Stained Part One

My mother constantly asks me why I only wear black. I don't tell her the reason because the reason would surely make me one of the world's greatest oddities. Instead, I shrug and walk away from her quizzing eyes. So now instead of thinking of me as an oddity, she worries about me in a way that a mother worries whether or not her child is doing drugs. I wear black because it's the only "colour" I can see. I was nine when I realized I was the only person who could see what I see. Up until then, I just thought the world was dirty, stained with a liquid that would not wash off. It was everywhere. I would walk down the streets of my city and see it splattered on the cement sidewalk, and dripping down the walls of alleyways. The only problem was, at that time in my life, I did not know what IT was. I didn't ask my mother for I thought it was just something normal because IT was everywhere. Then came that day in fourth grade, I call it my day of discovery, it was also the day of my first fight. My teacher had wandered into the boy's washroom only to find a group of sixth graders circled around my bruised body curled in a ball on the floor. My teacher quickly stopped their kicking and sent them to the principal's office, I was sent to the nurse with a swollen arm and a bloody nose. I was trying to get them to see the stain splattered across the washroom sink but they couldn't see it, instead they called me a liar and pushed me to the floor. The nurse frowned at me as she cleaned up my face. My eyes stayed glued to the ground. I felt a drop of blood drip over my lips and onto my chin, hanging there for just a moment before releasing and falling to the ground. "Whoopsies." The nurse exclaimed, grabbing a cloth and bending down to wipe the droplet from the floor. I watched the cloth wipe lazily over the spot and as she removed it and pushed herself up off the ground, my whole body froze. A stain remained where the drop had been, a stain much like those plastering my city. Those stains were not placed there by something as nonchalant as rain, it was blood. I was seeing not blood that existed now but blood that had been washed in an effort of removal. That was the day I learned I was not like everyone else and also the day I learned I could not talk about it.