The Future is Orange (Five Sentence Fiction, June 2012)

The one word prompt from Five Sentence Fiction this week was ‘orange’.

 

 

I’d always hated the colour orange, associated as it was with all that had been painful in my life.

As a child I’d been cursed with what was referred to as red hair, a euphemism for the explosion of wiry orange curls that sprang out at all angles from my head as if trying to escape from the wilful, bad-tempered child that lurked beneath.

There’d been the orange glow of the fire that had destroyed our home, long tongues of flame licking at the doors and windows, seeping out of the roof tiles, destroying all that stood in its way until eventually it subsided to a malevolent orange heap of ash, still pulsating with a life of its own as we picked through the wreckage of our belongings.

And now I lay in the wreckage of my car, conscious of the weight pinning my legs against the seat, the ticking of the still-warm engine, eyes fixed on the orange glow of the ignition light, wondering if I could hold out until someone, anyone, ventured along this deserted moorland road to summon help for me.

And then I saw it, the most wonderful colour I’d ever seen, edging purposefully through the darkness, down the grassy slope to the hollow where I lay in wreckage of my car – the blessed orange glow of the hazard vests belonging to my rescuers.