Lake Texoma's Paying Guest

Sally’s weary eyes find a vent in the basement; the only thing that could connect her to the outer world. She’s delirious and looks around if she is still being watched. She is assured that there is nobody around. She tries to get up and totters on her unsteady feet. It’s not just hunger that has weakened her rather it’s the wound that she had endured through this adventurous life. Her leg was badly injured the other day when she had accidentally tripped over something and fell down through the wooden planks in the wall of that dark room and then to this horrible basement. There is much less of daylight the left. She adjusts her eyes in the darkness around her to find a stool which she places beneath the vent on which she climbs to reach the vent. The mist in the horizon is crimson red. There are streaks of puffy clouds and the color must have been a reflection thereof from the Lake’s water.

Red is the color of love; the love her mother always had in her heart for her; the love Josh had sown in her heart forever; the redder it gets with the setting sun, the more gloom it fills in her heart. She is saddened by the absence of her loved ones. She is saddened by the fact of her loneliness and her helplessness.

Occasionally, Red is also the color of blood. The blood she barely could stand the sight of; the nauseating blood, indicating the loss of life; the color which maddens most and drives a few crazy. The color of blood she is really afraid of.