Deep in Red Water
2/1, 5-minute write, prompt: "Deep in red water". Taken as a title, rather than a first line.
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The world glows orange, and it’s beautiful. It’s hazy and slow as it moves, or you move, or both. You can’t tell which. But it’s beautiful.
The lights are hazy in the sky, behind the curtain, shining somehow all the way to your eyes from a handful of yards away. Their edges flicker and glimmer and wobble as they search and sweep.
The voices are hazy in the air that’s not air, rippling around you, through you, past you. Someone lets out a low scream, rough and smoothened, and it’s the most beautiful sound you’ve ever heard.
The lights are a little less hazy now, a little clearer around you. The world glows orange.
Clamping down on the back of your neck, something yanks, and yanks. It’s funny to you that a yank could last this long, and you let the laugh slip from your lips as the world rolls around you.
Suddenly it is sharp. What is?
Everything.
You hang in the air, watching the people sob as they see you and the six burned holes eaten through a shirt that might have once been white, dripping water and something more.