Chroma - A Study in Nightmares

The sky is grey.

It’s not the grey of storm clouds. Not the pale grey that comes before heavy rainfall, nor the kind of grey that tells you to stay inside with a warm cup of tea. No, the sky is the dark, stony color of pencil lead on paper. It’s the color of ash.

A girl runs as fast as she can down the street. She is not safe, she knows. Nowhere is safe anymore. She sneaks glances over her shoulder as she runs. She wishes she hadn’t.

There are people following her, their pace far too quick for what looks like a shuffling gait. All of them are familiar faces. She sees her teachers, her neighbors, her - 

No. That’s not her best friend. Not anymore. 

She keeps running. Brightly colored flower petals line the street. They build up into waist-high piles, impossible to move through. She can’t stop, not with those things behind her. The flower petals obscure her vision. She can’t breathe.

She wakes up.

The sky is red.

Not red like the sunset, or roses, or blood. This red is the color of faded marker, scribbled on the white walls by a mischievous child. It’s the color of a goldfish, soft reds and oranges overlapping until you can’t tell what’s what.

A girl sits on a train that slowly chugs along its path. She does not know its destination. She does know that she wants to get off.

She walks through the empty train cars, trying to reach the locomotive at the front. Every car looks exactly the same, with simple, dark furnishing. She is alone, so alone. There is no conductor, she realizes. There is no engine or caboose. It’s only one passenger car, that she cannot escape.

She looks out the window at the dusty brown landscape below. In a snap decision, she rams her shoulder against the glass, shattering it. It does not hurt. She jumps out the window, hurtling out of the train. She lands back in the very same train car. 

She wakes up.

The sky is white. 

It isn’t paper-white, and it’s not snow-white. It’s the off-white of painted wood or ceramic. It’s the color of something that must have been handmade. A white that looks natural on the ground, but seems just slightly wrong when it’s in the sky. 

A girl sits in her house, playing a video game. She does not notice the world around her, eyes focused on her screen. She calmly clicks the buttons, interacting with cute, loveable characters.

Out of the corner of her eye, something flickers. One of the characters, a small yellow rabbit, is staring directly at her. She ignores it, moving her character away from him. She blinks, and he is there again. There is a menacing expression on his face that could not have been coded in.

The rabbit’s face begins to come apart at the seams, becoming nothing but ragged glitching in the vague shape of what he once was. All that is discernible is a manic grin, directed at the girl. She tries to shut off the game. She fails.

She wakes up.

The sky is lavender.

It’s entirely different from the lavender sunrise. It’s not the lavender of flowers, or of the warm comforter on a little girl’s bed. This lavender sky is almost spectral. It seems to shift at times, like waves rippling across a lake. It’s the kind of lavender you see in photos of galaxies.

A girl sits in a car, driven by her father. She is staring out at the horizon, letting her mind wander. She says something to the man, starting a bit of small talk.

The conversation veers unexpectedly. Her father tells her of shocking news - that her grandfather has been arrested for murder. He has already been proven guilty, without a doubt in anyone’s mind. There will be no more trips to Los Angeles to visit him.

She’s crying and panicking, praying that it’s not true. She’s in denial, and she knows it. She can’t speak a word. There is no comfort offered. It barely matters, considering how dismayed she is. Her father keeps driving.

She wakes up.

The sky is black.

It’s dissimilar from the blue-black of midnight. It’s closer to the shining black of a crow’s wing, or the iridescence of spilled oil. It gleams like pitch-black ink or the crystalline black of obsidian. It’s deep and pure, uninterrupted by stars or crescent moons.

A girl is curled into a ball inside her closet, shaking uncontrollably. Her breath is uneven and shuddering, and she forces down a whimper of fear.

There is something outside, banging around. Sometimes it lets out a horrid screech, forcing her to cover her ears. She has no idea what it looks like, what it is, but she is afraid. She knows that it can hurt her. It may have already, she can’t remember.

Whatever is outside, its heavy footsteps come to a halt outside the closet door. She hears clattering as it grabs the doorknob, twisting and shaking until it breaks off. It begins to throw itself against the wood. She screams for help, knowing none will come.

She wakes up.

The sky is blue.

It looks almost like the sky’s regular pastel blue, dotted with puffy white clouds, but it isn’t. The colors are just a bit too saturated, slightly too bright. It could be passed off as a trick of the light, but no matter where you stand the sky looks the same.

A girl shoots into a sitting position on her bed. She takes a few breaths, trying to calm down from her nightmare. Sighing, she hugs a stuffed cat to her chest.

The cat is softer than she remembers, squishing as if it were filled with feathers, rather than the cotton she’s used to. She dismisses it as her being disoriented from her dream. The girl shifts off her bed and stands up. The floor does not squeak in the spot it always does.

She looks around her room. Her cactus has been replaced by a small fern. Her desk is on the left side of the room, instead of the right. Her bookshelf has an extra level. The posters on her walls have been replaced with tapestries. Everything is just the tiniest bit wrong.

She wakes up.

The sky is grey.