Touch, Color

248 words to create a character, as per Chuck Wendig’s most recent Flash Fiction Challenge.


They quarantined me when I turned someone purple. Then they started paying me. I could try to explain it, but that would require knowing the first damned thing about it.

It just started one day in a most indelicate position. Mid-coitus, if you prefer a polite term. I tend not to. When you can’t even touch yourself without becoming cerulean blue or neon pink, you kind of stop giving a shit about social nicety.

They flew me to Hollywood first, and I can’t even tell you how many rainbow dogs are running around now.

Once Paris got wind the fashion industry just about shackled me to the runway. Oh, they paid well for their dazzling dresses and wild lavender hairdos, but I don’t even know how many bottles of hand sanitizer I go through in a day. They cart it around in a suitcase, and even though it dries quickly my hands always look splotched with paint.

I get to touch a lot of beautiful people, though.

Scientists have poked me, prodded me, biopsies. You name it and they’ve done it. All the equipment is in a lab somewhere, untouched. Turns out people aren’t too fond of a CAT Scan machine that’s blood red inside and out.

I don’t know. It has its upsides. Coloring Easter eggs has never been easier. I’ll never have to work again with the obscene millions they pay to be yellow, orange, midnight blue.

But no one wants to sleep with a freak.