly was only ten at the time. Her fluffy curls were tickling the skin on my face as I was pressing her small soft body tightly to my chest just below my chin. She was sleepy with one of her perfectly round cheeks protruding over my fluffy pullover in whose fabric her head was securely half-submerged. I could see her plump lips trembling from time to time and I knew that no matter how hard I tried I could not bestow the warmth she needed on the adorable white angel in my arms. But it was not about warmth or physical health or any kind of physical protection. Exhausted, I tried again:
“You need to remember, Molly!”
She looked at me with her large wide-open eyes, half-accusatory, half-surprised that I was starting again. Maybe it was just her desire to be left to sleep… But that flame in her eyes which I recognized as accusation is even now scorching my soul. “Why? Why do you want me to make this sacrifice? For whom?” was what I read in her gaze.
“You have to do it for yourself, Molly. For us…” I murmured. But even as I was whispering in her ear, a stream of tears raced down my cheeks. Why would I want her to give up the colors in our lives? What good could that possibly do us?
“Only then could we remain together. You…” I choked with crying under Molly’s unflinching stare. I drew her still nearer and closed my eyes 10 inches above her head. How could they know what was real? They weren’t right, I believed at the age of 15. But this didn’t matter. I bit my lips in order to fight the confusion that had overcome me and go back to the strict and exacting reality of the pain. No time for hesitation. They could discover us any moment. And if Molly continued to see the beautiful, presumably non-existent things around us, the doctors would deal with her their way. I couldn’t let them hurt her.
“They decide on the colors and phenomena of the world, Molly. You mustn’t see more than they do. Stop it or they’d take it away from you forcibly.” I was trying to be as convincingly didactic as I could, despite my own resentment. “Remember what you know about the world, Molly. Not what you see. That is the truth, Baby. Everything else is just…” I took a deep breath before I could finish with the word that tore my heart with its ruthlessness “insane.”
Molly gasped. She sat immobile, listening intently. Her big innocent eyes were desperately scrutinizing the air I emitted for an infinitesimal sparkle of hope to grapple to. A flicker of fear started to gloomily ensconce in her otherwise sparkling eyes.
“Wrong, Molly. It’s wrong.” I tried to find a milder substitution for the suffocating word. “They’ll separate us, if you don’t remember.” Tears were sliding down Molly’s smooth cheeks. She was now standing before me, out of my embrace, and all she could do was wrap her arms around me and bury her head in my pullover, craving for a shelter against the cruelty of a world she did not understand.
“I won’t go, Karen! I’ll stay with you!”
Oh, my sweet little angel! As she was falling asleep in my arms a few minutes later, I was wondering how anyone could want to take away from her that wild belief in the beauty of life?!
* * *
I was five years old when Molly was born: the cutest little bubble with the most exquisite smile and dimples at its sides. At the age of five she was as unlike me as she could be in her appearance, I was told. People usually described me as a slender, pretty girl with contemplative deep blue eyes and gigantic, straight brown hair. Molly’s curly head was blond and her eyes reflected the color and brightness of the sky. My lips were darker and thinner. My typically serious face didn’t have her sublime rosy shades. Or so I knew from the others… What wouldn’t I have given to see her smiling round face in color! But I was born with the inability to see colorfully. So I was perpetually saturated into my black-and-white reality. And I would have probably been growing up a desperately sad child, had it not been for Molly’s glorious and unwavering love of life, her constant pursuit of beauty and brave allegiance to dreams and optimism. Her whole nature sprayed inescapable love all around her. Sunshine and beauty tailed her in her adventures, bestowing on her environment obviously more happiness than it was ready to tolerate. My Molly… and her elaborate perception, which made the world more mesmerizing than any colors could. She hungrily swallowed sights and turned them into magically erected palaces of joy for the both of us. The flowers danced; the inanimate objects talked; the rivers sang.
Although more often than not, I couldn’t see what she saw... I didn’t see the greenish fairies in the air with their countless tiny torches coming to take care of me when I had the flu one winter, but I felt better with her warm soft hand on my forehead. I couldn’t see our mother, who, she said, often visited us to kiss us goodnight and softly talked to us in a dulcet voice.
But I saw the monster who came with my father to steal her away from me. His white hands seized her, insensitive to her crying and begging. She fought that night.
“Don’t take her away!” I cried in my father’s firm grip.
The huge white man looked at me with mocking pity, as if to make sure I understood that I was a brainless child, who had no idea what was going on.
“She will be much better off in our hands. We’ll heal her.”
From what?! I angrily asked myself. I saw this in his black eyes: his intentions weren’t good.
He was taking her away. He didn’t understand.
“But someone has to take care of her. Don’t send her there alone, Daddy! Send me with her!” I started sobbing uncontrollably, immobilized in Dad’s strong hands, as the white monster carried her away.
That night Dad came to me. I wouldn’t talk to him. I had no desire to see him or hear his explanation that she needed special care before it was too late. I knew what he was going to tell me. Mom had been dead for 8 years. Molly couldn’t possibly have seen her. She was not supposed to be seeing unreal things. The doctors at the hospital were going to save her. From what?! From her ability to see the static black-and-white woman we saw flat in the photos in color and motion and relief? Mom wasn’t unreal. And Molly didn’t need to be saved from the smiling colors of her world only because we would never see them.
At the door Dad turned to look at me. He was crying, black all through. Even his normally pale skin was grayer than ever beyond the mist of tears filling my eyes.
A few days later we visited Molly in the hospital. And while Dad and the doctors weren’t watching, engaged in a secret discussion, I grabbed her hand and ran away with her. We hid in the gray hospital basement. The heavy black door slammed shut behind our backs obscuring the daylight from our sights for two long days turned into an endless night.
“Remember, remember” I kept imploring. “Reality.” “The true colors.” But how could I help her see them when they were only black and white to me? I just had to try to save her. I couldn’t trust the doctors. They didn’t understand.
On the third day they found us huddled together in the alcove under the concrete staircase. The white candle on the black table had burned away. And even to Molly now everything seemed black.
They took her away from me and, finally, dealt with her their own way. Treatment, pills, confinement… Six months later she was out of the asylum, presumably healed. She had no hallucinations and wouldn’t let her imagination go wild any more. But the brightness of her eyes was gone, too. We looked more alike now. Only that I never saw her smile again.
Another change was that Molly and I weren’t close any more. We just had nothing to talk about, nothing we could do together. All we knew about each other was out of the scope of the conversations we were supposed to have. So we just remained silent and gradually estranged.
One sunny day, Molly entered my bedroom and stared into my eyes. We just stood there looking at each other, craving for a moment for that broken connection of brightness that once kept us together. We were waiting, but nothing happened. No colors, no dancing flowers or golden showers of sunshine. Just a white pane surrounded by a black frame and a simple gray bed in the corner of a whitish room. Suddenly Molly’s gray eyes filled with tears and she dashed out. As the door slammed shut behind her, I knew my guiding star to the world of happiness was gone forever.
* * *
It was a beautiful warm day in the middle of June. The sun was smiling from the illimitable sky. And Molly looked more exquisite than ever. Only ten years old, she was already a beautiful, head-turning lady, as she entered the prom organized by the Queen of flowers and fairies. Everyone was exceptionally well-dressed that day. Millions of colors were mingling in the fresh morning air of the palace gardens. They were dancing to the sounds of the wind which playfully ran among the numerous flowery couples. As Molly entered, however, everything became quiet. The Queen fairy flew to Molly’s shoulder to inform her of a few organizational details. Everyone straightened up in anticipation.
Or so I imagined as I stood blindfolded by the fence.
At some point Molly approached me and inserted her soft hand into mine. I knew she was smiling and I was dying to see the prom she had organized for my fifteenth birthday. She was going to take me somewhere. “Some place special” she had solemnly declared and the familiar enigmatic smile had lit her charming face. She always smiled like that, as if she knew something beyond the limits of the possible human knowledge. And she really did, I believed.
A few steps. The brightness of her smiling eyes was penetrating through the cloth, as we were submerging into the ocean of flowers under her careful supervision.
“We have arrived” Molly gloriously announced. She rose up on her tiptoes and reached up to loosen the cloth.
“Happy Birthday, dear Karen” came floating to my ears as the piece of silk fabric slid down my face releasing my eyes.
“Oh my God!” I couldn’t believe my eyes.
Molly hungrily absorbed the impressive view before us, smiling proudly. The tears flowing from my eyes wetted her face as she warmly embraced me.
“And now, my Princess,” Molly bowed courteously, “let’s dance!” A playful smile emerged on her royal face. And she ran deep into the garden fluttering around to the sound of the wind.The parting kiss was still burning on my face, as I was watching the colorful triumphant figure, dancing among the colorful flowers of the black-and-white world.