Right.

Left.

Right.

Left.

It was the same as yesterday; monotonously as a chorus line in their last performance we trudged through the sunken, sullen faces of the blues we had struck down senselessly in rage the night before. It was, after all, a war, but for those who weren’t caught up in the blind patriotism, it was merely a reflection of our primal desire for retribution.

It had always been written that the reds would be locked in a struggle with the blues. But it hasn’t been for three years that the violence had become this bad. As I grow older, it seems that the time between the outbreaks grow shorter, the drama longer.

I can remember like a nightmare the first time that this struggle permeated the veil of protection my court appointed guardian had tried to provide in the faint days of my youth.

To my right, a comrade red was 10-hours into giving birth while the doctor sat poised at her ankles, assuming the position to deliver the newest cog in the fighting force. But as she pushed, and wailed, and strained, and cried, the look on the doctor’s face turned from anticipation to horror as the crowning baby made his entrance into the world as a stark sea blue. His umbilical cord had apparently become wrapped around his neck and the baby had asphyxiated in the cushioning of his mother’s womb. Seizing the baby by his leg, the doctor, a respected red back in his day, flung him against the powder white walls of the delivery room. The once-white paint was now a grotesque shade of crimson as the blood of the unwanted punctuated the matte surface. A smug smile crept across the face of the doctor as I looked on in revulsion. It was a small victory for the reds that day; an eight pound, six ounce victory.

It was less the act itself that shocked me, but the mother’s audible sigh of relief. Not from the relief from the pain of the pregnancy, but relief to know that she was free from an enemy of the state.

Less than ten seconds in this prison and the baby already had what would become a welcome liberation.

And from that day forward, I vowed to end the war, but all I managed to do was turn one year older and I was conscripted. I’ve always found it weird that conscription sounds like prescription, because war is no solution for anything. But the fight in me had just been released. If I couldn’t change the war from within, I could sure as hell try from the outside.

And so here we march. And fight. And kill. And nothing makes me more satisfied then to spill the red blood of the blues. But at the same time, it kills me to know that we are all made from the same color on the inside, yet I fight for my brothers beside me and shun the ones on the other side of the gun.

Shun.

Unshun.

Shun.

Having a heart is a dangerous game.

I assume that my schizophrenic moments will pass, in time, but I can’t resign myself to the same fate as the blue baby. I can’t let myself be made an example of for the blue, knowing that I failed. Or the reds, for that matter. I must fight to avoid the label of enemy of the state. I must beat the system.

And so, tonight I will hang myself. Stripped from the red attire that I wear to pledge my allegiance; instead wrapped in purple to be politically incorrect. That way, nobody wins.

In fact it will be the greatest day of my life. The day that I won the war. The day they finally realized that their system doesn’t work. That their once-white world had become clouded.

It will be up to the unborn to change it.