Splash of Color

This short story was inspired by the work of my best friend and amazing photographer, Arielle Lewis. In particular, these photos.

If you’re interested, you can see more of her work at http://www.ariellelewisphotography.com or find her at http://www.facebook.com/arlewis8.

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It was a world of white.

As the girl awoke, a wave of confusion washed over her. Where was she? What happened to her? She struggled to her feet and squinted at the world around her. In every direction, there was nothing. The walls, the floors, the sky; the world was nothing but white. Blank. Empty.

She hesitantly took a single step, unsure if her foot would be met by solid ground, and let out a sigh of relief when she felt resistance. It wasn’t grass she felt beneath her foot. It wasn’t concrete, either. It wasn’t really anything. It was just… solid.

Confused, she looked down to examine the hard surface she was standing on. And she screamed.

Where there should be a foot, there was an empty space. No toes, no nails, no ankle, no shin; just white. She quickly threw her hands in front of her face, and panic began to overtake her when she saw the same nothing. She frantically ran her hands up and down her body to be sure that she was, indeed, a person, that she existed, that she was real. It was all there, exactly as she remembered it – her familiar curves, her scars, everything – the body she knew her whole life was still there. And she was still conscious. Her mind and thoughts were the same they had ever been, albeit a bit more scrambled than she preferred. She had the same memories, the same hopes, the same regrets. She was undeniably herself.

Then what was this place? This world?

She calmed herself, took several deep breaths, and, careful not to look down, slowly took another step. And another. And then another. One nothing foot in front of the other every time. As she became more comfortable walking along a ground she could not visualize, her pace quickened, her hesitant baby steps eventually turning into a brisk jog. She had no idea where she was going or if she was even actually moving – the lack of landmarks gave her the strange sensation of running in place – but she ran. It was all she knew.

After several minutes of running, she stopped, her chest heaving up and down. She always hated the gym. She bent over to catch her breath, her hands on her knees, and shut her eyes. She did not want to see nothing where she could feel her knees slightly shaking beneath her hands. She did not want to see emptiness trying to look at her chest, even though she could feel her lungs expanding and contracting. The darkness was more comforting than the light. At least then it was her own decision not to see anything rather than that of the world around her. She put a hand to her chest and felt her heartbeat, strong and rhythmic, the one constant thing in her life to ever keep her sane.

She heaved a final sigh, stood up straight, and opened her eyes to the vast nothingness surrounding her. She looked around in a hopeless attempt to find something, anything to break the white scenery. But the sky, the ground, everything was still… empty.

She rubbed her eyes. Maybe this was it. Maybe this was to be her existence for eternity, to inhabit an empty world of nothing. Maybe this was her punishment for the choices she made, the wrongs she committed, the people she hurt. She sighed and laid down on her back on the nothing’s solid embrace. It could be worse. At least she still had her thoughts. Not exactly entertaining, or even comforting, really, but it was something. Was this Purgatory, maybe? She considered this, but decided it was not. From what she remembered, Purgatory was supposed to have scholars and philosophers sitting around as they waited for eternity for nothing to happen. That would be okay. At least then she would have someone to talk to. No. This wasn’t Purgatory. This was worse.

She felt water welling up behind her eyes, but stopped herself, forcing the sobs back down. She’d been through worse. She sighed, turned on her side, and put her hand back to her chest. The familiar beating of her heart comforted her. As she studied the drum-like rhythm of her heart, she noticed something. She rubbed her eyes again and squinted. She looked slightly to the left and to the right of where it was, wanting to be sure it existed, that it wasn’t just in her mind. And there it stayed, in the periphery of her vision: a single dot, the size of a pen tip. It was impossible to tell how near or far it was with the lack of visual markers, but it was there and it was hers. It was hope.

She stood up and immediately started moving towards the dot, her eyes never leaving it. She was still exhausted, but she ran, her heart pounding in her ears. For a while, the dot never grew and her heart began to drop. But she kept running, and before long, the dot was the size of a drop of ink, and then a human eye, and then a budding rose. Slowly, slowly it grew, but she would not stop running. Her eyes watered, her chest was on fire, but she pressed on, the inexplicable dot gradually growing.

Only as she came up to the dot that was now the size of a large puddle did she slow to a walk, huffing, wheezing, and rubbing her sore throat. The puddle was unlike anything she had ever seen before. It seemed to incorporate every color imaginable in one swirling mess, like oil on water, but moving, flowing, in constant motion, as if it were a living being. She looked in every direction for some sort of indication of what this liquid was or where it might have come from, and was unsurprised to see nothing, not even a single drop outside of the puddle.

She knelt down next to the puddle for a closer look. The substance was thick and viscous like liquid magma, but beautiful and otherworldly. She hesitantly put out her hand to touch it, but quickly realized she couldn’t even tell how close her hand was and pulled back. She bit her lip, placed her hand flat on the ground next to her, and slowly began to slide her hand closer and closer to the liquid. Her heart thumped loudly in her chest, her hand getting invisibly closer to the pool of color. After a few moments, she began to think maybe this was all just an illusion, a trick of her mind. Her hand must have reached the pool by now. This was impossible. She began to pull her hand back when the tip of her middle finger grazed the cool edge of the pool, sending a fine ripple across the liquid. She gasped and yanked her hand away, shaking it as if burned.

But she wasn’t burned. She lifted her hand to her face and saw a warm yellow paint-like substance floating in mid-air. She waved her hand slowly in front of her face and wiggled her middle finger, and the yellow followed. She touched it to where her thumb should have been, bent her thumb a few times, and was satisfied to find that she now had her thumb back. She rubbed both hands together, the liquid substance quickly thinning, but she was euphoric with the result. When she pulled her hands apart, her hands were back. The lines, the cracks, the textures, they were just as she remembered, simply covered in what looked like barely enough yellow paint.

She plunged both hands into the pool at her feet and rubbed the liquid all over body. She laughed as her body was given new definition. Her legs, her stomach, her shoulders, her breasts; it was all there. But the scars were gone. Oh, well. They were hideous, anyways, ugly reminders of the poor choices she made in her past. She grinned.

But she was still alone. Alone in a world of white. Of nothing. Her laughter faded as she thought of her home, her family, and her friends. All of the loved ones that she ran from and left behind. She thought of her favorite coffee shop where she would go to work silently on her computer, of her favorite park where she would lay down in the grass and daydream for hours, of the crummy store where she worked. A tear rolled down her cheek before she had a chance to react and she felt it hit her foot. She wiped her eyes, ashamed of herself for letting her emotions get the best of her, and looked down at her feet.

That was when she noticed the mess she had made in her excitement. Colors were splattered everywhere, all over the floors and the walls. This would take forever to clean. She grunted at herself disapprovingly and started to wipe herself down and stopped abruptly. She followed the color splatters again with her eyes.

There were walls. Or, at least, it looked like it. Drops of bright green were hovering in mid-air, slowly rolling down a vertical surface. She studied the drops. She couldn’t be going crazy. This was happening. She took a deep breath and shoved her hand out in the middle of the mess and winced when her arm was stopped by a rough, solid surface. She rubbed her hand up and down the wall furiously, smearing blue and green everywhere.

This was a wall.

She rushed back to the puddle on the ground, formed a cup with her hands, and plunged them in. But her foot slipped in the excitement and she tumbled headfirst into the puddle. She found herself submerged in a rainbow of colors. She kicked frantically, fighting to find the surface. She didn’t have a chance to breathe before falling in and felt her chest tightening. She waved her arms wildly and for a brief second was sure that this would be the end. But her arms found a wall, she chose a direction, and hoped.

She reemerged on the surface, gasping for breath and dragged herself out of the pool, lying down on her back. Okay. So the puddle was bottomless. Good to know.

She staggered back to her feet, coughing up reds and oranges (Was that the mystery liquid or blood? It didn’t matter, she supposed.), and carefully scooped some liquid into her hands. She tossed it wildly at the wall and continued to smear it over as much of the surface as possible, returning to the puddle every so often to rejuvenate her supply. Before long the wall was completely covered and she realized what she was looking at.

This wasn’t just a wall. It was her home, her crummy little condo with cracked windowpanes and a backdoor that hung loosely on its hinges. It was a nasty amalgam of colors, that, when smeared together, made a putrid shade of brown, but it was her home, damn it, and it was the most beautiful thing she thought she would ever see in her life.

She walked up to the door, ran her hands along the hinges, and laughed. All she ever really had to do was straighten the door and tighten a couple screws. Why was she so lazy? She yanked the doorknob up with her left hand with ease, making the door nice and level, and rubbed the top hinge with her right hand. She knew she didn’t have the tools, but it felt good, it felt cathartic, to attempt to something, even if only symbolically. She sighed and let go of the doorknob, waiting for the door to thump back to the ground the way it always did. But the thump never came. She stood there confused for several seconds, not sure if maybe she couldn’t hear anything now either. But the dull drum of her heartbeat was still there in her ears, steady and ever present. She looked down at the base of the door and saw it was level. She cocked an eyebrow and looked up at the hinge. The paint was thick and smeared where she rubbed it, so she wiped off the excess, and where it once was broken it was now solid and new. She looked over at one of her cracked and splintered windowpanes and had an idea.

She rushed over to the pool, scooped up a handful of the liquid, and rubbed it vigorously over the cracks. She expected to feel the sharp pain of splinters entering her skin, but she felt nothing – only the smooth, silky texture of the rainbow liquid. When she felt satisfied, she violently shook her hands in the air to rid them of any surplus liquid, and rubbed the excess off of the windowpane. There were no cracks, no splinters, nothing. It looked brand new.

Overcome with a new sense of purpose and self-discovery, she quickly ran back to the pool and continued on with the rest of her home. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all. Maybe this was a second chance, a way for her to make things right, to fix her mistakes. Whatever this world was, it was a blank slate, a canvass. And she was going to paint all night.