Taste The Rainbow

As you see me now in this picture, you may consider me an old country time farmer boy who's exhausted and tired. You probably noticed my dirtied arms and the fact that I'm wearing nothing under my overalls, or perhaps you noticed the other youngin’ to my left. What appears on the surface isn’t all it actually is, as you’ll come to learn about in my story.

It was a humid midsummer afternoon, and me and my buddy Dan had just came back into the Ford assembly line after having a small lunch. The only reason I knew of Dan was due to the fact that he was the next person down the line, placing the windows on while I screwed in the door handles. There was this unusual force though, as if trying to push me closer towards him Eventually, I mustered up my courage from under me and took my first steps to my future. The conversations were awkward at first, but we quickly grew close. One day, on our break, we got on the topic of dreams.

"You know, I've always wanted to just live out in the country, with my own cherry picking farm, I like cherries"

The image of this scene covered my vision entirely, like someone was blindfolding me. Except the odd thing was, I could also place myself in this dream as well, and the notion didn't seem half bad. Speeding back up to the present, we were just going about our usual business when all of a sudden, we and several others were roped together out of the assembly line and over to the boss himself.

"Alright, I'm going to keep this short and sweet."

And he did, as efficient as a plow; he fired each and every one of us there in less than a minute. I had seen this coming, but poor Dan was really looking to this job to support the wife and child that were under his care. As we left the line for this final time, I could notice Dan starting to cry, so I shared with him a great embrace even I particularly enjoyed. I gave him words of comfort while I felt even more drawn to him.

"What am I going to do now that I lost this job…? I can't look at my wife and child ever again…”

That's when Dan's dream popped in my head, and a response immediately popped out of my mouth.

"Well, let’s go away, together."

"Huh?"

I shut my mouth up real good when the words escaped from my lips, where did that come from? I knew I couldn't dig myself out of this hole, it was too late, so I trenched onward.

"Let's go, away from the city, into the country, you said your dream was to have a cherry farm. Let’s make this dream a reality."

At first, he objected the notion, but after buttering the idea up to him, he finally caved and agreed to travel with me. But why, why was I feeling the urge to go so far for this one man?

We packed a satchel full of supplies, nothing extraordinary, just a loaf of bread and whatever spare money we had on us since we couldn't get to our respective banks. The two of us then set off together, on the journey of our lives. Our scrawny legs carried us for miles and miles on end, we would occasionally stop to take the smallest portion of bread, drink from the nearest lake, and continue onward. After roughly a week of repetition, we had reached a small town, nothing fancy at all. There we met with the local sheriff, a kind fellow by the name of Andy. As we told him our back story, he looked at us with a tickling curiosity.

"Why fellas, did you think this was a good idea? I mean couldn't there have been some way things could have worked out for everyone, like your wife and child?" He said pointing towards Dan.

For some reason, I slowly grew uneasy as he pressed on with these confrontational questions. I looked over at Dan to find him looking at Andy with the same quizzical look that made me crawl out of my skin. Within the next two questions, I quickly withdrew my unsteady posture as I stood and ripped at Dan's tan arm. Despite his refusals, I was much more stronger than he was, and so pulled him away, out of the little town called Mayberry.

We continued our trek, our bodies grew even weaker, blisters started to form on our feet. The bread we had replenished at Mayberry was soon depleted, and not a lake was to be found anywhere. Our hopes started giving out as we started shutting down; it looked as though our never ending journey would come to a penultimate end.

But just as we were taking our last steps, our last breaths, we found it, the one thing that we had been searching for all this time. The cherry farm. Our final haven. We stumbled upon the grassy fields as we fell down on our backsides, filling the air with hysterical laughter.

"We made it Dan, we made it!"

I looked over to see my companion, all grins and laughter. Before, I never really noticed how bright he could look, it was almost mesmerizing. Suddenly, as if the world were trying to stop our happiness, a strange noise erupted to the left of us. As we looked over, all we could see was darkness approaching with haste. Quickly cursing under our breaths, we ran in the opposite direction. Finding vacancy in a medium sized tent just outside the fields, we hustled inside, using the tools inside to keep the flap from blowing open. Who knew how long this tent would support the two of us, all we had was our small ounce of hope. Our breaths stifled as the cloth rattled about around us. Even amidst the swirling chaos, I still managed to find comfort in Dan's company. Before I knew it, I found myself moving closer and closer towards the man. What was happening to me? What was I doing?

"What are you doing?" Dan asked me, slightly fearful, backing up.

I no longer had an answer myself, my instincts just took over. We continued to play this game of cat and mouse for several minutes, no longer paying attention to the noise outside.

"Seriously, stop this!" My friend yelled, but to no avail did it stop me.

Scared for his life, beads of sweat dripped down his forward as he tried to rip apart the flap to the tent, but I pushed him away, getting angrier than I've ever gotten since I was a teenager.

"Don't you dare leave!!!" I exclaimed, grabbing a hammer sprawled on the ground.

Dan looked over at the hammer, and then to me, with great complexity, "W-what...you couldn't possibly threaten me with that! Are you insane!??!"

I could no longer understand that he was trying to get me to realize what I was doing, and continued on, with a crazed smile, "N-now, listen here, y-you just, s-s-stay here, with me, we'll get through this," I started to stroke his raven hair, "I-I promise. A-and we'll live here, f-forever, in this cherry farm, it's what y-you've always wanted, isn't that r-right?"

Tears started to roll from Dan's eyes, I no longer said another word, and we stayed there until no eruptions could be heard from the outer world.

Slowly, I ripped apart the flap, and stepped out of the tent into the blazing sunlight. I slowly gripped onto Dan's arm, hammer in the other. As I shielded my eyes, I noticed on the ground there was water, and through its reflection I could see a tiny rainbow, but soon the image became distorted by tiny red droplets that dripped off of me, creating a darkening tint to the multicolored spectacle.

This is when I had my greatest epiphany.

I was gay.

And a cannibal.