Night Colors...

Okay, this one is bizarre. But I had fun writing it. And before you ask, no, there were no psychotropics involved, and I did not see an erection made out of Gummi Bears while I was writing it. It's just kind of a fun little short-short. Let me know what you think, and give me both barrels.

The night is filled with colors.

People come out to stare at the strange display. The normally sedate blue evening gown that night wears has been replaced with a psychedelic mishmash of colors that swing, scamper and flow into each other like hyperactive children playing in a field of acrylic paints.

There is a low murmur of confusion among the assembled crowd. Is it aliens? Aurora Borealis? The Rapture, even? No, someone says. Can't be the Borealis. Too far south. Some sort of Air Force experiment, maybe? From where, someone else asks. No Air Force Base in a hundred miles.

None that we know of, anyway, an ominous voice intones from the back of the crowd, and there is a moment of silence as this is digested.

Above them, a large finger of pink sky darts after a fan of blue, and the two collide into a fireworks display of purples mixing in with greens and yellows until the whole sky looks like an Impressionist painting. One person says that they see God in the colors, which sparks philosophical debate that lasts only until it is revealed that the person in question was and is quite intoxicated from any number of illicit substances.

The colors are calming down now, ebbing and flowing in time with the heartbeat of the crowd.

Forty-five minutes after the disturbance began, the colors begin to clump together on opposite sides of the sky, leaving a mile-wide swath of sky untouched, the same familiar purple-blue-black that the crowd is accustomed to. On either side of the dividing line are opposing colors swirling together in vortices of light.

The colors stop for a moment, and the crowd holds its breath.

Slowly, the colors begin to undulate again, and there is a general feeling of picking up speed. This is confirmed as the colors slowly begin to drag themselves towards each other, faster and faster until they collide. The two masses smash together and explode outward in a geyser that drifts slowly towards the ground, invoking a feeling of vertigo in many of the crowd below. The colors drift ever closer to earth, until a few of the onlookers reach out a hand to grab a bit of color.

And then slowly, the colors fade. An hour after it all started, it was over.

Everyone who saw the disturbance has their own theory, and none can provide enough evidence to make their case convincing enough to end all doubt. But those who did see it remember, amidst the confusion and debate, a feeling of comfort and warmth.

A feeling that all was right with the world.