And then the red one enters

A great artist once said, ‘Colour! What a deep and mysterious language, the language of dreams’. Depending on the situation or distraction, this philosophy unquestionably plays an integral part in Herbert Truelove’s meandering existence. Floating and gliding from one state of contented, colourful contemplation to the next, regardless of the consequences.

It is Tuesday. Spring has just about sprung and a dapple of weak sunlight is finally threatening to break through the clouds that have been in perpetual domination since last October. At least it seems that way to Herb, who as we speak, is in a daydream of sorts, caught between the grim reality of his humdrum day job, and the fantastical scenes that his mind is playing out to him. Today, softly tinted marshmallow cats and dogs with expertly curated moustaches and jaunty little hats, are fleeting across his venturing mind. Everything is soft and hazy around the edges. The sun’s faint rays kiss the scene with hues of pale yellow, blue and pink, and across the dusty blue sky, cloud-like forms are enticing him away to somewhere far beyond the grey walls of reality where Herb’s flesh and bones exist.

“Truelove!” Shrill and pointed as ever, the bespectacled and suited Geraldine Leadbetter, a storm-cloud personified, marches across the office, and places herself between the window and Herb’s reverie. She casts the darkest kind of shadow across the desk, perhaps the sort you might encounter in a terrible nightmare. “Are the figures for the board meeting ready yet?” The words, thunder reverberating in Herb’s ears - but he is not easily phased. Herb has learned that it is best to do whatever is asked of him. Herb knows that it’s wise to keep his head down and complete his work to an adequate standard, so that it attracts minimal attention. Herb knows where his mind would rather be…

The moustachioed marshmallow cats and dogs saunter away towards the rapidly greying clouds, and Herb, rubbing his eyes, waggles the grey plastic mouse to motion his laptop back into life.

“Half an hour,” mutters Herb as he adjusts himself to the reality that surrounds him, the cats and dogs disappearing into the cloudy horizon. His tired eyes flicker across the incomplete spreadsheet that occupies the screen. Conditional formatting highlights the cells that need to be completed in a garish bright yellow. As Herb knows from bitter experience, the department heads are notoriously tardy in submitting their month end figures, and this month is no exception.

“And that will include the projections for the second quarter,” the dark outline of Geraldine Leadbetter, demands rather than questions.

“Of course.” Around the edge of Geraldine’s heavy form, Herb can see a butterfly hovering outside the window, its golden tipped wings unusually early for the time of year, but splendid all the same as it flutters in the mid-morning light.

 “On my desk by eleven sharp then.” Then Geraldine, engulfed within her ominous cloud, rumbles back through the office and is gone. The light resumes its place on Herb’s desk and his pupils contract for a moment. As he refocuses, he watches the butterfly as it continues to dance outside the window, coaxing and tantalising, almost coquettishly if a butterfly could assume such a demeanour. ‘Hey Herb, look at me!’. Herb runs his hand over his chin, catching the patch of stubble that he’s missed during this morning's shave. The empty yellow cells blink at him.

Herb is no fool of course. He is something of a spreadsheet genius, and all the projections, graphs and charts will update automatically as soon as he inputs the missing figures. He turns his attention away from the butterfly for a moment and flicks to his emails. Nothing. Five department heads have still not submitted their figures. Herb detests having to chase them. They make him feel insignificant, as though they have more important things to think about than a few numbers.

‘Numbers that you should bloody well know if you had any clue what you were doing!’ thinks Herb.

The tapping at the window draws his attention away from the screen. The butterfly is still there, and in the distance, pink and blue marshmallow cats and dogs with moustaches and jaunty hats are bounding along the tree tops. The butterfly poses enigmatically on a small branch that grows out of the old brickwork, stretching and twitching its outstretched wings. Herb is so overwhelmingly compelled by the creature, that he moves cautiously round to the other side of the desk and crouches down, the thinning fabric of his trousers straining at the knees as he does so. The glass separates his nose from the butterfly by less than an inch.

Over the hills and the meadows, golden yellow with rapeseed and sunflowers, far too early for the time of year but glorious all the same. The countryside is ablaze with colour as Herb and the butterfly soar, dipping and flying over the landscape below. Hanging on tightly to its wings, delighting in every swirl and swoop, Herb is surprised to see strange markings on the insect, not usual for this type. In between the clouds, the cats and dogs nod and doff their hats as he passes, and Herb strains his eyes against the wind, fascinated by the butterfly, curious to examine more closely its squiggles and shapes.

Back at his desk, Herb recalls the markings, which were in fact, numbers. Five of them etched in fine flowing lines across the butterfly’s wings. He opens the spreadsheet and, compelled by something he knows not, he enters the numbers into the bright yellow cells, which immediately reformat to corporate grey. The bottom line updates, the graphs and charts complete. All is done. But the cell containing the overall projection for the next quarter is now red. This doesn’t surprise Herb, the second quarter is always like that, so he prints off copies for the board meeting, slides them onto Geraldine’s desk whilst she’s in the washroom and disappears for an early lunch.

Outside, the sun has burned away the hazy cloud of earlier and the day promises to be a little warmer than of late. Herb buys a takeaway sandwich and coffee, then in the small memorial garden down the road from the office he finds an empty bench facing the sun. He sips the coffee, letting the warm milky substance trickle down his throat and warm his insides, the caffeine tingling through his veins. Herb closes his eyes. Blotches of red, orange and green fill his vision as the light from the sun leaves its mark. The green shapes begin to move in slow swirling motions, bumping off the red and orange, like a crooked kaleidoscope. Herb recalls holding his eye to the brightly decorated tube, turning the coloured beads, reflecting in the mirrors. In the distance his mother is calling him in from the living room to go through to the kitchen for his dinner. The kaleidoscope falls to the floor and the green swirls fill his vision as a formation of leaves and petals spin clockwise and then anti-clockwise, alternating, until a purple snake pokes its head through the centre of the arrangement. It smiles. It’s a pleasant enough smile, though perhaps verging on the sinister and the corners of Herb’s mouth twitch slightly. People passing through the memorial garden give him a wide berth.

Herb sips the last of his tepid coffee, eats the ham sandwich which is now lukewarm and stretches his legs before heading back inside. As he passes the office window, he checks his reflection, ‘reasonable enough, if a little worn around the edges,’ but he notices that his shirt looks an odd colour. Herb shakes his head, ‘just the light,’ and heads back into the office.

Herb’s stomach sinks as returning to his desk he sees the familiar outline of Geraldine against the window. But as he gets closer, he notices an expression on her face that he’s never seen before. Not the usual storm cloud, more like a break in the weather, a lightening of the day. There’s a faint flush of colour to her cheeks, a softening of her usually harsh and critical eyes. Her blouse, usually a nondescript, department store shade of greyish beige, now seems to emit a slight hint of pink. Not bright enough to be obvious, but just enough to make Herb look twice.

“The board meeting went well,” she says. “The projections were in line with expectations. Good work Truelove.”

Herb nods, not sure how to respond. She has never called his work good before. Ever.

“I need you to run some modelling,” she continues. “Future projections, based on recent trends. A few different scenarios. I want to see what we’re looking at for the next couple of years.”

She turns to leave then pauses. “By the way,” she adds, looking Herb up and down in a way that makes him feel like he’s transparent, “I like that shirt on you. You had a dark blue one on before, didn't you?”

Herb looks down. His shirt seems pale and washed-out, and he’s not entirely sure what colour it had been earlier, his morning routine being somewhat chaotic. The first shirt out of the wardrobe usually suffices.

Herb sits at his desk. For a moment he glances towards the window as temptation draws him to contemplate for just a little while. But Geraldine’s demeanour has startled him, setting him off balance. For the first time since starting with the firm, he feels compelled to produce what she wants as accurately and as promptly as he can. Herb exhales slowly and turns to the spreadsheet. Numbers and formulas are a place of comfort and security for him, and he begins to plan out the equations and tables of data that he needs. Everything is mapping into the right place, no errors flash, but his mind is slowly drifting. The warmth of the sun still lingers on his face, the coffee tingles in his bloodstream and Herb’s fingers hover over the keys.

The marshmallow cats and dogs have returned. Their sugary bodies bound across a soft, undulating pastel landscape, their hats perched askew at gravity-defying angles. Herb watches the beautiful hues of the world around them, gentle, like childhood dreams. He smiles as they swirl and leap, admiring their peculiar hats and moustaches.

Then, there’s a flicker and something deeper in his mind stirs. Herb snaps back to the screen. The formatting is wrong. Purple cells.

They hadn’t been there before. He hadn’t formatted them that way. Herb was sure of that. The empty spaces within them pulse ever so slightly and Herb’s stomach tightens as he recalls the numbers on the golden tipped butterfly. ‘The snake was purple.’ He tries to remember the patterns. ‘Had there been numbers?’

Herb leans back in his chair and closes his eyes, trying to recall, attempting to re-summon the lunchtime dream. The marshmallow creatures appear again, bounding across rolling gentle pistachio fields, warm, comforting, inviting. But that’s not what he needs right now.

The snake had been different. It had coiled through a spiral of violet and deep shades of green, its smile knowing, its movements slow and deliberate. Herb pushes deeper into the memory, searching for it, feeling the gentle marshmallow dreams resisting, as if trying to keep him away.

Then he finds it. The kaleidoscope returns, ‘your dinner’s ready Herbert,’ but the snake slithers from the swirling pattern of leaves, its scales shimmering in purple hues. And there they are, the numbers, etched in golden ink along its back, shifting and twisting as the creature moves.

Herb returns to his desk with a jolt. His fingers move quickly before his waking mind erases what he’s just seen, and with shaking hands, he enters the snake’s numbers into the spreadsheet. The model updates. The figures align.

Herb’s heart thumps in his chest. The purple cells have turned grey but he doesn’t know what the new snake-derived data means. But when he prints the pages and places them on Geraldine’s desk, she looks at him with something close to admiration.

“Interesting,” she murmurs. Geraldine chews her freshly painted lips as her eyes move across the sheets. “This changes things. Leave this with me Truelove.” Then a pause as she adjusts the chain of magenta beads that seem to have appeared around her neck. “Thank you.”

Later in the week we find Herb reflecting on the events of the last couple of days. He’s continually surprised and a little bewildered at the changes he sees in Geraldine’s persona, gaining subtle hints of colour in both her wardrobe and her demeanour. With every financial forecast or model that she requests, amidst wild daytime dreams and flickering spreadsheets, Herb delivers the goods. He knows he’s making a good impression but his daytime reveries are changing, showing him things he’s never seen before, and he isn’t sure how he feels about that.

The faded and worn knees of his trousers have thinned further, now nearly transparent, and when he catches his reflection in the washroom mirror, the patchy stubble on his chin seems to be developing a rather grey tinge. Herb’s comforting daydreams full of soft and gentle colour seem to come less readily and the pink and blue creatures keep on vanishing over the darkened horizon. The spring that threatened to flourish just days earlier has retreated back into winter, and a bitter easterly wind whips around every building and street corner.

Today, it is Friday and Geraldine wants the latest figures to review over the weekend. As ever, Herb is on point to deliver. It seems to him that the department heads have faded into obscurity. They approve the files that Herb emails to them, without a second glance, and Geraldine continues to be enthralled, enchanted almost, by the tables and charts that Herb sets on her desk at every demand.

This morning, Geraldine’s blouse is a vibrant cornflower blue, her smile brighter, her voice lighter. She calls Herb into her office.

"Herb,” she smiles.

‘Did she just call me Herb..?’

 “The board members have noticed your work. They want you to take on some more experimental forecasting."

Herb’s eyes drift past Geraldine’s shoulder. Through the window, he sees a slender man in a tight red suit balancing on the edge of the window ledge. He’s grinning at Herb, opening and closing his suit jacket, revealing something, a code perhaps, and then quickly concealing it, smirking as he does so. Behind, in the distance, the soothing colours of pastel fields flicker, as marshmallow cats and dogs try to draw Herb’s attention. The scarlet character outside the window watches, waiting.

“Herb!” Geraldine’s voice punctures Herb's distraction. “This could mean a promotion. More pay. More prestige. Think about it over the weekend.”

Herb rattles his head, bringing himself back into the moment. “I’m sorry Geraldine, it’s been quite a week...” He looks down at his hand, it looks paler than before, almost translucent under the harsh office lights. He swallows, his throat dry. “I’ll get those figures to you this morning - ready for the weekend.”

The spreadsheet gapes at Herb. It flickers. Cells that were accurate earlier are now showing #REF! and other disturbing error codes that Herb has never seen before. Other cells are suddenly formatted in red, their borders animated, serpents slithering around each red cell. Herb looks out of the window across the grey sky where trees bend and sway in the wind and litter from the street blows up in gusts. The red suited man peeps impishly around the corner of the window, just enough that Herb sees his menacing grin. Then he steps fully into view. Herb notices the purple snake wrapped around the man’s left leg, and on his right shoulder sits a butterfly with golden tipped wings.

Somewhere in the distance, in what feels like another world, a dream within a dream, the blue and pink marshmallow creatures are trying to reach him, their little hats bobbing as they bounce over clouds. But the scarlet presence is looming closer, toying with the buttons on his red jacket, ‘open or closed?’ it mouths through the glass. The butterfly flaps and the snake slithers, its purple scales gleaming, waiting for Herb to notice the fresh set of numbers along its back.

As Herb closes his eyes, he finds himself at an unfamiliar crossroads. One path stretches away in soft, gentle hues. It feels familiar and safe. He can see the marshmallow creatures playing in the distance, their hats bobbing as they bound through a pastel-tinted world of sunlit clouds. They wag their tails, tweak their moustaches, urging him to join them. But they are fading, their edges blurring. In the opposite direction, shadows twist into deeper, richer colours, purple, red, gold. The air sparks with energy that Herb can’t see and the red-suited man stands, waiting, his smirk widening as he temptingly holds his jacket open, revealing an array of numbers and equations. Herb rubs his eyes, looks again in each direction. Herb is compelled by something unfathomable, but he thinks he understands…

At his desk Herb works feverishly, head down. He is focused on completing the spreadsheet for Geraldine. By lunchtime he has succeeded in his task. Geraldine is happy. She pats the papers on her desk fondly like a favourite pet. She’ll look at them over the weekend, she tells Herb. She trusts him to have done a good job.

We rejoin Herbert Truelove the following morning. It is Saturday. His tousled head emerges from beneath the bed-clothes and he greets the weekend with a yawn, blinking at the light creeping between the gap in his thin bedroom curtains.

He has slept well, remarkably well in fact. It has been the best night's sleep Herb has had in a very long time.