Do not step on the BLUE

Obsessions are insidious.

They take root in the mind like a silent poison, creeping into every thought and distorting our perception of reality. They tug at us like an unseen current, pulling us away from the shore of reason, dragging us into dark waters where escape becomes a distant memory. Slowly, they drive us toward reckless decisions—choices that harm not only ourselves, but ripple outward, touching everyone we care about.

Norman Sykes walked the coastal road, the sea stretching endlessly beside him. The soft murmur of the waves was a lullaby, hypnotic and soothing. As he passed a weathered sign, something stopped him. He took a few steps back, brushed a stray lock of hair from his eyes, and read it again.

Do not step on the BLUE.

"That’s odd. It usually says ‘Do not step on the grass,’" he murmured, his voice barely above a whisper.

His gaze wandered instinctively toward the sea. Countless tangerine peels floated aimlessly on the surface, moving in lazy, slow circles.

His breath caught.

Then he woke with a jolt, his heart thudding violently in his chest.

The same dream. Again.

At fifty, Norman had spent much of his life trapped in the clutches of obsession. He twisted door locks over and over, checking them again and again until certainty—that cruel illusion of control—settled in. There were mornings when he turned back mid-commute to ensure he hadn’t left something behind, arriving late to work, to appointments—perpetually out of sync. But none of his compulsions held the weight of this—this fixation that had sprouted from a dream. It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t terror. But for reasons beyond his grasp, it consumed him.

Without thinking, he began avoiding anything blue. His favorite navy suit, long tucked in the back of the closet, was now hidden away. The blue blankets he once loved were packed into storage. He even took down paintings that had a hint of blue, as if erasing the color would free him.

But the dream did not relent.

One evening, as he mentally cataloged every trace of blue still clinging to his life, his eyes fell on his reflection. And there they were—his deep, piercing blue eyes staring back at him.

Once, they had drawn people in, captivated them. Now, they repulsed him.

A few hours later, Norman walked out of the ophthalmologist’s office, his new black contact lenses hiding his gaze. He then bought a pair of brown-tinted sunglasses to dull the sky’s unrelenting blue.

It helped. A little.

Blue was fading from his waking world.

But it still haunted his dreams.

The nightmares continued, night after night.

One day, exhaustion took hold of him. His legs trembled under the weight of sleepless nights. He found a bench at the edge of a park, collapsed onto it, and checked the time on his phone. He should have been at work hours ago.

His eyes were sore—aching from lack of rest, from the black contact lenses that felt like foreign objects against his eyes, pressing into his very soul. He hadn’t taken them out in days, and the constant pain was a reminder of the obsession that had consumed him.

He had always believed control was the answer. If he could just manage his thoughts, his actions, he could maintain order.

The faint echoes of his dream lingered. The blue. The tangerines. The sea. Strange, but familiar. All-consuming.

He walked on, each step heavier than the last. Shops, people, the noise of the city—it all passed him by. He was lost, trapped inside his own thoughts, unable to escape.

At a street corner, he saw a vendor with a cart piled high with tangerines. His chest tightened. The sight of them made his skin crawl. He couldn’t breathe. Without thinking, he rushed forward, his foot swinging violently to kick the cart over. The tangerines spilled everywhere, rolling onto the street.

He heard the vendor shout in anger, but Norman didn’t care. He had to escape.

Days bled into nights, and still, he refused to sleep. It was the only way to avoid the chaos in his head.

Then one morning, as he drove to work, exhaustion gnawed at him. His eyes burned—both from lack of sleep and the contact lenses that hadn't been removed in days. The pain was unbearable.

He stopped at a red light, gripping the wheel, rubbing his aching eyes. Behind him, impatient horns blared. He assumed the light had turned green.

Half-blind, he pressed the gas pedal.

His foot felt heavy, disconnected, as if it didn’t belong to him. The world before him seemed to warp and bend, the street stretching out like a mirage.

It happened too quickly for him to react.

He never saw the van, brimming with tangerines, rounding the corner.

Nor did he realize the honking wasn’t for him.

The driver of the van swerved violently, trying to avoid him, but it was too late. The collision was brutal. Norman didn’t even have time to brace himself. The crash threw him back in his seat, the airbag bursting in his face with a deafening pop. His head rang, his vision blurred, but it didn’t matter. His mind was elsewhere.

Tangerines exploded onto the pavement, tumbling into the sea. They bobbed weightlessly on the water’s surface like fragments of his dream, somehow real.

A motorcycle became entangled in the crash, its rider hurled onto the counter of a small paint shop.

Norman barely registered the chaos around him.

It was too much.

A bucket of paint flew through the air, landing in the grassy park nearby, right beside a sign that Norman had passed countless times before.

A sticker on the bucket read: BLUE.

The sign split in two, crashing to the ground next to the bucket—a shattered reminder of everything Norman had been avoiding.

It had never made sense before, but now, it felt like an undeniable truth.

Had anyone been there to read it, they would have seen the warning:

DO NOT STEP ON THE BLUE.