David lay naked on the covers of his bed, the blunt fingers of a headache just beginning to work their way into his skull. When he closed his eyes, he felt the fingers bear down with steady, insistent pressure. When he opened his eyes, the invisible hand clenched, sending agony all the way down his spine. He kept his eyes closed. The shift was coming.

In reality, it didn't matter whether his eyes were opened or closed; whether he was awake or asleep. It didn't matter if he was talking on the phone, or driving, or taking a crap. The shift always came and it always brought pain. And color. And when it took him, it took all of him. Everything else fell by the wayside.

The shift found him, as usual, in a paroxysm of torment.

The pain had blossomed to the point that he could scarcely breathe. It hurt to lay still. It hurt more to move. Wave after wave of agony radiated from him like a fever glow. But at least while he felt the pain, he was still here and he was still David. When the pain went away, it was replaced by something else. He was somewhere else. Someone else. He was...

Blue.

He was always blue, a streaking disembodied spirit: swirling like vapor, crossing vast spans of distance on the whim of a simple thought, almost completely unaffected by the physical world. In his mind's eye, his body felt and looked real enough, yet he couldn't feel the sting of the wind on his face, or hear its roar in his ears. The sensation of speed was gauged only by the blur of land passing under his feet.

He was blue and he was speeding toward trouble. The trouble was blue as it was sped toward him. It was always this way. He never really knew beforehand where he was going or what was going to happen. He knew only that the trouble approached blue and that if he arrived quickly enough, he could stop it before it arrived.

He came to a stop behind the counter of a convenience store. The robber had just pulled the trigger of the gun aimed at the store's clerk, but instead of a flash of orange light, they both saw a flash of blue. The gun didn't fire and the robber, confused, slipped quickly away.

He shifted blue again, and arrived in front of a pair of blue headlights, heading for the edge of an icy road. The car passed through a strange, blue drizzle at the same time the driver was able to correct the slow, perilous skid.

A blue phone rings in time to stop a suicide. A passenger jet grinds to a safe stop on defective, blue landing gear. A blue battle in a blue war ends suddenly, inexplicably.

The shift carries him through the night and the next day. So much trouble is approaching. So many shifts.

In the end, the shift arrived in a quiet room. A naked man lay on the bed. The man was no longer alive. He was red.

The shift was now red, moving away from its host. It would have to find a replacement. The world was a very blue place, full of trouble.