The Dark Side of the Colors

The Dark Side of the Colors

            I was walking with him along the edge of a cliff, looking out over the bay. Waves crashed against the sheer rock edge, making a symphony of sounds that played like music to my ears. I looked up in the sky, and saw something that caught my attention.

            “Honey, look, it’s a rainbow!” I yelled over the sound of the waves.  I loved rainbows, I always have. The way their colors blend together to make a cacophony of light in such a beautiful way. The way they stretched across the sky, taking the Earth in its warm loving embrace.

            “Yeah, pretty.” He said quietly. I looked over at him, puzzled. This entire walk, which he had invited me on, he had seem quiet, reserved, and really out of it. I was worried for him.

            “What’s wrong? You seem out of it.” I said lovingly.

            “Nothing.” He said.

            “Come on, I can tell there’s something.”

            “I said it’s nothing!” He yelled, then reared back and slapped me. My eyes swelled up with tears, and I started sobbing. He had promised that he wouldn’t anymore; he had said he had changed. I thought I had finally changed him. But I knew that he did it out of love, nothing else. He wasn’t a bad man; he just made mistakes some times.

            No, wait, he was a bad man. There wasn’t anything good about him, except when he was in a good mood. He yelled at me, threw things, hit me, and put me down constantly. I hated him, I realized. And I was fed up.

            “How could you?” I screamed. “You promised you wouldn’t any more, you promised you would stop!” I was unleashing my fury at him, because I was fed up. “You are a horrible human being, and I hate you. You deserve to die!” I yelled as I pushed him backwards.

            I must have caught him off guard, because he went reeling back and fell off the cliff. I looked over the edge, and saw his flailing body fall into the water with a crash, then get slammed into the cliff and thrashed about in the waves. I backed away, and put my hands over my mouth. I hadn’t meant to, not consciously at least. But maybe I had meant to in the back of my mind.

            I walked over to the edge of the cliff, and looked down. I saw him disappear beneath the waves for a final time, and I never saw him again. I looked up, and saw the rainbow. While still pretty, the colors seemed to have another side to them, a dark side of the colors.