Fiction
1 min
Not The Brightest Crayon in The Box
McKagen Chio
I have been cursed with being the white crayon. The one that all of the children brush past when picking out their colors. I am not even a color, really. I am what you get when there is an absence of color. I am devoid of color. Of purpose.
My job is simple, sit in the crayon box. Wait to be chosen, colored with, sharpened, and put back into the box for later. Pretty simple for a crayon in a kindergarten classroom. Not for me, though. I suck at my job. I'm the only one who's never chosen. How could I be when I'm the same tone as paper?
I hate when the other colors talk about their day. Denim always brags about how often this one kid, Austin, chooses to use him in a week. Brick Red and Scarlet always fight over who is the class favorite. It got to be such a problem that we had to start separating them.
Yellow Green is my best friend. They are used sometimes, unlike me, but the kids get confused. Are they yellow or are they green? Children are so easily intimidated. Yellow Green always tries to cheer me up. They believe that someday I'll be used. I don't.
One day Orange is put back in the box broken in half. One of the kids killed them. We're horrified. It's one thing to kill them but it's another to put their corpse back in the box with the rest of us. What a sick bastard. Indigo was the one to throw Orange out of the box. We all said some nice things about them beforehand. Sky Blue was devastated at their partner's passing. Their color dulled after that.
As the school year continued there were many more casualties. So many that we ended up just leaving the corpses in the box. There were too many of them for us to clean up. One of them was Yellow Green. I never would have expected it. I felt numb.
I had always complained to Yellow Green about not being picked. About not being good enough. In the end, being bad at the only thing I was made for is what kept me alive.
A Bronco Story. Submissions are from the Western Michigan University community.
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