Over a year ago, as an exercise, I started writing one short story a week. This was something Harlan Ellison (I think) suggested to one of his fans, his reasoning being "You can't write 52 bad short stories in a row." I'm not sure about that, but here's one of those stories.
*
A blue-colored little girl Lena, who’s tall for a 10 year old, enters a rusty metal building with Bee-tou, a short stocky Blue who always wore a knitted cap even when it was hot. Their clothes are shabby, torn, and patched, in dark reds, browns, greens and blues. The structure is made of corrigated metal shaped like a half-cylinder on it's side. Lena thought it could have once stored farm equipment or maybe it was once a hanger for a prop plane. It had electricity, but not much. Enought to heat one small section, and to power dim lights here and there. Mostly, it stored boxes and was a place for the Blues to meet the Wise Man.
The Wise Man, looked at them as they approached the heated section he sat in. His eyes we impassionate, but he greeted them with a warm smile. This made Lena more nervous but Bee-tou smiled back.
“Please make yourself comfortable,” Wise Man said, pointing to a sofa and chair close to him with cushions. Wise Man gets some bottles out of a cooler. He gives one to Bee-tou, “Call me Woosa. You at the protector Bee-tou?”
Lena took the chair and Bee-tou takes the sofa. Bee-tou nods. “Thank you.”
As he gave Lena a bottle he asked, “So you are Lena, the one with the bad dreams?”
Lena nods nervously and sets her bottle down.
Bee-tou drinks and says “She can be shy. That’s why I came with her.”
“Of course, you are her protector.”
“Not the only one. The others are outside.”
“Of course” Woosa says and smirks at the door.
“She calls them visions, not dreams,” Bee-tou says with a corrective tone.
“Do they scare you?” Wise Man asks Lena. She nods and looks away.
“Well, relax, you’re safe here. These dreams are normal. Your brain processes the stress and strain of everyday life. It’s not natural for our kind to live like this, is it? Scrounging for food, fuel, electricity. Keeping eyes peeled for Reds. We go into survival mode. Therefore, when you sleep, your dreams carry these scary, stressful images. Nothing to worry about. Would you like to talk about them?”
Lena shakes her head.
“I understand. Has she told you about them?” Wise asks Bee-tou.
“A little. They involve Red attacks,” Bee-tou.
“Exactly my point. When was the last time we fought the Reds?”
“Months ago,” Bee-tou says.
“Was Lena scared?”
“Oh, yes.”
“It’s quite possible the Reds now want peace. We don’t know. But, in any case, that explains it. Lena was scared in the Red attack and her subcounscious processes that fear as dreaming these scary visions during her sleep. Basic psychology, right?” Woosa smiles and nods to them both. Woosa gets a small pill bottle and hands it to Lena. “Take these for a few nights. They will help you sleep.”
Lena takes the bottle.
“Thank you,” Bee-tou says. He looks to Lena. “Ready?”
Lena nods and gets up. “Thank you,” she says shyly.
“Absolutely my pleasure,” Woosa says with a smile, watching them walk out. As they shut the door he turns Red and his smile vanishes.
*
Lena and Bee-tou walk a path between crumbling buildings and junk. large and small. Abandoned relics, tossed aside by the Elders just as they did with their children. They look around then, seeing no one, enter the rear door of a rusty car parked too close to a long crumbling brick building. Lena goes in first, and slides over the vinyl seats, then Bee-tou. He shuts the door behind them. It's quiet and, because the windows are tinted, darker. Then they open the door on the other side, which doubles as a hatch into the building. They are greeted by another stocky Blue, who nods and helps Lena step out into the building. It’s clean and on the other side, there’s a well-lit space with lots of little Blue girls paired with their stocky Blue protectors, all dressed in the same drab colors.
As Lena and Bee-tou approach them, one Blue girl asks “How did it go?”
“He said not to worry,” Bee-tou says.
“He gave me these,” Lena says, handing the bottle to the smallest Blue girl. Deesha. Deesha tries to open it but can’t. She looks to her protector, Gee-doo, who takes it, opens it and hands it back to her. Deesha sniffs it, shakes her head at Lena, then tosses the bottle in the trash.
They all look to Lena with an unspoken question. Lena looks at each one of the little Blue girls then says, “I know what I saw, call it a dream or a vision, whatever you want. We need to be on alert.” Each of the Blue protectors looks at their girl with concern.
“I’m going to make a food run. We sleep here tonight and move at first light,” Bee-tou says.
*
That night, they are all sleeping soundly, even Lena and, not far away, Bee-tou.
Lena’s head jerks and her eyes open. She gets up, the sound waking Bee-tou, who watches her carefully. Lena quietly tip-toes to each of the little Blue girls, touching each one on the shoulder. They wake when touched, look at Lena, and nod.
Bee-tou coughs. All the Blue protectors’ eyes open at the sound. They look to Bee-tou, then to Lena. Bee-tou points to the exit, a hole in the wall leading to a car door. They all quietly head to the exit.
*
Outside, it's dark, the way lit by the flashlights held by the protectors. They walk in single file along a path between junk and abandoned buildings. Lena turns to look behinds them. The sky, once dark blue, starts to turn red, like a strangely colored sunrise.
“We need to run,” Lena says.
They run reaching a large parking lot, where they spread out and run as fast as their small legs can go. The Protectors stay between the girls and the Reds in the sky behind them. Once in a while, a couple of stray Blues boys come out of the shadows to join them running. They fall behind, whether
by intention of lack of speed.
The Reds are visible in the distance behind them. The closest Red, flying at the height of a small building, throws a red translucent small cloud at a Blue stray. He collapses in the parking lot, dies and turns Red. The Protectors see this and re-organize to keeps themselves between the Reds and the little blue girl they are in charge of.
Bee-tou yells at little Lena, “Hurry.” They speed up as fast as they can. Another Blue stray dies in a red cloud. Bee-tou yells at even louder, “Hurry.” Three Blue strays die in red clouds.
As far as the eye can see, there are Reds flying towards them, a rag-tag bunch of scared little Blue kids.
Now Bee-tou is loudly yelling ‘Hurry”, so loud Lena starts to cry. The little blue girls look to Lena, reaching out to her, all the girls touching Lena.
Lena stops running and, sobbing, she drops to one knee. She raises her head to the sky and screams a long high-pitched scream. The girls hold each other tighter. The Blue Protectors surround all the girls, facing outward towards the approaching Reds.
As the Reds, en mass, descend for their final attack, a translucent blue cloud condenses and grows around the girls, spreading to the Blue Protectors. They look at each other mystified and Lena's scream continues impossibly long and loud. The cloud condenses and grows and expands wider and wider.
The Reds throw red clouds at it, which simply dissolve into mist and fade away. Each little girl starts to scream, joining in the terrible scream coming from Lena. As each one starts to scream, the blue cloud grows. Finally, Deesha too screams and the blue cloud explodes to infinity. As the edge of the massive blue cloud passes through each Red, they turn Blue and drop from the sky to the ground.
For what seems like hours, the sky rains Reds, who drop to the ground and turn into a Blue adult. Asleep at first, one by one they wake and look around at their new world.
The little blue girls vomit when it’s over. Then they all collapse in exhaustion. Eventually, they get up eventually, leave their Protectors. They know they must search for their parents, who once abandoned them and became Red. Their parents are somewhere out there, among the fallen.
