Flowers Were Red
by Maddy McGowan
Once, I saw a shoe on a pole. It looked like a perfectly ordinary shoe, except that it was in kind of a weird spot, being on a pole. Distracted by the shoe, I stopped.
It was the middle of morning rush hour, and everyone was going wherever they needed to go, as fast as they could. Trains whooshed overhead, pedestrians spoke into their phones, and delivery drones hummed happily. It was deafening.
The city never slept. People were always moving, trying to get from here to there, and there to here. A long time ago, when animals still lived near us and the sky was still blue, I imagined people strolling, and enjoying life. Maybe they would listen to birdsong, or admire the changing leaves throughout the year. Maybe they would lie down in a park, and watch clouds for hours on end, or admire the glowing trees.
Why would you rush to get to a place you don’t want to go anyway? People spent all day working, so they could pay to keep living. But no one really lived anymore. It was all just work. Why not stop and...What was the saying? Smell the trees? Why not stop and sniff the plants? That sounded right.
People were always trying to get ahead. Trying to move forward constantly, never stopping to look.
After all, more money bought more time, which brought more money—which bought more cars, bigger houses, and more clothes.
The city never slept.
In the cold winter sun, the shoe didn’t look that special. It looked small, maybe size 5 kids, with a big flower on the side. It reminded me of when I was a kid. The laces were all neatly done up, with a little bow at the top. For a second I thought the flower was red, at least how I remembered red looking, but that was impossible.
Colour disappeared a long time ago.
Everyone knew that. You don’t see colour as you get older. Like someone’s hair turning grey. A natural process.
All the buildings around me were decorated with plastic garlands, plastic wreaths, and plastic trees. All in shades of grey. Dark grey like the oil that sludged through dirty pipes. Light grey like the clouds in the sky. Bright grey like the shiny trains. Everything in shades of grey.
I exhaled, my breath billowing around me in a cloud of white and grey.
The shoe stared at me, demanding in the way only a child can be.
I stared back.
A middle-aged woman bumped into me, as she sped along the sidewalk, interrupting my stare- down. My arms flailed as I tried to balance. Never underestimate the strength of someone on their way to work. One of my arms struck the pole, causing the little shoe to wobble. Pain blossomed in my arm. I lunged forward to catch the tiny shoe as it fell.
Victory.
As I went to put the shoe back, my phone rang—the ringtone was like a clarion call cutting through a concert hall. I flinched, clenching my fists, and I nearly crushed the shoe. If people weren’t staring at me before, they definitely were now. I gritted my teeth. I’ve always thought that answering phone calls is like a battle, never knowing who you’re fighting, always ready to deliver quick blows as defence. I placed the shoe back on the pole and drew my phone out of my pocket. The screen flashed and my eyes widened.
Shit.
“You are approximately 32 minutes and 7 seconds late for work.” The AI assistant, Page, sounded as clipped and polite as usual.
“I’m not sorry, but I —”
“Ms Landford says not to worry.” It said in a pleasant paper voice. “If you are not here in ten minutes, consider it your two weeks' notice. Have a very Merry Christmas.” It hung up.
I looked at the shoe for a second longer, then started walking again. Snow drifted down around me, as I bid the shoe adieu.
* * *
“8 minutes and 36 seconds.” A mechanical voice greeted me as the doors slid open.
I entered the building. The white sterile lights like machines invaded every space in my shiny office building. I liked to pretend that the lights were actually rainbow, like the sun was supposed to be, and that we just couldn’t see it.
“Stop daydreaming.”
My manager’s voice, her real voice cut through my thoughts like a little knife. She reminded me of those birds in the old encyclopedias, the ones that looked like they’re thrice-divorced. Her coat had a big ruff of fake feathers, and her face was long and bony. Her cheeks were valleys, and her nose was one tall mountain that no one dared to climb. Like a vulture, she swept down, watching me work.
Wait. I still needed to answer.
“Uh, I’m groovy! How are you? Crazy weather outside. amirite? Looking forward to Jesus’ birthday?”
She squinted at me, as if looking at a particularly troublesome child.
“Get out of your own head and focus on the world around you. You need to keep up.”
Her voice faded as I looked down at the green carpet between my shoes.
... Green?
I blinked and the carpet went back to grey. “Miss Landford! Did you see that?”
“See what.” She looked at me down her exceptionally beak-like nose, through her tiny spectacles. “All I can see is you not doing your work and interrupting me. Every second wasted is a penny gone.”
“No, wait — I could’ve sworn I saw...”
“Yes? I’m waiting.”
“Nothing ma’am.” I sighed. “It was nothing.”
She glared for a few seconds longer, before turning briskly on her heel and clicking away. I swore her feet sounded like talons. Maybe she really was three vultures in a trench coat. How big was a vulture? She was a pretty short woman, so maybe two vultures.
* * *
The crinkle of paper bags signalled the start of lunch, as every employee pulled out their plain, ham sandwiches.
Everyone ate at the same time, still tapping away at their tablets. It felt like they were all chewing in sync.
I pulled out my own sad paper bag, feeling distinctly out of place.
I’m gonna find that shoe again.
I sent a quick text to the door, warning it to expect me, then stood up. All my coworkers turned, and stared. Even Floor Jim. People said that he wasn’t the sharpest fork in the knife, but he stared at me right along with everyone else. Their heads swivelled to follow me, their hands frozen over the keyboards.
Like meerkats, I laughed.
Once I was outside I turned back to look at them through the glass, feeling like I was at a zoo exhibit — one where I couldn’t tell if I was the viewer or the animal.
I could kind of understand why they were looking at me. No one ever went on walks just because. Walking for the sake of walking was a waste of time. But I don’t mind wasting time.
Time is too precious not to waste.
As I walked, I kept seeing flashes of colour at the edge of my vision, but every time I focussed, they would leave. I stuck out my hand to stop a random guy in the street, and asked him if he saw the colours, too.
“No?! How young do you think I am?”
I asked an older lady if she could see anything, and she told me that she appreciated the compliment, but that she really needed to go.
I kept walking, unconsciously walking back to the shoe on the pole. Just like this morning, I stared at it. I stared and stared until I was almost late for work. Again. Even though work had already started. I was now almost positive that the flower was red.
I stopped a group of teenagers walking back to school and asked them what colour the shoe was.
“IDK chat,” the leader said.
“It’s like a little colour, but I don’t remember what that colour is anymore,” one told me.
“Don’t touch that shoe, chat, it might have rabies,” a third piped in.
“That’s not how rabies works, type.”
“Yeah, it is, type.”
My phone rang again, and I ignored it. It buzzed insistently as their argument faded, until I got back to my building. My shiny gray building. My shiny gray blue building. My shiny gray green building? I wasn’t sure anymore.
I took a deep breath and stepped through the doors, right into the path of my manager. The thrice-divorced vulture glared at me.
“You left the building without notifying me,” she hissed.
Two face-to-face encounters in one day? Lucky me.
“You saw me leave?”
“Young man. I do not think it wise for you to go gallivanting off while there is work to be done.”
“There’s always work to be done. But I saw colours today, and I wanted to see them again before they went away.”
She looked at me for a few seconds. She seemed to be doing that a lot today.
“Are you daft? Everyone knows that you don’t see colour once you age, and certainly not past your 20th year. There’s no need to see colours.”
She tsked at me before clickity-clacking away. By the end of the day, the flashes of colour in my periphery were pretty constant. The colours were always there.
The red of the exit signs was unnerving and sharp, the yellow of the lights was soothing, and the green of the carpet seemed soft and fuzzy. I reached out to touch the carpet, feeling super weird as I did it. Although the lights still buzzed, they were a much nicer temperature than I first thought. Was it weird to think of colours as temperatures and textures? Did I think about colours like this when I was a kid?
The chairs looked striped, like candy at Christmas.
I decided I was going to leave work early today. Technically they couldn’t fire me for it — I read the fine print.
* * *
When I got back to the pole, in that once-busy intersection, my shoe was gone. I knew that kid’s shoe was never mine, but I’d adopted it in my head.
The warm evening sun cast golden light everywhere. I almost felt as if I could hear colorful birds singing in the empty trees. The garlands around the square were bright green, and red-gold baubles dotted every building. I breathed in. I could smell the colour around me, like when I was little.
There was a snotty-nosed kid on the beige bench, lacing up their flower-printed shoes.
I sat next to them.
“Was that your shoe on the pole?”
“Yes, mister. I losed it a few days ago when I was playing.”
“Would you mind telling me what colour the flower is?”
“It’s red, mister! But look around, at all the real flowers!”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s so many colours all around us!” He pointed up at the sky. “There’s so many colours in the rainbow.” He pointed east. “And so many colours in the morning sun.”
“There’s so many colours in the flowers,” I continued.
“And I see every one.”