Her head was shaven, but already shadows of stubble grew over her pale scalp. The grey clothes hanging off of her fit about as well as a box might have fit if arm and leg holes had been cut out of it. There were others who wore the same, and in the jumping, jeering crowd, these grey men, all bald, serenely surveyed the executions.
As with all dictates, it was unspoken that these, these select, should never be approached or addressed. To even look her in the eye, some feared, might bring reprisals uncountable. These ghosts were just that, a terrible thing everyone knows to be but will not see.
Blood was the only thing of color left in this new world, and the people loved red. It was easy, then, that no one should look her way. The executioner was a master of the crowd. He held a severed head aloft, and the hordes booed as he questioned the silent man. She pushed her way through the bleachers.
No one resisted her touch, but all alive with fear parted instantly for her. The rumbling aluminum shook under her feet as she walked down the stairs toward the arena, but no one saw her. It was too loud, too raucous, that she should be heard, and so the one thing she could do she did.
She leapt from the balcony. It was not a far jump, though her knees shook a little as she stood, her shins full of sharp pain. The crowds fought furiously not to see: It was treason to look at her; it was treason to look away from the execution, from the blood. In her grey vestments, her colorless clothes, she walked into the red, the flowing, butcher’s red.
She would be seen, and she would be heard.
Tale Told 