Beyond the Colors

I jolted, real scared.

“Um…” My best friend stared at me, eyes wide. “I-I don’t know. Let’s go!”

He grabbed my arm, and we ran out of the abandoned, broken-down shack-like barn, escaping into the cornfield. It was Halloween, so I shivered, not just from the cold wind piercing my skin. I had a simple jacket on, but my best friend was freezing. “Hey—let’s go home.” I lead him to my house, where we built a crackling fire, roasting marsh mellows and then squishing them between two graham crackers and squares of Hershey’s chocolate before stuffing them in our faces like we’ve been doing every fall since we were toddlers.

We discussed the thing that I had seen out of the corner of my eye. It was really weird-looking—like a black cat or something. It didn’t even have a body. It just…was. I shivered, despite the roaring fire behind me. I moved closer to it. My best friend, on his second S’more, suggested I grab a flashlight next time we head out to the Field of Screams. Maybe next year, we’ll be ready.

“Yeah, and I’m the princess who needs to kiss this thing to make it come alive!”

We laughed.

“I’m serious!”

I shook my head when my best friend squished two golden-brown marsh mellows between three squares of chocolate and two graham crackers. I looked at the fire. I wished I could absorb it, like those people in cartoons who have the power to manipulate fire. Who have the power to control it, like they own such a beautiful element. It’d be cool to eliminate anything scary in this world with fire. Watch it burn and die before you.

“Um…Thor?”

“Yes?” He turned. “Yeah?”

“Um…what do you mean, burn and die before you?”

Thor jumped. He stared at me, his best friend able to read minds! Thor squinted. “Are you feeling okay?”

“No—you were just looking at the fire, thinking you’d like to suck up that fire and spit it right at evil. Eradicate it from this earth, like it never happened—”

He scrambled up, backing away. “Electra, you’re really weirding me out. I just don’t know what you mean…” Then he widened his eyes. “You can read my mind?” Thor wrung his hands, panicking, his voice going up a few notches. “You—you’re scaring me, okay? All this time I’ve known you, you’ve just been really weird. I-I don’t know…” He dashed to the broom closet, where he grabbed a dustpan and broom and even hand vacuum, defending himself. “Come any closer, and I’ll suck you right in!”

I laughed. “I just read minds. I’m not that dangerous. Really—that’s my only power. What powers do you have?”

I didn’t answer. I just turned to the fire. I think it deserves to steam more marsh mellows.

Thor put everything away, I heard, and came around to the fire. He grabbed some marsh mellows, I could tell, and said, me looking over with half-closed eyes, “So here you go!”

I smiled smugly. “Yes. Thank you.” Taking them, I jammed them on my plastic wire stick and watched as the poor things got toasted. Putting them on top of a graham cracker only to squish them under the weight of chocolate and another graham cracker, I devoured the whole thing. Just like that.

At school the following Monday, I texted Thor, telling him not to read anyone’s mind today. He sent a shrug emoji. I said in all caps that he should not do so! He told me that I wasn’t his mother, and didn’t text me all the way home on the bus, just looking out the window. When I did the same thing, I stared at something under a small bridge over a pond the bus passed by every weekday. It stared back, its golden and black eyes boring into my grey ones. I jerked away in a cold sweat.

“Dude—you okay?” Thor gave me an annoyed look. “What’s up? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“No—worse!” I told him of the thing I saw out of the corner of my eye. “It’s back.”

His eyes went huge. “Oh my gosh. We need to, like, move to another planet!” When the bus came to a screeching halt—the bus driver lamenting the brakes’ poor performance—we dashed out of there like a dog escaping the bathtub post-bath. Heading inside, Thor yelled to his parents while whipping off his backpack and I shutting the door and locking it, forbidding Shoes the Chocolate Lab mix from exiting. He barked, but I yelled.

“Hey, hey!”

Mr. Thompson entered the hallway, asking what was going on. He called the dog, and sat on the stairs, scratching his ears. I told him there was this thing that had black and golden eyes, and that it was following us. He looked at me, furrowed his eyebrows and shrugged. “You’re dreaming, Electra. Go do your homework with Thor. You’re smart. Get smarter!” He got up from the stairs, and Shoes followed him into his office. He closed the door.

I wanted to sit with Shoes, bury my face in his fur. Part Golden Retriever, he’d be my comfort buddy. But he was lying on his pillow, Mr. Thompson sitting in his big swivel chair, his feet up on the desk, phone to his ear. I ran into the kitchen after Thor told me to help him make his favorite after-school snack: Chex Mix mix. His hands were too sticky to get the pantry door open, so I told him of my power to see through things. I had X-ray vision, I said, like Superman!

Thor wasn’t surprised. “Oh.” Was all he said. I retrieved the big plastic container of Cheese Doodles, and added it to the already sky-high pile of marsh mellows, pretzels, Oreos, Cheese-Its and gummy worms. Once we dumped all this into a huge bowl, we ran upstairs, Thor’s arms wrapped around that thing like his life depended on it. I closed his door, and Thor set it on the carpeted floor, me wondering aloud about his indifference.

“What are you talking about? Thor, you should be excited! Your best friend announced you’re the second person to have a power.”

“I don’t have a power. I have powers!”

He sounded annoyed. Suddenly, I realized I wasn’t talking to my best friend. Thor morphed into something with black and golden eyes. I screamed, fleeing, but before I could get to the front door, I found myself in Thor’s room again, him sitting at his desk, a notebook and textbook open. He seemed to be studying. I slowly went up to him.

“Thor?”

I shook his shoulder. He looked up at me. “Hey! You want to study—for once?”

I backed away. Was this reality? I felt the bed. The comforter felt real. I went over to the door—its knob felt real. The door was wooden. I took off my sweater. “Man, it’s hot in here! You want to turn down the thermostat?”

“On the wall in the hallway.”

After doing so, I asked Thor whether he was real. He got up and looked at me, squinting his eyes. “What? Of course I’m real! What’re you’re talking about?”

“Look, I had this dream, or something, that we were going home from school. You turned into this thing with black and golden eyes. Then I screamed. Before I could get outside, I found myself here. Now I’m in your room…” I shivered, hugging myself. “And you’re here—”

“Dude, you’re imagining things. I think those Lucky Charms get to your head.” He turned around, returning to his homework. I told him it was real, but he ignored me. I wanted to smack him. I was telling the truth! I went downstairs, telling Mr. Thompson the whole thing. Shoes barked, but he remained on his pillow. He was told to be quiet. Mr. Thompson smiled a little. “Electra, things you think are real are just in your head. I don’t know what’s overcome you!”

“I know I saw Thor—”

He waved his hand. “No. You were imagining things. Go do your homework.”

“Yes, sir.” I muttered darkly, leaving his office. Closing the door behind me, I wished I could curl up with Shoes beside me. He’d understand. Part Golden Retriever, he’d listen. I’d hug him, thanking him for hearing me. He’d just lick my face and then trot away, probably to go find some food in his bowl or something.

I grabbed my backpack from the stairs and trudged upstairs. Dropping it on the carpeted floor after taking out one of my textbooks and notepads, I flopped onto Thor’s bed, opening the textbook to one of the assigned reading pages. I read in silence for half an hour, took some notes, used Thor’s desk highlighter to glean some fresh insight into the stuff I was reading and then slammed the book shut, glad I was done with something I didn’t care about. I scribbled a small essay about the Revolutionary War— how General George Washington’s hope to win the war obviously played a big part in the ability to do so—and slapped the book shut. Putting the books into my backpack, I told Thor I was done with my homework—

“No, you’re not. You just rush right through it!” He told me without even looking up.

“And you act like you’re supposed to read the whole textbook done by tomorrow!

“Look, just because we’re the opposite of each other—you studying until midnight, me playing Mario Kart and Zoo Tycoon until midnight—doesn’t mean you can ignore me! We’ve been best friends forever. I don’t see why we have to understand all that crap. See—” I took his textbook of a million pages, and picked it up, grunting.

“Stop pretending like it’s a million pounds. Just get the work done!”

“Why I even bother going to school—”

“You know what, Electra. I care, okay?” He actually glared at me. “I’m going to get into a great college. I know we’re one year away from starting high school, but I already applied to Oxford, Yale and some universities here in America. I don’t know what it takes for you to stop being so selfish and actually look around you. Stop fighting everything!”

He flopped back down, returning to his work. I looked at him. I knew he was right. As time went on, I noticed he always raised his hand at the proper times, excelled in almost every class and even made it on the track and soccer teams, eventually becoming captain in our last year. I would just purse my lips, driving away from the celebrations of Thor’s won game. I decided I’d look into some colleges and send in an essay, and then be done with it all.

One morning, I noticed a huge, Medieval-looking dusty book on my bedroom nightstand. I tried picking it up, but it was extremely heavy. It was so heavy I sweated a little. Maybe…it’s made of lead or something? Or metal? I went downstairs, but my parents’ study office doors were closed. Still, I saw them, though, talking. They were in a meeting, because they were both on their phones. I blinked. Wow—I could see right through solid objects!

I told Thor that day at school, and he stared at me. “Really?”

“I’ll prove it!”

He unlocked his locker, opened it and told me to stand on the other side. “I’m making a funny face. What kind?”

I laughed and told him.

“Whoa.”

Halloween night, we went through the Field of Screams (which really wasn’t that scary), and then went to Thor’s house. Snacking on S’mores, I looked at the fire. Thoughts of graduation in the spring, possible college and then our wedding went through my head. He asked whether I wanted another S’more.

“You’re on your third one!”

His fingers were all goopy with sticky whiteness. “Want mo’?”

I told him I found a huge Medieval-looking book on my nightstand this morning. He furrowed his brows.

“That’s maybe even weirder than your consideration about college and our wedding!”

I stared at him. He read my mind! After putting the S’mores away, we went to my house down the street. Shoes had wanted to come, and Mr. Thompson let him go. He trotted beside us.

In my room, I whipped the cover off.

“‘If you stop the curse, you stop me’.” Thor scratched his head. “What does that mean?”

I shrugged. “You’re the straight-A student!”

Thor gave me a look.

“Fine!”

So we go into this Medieval world, where maidens tell of a thing with black and golden eyes. I say I saw it out of the corner of my eye and then Thor here morphed into it. Maidens say it is an evil goddess disguised as a black cat. Thor and I have to stop this cat-goddess being by bringing it back to the Egyptian world before it destroys all of life in this book, other books and reality. I look at Thor. “How are we going to convince a cat-goddess woman to go back where she came from? This is the Medieval times. Shouldn’t we look for a book that’ll send us to the Egyptian times when they worshipped gods?”

“She’s come from her home, the Egyptian books, to destroy ours.”

We looked around. Mountains of destroyed cathedrals, taverns and universities, burnt-down homes and forests, wooden carts and wheels smashed to smithereens, poverty-stricken men and women wailing miserably as they sat among the ruins, hopelessness cloaking their gritty appearance. I teared up, telling Thor we needed to do something about this atrocity.

“The goddess will ultimately destroy you two if you succumb to power, like these people have. They’re destitute because they have allowed her to suck them dry of all they knew, plus what they thought power would give them. Don’t give in—resist the crowns and thrones!”

Thor and I looked at each other. Thrones and crowns? We were intrigued.

“Where?”

“In another room. But don’t go in there—that’s where her power ultimately lies in this world. Don’t succumb to its seductive ability to turn you into your own worst enemy! If you defeat her, those crowns and thrones will become usable. But, for now, they’re deadly. Resist them!”

“We’ll do it!” We said simultaneously. Thor was shaking, and I was searching for the exit. The maidens said that should we escape, the goddess will wipe reality out. I didn’t want to be told I needed to be brave, because I already was—I just didn’t want to face such a stupid character. So I went on a little tour. This medieval world consists of blood-red robes, pure-white crowns, scarlet crowns and solid black ones. I looked at the crowns, but Thor pulled me away. But I wrenched my arm out of his grasp. He was too weak to distract me! I went right up to those crowns, studying them each. There they were each on a royal pillow, in all their beauty. The solid black one caught my eye. I went over to it, reached out, taking it. “Electra, that’s not yours! We have to go, because the goddess—”

I put the crown on my head. Seeing a mirror, I went right over to it. I smiled. Then I sat down on one of the jade green thrones, and a goblet holding water colder than ice satisfied my parched throat. Suddenly, someone grabbed the cup and tossed it.

“The maidens told me the goddess manipulates whoever puts a crown on his or her head and claims a throne. You’ve become her servant now!”

Now, reader, each color represents a certain monarchy’s fatal flaw. Little do Electra and Thor know that past or present, each monarchy succumbed to their own fate. The colors of each king and queen’s robes, throne and crown represent which flaw they succumbed to—jade being greed, scarlet being pride, aqua blue being selfishness, lava red representing anger, blood red representing hatred/murder and royal purple representing treachery and betrayal. Yellow represented cowardice—this color attracted both Thor and Electra. Sadly, Thor succumbs to the yellow throne that has a tinge of scarlet, aqua blue and royal purple, meaning he—a competitive workaholic who needs an A—will do anything to keep his throne, even going so far as to murder Electra should anyone dare even thinks of becoming the next king.

Thor rules through fear, reading people’s minds, going mad.

Electra’s black crown represents love of money. Her throne of avarice sits next to Thor’s throne of cowardice, and they will be destroyed by their own sins. Greed (and cowardice, selfishness, pride, anger, hatred/murder and treachery and betrayal) personifies as a servant, making Electra and Thor believe they’re in control. There’s no goddess to destroy, they lie. Electra and Thor turn on each other, him only feeding his own selfish purposes. The goddess escapes into reality, as well as other historical books made from a certain element familiar with that time period (the Renaissance is a book that looks like a painting, etc.). She destroys reality, much to the indifference of Electra and Thor.

Thor orders his servants to capture other books’ characters, and enslaves them to rebuild the Medieval book to his liking, while Electra’s personal servants steals other books’ gold. Electra and Thor don’t bat an eye at the suffering of the innocent. They do not overcome their sins. They slave under the goddess, thinking she’s going to ultimately reward them for their work.

Each time period seeks to help Electra and Thor, but they cannot let go of the crown. Electra and Thor’s stealing, lying and manipulating soon destroy them, the Medieval maidens despondent. They both die glad, thinking the next life provides riches unimaginable.

The end.