Post-contest commentary:
I actually wrote this at 2am after having not slept for over 40 hours. I was never 100% happy with it, but it did well in the rankings, so I decided not to mess with it.
There is a specific reason why "red" is the first word. Although I clumsily tried to tie "red" to SCP-140's love of blood, in a now deleted entry (also written at 2am without much sleep), that was not the original reason. The story that explains the real reason was supposed to be submitted for the contest, but I couldn't finish it in time. Nevertheless, I will hopefully be able to post it soon.
Edit (7 months later): Ok, I promised this story "soon", and then I didn't deliver. This is what happened: I ended up accidentally combining my universe from "The Fifth Syllable" with the Foundation-verse Daeva, but ultimately decided that I didn't want to co-mingle the two, and also I didn't necessarily want to submit my universe to the SCP copyright license. I never was able to straighten that out, so I never posted the story. I doubt anyone was on pins-and-needles over it, but I did want to explain.
