Red - My First #FlashFiction

My job is simple. Make poeple happy. Many others like me, my friends, rest in waiting to fulfill our lives work. Some are green like the fresh leaves of spring, reminding people of the happy times they spend with friends and family. But also green like envy, jealousy, what we feel when another goes instead of us. We don't choose, we are chosen.

Others are blue, like the sky on a clear sunny day, with fresh air filling your lungs and putting smiles on everyone's face. Everybody smiles when it's a blue-sky sunny day. But also blue like the sadness and despair of a lost loved one that nobody can bring back. Nobody can ever bring us back once we are chosen. It is our destiny.

Still more are orange, yellow, purple, like a rainbow after a cool rain shining in the sky, shouting out to the world "We are glorious!" or an oil slick gliding down a driveway and into the gutter.

Some are white, and they are my closest friends, like the clouds that drift in the sky, always admired, or new fallen snow, untouched, unmarred by footsteps or car exhaust. But white is cold, like ice, frozen in a wasteland. Like the ash that drifts from the sky around a volcano, choking all that breath it. Like the dried decayed bones of the long dead.

No, I am none of those colors. I am warmth, comfort, passion, the color of love, of rage, the color of fire and beauty, admired most of all, first seen always. Like an apple gleaming in the sun, ripe and waiting to be picked, I long for my turn, long to be chosen. To make my way out into the world and fulfill my purpose. I am red. Like the blood that brings life, like the setting sun that holds all in awe for my many shades of brilliance.

When my day comes, when the fateful sound of the chute echos through our waiting chamber, and I am chosen to slide down the spiral slide, I will go. Unquestioning and without hesitation I will emerge into the waiting hand of some lucky person who will exclaim "I got a red one!". And it doesn't matter if I am simply chewed up and spat out, the joy I will feel to become part of somebodys life, to bring happyness as they chew, blow bubbles, pop them and chew again will satisfy me. Bring me peace. And as I sit on the sidewalk baking in the sun, and my color is gone, faded, bleached away, I will know that I did good.

Because I was red.