03. The White Woman

Okay, so I didn’t die; at least not permanently.

Greg Corcoran

I may have been dead a few minutes.

Maybe I still am.

Let’s say the jury’s still out on the whole thing.

My first thought when I woke was that I’d gone to Heaven. Pale light came through the cupboard lattice and I heard divine singing. It was a fair deduction. But the white stuff around me crunched and — focusing — I realized what it was.

Snow — honest to God snow, packed right there around my legs and chest. It was turning pink with blood. My breath came out in mist and through the lattice I saw the whole apartment iced over. The carcasses were frozen and the furniture powdered.

There was a woman by the easel. I would have missed her outline if not for the glint of a diamond necklace. She was silver-haired and slender, with white robes and furs around her neck. I imagined she was the same age as my mum, but a lot scarier — the kind of face my teachers had when I was late for class. With a snarl she ripped apart my uncle’s canvas frame. I’d imagined the easel was a sturdy thing, but this woman went through it like butter. Either Stern had a girlfriend who was torn up about him leaving, or I had one pissed off angel on my hands.

She saw my breath mist. Her face snapped towards the cupboard: high cheekbones with gaunt flesh beneath, narrow nose, skin pale as alabaster. So much about her was whiteness that the other colours (the flesh-toned lips and coal black eyes) seemed strange. She extended one hand and the air plunged even colder. The wood iced over, and when the White Woman twisted her hand the whole thing cracked apart. Slumped in my death pose, I had nowhere to fall but face-first in the snow.

Ever been shot in the chest then fallen chest-first on the floor? Yeah, it’s not recommended. But I forgot the agony when the apartment shook. Her shout was like an avalanche.

A roar answered. Not from me, but something to my right. I rolled my face and saw the woman’s companion in the kitchen. It had been nuzzling pots and pans and pawing at the cabinets, but when the woman shouted I got its full attention.

And if I had any shit left to shit, I would have shitted it right then.
Seriously — this was the last thing any human wants to see when lying in a bed of snow.

Coughing blood, I scrambled across the lounge and spilled straight through the front door. Sure, there was a bullet in me, but the thing giving chase would make corpses do the long-jump. I kicked the door shut while only halfway through. The wood closed between us then bucked as the bear slammed it. The force sent me tumbling down the stone steps to the street below.

Ever been shot in the chest then fallen down a flight of stairs while being chased by a polar bear? Perverts make movies about this kind of torture. It was the third most painful experience of this whole damn story, and right then I wished for death. I didn’t care what came after — hellfire, judgment or oblivion — I wanted it to end. It was horrible.

One thing that wasn’t horrible, though, was the singing.

Even as my vision swirled and my chest burned; even as I felt the Venetian cobbles and the ache of broken bones, there was still that melody from before. It was beautiful. I knew it even in my suffering. The song was a deep-tone ballad with hip hop staccato, like something out of New Orleans washed up on the shores of punk-rock Britain. It was cool, without doubt, and delivered with gusto.

And between each verse came the pop of bubble gum.

Sprawled in the street, dying a second time, I saw a girl leant on the wall across the street. She had her earphones in and her eyes closed. She hadn’t heard me fall. And in not seeing me I saw her all the better. Her hair was the colour of pink champagne and arranged in a wild pixie cut. A fringed cardigan, like something a hippie would wear, covered a pastel tank top, white hotpants and magenta, leather boots as high as her knees.

She had it going on.

I swallowed a tooth and the convulsion alerted her. The girl opened rose-coloured eyes. The singing stopped. One earphone came out and a smile — a straight-up smile — lit her face.

It was a British accent. She dropped the ‘h’ when she added

Something crashed above. The door had shattered and the beast was coming through. I saw its snout and misting breath, its front paws swiping at wood fragments. It was too big to fit through the doorway and it struggled, a growling, salivating nightmare.

“The name’s Rosa. What’s yours?”

I couldn’t believe it. The sexy girl was talking to me. Did she not see the fucking polar bear about to rip me a new asshole? I tried to move but something seized me. Or rather, my clothes seized themselves. A few days ago I had removed my t-shirt to mop up my vomit, (don’t ask me why). It hadn’t really helped — just given me a vomit-soaked t-shirt to share the cupboard with. And Stern had taken my jeans away on the seventh day to get at the good blood in my thighs. All I’d been left with was this pair of white boxer shorts that were now, at this very moment, shrinking.

“Don’t struggle!” Half-hearted advice from Rosa. Why wasn’t this girl helping me? Didn’t she see this? I flailed as I was dragged violently up the stairs by my boxer shorts, which had constricted to give the mother of all wedgies. My head clonked on each slab. And while the animal in the doorway had retreated it left a hole for me to slide right through. So over the splintered breach I was sucked back into my uncle’s apartment and planted in the snow.

The White Woman stood over me.

Her right hand was pure as if dipped in paint. In it was an icicle aimed for my heart. I was glad. This was all too much. I wanted it to end.

But the next inexplicable thing occurred. A flurry of rose petals came between us and the air warmed, if only by a fraction. I saw another woman between me and the white one. She crouched to touch my head, to stroke my hair. “Come on, mum. Don’t kill the poor sod yet. He might know something.”
She dropped the ‘g’. It was the girl from the street. She smelled of strawberries, which swallowed whole the stink of my uncle’s lair.

“You didn’t tell me your name,” Rosa said.
My mouth was dry and snow-packed. I answered with a gravelly voice. “He fired.”
“Oh bugger, mum, he’s been shot.” Sadness creased her face. “Who’d do such a thing?”

“Irrelevant.”
“Maybe you and Akeani could take the bullet out.”
“Very funny.”

(Don’t worry about that joke. It’ll make sense later.)

“Out of the way, child.” The White Woman’s voice was everything the Pink Girl’s wasn’t. She pushed past Rosa and gripped my hair. “Where is the Painter? Tell me now and the suffering will end.”

Fuck, I wish I could have told her something. My response was to scream a little more, but she found this insufficient. There was a static buzz and suddenly she was holding something again: a bleached, skinless human thigh bone. She lifted the club and was about to bash my skull in when the Pink Girl intervened again.

“Why don’t I deal with him while you snoop around?” Rosa made the proposal excitedly. “The Painter can’t have legged it too far.”
I looked between the savage woman and her smiling daughter. It was like staring down the barrel of the gun again. My blood leaked through the snow as they hesitated.

“Very well,” the White Woman said at last. She stood with a pale finger held to her daughter.

“Find out everything he knows. Torture him.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Rosa waved her mother off then rolled me gently on my back. The White Woman glared a little more then, suddenly, was gone. A whirl of snow gusted across the apartment and through the door, howling into the streets below.

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Colour Blind, a novel by Greg Corcoran, is a story about colours and their abuses.

Leon is left for dead by his uncle, an insane artist in the medium of bodily fluids. But when the boy is found by Khromas, creatures of living colour, his adventures begin. With Rosa the Pink and Ivorene the White, and the monstrous Aldak by his side, Leon embarks upon a chase to the ends of the earth and the borders of consciousness.