Red

The grass was soft beneath Red’s feet. The sun blurred the edges of the landscape with a yellow tint, like an overexposed photograph. The first berry she picked was plump and bursting; if she squeezed just a little, it would explode into her hands and stain them purple. The second was too, and the one after that, and soon her woven basket was brimming with delicious berries. Beads of sweat lined her brow but her muscles weren’t sore in the slightest. Red tracked the sun with her eyes, and finding that it hadn’t even crossed noon, laid herself in the middle of the clearing and stared up at the sun. Nanny, had told her not to, but Red found a minute pleasure in doing things she wasn’t supposed to, so she let the black spot surrounding the light grow, and once her eyes burned from the strain, closed them so she could observe the flickering vision behind her eyelids. 

* * * 

Lali opened her eyes. Her clothes stuck uncomfortably to her skin, and she realized that her blanket had been wrapped so tightly around her that she had sweat terribly the whole night. Peeling her disgusting body off the bed, she navigated carefully across the trashed room and stripped down. She felt an exhaustion set in despite sleeping for so long, one she felt made a home in her bones, and she couldn’t bring herself to shower in the mornings despite the clamminess surrounding her, so she just changed her clothes to escape the feeling. 

Begrudgingly, shivering, she trudged back to her bed, flipping her blanket over so the sweat would stay off her, and buried back into the still-warm area. She stared up at the harsh ceiling light. It was painfully white, and Lali let it pierce into her vision until a little dark spot appeared, then closed her eyes so she could observe the flickering vision behind her eyelids. 

* * * 

Red awoke with a start, and seeing the sun tilting down toward the horizon, realized she should really be getting back. Snatching up her basket, she skipped down to the river; on such a hot day, the breeze brushing over the water was much cooler around there. She skipped along, skipping and skipping until she was within eyeshot of her and Nanny’s cottage. 

Nanny was an older woman with wrinkles and dotted skin. She had a raspiness to her voice but was quite agile for her age, and Red loved her with all her heart. Her parents had

gone someplace a while back, but Red didn’t mind. Her days with Nanny consisted of picking berries in open fields and chasing butterflies. When she returned home with her yield, Nanny would always make her a delicious stew that Red couldn’t fathom came from those unassuming ingredients. 

She was about to start diverting her path from the river before a flicker of movement in her peripheral caught her eye. A cloud passed over the sun, and in the darker world, the shadowed trees obscured the lanky creature standing in the trees. A shiver crawled up her spine upon identifying the silhouette. She had long wispy hair that stuck out unflatteringly, draping down around her shoulders and covering her eyes. His front pieces were so long that they touched the start of her scarf, which blended into the scruffy fabric. 

“Look at her face. She’s old old. I could use the wrinkles in her face to count the trees in the forest,” she had said once, in a rattled whisper, when she was visible a few hundred meters away from the cottage window. “She’s like a wolf-woman.” 

“You mean a werewolf, love,” Nanny corrected, with nary a glance away from her knitting needles. She had never given much attention to her aside from indifferent responses to Red’s concerns, as if she was simply an eerie afterthought in their world. 

Such a theory may have been true with the way she now stood unmoving under the canopy. Red stalked carefully away from her, but the woman’s gaze followed. “She came back, Nanny. She was just lurking there, like a creep,” she complained, once back in the safety of her cottage. “I’ve heard her speak before, you know. It’s gibberish! Barking like a dog. Maybe she really is a wolf.” 

“Pay no mind to her, child,” Nanny reassured. Red sighed and buried her head in her crossed arms, before turning it towards the window. 

* * * 

The door flung open, violently ripping Lali out of her dreams. “Lali!” her dad started, with his unforgiving and accent-tainted voice. He looked around the room, clothes strewn across the floor, papers scattered next to pencils, and food crumbs inside wrappers begging for ants to take them home. 

Lali didn’t have to look up to read his disappointed expression, and she was used to being bombarded with his worries. “Getting up,” she muttered, and before he could start, “And I’ll clean my room later today.” His fist clenched on the doorway, and signaled the coming lecture with a heavy sigh.

“Lali, you cannot live like this. Like an animal! Sleeping until noon everyday with the lights on the whole night, napping through the week, letting your grades tank—” “I know, I know!” she snapped. She had heard it a thousand times. He let out a frustrated grunt. 

“Get mad at me if you want. But this is for you, Lali. You are doing this to yourself.” And with that, he left the room, leaving the door open as his steps thudded down the stairs. She hated the way he said her name. He repeated it in every clause, as if it was so deeply connected to her identity that tarnishing it was supposed to invoke guilt. It didn’t, Lali wanted to say. Even when her name was laden with compliments, it felt as if it were attached to a different being, a persona. What Lali wouldn’t give to have a normal name. Red was perfect. It meant the same thing anyway, and she could’ve escaped the stereotypes that had followed her for her entire life. 

“Your food kind of smells, Lali.” She spent the week begging for American food to take to school. When her parents didn’t listen, she stopped eating until they did. 

“If you managed your wild hair you would look much more put together.” She tied it up. Once she was older, she took to a straightener. 

“Your dad’s accent’s kind of funny.” She stopped being seen with him in public. He said it felt like she was embarrassed once, and she vehemently denied it. She later found it was easier to predict the comments and squash those issues before they ever reached her ears or tainted her image. 

It was another few minutes, each filled with the longing pull of dreams clashing with the ever-growing fear that her parents would come back and scold her further for rotting in bed, before she pulled herself up to her feet and made her way out of her room. 

Her mom took a seat next to her once she made it to the dining table. “Be soft with your father, beta; he’s going through a lot right now,” she said. “I understand it is hard. I know you lost her too. I know you have your studies, I know you have your own troubles. But be soft.” And instantly, the guilt she had stubbornly refused to accept due to her self-righteousness flooded over her. Her loving father, who had lost his mother just weeks prior; who she had practically yelled at in her sleep-induced haze. 

It was worse because Lali knew her mom’s sympathy was unjustified. In reality, Lali had barely been shaken by her Nani’s passing. She barely cried over it, and her biggest worry since the day she died was school. Lali knew she played it up because it was appropriate to be in mourning, but her grandmother had been unable to travel, halfway across the globe, and didn’t even speak English. It was embarrassing to try and speak her broken mother tongue, so she

never spoke and always gave one-word responses. Lali only pretended to care so she didn’t seem cold. 

But even with this guilt, by the end of the day, Lali hadn’t apologized to her father. She let it brush over, and closing her eyes once more, decided to let it fester in her heart instead. 

* * * 

Red woke up in the woods. Her ever-shining world was shrouded in night, and she didn’t know where the cottage was. Scrambling to her feet in panic, she spun around to find herself encased in looming evergreen. A rustling in the branches caught her attention. “Nanny?” she called out to the forest. 

A figure stepped out into the small clearing where Red was. It was the werewolf. The color drained from Red’s face. She scrambled back, snatching up a stick from the ground. “What- What do you want?” she stammered. She had meant to sound intimidating, but her cracked voice stole her confidence. She sounded like exactly what she was: a scared little girl. 

The werewolf raised a trembling hand and swept back her hair. Her skin was dark, with washed-out gray eyes and little chin hairs. For a second, she almost resembled Nanny. An imperfect Nanny. It did little to calm Red’s fear of her. 

“You hurt me.” The sound radiating from her mouth was odd. It didn’t sound English, but somehow Red understood it perfectly. She felt an inexplicable feeling of familiarity toward the woman. “I heard your rude comments about me.” 

“I’m sorry. It was all speak, promise. You’re not creepy, your voice is really very nice, I didn’t mean any of those insults–” 

“Don’t lie to me, Red. I know you. I’ve known you for a very long time. It’s time for you to take responsibility for your own thoughts and actions.” 

“Responsibility for my thoughts?” Red laughed. A wave of indignance overcame her. “What do you want me to say? That I don’t care for you?” 

“Admit that you loved me. Admit the real reason for your guilt.” The woman flashed brightly, and within a blink of Red’s eye, she was gone. In her place was a gold-trimmed mirror. Her hand, as if by its own volition, reached up to touch the glass. 

* * *

Lali woke up sweating in her sheets. Her room was bright, so she squinted her eyes as she rolled out of bed. She turned to head to the bathroom but found no door. In fact, she found nothing; the world she now occupied was a vast expanse of gray nothingness. In the face of this abyss, Lali attempted to ground herself with the only object she saw, but she quickly realized her bed had vanished as well. In its place was a mirror adorned with gold. 

Her reflection began moving, and as it came closer to the mirror, transformed into another version of her with pale skin and flat hair. Her face was devoid of dark circles, with a dusted blush and intermittent freckles spanning the length of her cheeks. She was beautiful, Lali thought. 

Lali had never seen her from this perspective before, yet she knew instinctively the body she had inhabited for countless nights in her dreams. “Red?” she whispered. Red’s eyes fell upon Lali, and a shiver ran up the latter’s spine. Her eyes were pitch-black soulless. The edges of her mouth split her face into an uncanny grin. Even though she didn’t say anything, Lali could sense the hostility. 

“You can’t do anything to me. This is my mind. Even you’re just a piece of me.” “I know who I am. I am an amalgamation of your insecurities and jealousies, in the media and people you’ve surrounded yourself with. In essence, you are my imperfect self.” She said it in a mocking tone, yet Lali couldn’t disagree. How could she convincingly lie to someone who knew her every thought? It was a fact that Lali idealized Red. She looked at her feet. When she looked back up, Red was gone. In her place was the werewolf woman. Lali realized that the face was terrifyingly familiar. Horrified, she identified it as her Nani. She began speaking in the non-English language, and Lali felt her heart splitting apart as she stared at the dead woman. 

“Face yourself, Lali. You regret that you disconnected yourself from your culture, your people, and never reciprocated my love. You live in filth, you let yourself go, and still found a way to pretend you aren’t grieving. Do you even realize that you made this entire space to cope with your loss? You are so terribly ashamed of your weakness that you’d rather convince yourself you never loved me than admit that you messed up.” 

The words struck her hard, but Lali had known it was true all along. She grieved for the future. She always thought that one day she would find it in herself to overcome her disdain for her roots, that one day she would learn to speak her mother’s tongue, that one day she would be able to wholly accept someone like herself, that once that day passed, she could unabashedly connect with her Nani. 

But she was dead now. She was dead.