by Emily Stech
The air was dank and cold. The shared living space was red like a brothel. Under cheap plastic frames were photos of young men, covering half of the room, as if for sale. Each image seemed to ask: who do you want, and what do you want them to do? Half-naked in provocative poses, slim and lean from endless nights of dancing, their foreign allure radiated from the photographs. Cajoling you with pastel colors.
Technology scattered the room: a karaoke machine, VR headsets. So you could escape a collapsing dystopia and anti-utopian landscape. Game systems sat for pure aesthetic. The room strived for a sterile, minimalistic future tech, clean and white. Clashing with the dark wood and heavy bedding, which only deepened the brothel’s mystique.
I sat at my desk, heavy fake wood and iron. I bought it for two reasons: The first was my Gashapon collection. Once a month I would log on, spending 30 dollars to buy small animals in cute poses, praying animals, bonsai animals, and lucky animals. As well as the seasonal items for them. I would add my haul to my growing collection.
The second was the performative books, which took up the two other bookshelves. Hidden under the top of the desk was a shelf full of thick books that were closest to my heart and pressed flowers. Paper cranes nested in a fake plant. The only kind that could survive since the room never got enough light for a real one.
I got up to go downstairs, my coffee cup was empty, and I had reached a point where I could stop on a painting I was working on. From the middle of the stairs the sterile blue light burned my already chronically dry eyes. The stairs were purple, from where the red light met the blue lights.
Walking on my toes the house seemed to groan; I was too loud. The cat chased me to the kitchen. I started a cup of coffee from one of the used pods my mother and father left out for me. I knew I could get two uses from a single pod. From my parents, three as they made 8oz cups of coffee; hip cocked, I was doing math idly as the coffee machine steamed angrily, hissing. I surveyed the kitchen. Everything was too clean as I threw the wasted pod away. The microwave blinked in Morse code. A warning in a language I did not understand. My mother always deep-cleaned when she was stressed. Another warning. What was it warning me of?
Purple does not physically exist in the spectral colors; purple ends visibly at about 380 nm. It becomes Ultraviolence in every sense of the word. We create it with our brain simultaneously with red and blue lights. This is why the stairs to our house were purple. It was from the light leakage from the red brothel lights of my shared room and the blinding blue lights on the first story mixed within our brain to create an amalgamation. Something that should not exist.
Purple is the worst part of the house, a schism of the house you do not want to be in. Day or night. The heat hangs in purple, cold clings to you in purple. The house sags in this area. The stairs in purple feel like they will give out at any moment. At night, sounds emit from purple. My mother beckons to me. Someone is screaming. There is a knock. My father hears us calling for help. I saw the cat watching on the banister, a flick of her tail; ready to guide and protect me in the between blue and red.
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Emily Stech is a retired beat poet, writer, and digital media artist whose work has been featured in blood+honey and art in other digital publications. When they’re not enjoying pasta salad, they can often be found experimenting with various forms of art. You can find them on X at @0eikeke.
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