The Grey World

There’s nowhere left to hide.

I never meant this to happen. I got caught up in it; and once I’d started seeing, I couldn’t close my eyes. I blame her.

I was just another sixteen year old girl. I led a normal life, and the dreams I had were reasonable dreams, things I knew were in my reach. I wanted a partner, a thrill to keep my parents up at night. A career, something that suited me and I would excel at. I did as I was told, spoke the language I’d been taught. Questions weren’t evil, they were… strange. What sixteen year old wants to be strange?

Some things you take for granted. It never occurs to you to ask, because the lie is so seamless there are no cracks to see. None big enough that my glazed eyes could find them, anyway. She was different. I don’t know how she got that way – an accident of birth? One bright thought too many? Or maybe she simply saw something she shouldn’t have, and once she saw… she couldn’t unsee. She said the strangest things to me, and I didn’t think to shut the words out, because it never occurred to me that they might be true. They were silly stories – of a time when the world wasn’t grey. When there were things called colours, and you could see them in everything. The sky, the trees, the flames of a candle; each stood apart, different. Every strand of hair, every eye, every bit of skin; different. And ideas, thoughts! Every person came up with their own. You weren’t handed down a personality from your parents, no; you invented your own. And books weren’t full of truths, but stories and lies and fanciful things! What a picture she painted, and I couldn’t believe them, but as soon as I started to picture it… I started to change.

The colour started in hidden ways. Dreams of what “blue” might mean infected my thoughts, until I could almost see it if I closed my eyes and stared into a bright light. I began to wonder… who I could have been, if my parents had been different. If I had been handed a different way of being, would I have been just as good at it? We told each other stories, secret little things. I started watching, knowing, seeing, in dangerous ways. Questions occurred to me; most when unvoiced, but a few snuck out. I’d never known how different a person could be, and once I saw how different I could think, I started to realise how much more we all could be!!!… and the colour began.

It started in my skin. A patch above my elbow. I hid with makeup, covered my arms with long dresses. But the colour spread. One day there was a blush on my cheeks – oh, God, the colour red! Brighter than anything I’d imagined, warmer and richer and fuller, it burned my eyes but I couldn’t look away! – and how to hide your face?

They saw. They call me dangerous and maybe I am, because if this is how the world could be than I want to tear down the one we have. I want to rip it to the ground, burn the pieces and show the world what beautiful colours there are in flame! I never meant to be a rebel, never asked for this new way of seeing, but it’s on me now, black hair and peach skin, red dress and blue eyes, every colour she told me about, all the things we dreamed, and I am no longer the personality my family gave me! I am something else and there is nowhere left to hide, it’s printed on my very skin but until they catch me I will keep telling this story to everyone I meet. Like you. Don’t forget it. Close your eyes, and stare into a bright light, and imagine the colour blue.

Image courtesy of Hayley Mechelle Bouchard. Her work can be found at Little Cat Photography, and on Our Contributors page.