"Red All Over"

She looks pretty in red.

It drips in filigrees over pale skin like smelted rubies, bone-china dyed with crushed roses.

The blade in her fingers is as elegant as a brush in an artist's, and he guides every incision she makes as if she was learning how to play a fiddle.

Their voices meld, his screams and her laughter. The music they make is too lovely for any poem, his pain and her pleasure.

So, he'll settle for carving the words into his skin.

She is breathtaking like this, all violence and mania and his, bending over her duet's corpse, inscribing ancient characters from dead tongues on rotting flesh.

Her slick fingers smear squishy slush on his nape when she drags him down to taste the copper off her tongue.

"I do."

There is lace on her hands, and a platinum ring on her finger.

There is a hint, only a touch, of red on her cheeks, in the suggestion of a flush rather than a splash of gore. It is the only red on her, from the veil on her head, the dress that flows and pools and floods, to the bouquet of roses in her gloved hands.

She may be pretty in red...

... but she was beautiful in white.

All serenity, happiness, and his.

To the man with the same silver band, at the altar alongside her; a miasma of laughter, hers and his.

Red would be gorgeous on her.

- Ariadne Grey