| Anyway this is my latest story and I'm using this as a test to see whether it's good enough to post on my fictionpress account or not. It's in the same style most of my stories are in and it's relatively long, but this is the entire story. Reviews would be appreciated. Anyway, here it is: '...grow accustomed to the grays and blacks because they're always coming back...' -'Colorblind' by Say Anything I’ve never seen a rainbow. Twenty three years on this poor excuse for a planet and I’ve never seen a fucking rainbow. And I never will. You see, I have a condition of some sort, a condition that the doctors around here have never seen so they have to hire outside specialists to look at me. And I have to pick up the tab because my insurance doesn’t cover the condition I have because apparently no one has ever had it. They’re not exactly sure how I got it but they’re fairly certain that it’s not contagious. Fanfuckingtastic for the other guys. As for me, I’m not so lucky. These expensive specialists that really don’t have a clue what’s wrong with me tell me that it’s either a strange sort of mutation or something that’s been passed down my family line. Strangely though, none of my family has ever had it. I guess that I should tell you exactly what it is that I have; it’s some sort of degenerative disease that affects my sight. It eats away at my eyes, at the rods or cones or something or another. What this means to you and me is that gradually, one at a time, I’m losing my colors. Colorblindness, to the extreme. Because I can’t just halfass it, I have to go the whole way. Red and green just wasn’t enough, it has to turn my entire life into a Charlie Chaplin film. I can even remember when I first noticed it. You see, at first it sort of sneaks up on you. I didn’t even notice that something was wrong until I was halfway to work. The day started out the exact same as any of my other days have started out, I woke up and grabbed a suit from my closet. I shower, throw it on, grab a cup of coffee and get into my car. Everything’s fine and dandy so far. I might’ve been colorblind this entire time and didn’t even notice. But when I saw the stoplight, that’s when I noticed. It was gray. I would’ve blasted right through it and probably died right then if there hadn’t been a car in front of me who hit the brakes, the taillights were a gray as well. That’s when I realized that something really was wrong. Now I don’t even remember what red looks like. It’s amazing how quickly you forget something. You could be best friends with some guy in high school, you go off to college and you can barely remember what his face looks like two months later. Or that same person cuts their hair within a couple of weeks; you can’t remember what their hair used to look like. It’s the same with color. So that’s really how it started, at first I wasn’t too worried about it, I never really knew what colorblindness was but I was certain that someone else had suffered something similar. I called up my doctor and went through my day at work. The doctor said that there wasn’t anything wrong with being colorblind, then he asked me to find the R in a circle made up of a bunch of little circles. I pointed out that that wasn’t really a test since I could still see green, I just couldn’t see red. That’s when he looked at me funny. That’s when I knew something was wrong. That’s when I started getting worried. He held up another circle and told me to tell him what the shape in the middle was. It was a triangle, clear as day. Then another circle, this time with a number in the center, a one for anyone out there who cares. With a wide-eyed shake of his head, he dropped the cards and wrote something down in his little booklet. Snapping it shut he tells me to see this eye doctor in town, I ask him what’s wrong with me and he just looks at me. I can still remember the words exactly how he said them, all rushed and quiet like, “I don’t know.” By the time I made it back into his office, I’d lost yellow too. I noticed it when I was reading the funny papers, Peanuts particularly. Charlie Brown’s shirt was gray with that wriggly black stripe going across it. Garfield’s mouth was gray, Mallard Filmore’s bill was gray, Marmaduke was gray, that kid’s hair in the Family Circus looked like he’d aged thirty years. I practically sprinted to the doctor’s office the day of my appointment. This time he used various lights and other instruments, shining them into my eyes until I was almost blind and even after all this mess, he still didn’t have a clue what the hell was wrong with me. When two doctors can’t tell what’s wrong with you, you’ve got two real choices. Hope that there’s another doctor out there who can help you, who knows exactly what’s wrong. Or just accept you’ve got a disease and live with it. If you live in TV land, you’ve got a third option: Call Dr. Gregory House. Unfortunately I only got two choices. At first I hoped that there was someone out there who could cure me but now seven specialists and three colors later (Green, purple, and orange) I’ve stopped hoping. I’ve begrudgingly accepted the fact that from this moment on, Crayola will make only gray crayons, despite what they call them. All I’ve got left is blue. Everything else is white, gray, or black. It’s like living on the set of Sin City. The blue is a nice change of pace to the monotony, but it still really sucks. At least the sky’s still blue. At least her eyes are still blue. Yeah, there’s a girl in this story. Isn’t there always? Anyway, her name’s Brooke and she works at my office. She’s a little slip of a thing, five four or so blond and cute. A little girl nose, you know that’s tweaked up a little, defies gravity that way. Blonde hair, pale skin, and these brilliant blue eyes. I mean absolutely stunning. So blue that if you stare at them long enough you start to drown. I swear to God, if there is a God out there and I’m really starting to doubt that, I swear to God that if I lose blue, I’ll kill myself. If I lose her eyes, I’ll be better off dead. And I mean that. And to be quite honest, besides the eyes, this chick really isn’t all that hot. I mean, sure she’s got a pretty face, but it’s the kind of pretty face that you see every day at least twenty times just walking down the street. She doesn’t have any boobs to speak of, I mean, mine are almost bigger than hers. Besides her face, her only real asset is her ass. Seriously, she has an absolutely perfect butt. But in all honesty, on a scale of one to ten, she’d probably wind up around a six or seven. I know that, but I still can’t take my eyes off her. There are at least twenty girls in my office that are hotter than her and yet in my eyes, compared to her they are nothing. Absolutely nothing. She’s just a really nice girl and I’m pretty positive that if there was any one girl who I had to spend the rest of my life with, it would probably be her or someone almost exactly like her. I’m not saying I’m in love with her or anything, I’m just saying she’s got the kind of personality I’m looking for. I don’t know, it’s just that she’s one of the only women out there that I can actually talk to, without getting all nervous and trying to impress them or make them laugh with every sentence out of my mouth. No, with her I can just talk and she just listens and it’s nice. I sound like a fucking girl, don’t I? But seriously, it’s nice sometimes. Let me put it this way, I never told anyone at my office that I can’t see color anymore. I’ve just been able to get by with it and not let anyone know about it. But I guess that she caught onto it. Well, it was sort of obvious I guess. There was a color coded memo that was passed around the office, it’s some weird obsession that my boss has, she just has to have everything neat and orderly and if necessary, color coded. So anyway I turned in a report to Brooke to check over and she looked at it for a second before she said, quite politely I might add, something along the lines of, “This isn’t right, didn’t you get the memo? Just look under the red part and it’ll tell you what to change, it’s nothing big.” I guess she saw my blank stare when she said ‘red part’. “What’s wrong?” she asked. And that’s when I told her, that’s when I let it all spill out, well not really. I told her that I was gradually going colorblind but I don’t think she got it one hundred percent, you know. She just sort of said, “Oh, that’s okay, I think I have the memo somewhere around here, I’ll just point it out…” But before she started rummaging through her desk she saw my face and stopped. I said something like, “No, you don’t get it. I’m not just going normal colorblind, I can’t see any colors anymore, they’re just disappearing.” I guess I was in pretty nasty shape, getting ready to cry or whatnot because she got a really worried look on her face and then took her lunch break. We went to eat a one of those bar/restaurants that aren’t quite seedy and altogether avoided, but only just so and we got a booth near the back and the entire time I told her what was happening to me, even on the car ride over. And she just listened. When I was done she asked, “So all you can see is black and white?” I shook my head, “No, I can see blue too but I’m pretty sure that’s going to disappear from the map here shortly.” I feigned a smile but from the way her head tilted to the side, I know it didn’t look happy. “So none of the specialists you went to can do anything about it?” I shook my head, “Not even the laser corrective surgery can help what I’ve got.” “I’m so sorry, I didn’t even know that this was happening to you.” “Yeah well, I didn’t want anyone to know, I don’t want anyone’s sympathy.” When in reality that’s really what I wanted, I wanted sympathy from even person on the fucking planet. I wanted to be like AIDS’s Patient Zero, known everywhere. Loved everywhere. Idolized everywhere. But all the time I knew that this was a one person deal, that I would be the only one on the planet that would ever suffer this, the only one who would know about it. I guess that’s really why I talked to Brooke about it, because I wanted her sympathy. I wanted her to see my tears and then take me back to her place and then I could spend the night staring into her brilliant blue eyes until they disappeared and turned gray, like everything around me. But that’s not what happened. We just talked about it, and then we went back to work and we never spoke about it again. I guess her sympathy, if you could call it that, came later. At the end of the week, she asked if I wanted to go do something that night. Of course I said I would and so we went out and ate and then we went to see some barely mediocre slapstick comedy. But at least I got to see it with her. Though she never mentioned it and I never bothered to bring it up, she wore all blue, blue jeans, a blue tank-top sort of deal, blue earrings and a necklace with a blue stone on it. Black, white, and blue. Just for me. I had to bite my tongue just so I wouldn’t cry. Seriously, it’s the nicest thing that anyone has ever done for me, before or since. All in all, it was a fun night, she gracefully sidestepped the whole colorblind issue and we talked about pretty much everything else. She never mentioned the colorblindness until we were almost back at her place. We were just discussing the movie when she said, out of nowhere, “Does it scare you?” At first, I thought she was talking about the movie and I was about to say no when I saw the way she was looking at me and I knew exactly what she was talking about. I thought about it for a moment and then said, “No, it doesn’t really scare me. I can get by without color.” “But doesn’t it bother you?” I nodded, “Here in a little bit, I’m going to lose blue forever and then your eyes will never look as beautiful as they do right now.” Honestly, I was kind of shocked that I had just said that, it just sort of popped out of nowhere. She looked shocked for a moment, and a deeper gray hit her cheeks, what I assumed to be a blush, then she said quietly, “Really?” I pulled the car just outside her apartment complex. I hesitated a second, “Really.” Then we both just looked at each other, the way you always see in the movies and the way it never really works out in real life except this one time, and then we both leaned in and kissed. It was slow and pretty clean, I mean there wasn’t any tongue or anything but it was nice. It was the best kiss I have ever had. As we pulled away, I actually saw it happen for the first time. Right in front of my eyes I saw the different shades of blue on her flicker to gray and back for a second and then … they were gone, as though they had never been there. Sitting there in the car with Brooke by my side, that’s when it all went away. That’s the time when I could no longer see color. Next thing I knew she was lightly touching my shoulder, asking if anything was wrong with me. Of course there was something wrong with me. But me being who I am, I just shrugged and threw a smile on my face, telling her that nothing was wrong, that I really enjoyed spending time with her and that we should do it again sometime. I could tell that she wasn’t convinced so before she could say anything back, I leaned forward and kissed her again, just to keep her from asking. After the kiss I told her that I’d call her and then she stepped out of the car and into her house. I probably could’ve gone in there with her, spent the night with her like I always wanted. But now, it just didn’t seem worth it. On the way back to my place I cursed. I cried. I screamed. And then all of a sudden it started raining, not just raining but a goddamn downpour, lightning and thunder lighting up the night, keeping everyone awake. That’s when I lost it. That’s when I stopped screaming. That’s when I stopped caring. That’s when I stopped driving. I just let the wheel go, let my hands fall down at my sides, and I just decided to let God take me and my car wherever he wanted to. Up ahead there was a curve in the road, one of those metal girders blocking me from the trees beyond and I didn’t even car enough to lift my arms. God had already taken my colors away, it was probably only a matter of time before black and white was gone and then it would be over. He might as well take my life while he was at it too. I mean what life is worth living if you can’t see color? If you can’t see the colors of the neon signs as you shoot past. If you can’t see the color of gemstone that you’re buying for your girlfriend. If you can’t see the color of your newborn child’s eyes as they open for the first time. If you can’t even see a fucking rainbow. I managed a weakly spoken fuck you at God before I shot through the girder, my foot still smashed down on the gas. The car busted through it, but not before I had taken a bashing and the airbags began pouring out, then I went over the side. Metal screeched, the car turned and then it rolled, the sides pressing in on me, the white cloth airbags enveloping me. And then: Nothing. They say it’s a miracle that I survived at all, the way my car ended up. Some miracle. So now I’m sitting in a hospital bed with an IV shoved into my arm and a morphine button at my fingertips, and believe me, I need it. A broken leg, some crushed ribs so every time I breathe I feel pain, a busted collarbone, not to mention the lacerations and bruises. Some fucking miracle. It would’ve been a miracle if the bastard had just let me die, but instead he brings me back, he brings me back into this shithole of a world all bruised and broken, and only able to see in black and white. I know how you feel Humphrey Bogart. I know exactly how you feel. What’s worse is that everyone I know, and even some I don’t, have to drop by and ask how I’m doing, if I’m okay or not, what happened, you know the whole slew of questions you always get if anything vaguely interesting happens to you. And I always tell them the exact same things: I’m fine. It was an accident; I was tired and not paying attention to the road. I’m just kosher. And then they leave. But the one person I thought would show up before everyone else, the one person who I figured would be by my bedside the entire time, she didn’t even show up until I was about to be kicked out of the hospital without morphine, or as they put it ‘discharged’. Brooke stepped in, a gray beauty, and walked over to one of the chairs that tries too hard to be comfortable next to my bed. For a while we just stared at each other, not saying anything, and then she asks, “Did you really fall asleep at the wheel like everyone’s saying?” There’s always those moments when if you say one thing instead of something else, everything will turn out okay, but if you say something else everything will go straight to hell. This was one of those moments. I shook my head, I figured I could tell her the truth, “After I kissed you … after I kissed you, I lost blue.” Her eyebrows smashed together just above her pixy nose, “So? What’s losing the color blue have to do with your wreck?” “I can’t see color anymore,” I said quietly. “I can’t see any colors anymore.” She just kept looking at me confused. “It wasn’t an accident, I didn’t fall asleep at the wheel, I just let go of it. I just let go of the wheel and went straight off the road. I did it on purpose, I just don’t want to live if I can’t see colors anymore, I don’t want to go blind.” She just sat there in a sort of stunned silence before her eyes narrowed. “What’s the matter?”I asked. Then she stood up and started walking out of the room, I asked again and begged her not to leave and then she strode up to my bedside and stared down at me. And then before I knew what was happening she slapped me across the face. It hurt. I mean, slaps hurt a little bit anyway just because of what they are, but this was a slap to a guy who has been in a car accident, has a broken collarbone and is gradually being weaned off morphine. So it really hurt. That and this wasn’t a little girl slap, this was an actual honest to God trying slap. A slap that just said ‘I’m pissed off at you and I want to see you bleed, you bastard.’ That kind of slap, some of you out there might know what I’m talking about, others of you out there won’t. Let’s just say this; I saw spots for a few seconds. “You asshole,” she snarled. “I can’t believe I let you kiss me.” And with that, she left despite my protests of trying to make her stay, she just kept walking. Never again did she come back to see me during the tail end of my hospital stay. I really didn’t exactly know what her problem with that was, she’d never lived without color; she didn’t have a clue what I was going through, what I was dealing with. I mean, now I know exactly what was the matter but at the time I didn’t have a clue. When I finally went back to work, they had a welcome back party for me, which was a nice gesture, they had the cake and the banner and all that shit. Everyone was patting me on the back telling me how much they missed me, even if they didn’t. Before the whole mess was over, Brooke started to walk into the break room, where the party was at, she stepped in the doorway and if I hadn’t been looking, she would’ve blended in with the background, the grays and blacks. She looked in and her eyes fell on me, then they rolled up to the heavens and she stepped back out, her perfect ass swaying as she did that sexy but angry walk that girls do when they’re really pissed off. I pushed through the crowd of people stuffing their faces with the cake that should’ve been mine. I pushed through the crowd of people who pretended like they knew me, pretended like they actually cared about me. Fucking leeches. She was pretty far ahead of me and moving at a pretty fast clip, I actually had to break into a run just to catch up to her, and she was wearing heels. My hand landed on her shoulder as I said her name and she whipped around so fast I winced back, anticipating another slap. When it didn’t come, I opened my eyes. Hers were boring holes into my head, I had to look away. “What the fuck do you want? I have work to do,” she said, her voice dripping with hate. I was sort of angry at her now, I mean she was getting all pissy with me for no reason, any guy would’ve gotten pissed off at her. “What the hell’s your problem with me, huh?” I asked. “What the hell’s my problem with you? What the hell’s your problem?!” she cried. That sort of slowed me down, “What..?” “All men are selfish pigs,” she muttered under her breath. “You think that just because something’s not going your way, you have to go and off yourself. Are you just stupid or do you just not care about the people around you?” Once again, “What..?” But she was on a roll and my input, how little it was wasn’t going to slow her down, “After I heard about your accident I was worried sick, worried sick about some bastard who went ahead and tried to kill himself. Just because he can’t see colors anymore. Is life actually that meaningless for you?” “Well, I…” “If it is, just go ahead and kill yourself already because I can’t stand seeing somebody like you, who thinks that everything around him is meaningless. Someone who screws up their first try and is just a ticking time bomb until he tries to do it again. Save us all the trouble of worrying about you and just blow your fucking head off, guns don’t miss.” There were tears in her eyes. She finally stopped to breathe and I seized the opportunity to shove a couple words of my own in there, something to explain my actions, “Look, I don’t want to die … it’s just that I don’t want to go blind. I don’t want to be some cripple with a white cane sitting on the sidewalk begging for change.” “Fuck it, you just don’t get it,” she whispered as she wiped the tears from her eyes. She started to turn around to leave me, but I didn’t let her. “No wait, don’t leave,” I said lightly touching her shoulder. “You’re the only thing I’ve got left, and if you leave me now, I really will off myself. I mean it.” That stopped her. “I don’t want to go blind, but I don’t want you to go,” I said. Cheesy sounding as hell, I know, but it was the only thing I could think to say. I don’t know, I guess girls are saps for the cheesy sounding chick flick lines like that because it worked. She turned around and she wrapped her arms around my waist, I felt warm hot liquid press through the fabric of my shirt as she said, “Never do something like that again.” I pulled her close to me and I rubbed her hair and I said, “I won’t.” My voice was starting to crack a little too. A single tear started crawling down my cheek in a wet sort of slow motion, making a little pathway down my skin and off my chin onto the floor. “I don’t care if you go blind, I don’t care if you can’t see me, I just want you here, I don’t want you to die,” she whispered as she looked up at me, eyes wet and runny makeupstained tears. And then the blacks started to fade to gray and the gray began to bleed into the white, but I wasn’t worried about it anymore, I just grabbed Brooke and pulled her tighter as the white enveloped everything. As I went totally blind. As I finally realized what being blind was like. As I finally realized what being loved was like. |
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| that was nothing short of amazing! You should post it on fiction press it was awesome! Keep the stories coming cause I'll keep reading and commenting on them ;) |
 ~Signature made by Dea37s~ Night Academy I.D. |
| wow, that was awesome.I will definitely keep reading what u write. :) |
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