I live in a world of broken colour and broken dreams. Wow, doesn't that sound emo? I should write songs. Really angsty songs about my tortured soul that no one will ever understand and sell them to rock stars and make millions.

Despite how cheesy it sounds, it's true. I see things that people aren't supposed to see, and that's the broken colour part. I see the truth about people in the colours around them. These colours aren't always the regular ones - red, purple, orange, green - sometimes they aren't even really shades at all. Sometimes the colours come in the form of shapes or pictures or words. It's all so very hard to explain.

I also see broken dreams. I see into people's hearts and get to watch the brokenness unfold. All of the things that people go through are forever etched onto their hearts. We call them memories. Sometimes the dreams aren't very big or very important, but they meant a lot to the person at the time, and the scars are very deep and very real. Examples could be a little boy who wanted a red wagon for Christmas but he never got it. Every year he would look for that wagon and it never came. A broken dream could be a woman who fought her whole life to live up to her mother's expectations of her, only to fail time and time again.

Some of the happiest people you will ever meet can have the deepest scars. Some of the most torn up people you will ever meet could have the lightest. The scars and broken dreams I see are not the people's fault. They did nothing to deserve them. Most of the things happened by chance, or through misunderstandings. Everyone has scars on their hearts, but not everyone handles them well.

I hate being able to see these things. I hate it more than words could ever possibly describe. I tried to shield my heart from these ghastly images by numbing myself to them. I tried to pretend I didn't care about these people I had to watch be hurt and hide their secrets. It didn't really work very well. I just got angry with myself. Bitterness consumed me and it hurt me worse than the gift had ever done. I hated everyone and everything. Anyone who was hurting, I blamed them for my having to watch. It was senseless anger, but their emotions were hurting me and I had to do direct the pain somewhere.

It drove me insane until I finally did something about it.

I have no mirrors in my household. They scare me. When I look in mirrors, I have to see my own broken colour and my own broken dreams. My colour used to be a dark inky blue that poured out of my veins and my pores like oil. I don't think it was always that way, not before I became angry at the world, but after I did something about my pain, my colour changed. It went from dark blue to deep red that soaked my arms and dripped off my fingers. Everywhere I went, I left a trail of small red drops to mark my passage that no other eye could see.

You know, I loved once. I had a girlfriend, kind of. Well, okay, she never technically agreed to go out with me. We were more like friends. Really close friends. I had known her a long time, I don't even remember how long. She didn't know much about me because I was too scared to let her in, but I knew everything about her. Her broken colour doesn't have a human name, but it was beautiful. It was music that flowed around her, never staying still. That is the only way I know how to describe it to someone who can't see it.

We used to go places and I'd shuffle along and listen to her talk about whatever she wanted to talk about. Most of the time she complained about the guys in her life. Her father was a bum, her brother hadn't spoken to her in years, her roomate was a slob, and all of the other ones were probably jerks too. I never heard any mention of a boyfriend, but if she had had one, she probably wouldn't've liked him. I always wondered what she told other people about me. Certainly I fell into one of the categories of jerks that she used to classified the entire male population, I just don't know which one.

I never really got the chance to ask her, really. I had been in love with her for years and was content just having her near me. I wanted her colour to take mine over and make me whole. I wanted to have her say she loved me. I wanted, I wanted, I wanted, but I never could get. It's kind of depressing, wanting something for so long and never getting to have it. She wouldn't even let me touch her. Once, I think, my hand brushed hers and she recoiled like I was acid and would burn her. She must have really hated men.

One day, though, I couldn't stand it. I had spent an entire day at a mall. I hate malls. They're full of people and their memories that I don't want to have to see. I mean, if only I could shut my eyes and never see them again, but that doesn't matter because I'd see them in my mind. I had spent the entire day in a mall and was so angry and bitter with the world that I just wanted to vent. If just one more bad thing happened or if I had to see one more terrible person's sordid past, I was going to snap.

I quickly shuffled to my kind-of-not-really girlfriend's house and walked in. She never locked her door - too trusting. I walked in and the house sounded pretty much empty, though there was a tv on. This girl's really concerned about wasting energy (though pro'ly she's more conerned about wasting her money) and wouldn't even turn the air conditioning on until, like, July, so I really didn't think she would have left the house with the tv on.

I walked around and I thought I heard some footsteps in her room. I called her name and didn't hear anything, but I definitely heard some noises. I started talking to her as I walked into her room, but stopped as soon as I came in.

She was in her roomate's arms, lying in her bed. I could see the scar forming on her heart. I knew she knew he didn't really want her. It was all a lie. I could see his dark schemes and his lack of sympathy for her feelings. I couldn't control myself. I couldn't think.

This sorta-girlfriend of mine is really into history. She's one of those people who visits battlefields for fun. I've gone with her sometimes, but I really don't see the point. I mean, sure I'm respectful that people died and that they did some sort of service to me, but visiting the place where thousands of people died in a day is sort of creepy. But anyway, she's got these knives that are antiques she got off ebay and that were used in some famous war or another. She keeps them really sharp and displays them on a little stand on her desk.

These were the first thing I reached for. They were the first thing I thought of. I grabbed one of them and thrust it deep into her roomate's flesh. I had never actually stabbed anyone before. Heck, I don't think I've ever used a knife for much else besides cutting fruit and opening letters. I don't cook often enough to ever have to chop any sort of animal flesh. It made a kind of sick squish noise, and then it hit bone. I was amazed I heard it, though, over the high-pitched screams from my girlfriend.

My colour shattered and fell off my body, instantly replaced by the dripping red. I was covering her room in it, and I was feeling guilty. My old colour was in shreds on her floor, and my new colour was gushing all over the bed. She screamed my name over and over again, clutching her face with her hands and tears streaming down her face.

I went to her quickly and wrapped her in my arms, trying to stop her tears. I couldn't figure out why she was crying. Her life was perfectly fine. Her heart wasn't too deeply scarred. I had seen much happier people with far more broken dreams. She pushed me away, and I remembered that she hated touching me. Words weren't coming out of her mouth anymore, she couldn't even say my name. I covered her mouth to make the screaming stop. I held her pressed close and tight to me and whispered into her ear, "I love you."

She must have passed out from the shock. I had been quiet about my feelings for too long.

I carried her into her living room and tucked her hair neatly around her face. I smoothed out her clothes and folded her hands gently across her chest. She was so beautiful, I nearly cried. Before I left, I bent down and kissed her soft, pink lips. For a moment, I thought I might die. She was heaven in bodily form. I couldn't imagine a world that didn't have her in it.

I smiled for the first time in a long while and was almost to the door when I had an idea. I went up to her bedroom and took down the pretty pink dress that I only saw her wear once. It was slightly see-through, and it flowed around her legs when she walked. She was still asleep when I came back and softly unbuttoned her shirt and her pants and slid them off her. I had to move quietly and slowly so she didn't wake up and think I was a pervert. I tried not to look, I just wanted to see her in that dress. I had just professed my love to her, and I wanted her to look the part.

When I was confident that she was as gorgeous as the mortal world would allow her to be, I kissed her again out of joy. My idea had grown since seeing her in that dress, and I decided to take her home with me. She had never seen my house or my room, and I wanted her to.

Even with her eyes closed and her face looking so peaceful, a smile was present on her lips. I couldn't take my eyes off her face as I carried her home. I was no longer shuffling, but walking with purpose and meaning. Her head was cradled against my shoulder and she smelled like perfume.

When we were a block away from my house, we had to go across a bridge. It was really pretty, with a scenic view of a river with trees and everything. This used to be one of her favourite places, and I think it was the first place I ever met her. Not really sure.

I started to worry because she hadn't woken up yet. I had never seen someone pass out, and didn't know how long it usually was before they came to. She had been out for an hour or so. Wouldn't that be long enough? I tilted her head back like you see in the movies and breathed some air into her lungs, wondering if that might help.

It didn't, she still slept soundly in my arms.

I stroked her hair and then traced the outline of her face with my fingers. Perfect eyebrows, long eyelashes, determined nose, full lips, an adorable chin... I began rubbing my hand down her neck when I realized something was missing.

Her neck wasn't throbbing. It wasn't beating. I couldn't feel her heart.

I fell to the ground and placed my head on her chest. No sound. I hovered my fingers over her nose and mouth. No air. I started to panic and tried every move I had ever seen in any movie, but she wasn't coming back.

She was gone. It was about then that I noticed her colour was gone, too. I don't know why I hadn't noticed it. Had it faded? Had it gone out some time before and I had been too blind to notice?

I noticed my colour. There was a line of red drops leading from where I had come and pooling around my feet. Hot tears dripped off my face to join the red ones at my feet, as I realized what my colour meant.

I was a murderer. I had killed the only truly beautiful creature that I had ever known. I arranged her against the side of the bridge, sitting with her hands in her lap and that secret smile still on her face, but I was wrought with emotions. I was disgusted with myself, and with all I had become. I stared at my hands in horror. Blood was all I could see. Blood was all I had become.

I leaned on the bridge's railing and knew it wasn't deep enough or far enough to kill me, but I wanted to die. If the world was going to be without it's light, it should do without its darkness, too. Wasn't there some religion somewhere that talked about balance? Harmony? Something like that? If the angel had to go, than the monster should go with it.

That's when I noticed the train coming across the bridge from me. I stepped across and stood in front of the tracks. The train came, blaring its horn to tell me to get out of its way. I wonder if the conductor had ever seen someone stand in front of his train, not because they were too stupid to move, but because they were too stupid to live.

The train came closer, and I stole one last look at the fading flower I had destroyed. My hands dripped my invisible sentence onto the soles of my shoes, and I opened my mouth to speak.

I wonder what my last words were.