The Madness of Boredom

“Hey Em, I was wondering if you could give me advice on what to wear for my 100th-day anniversary with Michael.” Chelsea’s eyes gleamed with excitement as she held onto two dresses.

“The grey one.” Emily nods absently as her eyes return to her screen. 

“You’re absolutely hilarious!” Chelsea rolled her eyes and pushed the dresses forward one at a time. “It's either the dark grey one, orrrr… the lilac grey one!” That pulled Emily out of her trance and she finally looked away from her phone to stare at her friend. 

She squinted her eyes at the short-haired girl. “Lilac grey,” she repeated.

“What?” Chelsea shrugged as if it was something people would expect to hear on a normal Tuesday evening. “That's what I think lilac would look like in its grey form!”

Chelsea was always an odd person. But still, it felt uncanny to hear about colours from anyone.

When Emily first felt the true moments of being grey, she was just like Chelea; excited and amused by the shift in the world. Emily found it funny when she'd say “Hey look mum! Let's count how many shades of grey there are!” and she’d point at the view outside the window. It was safe to say her mother was already ahead of the grieving and she’d nod out of the boredom that remained permanently, the way she wished her perm would be.

Now Emily understood why her mother’s face was always so void of emotions. The colours really were their emotions. Sure the children born after the shift in nature, found the grey to be their only home. But this was never their home.

Emily laid back into Chelsea’s bed, her feet dangled off of the edge. Her eyes wandered across the fairy lights that stopped working, to the boho ornaments that never suited the room’s scheme.

“Can you imagine what the colour of the sky is right now?” She asked mindlessly as she raised her arm up and stared at rings on her own life.

“What else would it be, silly,” she grinned at Emily. “Blue!” like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Which it was… once upon a time but it irritated her how indifferent Chelsea was to what was happening. How could she be so used to it already?

Emily pushed herself off of the bed as Chelsea twirled with the lilac dress pressed in front of her. “I should start heading home.” She stared at what was once a room full of pastel pinks and oranges. Now the frills on the bed made the view look like they were in a 50s sitcom show. “My mum’s going to go mad if she heard I'm out at night.”

The walk back home was as usual. The same house and the same people outside on their front porch. But what was different this time was the strange crowd forming a few roads ahead.

“Tell me you see it too.” She heard someone mumble and her interest perked up. She pushed through as much as she could till she caught a glimpse of something that pulled the air out of her.

Red.

When Emily first heard the news of colour disappearing, her mother claimed it was the end of the world. Emily thought she was being silly. She thought that this was a metaphor for age. As people grew older their life became more grey. What Emily didn’t know, was that three weeks from then her life would forever remain grey.

The government called it a “colour-free nation.” Colour free like it was something they should feel blessed for. Isn't it exciting! To see the park but instead of green, we find grey, and grey, and oh goody! More grey!

It was obvious they had no clue what was happening and that they too were traumatised by the black and white atmosphere. 

It was five years from then; one thousand, eight hundred and forty-two, to be exact. But what was that she saw in front of her own two eyes?

The man groaned as he grabbed at his head. He must have hit his head so hard to leave such a wound for blood to be dripping to his chin.

“Do you think the camera will be able to pick that up?” That's when Emily noticed something odd. The cops glanced at each other with unease, sure the person being observed by everyone was not exactly the best thing for them to preserve a crime scene. But this was more than that. It was as if people saw something they shouldn't have.

Her hands fumbled for her phone as she pulled the camera up towards the poor man. She was a bit embarrassed realising she was no better than the others who lacked the common decency of giving someone privacy. But she wanted to make sure she could preserve this before something happened.

She then realised how strange it was that the phone that could once pick out the very marks on her face she could never see in the mirror, couldn't even grasp onto the colour.

Her eyes wandered back to the cops who were more afraid of the people seeing the red colour instead of the actual incident itself.

Emily shoved her phone back in her pocket and speed walked towards her house.

“Mum! You would not believe what I saw…” Emily kicked off her shoes as she walked further down the corridor. “Mum? What the heck are you doing?!” The scratches on her mother’s arms drew red marks, they were light, but they were still quite colourful in contrast to the grey skin.

That’s when she realised why the cops had that expression on their faces. She realised how insane people were. How desperate people could become.

“Emily!” Her mother’s voice, though full of genuine excitement, scared her. “Do you see this? We bleed in colour! But there’s a catch. Our blood is the only form of colour right now, and we can only see colour in our blood if we are the ones drawing it out! That's why it is so hard to find this information out!”

Emily felt sick.

People can go mad when they’re under-stimulated. Boredom was poison and Emily knew how important it was for colour to exist. But now she realised why it was also important to prevent people from finding out the truth.

Was this why the murder reports were increasing so much?

She held her phone up to take a picture of her mother’s arms. The image came out grey. She took her mother’s phone, the image still came out grey. She knew her eyes weren’t fooling her. She knew everyone could see the same thing, she heard the crowds. She finally came to the conclusion that this was all the government’s doing. To ensure that situations like this would not spread like wildfire.

Oh, but what they didn’t realise… as Emily peeked outside her bedroom window. The once bland neighbourhood being painted with red.

Her phone portrayed multiple news titles sharing a common theme; the fear of a civil war outbreak.

People would do anything they could to stop themselves from getting bored.