Devoid

Late one night, I was in my study typing out another one of my stories on my laptop and pausing every now and then to snack on a BLT sandwich－my usual late night snack－when I noticed something had taken place. I think I felt it at first, rather than saw it; a sudden and abrupt change in the atmosphere.

It wasn't anything tangible; more of a...change in mood, for lack of a better description. Taking a quick, cursory glance around, everything looked, smelled and sounded normal. Except it felt off.

Distracted from my writing, I got up from my chair and walked over to the window, pulling the blinds opened slightly to get a peek into the outside. I didn't know what I was looking for at that time, nor expecting to see. But as I peered out my window into the darkened street that was meekly illuminated by a lone lamppost giving out a pale, amber light, I saw nothing. Everything appeared as they would in their usual shadowy black, grey and white under the meager yellow lighting－homes, vehicles, outlines of trees and landscaping... I stared out into the dimly-lit street for a few more seconds before closing back the blinds and returning to my story.

I must have imagined the feeling. I mean, I write horror stories. And in the course of doing so, as ideas form in my over-imaginative mind, I tend to freak myself out at times. Snorting at my silliness, I attempted to resume where I had left off in my story. But I found that I couldn't continue.

The earlier sense of the change in atmosphere had become slightly stronger. I exhaled a heavy breath, sat up straight and let my eyes drink in my surroundings once more, lingering a little longer on them this time. Yet again, nothing was out of the ordinary in its appearance.

Something compelled me to the window again. And, in the moment that my heart had reluctantly made the decision to stand up and head towards the window and my brain had received the signal to do so, triggering movement in my legs, I felt something click in me, as if confirming this was something that needed to be done and giving me approval as I obeyed the call.

I pulled the blinds apart and once again, my eyes began to scan the outside. It was then I noticed something, something odd. It was subtle enough that I didn't realize immediately; the light from the lamppost was now glowing white. Not amber, not even remotely pale yellow, but white. As snow. Like the xenon bulbs of a car's modified headlights.

I rubbed my eyes, thinking I must have been having too many late nights and not enough sleep. But I looked again and, sure enough, white light was emanating from the lamppost. Weird, I thought. Had I seen it wrongly earlier? Was there a recent installation of new light bulbs for the lampposts in my neighborhood that I did not know of? That's highly possible. Makes sense too.

But it wasn't the only thing that was off.

Normally, in white light, though dim, you'd still be able to distinguish between colors of objects under its illumination. But with yellow lighting, things would mostly just appear washed out, as if they were colorless. Especially so in a much darker setting like the scene outside my window at that time of night.

But no. It wasn’t like that here. Staring intently at the objects dimly illuminated by the white light outside my window, I saw something was amiss. Everything seemed to have...there were no other words for it...lost their color.

A cold hand started to creep around my heart. Was I experiencing some sort of color-blindness?? Torn between the need for confirmation and the fear of finding out, I forced myself to shut the blinds and turn around.

The first thing that came into view was my pinewood desk and chair, both in bleached shades of yellow. Yellow! I could see yellow! Next, was my red laptop sitting on top of my desk where I'd left it. I could see that, too; a shiny, metallic red; a color that, right then, had never looked more beautiful to me. Other things, in full vivid color, simultaneously flooded into my view right then. I had never been so happy!

I closed my eyes and let out a huge sigh of relief, overjoyed at the fact that my color vision was still intact. I started to rationalize that, at that time of night, the darkness－causing visibility to be significantly limited－coupled with my lack of sleep had probably made things appear that way outside my window. The reason had been that simple.

Until I opened my eyes... And saw that the light yellow color in my pinewood furniture was fading to a greyish white! The red color of my laptop－proud and shiny a minute ago－was now receding into a dark, angry-looking shade of grey! I whirled around madly, my eyes frantically scouring the other objects in the room. Like an oil painting melting in a fire, the colors of everything in my study were ebbing away right before my very eyes! I ran out into my living room, followed by the kitchen and finally, my bedroom. The same thing was happening everywhere in the house. The instant I'd laid eyes on anything, it was always the same; its color about to bleed away completely!

What was happening??

Hot tears of panic welled up in my eyes as I blinked them back furiously, trying to fight the fear that had threatened to overcome me. But my vision became blurry as the room started swimming. And then, everything faded to black.

I woke up on the floor with bright, white sunlight pouring into my bedroom. As the sickening recollection of the previous night hit me, I dashed out my front door into the street. Right before me, the nightmare unfolded as the last vestiges of blue in the sky drained away. The trees, once cloaked in myriads of greens and browns in varying shades, had dissolved into a dull monotone. There was a morbid sense of surreality. It felt as if I was watching a never-ending sitcom back in the early 1940s on black and white TV. Nothing was ever the same again.

* * *
My world is now devoid of color.

Most of all, I miss the color red.

These days, I lock myself in my home with a bottle of vodka and stab at my colorless limbs with a kitchen knife, just so I can catch a glimpse of red before the blood fades into black.