Colorbound

It’s kind of amazing to think even now about how in the dark humanity is. Even when our ignorance is (very ironically I might add) the opposite of the dark. We’re so caught up in our everyday lives, buying, spending, selling, running, rushing, consuming, learning, loving, seeing, that we don’t even see what’s right in front of us. The very waves that make that rose look so beautiful, or that strawberry so ripe, bind us in a sense of freedom. A sense so powerful that we have no idea it’s happening. It’s terrifying.

Now, the story that I’m about to tell may very well be real, or a hallucination brought on by medication, allergies, or plain insanity. I’ve never been a good author, but that is mainly for the reason that I start something and never finish it. Visit my place, and somewhere you would find a desk full of unfinished stories. I’ve never been proud of my inability to finish a story, but I digress. I will attempt to recount my experience, or vivid hallucination, to the best of my ability.

This entire ordeal happened on a normal day. From my normal life. Nothing had ever really seemed unusual to me. I went to school, went to work, then went home. I was never anything social, hell, I’m still not, but I had a couple friends. Calling them friends is really an overstatement. Good acquaintances sounds better than friends. We hang out together, go to bars on Saturday nights. It’s fine, but it usually feels like I’m a third wheel in their escapades. While they would go to pick up chicks, I would go to just be out of my small apartment.

Well on one particular Saturday, I decided to take a walk instead. The endless drinking and sports games on the bar’s televisions didn’t seem very promising that night. Looking back now, I think that choice may have been a particularly bad one, had the things I’d seen been real. It really doesn’t matter either way, because the things already happened. Trying to change the past is an impossible dream, and dreaming it has consumed the thoughts of many people. I try not to be that way.

Back on topic, it was a cool, crisp night. I put on my usual jeans, t-shirt, coat, shoes, the like, and headed out the door. Nothing struck me as odd, nothing really was. This was a perfectly normal night. In fact, I don’t believe anything really bad happened that night to anyone but me. I was walking along the sidewalk. A few cars, but not many pedestrians in this part of town. It wasn’t the best part of town, but I had lived there all my life and nothing ever happened outside of a stray dog or two. That’s why this particular incident struck me as odd at the time.

Before I knew what had happened to me, exactly what had happened to me, I felt like a bit of a hero. I saw, well heard then saw is more appropriate, a woman getting mugged by some man in a ski mask. Sounds a bit stereotypical, I know. On instinct, I ran to help. It was then I realized the oddness in this. The second I ran down the alley, both the man and the woman looked directly at me. A split second later, I was sprayed with what I think was mace, and on the ground. I had heard of events like this, a fake mugging turns into a real one, but it hadn’t really occurred to me over the rush of adrenaline I entered when I heard the scene in the first place.

The pain in my eyes was unbearable. I remember feeling that, but my other senses were dulled. I don’t remember what else happened that night, only someone coming across me. I was presumably screaming in pain, so that shouldn’t have been hard. I woke up in a hospital. Bandages on my eyes. I didn’t know mace could do enough damage to my eyes to have the need for bandages. I heard a doctor come into the room. We made some conversation, I don’t remember exactly what was said, but I remember taking the bandages off. At first, I thought I was blind, but then I saw. In what looked like grayscale. I couldn’t see color, I couldn’t tell how pretty the rose looked, I couldn’t tell the ripeness of a strawberry. I was colorblind.

The doctor explained that he didn’t know what I was sprayed with. He said mace couldn’t have done that specific damage. I now have to agree with him, but maybe he was lying. I would too if I accidentally took away someone’s ability to see color. But he could have been telling the truth, hell if I know.

The next important part of this story id me going home a few days later. I remember looking out the window, and seeing some sort of black shadow, in the form of...something like a snake. It was “slithering” around people. I dismissed it as some sort of side effect from whatever medication the hospital had me on. I went to sleep.

As the days past, I saw more and more of these shadows, in different shapes. None human. I was growing paranoid, scared of them. I would avoid them on the street, some even entered my home. It seemed I was the only one who could see them. Looking back now, it did seem a bit insane. I was on the brink of losing my shit, when the most terrifying thing happened.

I had gotten used to my usual routine of avoiding the shadow things that it had given me a sense of...well routine. I was still scared of them, and scared of being insane, that I decided to see if they were real. For once and for all. I looked for one, and kicked it. Why...oh why did I have to do that? Because it seemed the second I did, they all turned towards me. Every...damn...one of them.

At varying speeds they all started towards me. So, I did what any sane person would do, although my sanity at the time could be argued. I ran. I ran straight back to my house. Those things followed suit. It seems wherever I went, there were more of them. So many. They went straight through any object. I was cornered, I couldn’t do a thing but let them come at me. They did, and their darkness consumed me.

I don’t remember passing out, but when I woke up, they were gone. I could see color again as well. It was an odd experience after almost three weeks of seeing gray. I have since debated to myself if any of it was real. I concluded the mugging was. But I don’t see those things anymore. Was it a hallucination? Or could they be real. My question is, why could I only see them when I couldn’t see color, when I couldn’t pick up those wavelengths that make the visible spectrum. Maybe they want humans to see color, to overlook them, to not believe they exist. Because we’re too busy seeing, feeling, caught up in our lives. Caught up in the color. Maybe that’s the case, or maybe I’m just crazy. But I have one last thought. They say dogs can’t see color.

Well, have you ever seen a dog bark at nothing?