The Crimson Crescendo
A medley of sounds and colours
Wednesdays are orange.
This Wednesday was no different as I woke up to the sound of my alarm and my family bustling. Like most students my age, I grudgingly dragged myself through my morning routine and went to the kitchen to answer the enticing call of coffee. After a quick breakfast and the usual goodbye to my parents, I left home.
The morning was serene — the cooing of birds and a light breeze accompanied me on my walk to the bus stop. I was soon aboard the bus and next to my friends, their voices flowing over the honking cars and rumbling vehicles passing by.
An hour later, we were greeted by the white walls of our school and before long, we were walking to our classes, strolling through the dulcet tones of laughter and friendship that filled the corridors.
He walked across the bustling corridors, his ratty shoes dragging across the squeaky white tiles. He was just a shadow grazing past the personalized lockers that lined the school walls. His locker, numbered 32, had recently been given a new addition — a dent in the shape of his head and a few specks of blood to add character.
It was only the metallic weight that now safely sat cocooned in his bag that gave him a reason to hold his head high.
If confusion were to be coloured, it would be the tints that painted the numbers in the Mathematics class. Unsurprisingly, I still couldn’t manage to find the x at the end of my rainbow of confusion.
The only respite from all the chaos was that I got to listen to my crush explain the solution to the problem. Watching him stand in front of the class, glancing at us with his kind black eyes and wild hair, making sense of the riot of colours on the board with a sort of infectious zeal…it cheered me right up.
It was only at the end of the class that the orange day turned sour.
School had always been a place for learning. One of the first lessons he was taught was “freak”, spelled out in the blood running from his nose and observed by the black eye that throbbed above his broken cheekbone. The next was “creep”.
But today, none of that mattered. He would be the one teaching.
A distant, muffled bang cut across the classroom. Incomprehension clouded over most of my classmate’s thoughts. The crimson that rippled across my vision drenched me in a cold sweat — this was the crimson that filled most of my family outings to the gun range.
Memories of the grey flooring of the firing lanes rushed through my head. My mother suggested the next outing be to the beach instead. I remembered the orange juice I sipped as I watched through the glass screen of the control booth. The crimson that hung in the air as my dad cocked the rifle and shot the target in the sixth lane. The same crimson that branded itself into my brain as a string of bullets pierced through its head.
The weight of the second bang cut across the whispers that filled the classroom. The blood-red spots broke me out of my panic, pushing me out of my chair and towards my teacher. “It’s a gunshot, ma’am,” I heard a distant voice say. My voice, pale-yellow lines quivering under the hold of disbelief.
The incredulous smile on her face had me break into anxious ramblings about my condition that caused every sound I heard to be associated with a unique colour, acting as guides to identify long-forgotten sounds. Each word about my childhood visits to the gun range struggled past the tightness in my throat, finally spiraling to a stop with a half sobbed-out plea for her to believe me.
Maybe it was the desperation that seeped through the cracks in my voice, but Mrs Verma,with her gentle mahogany voice — now laced with a metallic undertone — made us push her table against the door, jam the door handle with a stack of books and instructed us to stay hidden along the inner walls of the classroom.
I crouched down, trying to keep as quiet as possible amongst my classmates, our shaky breaths writhing across the air in streaks of olive.
He had always loved art class, the black lines shining starkly against pale cream, the greens bruising into brown. His favourite, however, had always been the bright reds that you could splatter against the white canvas.
The cold eye of the rifle stared down yet another pale face and greeted the screams and pleas with a loud bang, painting the tiles red. It was not very hard to pull the trigger: to draw in the same lifelessness that had accompanied his mother’s last breath, the same lifelessness that stared back at him every time he looked in a mirror.
A fragile silence fell upon us, only to be ripped apart by a shrill scream. Our breaths stuttered in unison, exhaling in forced calm to prevent a single sound from escaping.
Slimy dread choked me as ebony clouded my vision. Helpless cries from the corridor resounded across the clammy room in splatters of indigo and crimson. Each inhale was a reminder of borrowed time, of hunter-green footsteps creeping in closer, of gunshots that suddenly sounded deafening.
The grayish, stunted sounds of the door handle startled us. Someone was trying to push it down. Our hearts jumped to our throat and tears slipped down as the dense weight of helplessness pressed down against our lungs. Forgotten breaths folded themselves in silent prayers as we hoped that the shooter would move away from our class.
I couldn’t tolerate the colours that shrouded my nightmare and screwed my eyes shut. I waited, hoping desperately that we would all make it through this, make it out alive. There was a rough kick against the door and then, the sound of receding footsteps. The silence left behind gifted us with renewed hope and we breathed once again, waiting to be rescued.
Suddenly, the golden sirens of the police filled the air. The crack of gunshots whipped past us and footsteps hurried towards the cries of the victims.
He had covered the entire floor, kicking at a few of the locked doors. The screams of his schoolmates avenged the ones that he had cried out against the hands of his bullies. He didn’t resist the handcuffs that clamped down on his wrists. He had already coloured the corridors and the walls. He had taught them his lesson.
How colourful the monotony of daily life, our joys and our tragedies are.
After what seemed like hours, there was a knock on our classroom door, and a voice coated in brown spoke, “It’s okay, the shooter has been caught. You all are safe to come out now.”
The pink sighs of relief settled over the despair that lingered in the air, and one by one, we moved out from our corner of safety, with equal parts disbelief and elation.
Walking into the school courtyard, I searched for my friends and found them standing together, looking weary — their generally bright tones overshadowed by tears of grief. We stood together before the white walls of our high school, now a host to empty corridors and crimson-splattered classrooms.
I wonder if the boy who was responsible for the bodies that lay lifeless spoke in shades of blue or sang in magenta; I wonder if I had seen them before.
I wonder if bullies had forced the boy to bottle his voice, or if it was the violence that kept him company in the night.
I wonder why he had felt the need to scream in crimson and tear down our innocence.
All of us were glad to have survived this ordeal that threatened to paint our last breaths. But it could not ease the trembling lines of opal that bore witness to our trauma.
I stood there overwhelmed, taking in the world around me — the lime green of the cooing birds, the grey fog of the truck passing by, the azure of the gentle wind.
Synesthesia had unlocked the myriad hues of my days. The colours of my childhood, though faded with neglect and time, had saved me. They had reminded me to truly see the beauty of the tapestry that lay before me.
How colourful the monotony of daily life, our joys and our tragedies are.
This story was written in collaboration with Ashwin Shekhar.
